A good point, although reading the story didn't exactly make me feel like I was supposed to empathise with the protagonist. Put it this way - how many people would change their vote if there was a chance the slave would turn on you with a laser torch?
THE OUTER LIMITS - A Slave Girl
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A good point, although reading the story didn't exactly make me feel like I was supposed to empathise with the protagonist. Put it this way - how many people would change their vote if there was a chance the slave would turn on you with a laser torch?
What about having the Zeitgeist movement within Elite for example to represent better the real and future world?
A resource based economy that is self sustainable and there is no need for greed and destruction any longer?
OK read up on this ZEITGEIST movement.
Not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings with my bluntness. But it appears to just another utopian communism again with a different gloss, probably for people who have not read their Thomas More or Marx and don’t see it for what it is.
I don’t dislike these kind of idealist dreamers as people, I’m sure they mean well. But every time throughout history when this sort of woolly airheaded egalitarian ideas actually form the basis for any sort of society the dreamers are always replaced more or less instantly with bullies that use this talk as cover for oppressive regimes that lead to the deaths of millions and the brutal suffering of tens of millions more.
Free markets based on property rights by contrast has been the single greatest force for good in the history of our species and done an astonishing amount to life billions from poverty and provides ever greater standards of living for the species as a whole.
So by all means let’s have a few planets founded on communist ideals, but by the time you get there they will be oppressive totalitarian hell holes that make the lives of their citizens abject misery.
* Relaxed stance, It's-only-a-game *
* Death to all wrong thinkers *
What on earth did you eat at lunchtime?!?!
What about having the Zeitgeist movement within Elite for example to represent better the real and future world?
A resource based economy that is self sustainable and there is no need for greed and destruction any longer?
I don't want to force other players to live this way, but it would be funny to have those socio-political ideas part of that universe in a contrast to all those other old political systems. Even for players who prefer the old systems would surely have their fun to be confronted with those other kind of players.
Is it even possible to do this in ED? I mean, you then must have some game mechanisms for building political structures at least? I'm doubtful it could be done easily. Better then to join the faction that's closest to your ideals and try to change that from within - if that becomes possible.
IMO, the problem with this in RL is that it's just a "rich" man's experiement in the western world. Half the world is poor and can't afford most things, because they can't even cover the costs of production, transportation, and distribution. Not to mention the added profits on top, before the product is available for purchase. So simple logic says that to make an equal system work you'd have to minimalize or remove as many as these factors as possible. Technology can help this process a long way, but we aren't ready yet.
If you can't handle a little slave girl I would suggest your not cut out for big bad deep space.
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
- Joseph Stalin
Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.
- Joseph Stalin
If you can't handle a little dictatorship, I would suggest you're not cut out for big bad deep space
Free trade is the answer. 30 years ago Indians toiled away in ‘sweatshops’ stitching trainers and western do-gooders campaigned to get these ‘sweatshops’ closed down. But they used their wages, which were 5x what they would earn working in a field under the sun, to educate their kids. Now the west outsources their IT development and call-centres to India, they use the money to develop a middle class, and their kids will be even better educated and ever more able to prosper.
A few years ago a prominent charity campaigned to get Indonesian ‘sweatshops’ closed down that employed children. They succeeded. When they returned a year later to their horror they discovered most of these children had been forced into prostitution to survive. They presumably just assumed that children not working would be at home on the Xbox or something. So don’t listen to do-gooders, they just make everything worse.
Indeed, thank God for the rich westerns, who buy stuff, that is made abroad, and create jobs, and those jobs set of a spiral of economic improvements that creates an Asian middle class, and more trade, and more jobs and so on as billions are lifted from poverty. You say half the world is poor, maybe, buts that’s better than 75%, and if free trade continues in fifty years it will be 25% of the world is poor and so on.
(Well, the lefties will just keep redefining the term ‘poor’, but you get my point. Real poverty is shrinking.)
Free markets have been abused everywhere and every time they've been around (just like the other ideals you mention), which is why we don't have them today and regulate them instead.
ANYWAY, moving swiftly back on topic, erm... where we up to?
Well I could start another poll, this time asking if the slave girl should be blonde, brunet, redhead or shaved head (its the future after all).
True. In some areas of the globe. OTOH, the gap between the developed and the undeveloped countries has increased in many ways. I'm no "leftie" (I'm basically a libertarian), but I see many problems that comes with capitalism. One of the most urgent ones to fix is pollution. But capitalism is the best system we have to choose from. I have yet to see any other system that's doable. That doesn't mean we can't improve capitalism. And we need to improve it a lot. That's why we need do-gooders - because they're idealists and have ideas. And they do something hard capitalists don't do: think of other people's (and animals, plants) welfare and survival.
Edit: Sorry for the off topic. But I didn't start it (this time).
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And decreased in so many others. I was in Sri Lanka recently, a very poor country with GDP per capita of a tenth of ours, and most of the young guys had newer smart phones than I did and could talk about all the same films and games as I.
The gap might be increasing, when you measure in terms of monetary values, but the standard of living gap is slowly closing right across the world and that is what really matters, not all this Gini coefficient rubbish.
So back on topic, what age should the slave girl be?
*inappropriate for this forum*
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They are for themselves, which to them is the only valid viewpoint, hence my comment.
Saying "slavery is immoral and wrong" is simplistic and it depends on your viewpoint. To us (real people) obviously slavery is wrong, but in the fictional universe of Elite it's not wrong nor immoral to the Imperial society (but it is to the rest of the galaxy) If you free an imperial slave you're actually committing a crime as they are in servitude by choice, with rights, for whatever reason. I was simply quoting you to say that it depends on your viewpoint and things are not always black n white.
ETA:
Yes, unless you happen to be in Imperial space in which case you're committing a crime - slavery there is legal, and you also risk annoying the slaves themselves. If you are in debt and owe money one way to pay it off is to voluntarily become someone's slave - in doing so you have certain rights (pertaining to how you are treated) but other than that you are a slave. It's considered an honourable thing to do and is consistent with Imperial thoughts and beliefs.
Your call of course - do what you like and live with the consequences
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Or more accurately, by lack of choices.
You are talking about volunteer slaves, right?
Otherwise I'd say let her grow up before you make her your personal sex toy.
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No .. that's the point.
If you owe money there are plenty of things you can do and one of them is to enter into a contract of servitude.
To us that's slavery - to them that's a way of life.
<shrug>
Suggest you read up on the Imperial thread to get a better (and more accurate) understanding of what I am saying.
Moral compass on: Yes
Pirate compass on: No
I think we are talking about the choices made by the fictional characters in a fictional universe 1200 years in the future.
You're thinking about this way too much, it's getting really really ****ing creepy now.
Asterisks left in for effect, because damn...
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I did read it, and my understanding is that Imperial society doesn't provide many options when you're in debt - unlike societies which place value on liberty and individual freedom over social rank and money.
If you are in debt here in the UAE and you can't pay then under Sharia Law you are imprisoned until such time that you pay off your debts. All perfectly reasonable to the local people here but preposterous to Western thinking.
It all depends on your viewpoint.
Neither is right or wrong ...
ETA:
A pertinent part of the revised slavery proposal:
So .. saying "slavery" is wrong is not the full story .. It depends where you are in the galaxy and who the slave is.
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