A critique, GalNet News: Imperial Slaves Stranded

Gemai

Gemai
In a galaxy with over a trillion people living about, the very idea that a 4000 people news of freed slaves after the existence of Uibuth and the Adamantine Union is even worth a news was odd. Slaves get freed all the time. Now we not only got a 6 BILLION system struggling with 4000 people - Germany managed one million refugees - but those 4000 are also still in debt and desperate? At least chose a system that might struggle with 4k... or make it 400.000 or 4 million.

The description and lore of slaves says:

"Slavery is an important part of Imperial Society, providing labour for the Empire and a safety net for its citizens. Many Imperials will choose to sell themselves into a fixed period of slavery than face the embarrassment and dishonour of living with a debt."

The debt is the price of the slave. The debt is the money you pay to own them to work for you, like buying a house. Unless this description is woefully wrong, the IS had their debt paid when they entered slavery or had more debt than their slavery contract could pay anyway and need to go for a second slave round anyway. So the fallout shouldn't even be part of this!

This news is SO incredibly overblown and highlights so many and extreme problems as if 4000 insurgents of a terrorist group just landed on a world to take it over. What the hell FD! That reads like the finest imperial anti-immigration propaganda... and those aren't immigrants but citizens of the empire. If I drop 4000 New Yorkers in California, that is NOT immigration.
 

Gemai

Gemai
No the slavery - it is just called that you got more rights than a possesion, more like a servant - is part of the lore and social security system of the empire. And the anti-movement of Aisling and others exists. It just needs a slow change in the Empire... but then you need to replace the current social security network with a new one.

The news is just completely unrealistic.
 

Florenus

Florenus
News are for some flavour. They don't need to be extremely important and can be in fact stupid sometimes. Like taken from a tabloid.
Let's see a news example from First Encounters:

"Rare animal collector [name) of Bigg's Colony (Altair) was startled on his return home to discover that the pride of his collection, a rare Earth bird called a Bewick's swan, had disappeared. Close investigation of the premises of his 8,000 hectare private zoo revealed nothing but a few feathers and a patch of disturbed grass.

The mystery was only resolved the following day, when local vet [name) was called out to attend Dolbison's two Rigelian vinemonkeys, semi-sentient carnivores from Cooperworld (Aymiay). The vinemonkeys were found to be suffering from protein shock after eating the swan, and had to be put down. [name) is now said to be looking for an even rarer creature, the Quito Herfurari, to console himself."

As far as this particular news, the idea to free those Imperial Slaves was not that bad (it would be better to free actual slaves tbh, but indentured servitude is also wrong) - This emancipation group that bought them, actually bought their debt. Since they released them, it means they are free - they debt is taken care of and they don't need to work for it anymore. They can return home and sell themselves again if they want.
It's not how you should fight this kind of slavery - only making it illegal will work - but maybe this Autonomy group is just bunch of idealistic halfwits?
 

Vardaugas

Vardaugas
Yeah, should be at least 400,000 to cause any troubles. A single commander could haul in enough food and building fabricators to keep 4,000 housed and fed for a long while.
 

rrobes

R
I know it's a game but the idea of slavery, even as sugar-coated as the Imperials make it, is a no for me.

The trading of sentient beings should be outlawed over the entire galaxy by all governments. It could be changed to be highly profitable, difficult to do (not like the easy mode currently in place for smuggling) and highly criminalized. Would only take place in Anarchy systems, governed by outlawed minor factions with no affiliation with any power.

The above won't happen because the "lore" for the Imperials is what it is.
 
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Hanerib

Hanerib
First Elite game had slaves, narcotics, alien items, radioactives etc. I'm sure they feel a bit uncomfortable about the fact, but it's very much in the lore by now. They might as well remove all the bad stuff then.

I agree I'm not entirely sure how well that GalNet article fits to the world built in this game, it seemed content at shock value of barely mentioning slavery in this game, and raising ethical concern.

Also lore for the Empire seems inconsistent since Codex.
 

Klarg

Klarg
Attack Chimp said:
We still call indentured servitude what it is - slavery.

Lore or not, it's offensive.
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Brace yourself for this; Your feelings don't matter to the empire. And if you are genuinely offended by the inclusion of slavery in the game then you really need to get out into the actual world because there are much, much worse things happening out there for you to be offended by. if on the other hand you are offended in game, go right ahead and work against imperial factions but your feelings still don't matter to the empire.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
rrobes said:
I know it's a game but the idea of slavery, even as sugar-coated as the Imperials make it, is a no for me.
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Even the non-Imperial sort is pretty sugar-coated and just treated as another mostly-illegal good. You can fly up with a hull full of slaves to a "nice" Federal Democracy or Alliance Confederacy, get scanned by the police ... and they don't even confiscate and free the slaves, just fine you so your later sale of them to the local black market makes you a net loss. You can build up a rep as a slave trader and none of the "anti-slavery" powers even pretend to care, so long as it's not in their jurisdiction. Search and Rescue services will accept (and pay a finders fee for) a battered escape pod with maybe a 10% chance of still having someone alive in it ... but just pretend not to notice any slaves in your cargo hold. And this is in a universe where loitering is a capital offence.

