Help yourself. As I said: slavery is thriving. It's not institutional and right out there in the open for everybody to see, it's secretive, swept under the rug, hidden from view....but that doesn't mean that it's not out there. But if you can prove that slavery is just a cipher in this day and age, nobody will be happier than I. Good luck.
First, do you have any actual data to support your contention? Remember, what matters are not absolute numbers but relative numbers instead. If 1,000,000 people satisfy some criteria for being slaves
today, one has to remember that this is only 1 out of 7,000 people. In 1500, when the world's population was only 500 million it would require only 75,000 slaves to be just as bad.
In defence of the claim that slavery is decreasing, note that:
1. Slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world - in not-so-distant past it was legal in many countries. This does not, of course, prove that slavery as a
practice is decreasing; however, I suggest it is highly suggestive: if all human societies elect to make slavery illegal, this almost certainly must reflect a general trend of non-acceptance of slavery as a practice.
2. The media wildly distorts our perceptions; in focusing on bad news, media reports give people a highly inaccurate perception of reality. Thus, many people believe crime is increasing when, in fact, it is going down rather significantly.
To be fair, I found it difficult to find evidence on either side of this issue. But we should agree one thing, I hope: our claims need to be defended - it is not enough to provide "impressions" or appeal to anecdotes. No, numbers (and in fact relative numbers) are what counts.
