Slavery

Slavery is a condition of control over a person, known as a slave, that can be enforced by violence or other forms of coercion against his or her will. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing the labor of the slave. A specific form, known as chattel slavery, is defined by the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them.

Economics of slavery

According to the British Anti-Slavery Society, "Although there is no longer any state which recognizes any claim by a person to a right of property over another, there are an estimated 2.7 million people throughout the world, mainly children, in conditions of slavery." They further note that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. According to a broader definition used by Free the Slaves, another advocacy group, there are 27 million people in slavery today, spread all over the world. This is, also according to that group:

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• The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
• The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
• Reducing the price of slaves to as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male labourers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels (where they invariably contract HIV). This represents the price paid to the person, or parents.
• This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labor terms—while the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time, that represents US$38,000 in today's dollars, thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost only one one-thousandth (0.1%) of their price 150 years ago.

As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to yield what are called disposable people—those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or those forced to work in mines.

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