
Global Slavery Index 2014 - elleferrer
http://www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/
======
WiggleYourIndex
The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now
I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded
to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages
only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery,
and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery)

~~~
naturalethic
But taxes aren't right?

~~~
zenogais
Taxes are a bit different from wage slavery or even slavery, and shouldn't be
confused with them. Taxes and wage slavery, however, do have a mutually re-
enforcing relationship.

Wage slavery is a system in which a person can only subsist by exchanging
their labor for money - essentially forcing them to work for others for a
living in exchange for means of subsistence.

Taxes, in a democracy at least, are intended to be merely a yearly collection
to pay for products/services used in common with a state managed agency
typically overseeing the apportionment of those funds.

However, if taxes are extracted through coercive means (as they are in most
present-day states), then they can be viewed as coercing individuals into a
choice between either wage slavery or poverty. In that way taxes and wage-
slavery are two ends a coercive system.

~~~
pdkl95
Nonsense. we don't[1] have a debtor's prison in the USA and I believe most
laws that criminalize a simple inability to pay would be unconstitutional by
the 13 Amendment.

Now, this is a _very_ fine legal line to walk, because _intent_ (mens rea) to
withhold taxes is indeed a crime. Failing to file any required paperwork may
also be a crime in some situations. IF by some chance you cannot pay, but
_still file_ on time and explain the situation to the IRS, they will only be
able to impose financial remedies. So you can certainly get some sort of
payment plan, or wage garnishes, or liens on any property you own - but not
jail time or forced labor.

In practice, of course, this applies to only a very small set of people. It is
cleasrly a attempt to work around the moral issues to allow tax laws to exist.
If slavery is the concern, tax law is way to minor of an issue. I suggest
looking into the current trend of trying (and succeeding, to some degree) to
bring back slavery in the form of prison labor. For-profit prisons are a bad
enough idea, but allowing way-below-minimum-wage labor and a lack of oversight
and regulation is creating a huge moral hazard.

[1] I realize that there are currently trying to reverse the current situation
a bring back various forms of criminal penalties and/or a type of debtor's
prison. While concerning, they have had only limited, local success so far.

~~~
nickff
The parent said:

> _" if taxes are extracted through coercive means (as they are in most
> present-day states), then they can be viewed as coercing individuals into a
> choice between either wage slavery or poverty."_

You never actually addressed the issue of coercion as a whole, you only
addressed what happens when there is an 'inability to pay'; as you state:

> _" So you can certainly get some sort of payment plan, or wage garnishes, or
> liens on any property you own - but not jail time or forced labor."_

But you do not address what happens when one hides the money, in foreign
accounts, or domestic locations. If one does either of these, they are subject
to imprisonment, though it may not be called a 'debtor's prison', this is
still coercion.

TLDR; If I demand money from you, under threat of confinement, it is coercion,
whether or not you have the means to pay.

~~~
pdkl95
> under threat of confinement

In the area of taxes, nobody is making such a threat.

As I said above, "confinement" (jail) is the one thing that that would be the
one thing that can't happen for _only_ inability to pay.

> hides the money

See, that's not what I'm talking about. By attempting to hide what would
otherwise be taxable money, you are committing a _different_ crime, which is
really a type of _fraud_ (or possibly, if a court was involved, perjury).

After facing whatever penalty there is for fraudulently filling out tax
forms[1], someone who evades taxes (any way) would _still_ owe the outstanding
back taxes.... which cannot result in further jail time.

So yes, the government will make your _financial_ life hard if you fail to pay
taxes. They can (and do) coerce your _property_ very harshly. The government
should only start using coercive force against _you_ (instead of just your
property) if there are other related crimes involved.

{ For the record: this is not legal advice, see a lawyer for better
information. Especially see a lawyer before attempting some sort of scheme to
move money around in the hopes of hiding taxes. That is getting harder and
harder to pull off in the modern "big data" world and and clever analysis
techniques[2] }

[1] note: lack of filling them out still counts, as the IRS simply files a
substitute tax return in your place. Obviously, they will not be filling it
out in your favor. Their minimal filing doesn't even include the "standard
deduction". So

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Accounting_frau...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Accounting_fraud_detection)

~~~
zenogais
My apologies for not being clearer, but then again this honestly this strikes
me as overly pedantic. By coercion I meant coercion in the broadest sense as
anything designed to influence your behavior - eg induce pain or potential
hardship so that paying taxes seems more desirable than not paying them.
Therefore, while the legal classifications of the particular offenses may vary
and be debatated ad nauseum, I don't think they detract from the fundamentally
coercive, or even at least perceived coercive, reality underlying them.

~~~
pdkl95
I would agree that the interpretation being used here by the government (and
others) is indeed waling a fine line. I see it as mainly a historical thing:
guaranteeing at least <i>personal</i> liberty in a system that uses taxes was
a _huge_ improvement over what came before it. We should, of course, try to
improve the situation even further in the future.

I jsut think the tax issue is somewhat less important than aquite a few of the
other threats to freedom that currently exist. (the prison labor mentioned
above being a good example. There are other concewrns, too, of course.

