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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

If you like podcasts check out Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History episode on slavery https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dan-carlins-hardcore-h...

And Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast (season 4) on the Haitian revolution https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id70388977...

Slavery is an ancient and extremely complex topic. While it is certainly a moral evil there are very few heroes we can point to as moral saviors by modern standards. African kingdoms themselves sold their rivals into slavery en masse. Anyone who says the modern world is a horror show has no idea how good they have it.

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Precisely, it always gets me when many workers in the US are calling their work environment "slavery", doing so ultimately undermines and trivialises the horror our ancestors went through.

I, for one, am glad that such barbaric practice has been more or less abolished.

> I, for one, am glad that such barbaric practice has been more or less abolished.

Well, yes and no. Human trafficking is still big business even in the states (worldwide, the State Department estimates 24.9 million trafficked persons at any given time - domestically, there were for example over 1,500 reported cases in California in 2019). It's just underground now.

Is human trafficking strictly slavery/coercive, or does it lump in all smuggling of sex workers, irrespective of the presence of consent/willingness?

Slavery is alive and well in the world today, and is not simply limited to sex trafficking.

According to https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/resource/human-trafficking-.... Only about 20% are sexually exploited, with the majority used for labor.

"Anyone who says the modern world is a horror show has no idea how good they have it."

Depends on your actual location. Modern democracies were able to tame the worst human instincts down.

But Mariupol 2022 will likely enter the pantheon of worst horrors in history. Nothing good about that.

This doesn’t mean that nothing bad happens today, but that it’s nothing compared to past atrocities.

Of course Mariupol is horrible and I feel empathy for the people there. It must be horrible. And I’m sure it’s no comfort to them that Mariupol isn’t as bad as past things.

But it is a comfort to the rest of the world that Mariupol isn’t as bad as stuff like Alexander’s siege of Tyre over 2000 years ago [0]. And that Mariupol will not be remembered in the list of world horrors. It’s unlikely anyone will be linking to Mariupol in 2000 years. And let’s be thankful that it doesn’t get worse than it currently is. And that we help the people of Mariupol.

[0] after capture everyone in the city was murdered, crucified, or sold into slavery https://www.worldhistory.org/article/107/alexanders-siege-of...

True, the warfare of Antiquity was something else entirely.

> Anyone who says the modern world is a horror show has no idea how good they have it.

The modern world is still a horror show. We've just dialed back the barbarity from 100 to 98. Only now we tend to know more about what's going on in the world. And even then you can turn off the tragedy and suffering on the nightly news and happily watch Jeopardy!

And to misquote Gibbon - "our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery".

... Deleted

???

I deleted it. It's really not my place to say that

Say what?

I spoke poorly of someone. I'm trying to be more sensitive to potentially neurodivergent people so pardon me for leaving it here.

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