The gist of it: Slaves are being traded in Sudan (for about $33 a person) and human rights groups are raising funds to buy these slaves their freedom.
While I think this cause is very noble, the solution has bad news written all over it. As a businessman, I think that this whole project is going to make things much worse in Sudan.
These churches have effectively increased demand for slaves. When demand goes up, prices go up, and then supply follows. More slave traders will jump into the market as demand keeps going up.
Besides, what makes these churches believe that once the slaves (mainly women and children) have been freed, they won’t be recaptured? There doesn’t seem to be a system in place to ensure the freed slaves’ liberty, especially since the men of these villages have been killed.
What else can be done about this problem? The current solution seems like the seed to a much worse problem.
Short of invasion and occupation of another nation(s), there’s not much that can be done immediately. Since it’s going to take a lot of work and time to end the slave trade in the Sudan and elsewhere, I find the short-term solution of purchasing slaves expressly to manumit them to be highly laudable. It’s certainly preferable to allowing them to remain enslaved waiting for a magic wand.
Yup, this only creates a demand which will increase supply. It is true with drugs, slaves, women, toothpaste… everything. You can call it ransom. You could say we will give you a fixed amount if you commit to not doing it, but if you pay the ransom, then you are creating demand.
I was recently reading about the slave trade which broght slaves from Africa to the Caribbean and North America. The slaves were not enslaved by Europeans, they were purchased from local natives. When the trade was outlawed, the local African traders who had made fortunes were the most vocal protestors and the British had to make deals to compensate them for their loss of trade. It is not the story you normally hear where Europeans enslaved Africans. The Europeans were buying people who were already slaves but, by buying them, created a demand for more.
While I suspect that the textbook models of supply and demand do not stricly hold here, the issue of whether or not buying freedom for slaves increases the supply of those slaves is pretty much irrelevant.
The question remains–can we allow people to remain enslaved in the fear that more might be enslaved in the future?
How “free” are they after manumission? Do they have a home to go back to? A means of support? Do they get a paper that says they’ve been freed? It seems that slavery/freedom are not encoded in Sudanese law anywhere - you are a slave if someone can capture you and force you to be a slave. What is there in the culture that recognizes the legitimacy of slavery? If a slave ran away, would the authorities seek and punish her as in the American south?
What sailor says is true - African slavery has existed for centuries as a way to process prisoners of war. In many cases, African slaves could eventually gain their freedom and become functioning parts of the group that “owned” them - slavery was not a perpetual condition based on race the way it came to be in the Americas.
The creation of demand is a sticky problem. The article says that “slave kidnappings are down” or some such. What is the evidence of that? If I were a smart slave trader I’d take the money from the church group and recapture the freed stragglers on the way back to their homes and sell the same folks again.
As long as there’s an available pool of candidates to replace the slaves whose freedom is purchased, an increase in market demand will naturally also increase the supply. Better to spend that $33 on high-caliber bullets aimed at the slave-traders’ heads, which will dramatically increase their marginal costs. Less profit, fewer slaves.
As I have noted in other threads, based on my understanding of the situation and to a certain extent some personal observations in Sudan, I have to support the critique that churches buying slaves is feeding the slaving process.
Some generalized facts : the slaving is largely done by « private » militias based on clans armed by the Sudanese (northern government) military. It is not in large part directly under control of anyone. Part of a terror campaign. Both Christian and non-Arab Muslim populations opposed to the regime have been subject to this.
Sudan has a surplus of labor and it is hard to see how slave labor is truly competitive with « free offer » in Sudan, taking into account the expenses of holding slaves, dangers involved in raiding armed opponents, etc. As such I doubt much slaving is motivated by internally driven economic demand. That of course still leaves non-economic reasons which given my understanding of the society are not unimportant.
However, hard currency is not easy to obtain, above all for country folk. With hard currency one can buy interesting goodies. Such as more, higher quality arms which often require hard currency to get one’s mitts on them.
The xtian organizations pay in rare dollars.
It follows that two perverse effects are likely to arise from this (a) xtians orgs buying back xtians or presumed xtians make raiding xtians for slaves more profitable (b) creating a hard currency market for slaves is highly likely, given what I know about the situation to increase slave raiding since it qualitatively increases returns for risk.
