system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
&gt;Of course the situation is very different, but I don't find a "out of sight out of mind" argument very convincing regarding ethics.

It's not exactly that. If you owned a slave in the past, you could just as well go and free him. Perhaps it could inconvenience you as a plantation owner, perhaps it would put your plantation at a disadvantage compared to ones that kept their slaves and perhaps your plantation would even go out of business as a result. All possible, but you knew whether you owned a slave or not.

I have no fucking clue if anything on me was manufactured with slave labor. I can assume it was, but what does it help? I can pledge not to buy anything made with slave labor, but who's going to guarantee that? I'm willing to pay extra for things I'm being told were fairly manufactured, but what guarantee I have that this is in fact true, rather than the same manufacturer just pocketing the extra money and continuing as usual? The regulations on this in the countries that manufacture these goods aren't very trustworthy, but at the same time it's not okay to pull out of those countries entirely and we don't have an easy capability to manufacture this locally.

It's simply not as simple as deciding not to benefit from slavery.
gpt
You are right that it is not simple. It is impossible to know if anything you buy involved slavery at some point.