Now and Then?

The drastic increase increase in the world population has increased the potential of slavery and this has resulted in “in a dramatic example of supply and demand of slaves’. (Kevin Bales, Disposable People). Due to this increased supply, the value of slaves has come down. This has also changed the way slaves are used.
The fact that people can be treated as ‘use and throw”, the new form of slavery become less and less permanent. It is, therefore, just not profitable to keep slaves after their immediate use. And hence they are they are treated like Mcjobs(George Ritzer, 1996, The McDonaldization of Society) where usage is time bound and time periods are extremely flexible(flexi hours).The time of enslavement varied from business to business, or trade to trade. A crop grown in a particular month would enclave only for that season. In the 19th century slavery this was not the case. Slaves were owned by the masters and masters were responsible for the upkeep, they were kept even when the work was “done”. Slaves were kept in order to ensure that they live up the time enslavement so as to recover the coat and also to produce more slaves. It was expensive to buy new adult slaves and so cheaper to have new slaves through the old slave’s family. In fact in many cases especially with African American cases of slavery, slaves were ripped off their family names and their’ master’s sir name would become their sir name. This would help to identify the owner of the slaves. This was also one of the ways to kill the identity of slaves and alienate them. Today, no slaveholder wants to spend money supporting useless infants. Keeping the dynamics of old and new slavery following differences can be seen in old and modern slavery:



Old Forms of Slavery New Forms of Slavery

1.Legal ownership asserted
1.Legal ownership avoided

2.High purchase cost

2.Very low purchase cost

3.Low profits
3.Very high profits

4.Shortage of potential slaves
4.Surplus of potential slaves

5.Long-term relationship
5.Short-term relationship

6.Slaves maintained
6.Slaves disposable

7.Ethnic differences important
7.Ethnic differences less important

(Kevin Bales, 1999, Disposable people)