~~~
zenogais
We are in total agreement here. Taxes are far less concerning to me (and
honestly seem like a distraction) compared to any number of other more
impactful and coercive systems in existence.

------
mseebach
The Economist had a pretty scathing tear-down of indicies in the issue week
before last. One article specifically criticises the Global Slavery Index,
another is more satirical, but still well worth a read:

[http://www.economist.com/news/international/21631039-interna...](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21631039-international-
comparisons-are-popular-influentialand-sometimes-flawed-ranking-rankings)

[http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21631025-learn-
ruses-i...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21631025-learn-ruses-
international-country-rankings-how-lie-indices)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Also worth listening to the More Or Less podcast on BBC r4 where they
interview the Economist journalist involved.

Specifically they found that the NGO behind the slavery index had taken some
countries where there was no data and simply assumed that country had as much
slavery as a similar country (nearby, similar population etc)

Then they ranked countries. And named and shamed.

It was not good statistics.

~~~
backprojection
got a link?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
[https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/more-or-less-behind-
the-...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/more-or-less-behind-the-
stats/id267300884?mt=2&i=325350622)

------
josu
The definition of slavery according to them:

 _Modern slavery involves one person possessing or controlling a person in
such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual
liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use,
management, profit, transfer or disposal._

I would like to know what _significantly_ means. Were African slaves in
America "significantly deprived" or just "deprived".

~~~
smutticus
I think your question is fair and don't understand why you were downvoted.

I also question their definition of slavery. Are US prison inmates forced into
labor also slaves?

Slavery is not an easy thing to define.

~~~
nickff
It appears that inmates in modern US prisons are forced to work, though they
are often incentivized to do work.[1]

Your question is still a good one though, and I would be interested to know
whether penal labor would qualify as 'slavery', and whether the conditions of
the facility, or the reason for incarceration would be taken into account in
this judgement.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#United_States)

~~~
VLM
Something I don't understand about FPI is my sister in law's public school is
FULL of FPI stuff although technically they can only sell to the feds. I
believe there's a lot of "pass thru" and "non-surplus surplus sales" going on
in the prison industrial complex. I suspect there's a lot of "Well, sorry
about no federal funds cash this quarter, budget crunch and all that, but
here's some nice FPI desks made by prison slave labor". The quality level of
the carpentry work, both labor and materials, is usually pretty high compared
to Chinese slave labor which always kinda surprises me. I wonder if folks
closer to public schools than I am, see as much FPI as I do.

------
random_pr
An issue with problems like this, that are obviously bad, is that only
positive examples are tested, or only examples that would increase the
estimate of the scope of the problem. I doubt the 'Walk Free Foundation' has
tested equally for negative examples, and would look for ways to lower their
estimates (as one has to do to fit reality).

------
shawabawa3
This claims 60,000 "enslaved" in the US, however many people would argue it's
much more thanks to forced prison labor

[http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-
unit...](http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-prison-industry-in-the-united-
states-big-business-or-a-new-form-of-slavery/8289)

~~~
gaius
Men, tho'. So no one cares.

------
lukasm
I'm sceptical of the score. How did they calculate that?

~~~
notahacker
Methodology here: [http://d3mj66ag90b5fy.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014...](http://d3mj66ag90b5fy.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/GSI2014_full_methodology.pdf)

The TLDR is: they surveyed broadly representative demographics of _nine_
countries on whether any family members had ever been forced to work, and kept
in that position by coercion. They also used some secondary sources for _ten_
other countries.

They extrapolated the figures for the rest of the 167 countries based on
averages of countries considered to have similar characteristics, with some
largely subjective country-specific adjustments.

As an example, the score for China, which they note has few confirmed reports
of widespread slavery was (average proportion of slaves in Japan, South Korea
and Taiwan) _.9 + (average proportion of Qatar, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia)_.1

Worthy as the objective behind the research may be, it's difficult to
understate how speculative these estimates and the percentages reported to a
ludicrous number of decimal places actually are.

------
sgt
Today I learned there are 23 enslaved people in Iceland.

~~~
alex_h
Figures for Iceland were actually extrapolated from figures for Britain. In
all the index is pretty seriously flawed. Some countries are being ranked in
the complete absence of any slavery data to justify a ranking.

[http://www.economist.com/news/international/21631039-interna...](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21631039-international-
comparisons-are-popular-influentialand-sometimes-flawed-ranking-rankings)

------
happyscrappy
I find it hard to believe that close to one percent of Russians are slaves.

~~~
sgt
I think there's a reason why they use the term enslavement rather than people
being slaves. Enslavement implies modern slavery - which is far off from the
chains and whips of a by-gone era. However it's still a form of slavery and
quite a serious problem globally.

