Modern Slavery, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

Modern Slavery

So I was listening to a guy (on the Daily Stoic podcast) who wrote a book about the international slave trade (and the movement to abolish same) and I was so struck by the uncanny similarities to industrial animal agriculture now:

Everyone back then was like, “Yeah, we know it's not great, but we've always done it (the Greeks and Romans did it!), and it's pretty clearly never going to change, and also it's out of sight (so we can generally keep it out of mind), and we do like the taste (of cheap sugar!), and yeah it's probably not ideal for those trapped in it, but we have it on good authority their welfare is looked after (and, hey, they don't look like us so you're just being sentimental to think they're smart or sensitive enough to know their lives are living hells), and anyway, what are you gonna do, throw 30,000 sailors (on slave ships) out of work?!”

And then a tiny handful of people sat down in a cafe in London and undertook to abolish the entire giant multinational industry. Because they knew it was wrong. (And for the first time in human history, a few individuals undertook to fight for the rights of others, when it stood to benefit them not at all.)

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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