I mean, domestication is mutually beneficial in many cases. not all, but many. I think if it’s your species it isn’t mutually beneficial because they have the potential to be as intelligent and successful as you. If you genetically modify them to be unable to succeed without you, it might be a bit more like domestication. Obviously physically modifying them (i.e. ice pick) doesn’t count.
2 Likes
So in a way the modified ones can be both domesticated and enslaved at the same time under the right conditions?
2 Likes
Slavery has to hurt the slave, otherwise, you could just hire them. If they can’t quit their job and look for another one, that’s slavery.
Dogs are domesticated, but they aren’t slaves, because they do want to bring thrown objects back to humans. That’s their life purpose.
What if you made the dogs do something which cannot be their life purpose? Would then such a dog count as a slave?
1 Like
I had to delete a bunch of posts here that tried to derail the thread into a politics systems discussion.
I’m not closing this thread yet as I don’t want a single user to be able to just assassinate any threads they want by starting talking about politics.
6 Likes
Apologies. I did end up flagging my own post because I knew it was political when I posted it.
4 Likes
Why bother to post it at all then when you know it’s doomed?
Sometimes you just can’t help posting something even though you know you shouldn’t…
I’ve also done that.
8 Likes
Back to the thread topic
How would your species start to dislike slavery (had it accepted it before)? I’d guess education improvements and culture changes would atleast be involved in the process leading to slavery being banned within your civ.
4 Likes
Honestly I could see slavery added to the game as a mechanic. You could do this after conquering a country and you could make the population slave that can be used as a workforce that can do tasks. This would give incentives to conquer other nations.
1 Like
And slavery would become increasingly less efficient when new methods arise as the civs progress?
It is DEFINITELY not linear. Slavery looses and gains effectiveness based on which techs you use. If you have no high functioning merchant class and/or benefit from an aristocracy for other reasons, slavery doesn’t stop being profitable until you have automated factories and neocolonialism, both of which are really hard to get without a good merchant class. if you invent steam engines you no longer have a reason to use slavery for, say, powering ships, but you might have crops that are hard to harvest without manual labor and lack the economic factors to make payed workers profitable. Slavery also has to contend with alternative forms of exploitation. Company towns are often a surer bet than slavery once you’ve invented something resembling capitalism (wages cost you nothing if you pay in scrip, since workers can only buy from you) and labor camps serve double duty as somewhat inefficient replacements for slavery and a place to send people who annoy you once you invent some form of authoritarianism. Prison labor covers capitalists and authoritarian communists and fascists and aristocracies and everyone else, if you choose to have large prisons and harsh punishments (if you only go to prison for things that make you a danger to your society and they never keep you once you aren’t a risk prison labor won’t cut it, you explicitly NEED a harsh prison system, but uh, you’re trying to replace slavery with a plug-and-play alternative, I don’t know how anyone expects that to not be needlessly cruel). The point is, there are lots of options, and while you might be using slavery for a while, it is never your only choice. You could also not exploit people. Systems tend to stay stable for longer when the people they use to grow have a stake in the system. Doesn’t exactly work all the time, but I could imagine many players and nicer AI civs migrating towards less exploitative systems over time as more options present themselves.
2 Likes
How would slavery work with, say, eusocial species where only one not-so-populous caste is sapient and all others are not? Would that make enslaving the non-sapient castes “more ethical”?
1 Like
Ants colonies enslave other ants colonies.
1 Like
I know, but they aren’t quite nearing sapience our fictional “one-sapient-caste-eusocial” species reached with one of it’s castes.
1 Like
If the other castes aren’t sapient, I am not sure it meets the definition of slavery.
What if they’re still rather intelligent? Like a vertebrate? Able to feel pain and stuff?
1 Like
I was thinking that having certain values (eg. Liberty, egalitarianism) would lead to a lower view of slavey.
I wouldn’t call it ethical, but, as far as we know, most earth eusocial species seem content with there lifestyle. They don’t exactly revolt or runaway. Submissives like to submit. It is likely wired int there brain to want to be led in that fashion.
That could be the result of their minds being simple though.
1 Like