What do footballers, influences and celebrities have in common with slavery?

Good question.

While it's pretty obvious, the lifestyles of people like Lionel Messi and Kim Kardashian

are light years away from the brutality of enslavement,

they operate within a system that's centuries old.

Economic practices developed out of slave societies

and found a way to turn humans into capital,

and that meant attaching a price to them based on how much money they could bring in for plantation owners.

Late stage capitalism has revived the idea of sticking a price tag onto people

to decide how much they are valued in society.

Kim Kardashian's millions of followers on social media

are part of the reason she is considered to be worth millions herself to brands.

And think about your favourite footballers,

who all come with multi-million-pound values attached to them,

which decides how they are bought and sold,

with little say-so themselves in their professional trajectory.

This idea that everyone has a personal monetary value which decides work

has even trickled down to us ordinary folk,

where company departments who dealt with the welfare employees or once called personnel departments

now we know them as human resources.

What is a resource?

Something to be mined or drawn upon for the benefit of someone else.

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