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Kizarvexis
Captain (Junior Grade)
Posts: 270
Joined: Tue Apr 03, 2012 6:18 pm
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The E wrote:Theemile wrote:They may not be slaves in the manner we are used to thinking. It is quite possible they have a significant degree of free will - within boundaries.
It's those boundaries which are important, and how you create them. It's like the menu your order off of at a restaurant. You don't order lobster bisque at McDonalds - why, it's not on the menu. You take one look and order the Fish Fillet.
If you craft a society where people have sufficient options, perks and freedom within those options, they don't feel like a slave, because they decided to do what they are doing, and go where they are going. They might only have a job choice between sewer cleaner, sewer repair, septic repair, and waste treatment plant, but if you give them the option of a degree in waste management or septic engineering, they suddenly have the option to choose their path and to better themselves if they are able.
And really, how much different is that from how most of us live? we are given options, and we live within them.
And the population of Darius knows for a fact that some people are better at certain jobs than others. I'm guessing they're operating on a quite rigid caste system, and we know that those can be pretty stable (and that's without the kind of provable metrics the Alignment has about the relative performance in certain roles of the various genelines). cthia wrote:Interesting. Darius has a population equal to Manticore's. If Darius gets into a long protracted war with the GA, I wonder what impact it will have on their population - considering 34 % of their population is a slave pool which they cannot draw from. A reality the US eventually found wasn't feasible.
The whole point of Darius and the Alignment fleet is that they do not engage in major battles, either militarily or politically. That's what the Renaissance Factor is for. I expect the alignment stealth ships to appear as ambushers in support of traditional forces drawn from the RF ranks or as deep scouts. In other words, Darius on its own is not expected to run a fleet as massive as what the Manticorans or Graysons built up, therefore the presence of a caste unsuitable for military service isn't a big deal (and your underlying assumption that the genetic slaves are unsuitable in that way is unproven; I do not recall any textev for it)..
I agree, not like the slaves in the rest of the galaxy. Darius is planning a massive Navy, but maybe with not a good construction infrastructure or innovation. Mission of Honor wrote:The Mesan Alignment had established the first colony on Gamma almost two hundred T-centuries ago, and it had grown steadily since, although the really exponential growth had begun only over the last seventy T-years or so. Exactly when to begin that particular side of the Alignment's preparations had always been a bit ticklish, since no matter how well it was hidden, there was always the possibility of someone's stubling across it, which could have raised all sorts of questions. On the other hand, the capabilities Darius represented had always been central to the Alignment's strategy, and Albrecht's grandfather had authorized the first colonization flight as one of his last acts as the Alignment's chief executive.
By now, the Darius System's total population was in the very near vicinity of 3.9 billion, of whom just under two billion were representatives of one of the alpha, beta, or gamma genomes the Alignment had worked to improve for so long. The remainder of the system population were genetic slaves, but the conditions of their slavery were very unlike those which obtained elsewhere. For one thing, they were treated far better, without the often savage discipline slaves often received elsewhere. In fact, the Darius System was one of the very few places where the Mesan Constitution's official legal protections theoretically intended to protect slaves from gross mistreatment were actually enforced. For another, they had a much higher standard of living. And for yet another, they formed the backbone of a highly trained, highly skilled labor force which had earned the respect of its supervisors.
Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They'd been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.
Yet for all the years which had been plowed into Darius, all the effort, all the generations of labor, the fact remained that its space stations and shipyards were significantly less capable than Manticore's had been prior to Oyster Bay. Benjamin Detweiler didn't like admitting that, but he agreed with his father; the day someone stopped admitting the truth was the day he could kiss any of his hopes for the future goodbye. And the truth was that, despite the accomplishments of the Alignment's R&D, and despite any tactical advantages which might accrue from the streak drive and the spider, very few star nations could have matched the industrial efficiency of the Star Empire of Manticore. Indeed, Benjamin suspected that even Manticore had failed to grasp just how great an advantage it possessed in that regard.
Over the last five or six T-years, he and Daniel had been trying to introduce Manticoran practices here at Darius, only to discover that the task wasn't as simple and forthright as it ought to have been. If they'd really wanted to duplicate Manticore's efficiency, they would've had to duplicate Manticore's entire industrial base—and its society—and they simply couldn't do that. Their labor force was extraordinarily good at following orders, extremely well trained, and highly motivated, but the kind of independence of thought which characterized Manticoran workers wasn't exactly something which had been encouraged among the slave workers of Darius. Even if it had been, their basic techniques and technologies were simply different from Manticore's. Better than the majority of League star systems could have produced, if those other star systems had only realized it, yet still at least a full generation behind the Manties.
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