<html> At 10:32 AM 6/6/2002 -0400, Diane wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>At 12:28 AM 6/6/2002 -0700, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>economics 101:     U.S. Report On Human Trafficking  <a href="http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1152/6-5-2002/20020605084503_17.html">http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1152/6-5-2002/20020605084503_17.html</a></blockquote> Human trafficking is increasing and one has to go beyond simple 101 supply and demand to attempt to understand why.  Additional and more advanced intermediate level influences include: 1) What factors are behind supply and demand and how are they changing? 2) How is market structure changing? 3) Understanding the trends to normalize certain kinds of human buying and selling. 4) Corporate globalization displaces workers everywhere. 5) Eroding borders increase all trade flows. 6) Media conglomerates can more easily influence demand. 7) Post-Fordism production trends.</blockquote> A usual smorgasbord of liberal blood-letting.  Slavery has been one of the key pre-modern institutions, widely spread in the Middle East and Africa well before American took advantage of it.  It was curbed by the European powers and later the influence of Soviet communism - but in the post-cold war era marked by the return to localism and tribalism, even this traditional institution crawled from under its rock.   wojtek </html>