Disposable

I’ve begun to read Kevin Bales’ book “Disposable People.” Bales, director of Free the Slaves, is a sociology professor who has thoroughly researched modern-day slavery. When people use the statistic that there are 27 million slaves in the world today, they are using Bales’ figure, one that he says is conservative but that he feels he can trust.

The term “disposable” brings out an aspect of modern slavery that I haven’t seen emphasized in the other literature I’ve read. Bales says that one difference between “old slavery,” the kind practiced in the United States before 1865, and the “new slavery” of today is that slaves used to be a major investment. And although they were often treated horribly, they were still seen as an investment to be protected.

“Slaves of the past were worth stealing and worth chasing down if they escaped,” Bales writes. Today, on the other hand, “There is no reason to invest heavily in their upkeep and indeed little reason to ensure that they survive their enslavement. … And there is no reason to protect slaves from disease or injury—medicine costs money, and it’s cheaper to let them die.”

So it seems that our world has sunk even lower than the world that supported a “legal” slave trade for so many years. Today slavery is illegal everywhere, but more people are enslaved than during the entire African slave trade of the past, and today’s slaves face even more perilous conditions. They are simply tools to be used up and ground under the feet of money-hungry monsters. When a slave is dead or no longer worth keeping, there are plenty of replacements out there.