Meta: Abolitionists and Slaves

[telesilla.livejournal.com]

So, I have a bit of a meta question....

We've seen people like Jeff, Dylan and even the Catholic Church, argue that, given the state of things in the USNA, keeping slaves and treating them well is the right/humane thing to do.

Then there's the argument that keeping slaves at all is wrong, and that it's better to either pay the fines and remove yourself from society (Cate Blanchett is a good example) or to deliberately live poor so that you don't have to own slaves (although we haven't gone into this much yet, David Hewlett's mother and his sister Kate live like this).

I'm kind of curious as to what people here think: which way makes more sense in the context of the AKB verse and which way is more ethical in that same context?

PS: There may be other examples of both sides, I'm kind of behind on the more recent additions to the 'verse.

Comments

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

I think a key question here is just how much is the slave supply driven by demand?

That is, does Commerce somehow control the number of people enslaved to match within so many percentage points the projected demand for slaves within, say, a given year or decade? So if there are X number of people over the income level where slave ownership is mandatory (and are there multiple lines? so if you have a million you have to own one slave, if you hav five mil you have to own five? or something? or if you're over the line you just have to have one and any others are optional?) and they know from experience that Y percentage of those people will want to have Z number of "extra" slaves, that gives an estimate of demand, and Commerce knows they need N number of slaves available, plus or minus whatever.

I could see something similar to the sliding income tax scale, which changes occasionally, or a cost of living raise built into Social Security. So once per year or five years or ten or whatever, there's an adjustment of the amount of debt which will get you enslaved (with more estimates by the Commerce bean counters of how many new slaves that'll result in) to keep the supply sort of in line with the demand.

If it works more or less this way, then refusing to keep slaves and paying the fines, or dispersing your income through charitable donation (will that work?) or taking a lower-paying job so that you aren't obligated to keep slaves, will lower the demand, which will result in a raised debt threshold and fewer slaves. In that case, then refusing to own slaves at all would be a moral duty.

If, on the other hand, that's not how it works, then that sort of protest by the rich abolitionists wouldn't accomplish anything. If anyone with more than the threshold level of debt will be enslaved no matter what, period, then the rich paying fines or dumping their jobs or whatever would only result in some growing percentage of slaves who are stuck at Commerce because there are no positions for them in people's households. I don't know whether that's a better or worse life than that of your average slave who has a regular master, but I can't imagine it's terribly fulfilling and it is still slavery. The rich can financially martyr themselves all they want, but if it's not going to actually reduce the number of slaves, then it's actually counter-productive, because....

...if all the abolitionist rich people beggar themselves with either income reduction or paying fines every year (and who gets those fines, BTW? if the fines go through Commerce, then Commerce definitely has no incentive to do anything about the "protests") then the very people who still hold to a moral position on the subject of slavery are divesting themselves of the money (which means power and influence) they should be using to try to change the system. If the rich abolitionists protest themselves down into the middle class, then all they can do is protest. If they take in some slaves (and treat them well) and stay rich, they can use that money (and power and influence) to take political action to influence public opinion, influence the politicians, influence the people controlling the system and get it changed. Poor, they're just as helpless as anyone else, except the slaves themselves.

If it's a given that under the current system there will be slaves, I think it's a moral duty of good people to own slaves and treat them well. Slavery under a good master is still slavery and it still sucks, but it's the lesser (and sometimes by a metric ton) of two evils, when the alternative is being owned by someone like Lord Cruise. And when you've provided as safe a harbor as possible for as many slaves as you can support, then the next moral duty is to work to change the system. Even if it takes several generations, someone has to start.

Angie

[darkrosetiger.livejournal.com]

(and are there multiple lines? so if you have a million you have to own one slave, if you hav five mil you have to own five? or something? or if you're over the line you just have to have one and any others are optional?)

The minimum number of slaves you're required to own is based on a combination of income and location. David and Jason are multi-millionaires, but their minimum is two because they're a household of two in a loft in San Francisco, and not a large family on a sprawling estate in a less urban area.

I've been operating on the assumption that Commerce doesn't worry about oversupply because they haven't come close to meeting demand yet. On one end, corporations who rely on slave labor tend to need lots of people and have high turnover because they simply use people up. On the individual end of the scale, owning slaves is a status symbol. There will always be a market for pretty body-slaves if having at least one is a social necessity and a display of conspicuous consumption.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

So corporations can own slaves too? That makes sense, but I wasn't sure. Do they have a requirement threshold too, or is it just a matter of economic advantage for them so no one's bothered to pass any laws about it?

And it also makes sense that the cost of living where you are, and the size of your property would be factored in. [nod]

If there's more demand than supply, then I think the "good" rich people should definitely be buying slaves as a moral duty. If all the people of conscience bow out by one means or another, then that'll leave just the mid-range folks (like Mr. Neal, and realistically Liam, although he's a little farther up the range than Neal) and the real assholes (like Cruise) owning slaves.

Heck, I could see coalitions of the Good Rich People making some concerted effort to buy up as many pre-pubescent slaves as they could get ahold of, to prevent people like Cruise from getting them. Sort of like people in Texas buying cheap horses at auction just to prevent the meat packers' agents from buying them, turning them into steaks and selling them overseas where horse meat is popular. (With the comparison reflecting the suckitude of the system.)

Angie, who's getting more plot bunnies :P