In a discussion about slavery, I believe that several points need to be made . . . and I argue that it has never been eradicated, but only changed it’s form and appearance. Further, I argue that everyone in the wealthier countries (especially the U.S., but also Britain, France, Canada, and so forth) benefits from it.
- In order to bring every human being up to an American standard of living would require 4 more planets identical to Earth.
- The United States has aproximately 5% of the world’s population, yet we produce about 35% of the world’s greenhouse gasses.
- The only way we can consume in the way that we do is if we take resources and labor from the rest of the human population.
- If we really cared about everyone else, than we would see that the poorer countries used their labor and resources to benefit themselves rather than us.
- We work very hard to keep other people from entering our country to partake of the wealth that we take from them.
I reach the conclusion that the difference between slavery and what exists now is no different than any imagined difference between a Black slave in the 1850’s Deep South and a Black sharecropper family of the early 1900’s . . . so, not much distinction. We take wealth without sharing, and upsetting the status quo results in military action. We also use subtle bribery and political favors to put greedy fucks in charge of countries that have resources that we want.
The reason why there is a starving little girl with her waiting vulture is because we don’t want to sacrifice and/or make concessions on things that we think we need.
So . . . in order to live, 2/3 of the world must exist in deplorable poverty to provide what we want, they can’t vacate their lot in life and enter our country to partake of our wealth, and they die if they refuse to provide what we want (like the girl in the photo).
So . . . how is this substantially different from slavery?