Comment by Psyonic
16 years ago
How do you figure that prevents slavery? It doesn't prevent slavery right now... buying a russian sex slave and making her work 12 hour days in a club seems to generate a lot more income than she would as a "consumer".
I could turn the question around and ask you how the government prevents this, as the foundation of your question assumes that it's not doing so.
It doesn't. I was just curious why you thought the market was any different.
That said: the government does make an effort to prevent it, which I'm not sure can be said for the free market.
Hmmm. I gave this a little thought as I drove home, and I think I've got the answer.
On the whole, both regulation and the free market are able to deal with most of slavery. But at the margin, it becomes cost-ineffective to mop up the very last instance. In both cases, the instance is low enough that most of us will never come face-to-face with slavery. But ferreting out one more evil person costs society more than it would benefit.
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