It's a bizarre choice by Frontier - choose to include slavery in the game with all the potential for making people uncomfortable, raising moral issues, making certain organisations seem like the bad guys even in the "everyone's a bad guy" universe of Elite Dangerous, etc. ... but then make the actual implementation so disconnected and abstracted from that it's got no actual gameplay benefit to including it and they might as well have just included a few more types of Onionhead instead.
 

Gemai

Gemai
No it is not. Otherwise any media like Lord of the Rings with the dark empires murdering and enslaving the "maggots" of races needs to be banned in your eyes. Like anything else. Elite isn't glorifying slavery at any point...

The Imperial Slavery system is constantly criticized inside this world and all democratic governments inside the empire normally outlaw them inside their area of influence and set them free. It is part of the Empires makeup and was established during a hardtime in the empire and is now just a traditional system that didn't get changed yet.

Be offended as you want, but this is fine and legal and a good reflexion on human society.

In Africa people kidnapped children under pretense of giving them a scholarship to sell them to rich Americans as pseudo orphans. Welcome to humanity!
 

Gemai

Gemai
No, FD will not butcher the lore for your feelings. Especially not if most of their constant skin buyers and longtime players don't mind immersive backstories.

Sure I'd like a stricter penal code in NON slave systems, but FDs crime system detection was always horribly flawed.
 

DNA-Decay

DNA-Decay
“The article highlights some of our findings from a study carried out in the brick kiln industry in Tamil Nadu, India. We have led both a qualitative and a quantitative survey. As child labour is a common factor in the brick kiln industry, we show that in the interlinked credit-labour market employers do not directly employ children, but they have implemented a system that constrains parents to use their children to improve their productivity. In such an environment parents use child labour to improve their bargaining power.”

Your desire for power without responsibility, is blinding you to what the realities of slavery are right now.

You should spend some time familiarising yourself with the Brick Kilns Of Myanmar and Bangladesh. Debt and slavery lead to entrapment.

In my youth I knew a lot of sex workers and through them I heard of the girls who were entrapped in Sydney unable to return with huge and mounting debts to “service”. There was a film made called The Jammed.

The notion that these game slaves are nice middle class people who are overstretched buying a car and go into slavery for “honour” needs to be challenged.

Slaves are the poorest of the poor. The work that slaves are put to is nasty and brutish work.
 
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wetwire

wetwire
It is just story, fiction flavor text of the fictional galaxy. I assume the empire is loosely biased off the historical Rome empire that had indentured servitude and outright slavery in the modern term. Being offended by fictional slavery seems a bit obscure, akin to being offended by the Empire in starwars because they are modeled after the Germans of World War 1 and 2.
I see slavery being kept in the game to uphold the lore of Elite and serves as a reminder that the human race did this in the past, if it offends you then it has successfully reminding you how bad it was in the past of human history and reminds us not to repeat our mistakes.
 

Klarg

Klarg
Attack Chimp said:
I just want to quote you so your post is preserved.

I'm offended by depictions of slavery that return a profit, with very few exceptions. A space game, with zero historical context, is flat out offensive.
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Go right ahead. I have no intention of changing it and stand by what I said. If you don't like it do something about it within the context of the game. I personally don't trade in slaves but could not care less about their inclusion in the game. Humans are not a nice species. That is reflected in elite a little. But only a little. there are much worse things in the world for you to direct your moral outrage at.
 

Gemai

Gemai
Saying like I did with my Africa example that slavery is a real life issue and is a problem of human societies does rather promote the realism in implementing such system in less socialist and humanitarian societies like the empire inside of Elite. So while these terrible topics should be addressed - in Real Life - focussing your effort on confronting them from the safety of your chair in a modern nation doesn't help Asian slaves... or Arabic indian slaves like for the football world cup.

Elite is free to depict realistic scenarios in their lore. They exist. They don't glorify them either. Now please try to help the real life slaves... not the 1 and 0's in Elite by snapping them out of existence Thanos style.
 

Hadrian Augustus Duval

Hadrian Augustus Duval
Respect Imperial slaves, they are also consider members of the Empire, they are not merchandise.

Note that there is a difference between Imperial Slaves and Slaves. Imperial Slaves are people who willingly enter into indentured servitude to pay off their debts, and are granted the rights and protection of Imperial citizens, and are not chattel property.

They are often Imperial citizens seeking social mobility or supporting their families. Thus, unlike slaves, Imperial Slaves having free will and self determination as does any Imperial citizen cannot be 'stopped' or 'freed' as they will willingly return to their employment choice. It is often on these grounds that opposition to Aisling Duval's anti-slavery agenda is raised.

In real world comparsion, Imperial slavery is actually indentured servitude. They contract themselves out for a predetermined amount of time to earn money to pay off their debt that they couldn't otherwise clear. Imperial slaves have basic human rights, but substantially less freedom than regular Imperial citizens. Unregulated slavery is illegal in the Empire.

As with other parallels between the Empire and ancient Rome, Imperial slavery appears to be based on slavery in ancient Rome, including debt slavery.

These are all from https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Slaves
 

Gemai

Gemai
Wetwire:

The Empire and the fall of the Republic are not modelled after WW I and WW II. While the German Republic did slide into elected dictatorship (not a coup) like the Republic did pre WW II, Star Wars has ZERO comparison to WW I. At least make proper history examples.

The Star Wars Empire is actually a terrible mirror of fascism.
 
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