This website has been around for a while but it is still relevant. You take a quick survey and it tells you how many people in slavery around the world are working to create the products you consume. I figured that this would be interesting to look at the labor that goes into creating the food we eat.
Slavery Footprint Calculator
I found this slavery 'calculator' very interesting. Personally, it calculated that 53 slaves work for me, which like everything we discuss in this class, really makes me want to take a step back and be more conscious of every single choice that I make. This exercise was also a really good reflection on the readings we discussed in class today and just continues to show how important labor, whether it be domestic or immigrant, is to making the food and other products that we consume. I think this relates really well to the problems with immigration and labor in this country, even though they may not be slaves, they are not exactly free.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very neat "calculator". This provides the everyday consumer with a surreal look at the modern day slavery that is existential around the globe. Food production obviously plays a major role in modern day slave-labor, so our purchasing power is indirectly related to these rampant labor issues. Choosing the right products and the right amount of each thing we purchase is very important and plays a major role in how slave-like labor is practiced world-wide.
ReplyDeleteSo I had 43 slaves working for me and since I guesstimated on my answers, that could be more or less slaves than there should be, but in all honesty, that is 43 more slaves than there should be. This is a really cool calculator. I really wouldn't have thought about how many poorly treated, misused, and abused workers are used to provide for my type of lifestyle. Even the slightest change to one of the answers to the questions greatly influences the change of how many slaves are used to suit a particular lifestyle. This seriously makes me wonder how many slaves are used to provide products for the people that are extremely rich and upper-class. The crazy part about it, is that many people do not know that there are slaves still in the US that are making the products that people use everyday.
ReplyDeleteI found this calculator to be very interesting and informative. My result was 46 slaves. This rather high number was slight shocking to me. I didn't realize that the life I live was so labor demanding. I am very against slavery, mostly because of the mistreatment and abuse. All people are created equally and we should all be treated with the same respect. Making wise purchasing choices is the first step that consumers can make to stop slavery. We should all be informed of where our purchases come from and become active in preventing mistreatment of workers and stopping slavery all together.
ReplyDeleteI found this calculator to be very interesting and informative. My result was 46 slaves. This rather high number was slight shocking to me. I didn't realize that the life I live was so labor demanding. I am very against slavery, mostly because of the mistreatment and abuse. All people are created equally and we should all be treated with the same respect. Making wise purchasing choices is the first step that consumers can make to stop slavery. We should all be informed of where our purchases come from and become active in preventing mistreatment of workers and stopping slavery all together.
ReplyDeleteHey Lillian, thanks for sharing this calculator with us. I actually had 30 slaves, which surprised me quite a bit. At first, I took this survey out of curiosity & thinking that maybe I would get somewhere in the high 10s-low 20s. Although it seems like my number is the smallest out of the 4 others that have commented, I'm still shocked by the fact that 30 slaves had to work to produce the products/food that I use/consume today. Not regular workers, but the ones that are treated like they're slaves. I think the organization did a great job creating a user-friendly survey that truly gets at the heart of the labor issues surrounding us, and I'm going to be sharing this with my family over Thanksgiving. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteThis a very neat site. My answers resulted in 45 slaves. Just alone writing the word slaves next to my number makes me pause and reflect on my past choices and consumption choices in the future. I really liked that they included the small blurbs that went into greater detail about the actual working conditions and number comparisons. As we've talked about in other debates regarding food such as labeling products about where they are from and if they are organic or contain GMO's, makes me wonder if stating the number of slaves that it took to make the shirt you're about to purchase would change people's buying habits. While this only provided a small window of insight into the working conditions of those that are producing the products I consume, it made me very curious to read about it more in depth.
ReplyDelete41 slaves. 41 slaves. Like everyone who has commented, I am appalled at what the numbers reflect. The Slavery Footprint calculator reminded me of something Howard Zinn said when talking about his role as a bombardier in WWII:
ReplyDelete"When you're bombing, you bomb from 30,000 feet. And six miles up, you don't see any people. You don't hear screams. You don't see blood."
I think this is a similar situation, except our bombs are our purchases (and on a larger scale:capitalism). And the screaming, bloody people are the exploited workers.
The end result - the finished product - is shiny or high-tech or delicious. It's marketed with perfection. So there comes to be a strange cognitive dissonance tied to products. Ads say one thing (REPEATEDLY), yet we know another from news reports, from speaking to people, and from sources like this tool.