Added note, I note with some annoyance in slavery discussions a tendancy to “africanize” slavery (see the Civil War won by the south how long would slavery last where the OP can only imagine African “tribes” continuing slavery, I suppose we voluntarily ignore gender based slavery in SEAsia) as if other cultures were innocent of it. Slavery was a default institution in most historical cultures, including European. The prisoner of war integration of course was not unique to Africa, see Roman history.
Sorry to have annoyed you, and I’m quite embarrassed if you took my post that way. It is (unfortunately) laughable to assume that it is solely an African institution, and I raised the point only to indicate that the practice is very, very old and is unrelated to the way Americans think of slavery in this country. Thanks for your prior post, it described the issues quite well.
I think you’re missing the point, which is "Let’s not increase the market for more slaves. If you’ve got a practical solution for doing so, feel free to put it on the table.
“Possibly”??? Unless you’d care to demonstrate that increased demand would NOT result in increased supply, the point people have been making is that refusing to pay slave-traders one damn penny for their disgusting trade is preferable to encouraging the taking of even more slaves.
Well yes, Minty, “possibly.” I say that only because there’s no evidence one way or another. Economic theory establishes the relationship between supply and demand, but has always allowed for exceptions, especially with external forces. There’s anecdotal suggestion that the slave trade in the Sudan has declined.
:shrug: Of course I cannot demonstrate that buying freedom for slaves doesn’t increase the number of slaves. In fact, I suspect it will and does.
However, I still hold that in the absence of a magic spell to make the slave trade go away, freeing as many as possible now as work progresses to eliminate the practice altogether is a valid option. IOW, I disagree that allowing people to remain enslaved is preferable to purchasing their freedom, regardless of extenuation.
So you agree that the most likely outcome of paying slave traders for their goods <<shudder>> will most likely result in additional people being enslaved? But we should do it anyway?
I agree that slavery has to be ended, and that we ought to do what we can to stop it. But buying their freedom when the most likely outcome of that action is that even more slaves being taken is so counterproductive that I can’t even call it a moral response.
So, andros, I take it you see nothing wrong with buying stolen goods? After all, there’s no proof that buying stolen goods will cause more goods to be stolen in the future. And hey, the goods are already stolen. It’s not like we’ll be able to return them to their rightful owner. Might as well make some good use of them, right? And hey, why bother punish people for crimes? It’s not like that’s going to undo their crimes. And besides, there’s no proof that punishing them will prevent future crimes.
I can’t see why it doesn’t bother you that these people are paying people to enslave people. These slavers should be punished, not rewarded.
Huh? If you told a bunch of people that you’ll pay them what to them is a large amount for each person they kidnap, they “possibly” might do it? Economic theory allows “exceptions” for the simple fact if you pay people a bunch of money to do something, they’ll do it? I can’t see how you can entertain, even as a remote possibility, that these people would pass up essentially free money.
It is traditional is some societies to reply to a question with an answer and an explanation of that answer, rather than simply making an obvious statement.
Seeing as how one can not free anyone unless one has enslaved someone first, it follows that these people are being paid to enslave people.
Then why do you want it to be subsidized?
I’m not the one advocating paying people for slaves, which legitimizes their claims of ownership of the slaves (one does not pay someone for something unless one believes that they truly own it).
Well, I think that NOT PAYING THEM would be a good start. Applying pressure to the Sudanese government would be a good follow-up.
I do not have any such proposal.
I have some hypotheticals for you.
A man has been convicted of robbery. He has a wife and two children dependent on him. The wife has a much lower income than him, and without his income the family will probably become homeless. Now, given these two options:
A. Set the man free to support his family.
B. Put him in jail, causing him to lose his job and putting his family on the street.
which option do you prefer, and why?
You see a child with a sign in front of him that reads:
“My daddy won’t let go home until I get $30. Please give me some money so I can go to home and sleep”.
Do you give him money? Why or why not? (For the sake of the hypothetical, calling the police is not an option.)
A terrorist group has taken several people hostage, threatening to kill them if their leader isn’t let out of jail. Should the government comply? Why or why not?