These are depressing times, and I'm reviewing a depressing book about contemporary slavery. Yes, existing slavery now! To many, the existence of contemporary slavery is a shocker. It's illegal, but that doesn't prevent it from existing in a number of countries.
Author Kevin Bales tells us that there are more slaves now than the number of people who were taken from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade. The main characteristic that they share is poverty. Most modern slaves are debt slaves. People become slaves to satisfy a debt.
In a section about Thailand, we learn that many Thai investors don't know they own slaves. They invest in brothels because they are regarded as a more solid investment than the stock market. They don't know that the women in the brothels aren't allowed to leave. The police hunt down escaped brothel slaves.
The next section deals with Mauritania in northwest Africa. It's a country about the size of California and Texas combined. The total population is estimated to be about two million. Population density there is probably the lowest on the planet. We can't really be sure because the Mauritanian government keeps the results of its census secret. So the exact population statistics are unknown.
Slavery officially became illegal in Mauritania in 1980, but for most slaves "legal freedom never became actual freedom." There are no punishments for keeping slaves, and Mauritanian courts now refuse to admit that there are slaves.
Most slaves in Mauritania are named Bilal. Bilal was a slave who belonged to the Prophet Muhammad. He was freed and became the first muezzin. Muezzins call Muslims to prayer.
Bales met a Bilal who was a slave that distributed water. This Bilal fills two sixty liter barrels of water from a well seven to nine times a day. Each time he goes to the well, he hauls one load to his master's house and another load to his master's relatives.
There is supposed to be compensation owed to masters for the freeing of their slaves. The compensation that the Mauritanian government would owe to the masters if all the slaves were actually freed is equivalent to 16% of Mauritania's GDP. They could never afford to pay that compensation.
After the Mauritania section, Disposable People moved on to Brazil. In 1854 Brazil stopped importing slaves, but slavery continued to exist there until emancipation in 1888.
The author points out that slavery will always be a temptation for employers who have a low profit margin. Not paying the workers will raise their profits. The anti-slavery organization Free The Slaves , which can be found at https: www.freetheslaves.net, estimates that at the time Disposable People was being written there were forty million slaves.
Wealthy investors weren't interested in investing in businesses where the workers were slaves. So the Brazilian government set up a show place for foreign investors to visit with workers who were free, but very low paid. The book doesn't reveal whether that company did attract foreign investors, but it does show that employers will do what they can get away with. I imagine that if all workers in Brazil were in labor unions, employers wouldn't be getting away with as much as they do.
After reading this survey of slavery in various nations, I came to the conclusion that contemporary slavery might be more enduring than contemporary American democracy. Now that's definitely a sobering thought.
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