Slavery in Star Wars

[ZahirS]

And to mass produce those droids would cost more than rounding up 100 organics to be sold into slavery. You are forgetting every thing that needs to go into making that droid and keeping it in good working order. best example is look at a computer or a car. Both of these are mass produced and both require massive amounts of materials, and both cost more to make than buying a loaf of bread and water. This is basic stuff. And the thought you can't keep organics in rough living conditions, I think you need to go look at history, it proves in every way you can and it's effective.

 

Nope, droids already gave my argument over and over but doesn't seem to get though some thick heads.

 

A droid a basic labor one, requires parts that are produced by either Corporation, or even galactic goverments just like the Republic in coruscant, basically you are paying X prices for parts that the end result which is labor is Y, droids do their job so efficiently that some enviroments can only be sustained by droids and living enviroments made of gigantic robots performing different task.

 

To put it simple the price you pay is insignificant to the amount of labor a droid does, that is why is more efficient than organics that can't lift tons, can tire, need air, need food, etc.

Organic slaves will always be cheaper than Droids. ALWAYS. The up keep cost is way more than the every day cost of Organics. Take your handheld game, no where near the amount of sophistication of a droid, but still the same basic principal. it has maybe a battery life of a few hours of constant play, you then have to plug it in a charger or in the wall, which costs power, which costs money. A droid would multiply that cost by hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

 

Droids will ALWAYS be more cheaper than humans, aliens, and Ill say why?

 

Everyone in the galaxy can buy a droid there is also the cost of acquisition which for slaves is higher because its fobidden in most places.

 

Droids ONLY require parts to work, they don't need constant energy and they can live millions of years literally, they can even reapir themselves or with aid of a mechanic.

 

To prevent revolts, that's already been done with little to no cost already, look at the Egyptian slave set up, liquid bread. It had alcohol in it to passify the slaves as well as all the nutrients to keep them healthy. So that's already been solved.

 

Also, this debate isn't about morality. It's about cost efficiency which we well know just looking at today's society has no bearing on morality what so ever.

 

Revolt is the higher cost of slavery, let me put it simple Rome Empire fell because of slaves and revolts combined with their enemies at their door.

 

they well-fed the slaves and builts entire towns to provide shelter and commodities including what you said bread and wine but they weren't force to work, basically they paid them this in order to built the pyramids it was more like modern day contruction workers than slaves.

 

Slaves will always be a burden more than an efficient tool, history has proved that over and over again.

[Euphrosyne]

Revolt is the higher cost of slavery, let me put it simple Rome Empire fell because of slaves and revolts combined with their enemies at their door.

 

they well-fed the slaves and builts entire towns to provide shelter and commodities including what you said bread and wine but they weren't force to work, basically they paid them this in order to built the pyramids it was more like modern day contruction workers than slaves.

 

Slaves will always be a burden more than an efficient tool, history has proved that over and over again.

Rome only suffered major slave revolts when the Empire was powerful and unassailable, e.g. Spartacus' famous Servile War. There are virtually no records of slave revolts occurring in the late fourth and early fifth centuries when the Western Empire started to have its problems, and none whatsoever in the Eastern Empire that, notably, survived another thousand years.

 

The Western Empire ceased to exist not because of invasion by "barbarians" and certainly not because of phantom slave revolts, but because of the incessant civil wars that kicked off in about 380 under the Emperor Gratianus and which did not really abate - and then temporarily - until the 430s. As it turned out, the only thing powerful enough to bring down the Roman state was the Roman army. Would-be contenders for the throne caused an immense, fratricidal bloodletting, fractured the Empire along what eventually became regional lines, and allowed minor players to effectively carve out slices of imperial territory for themselves.

 

I can cite chapter and verse from Real Academic Historians like Guy Halsall, Michael Kulikowski, and Walter Goffart if you want to play.

 

---

 

I still don't know why people in this thread are insisting that either organic or synthetic slavery is more cost-efficient than the other variety when there are no data to back either contention up.

Edited May 11, 2013 by Euphrosyne

[ColaWindstar]

to chip in my support for droids:

Don't forget, you just need a nice speaker set up and your droids can become instant DJs for any party. Can you slave become the center piece of your party? Also it's easier to make droids look like Daft Punk.

 

Droids can be quickly modified if you have the a mechanic and/or the right parts. Combat protocols can be quickly installed and allow them to serve as... Vaguely competent soldiers.

 

You can get big robots. Like... Giant robots. And chicks dig giant robots. Ever heard of chicks digging giants slaves?

 

On a more serious note: droids seem like a better investment in the long run since, including other reasons stated, they're also far more modular with the right knowledge. A slave might need training in a complex task that can take months or years, a droid can learn it with an upload (which, at worst, shouldn't take more than a few days.) Also, part swapping further allows for more flexibility.

[Euphrosyne]

On a more serious note: droids seem like a better investment in the long run since, including other reasons stated, they're also far more modular with the right knowledge. A slave might need training in a complex task that can take months or years, a droid can learn it with an upload (which, at worst, shouldn't take more than a few days.) Also, part swapping further allows for more flexibility.

Maybe. But that assumes that only the knowledge is necessarily modular. For example: it doesn't do a protocol droid any good to know how to plant crops: it's still going to suck at planting crops, because it's not built to do that: movement and articulation are all wrong. Most organic slaves can, however, learn to be both majordomo and farmer without modifications to their bodies akin to what a protocol droid would need to be able to be an effective farmer.

 

But these are just reasons, they're not concrete evidence. Protocol droid/crop planter or whatever is just an example of something that might matter; there's no measurement of how much it could matter, in terms of opportunity cost or price, and how relevant that particular modular example is to the droid/organic slave labor force at large. So it might be a really big deal that most droids, being purpose-built, aren't as modular in some respects as most organics. Or it might not be a big deal at all. We don't know. And pretending that we do know is asinine.

[ZahirS]

its simple:

 

Those slaves of the Late Roman Empire included Greeks, Christians, Jews, Ethopians (Africans) mainly.

 

The empire fell for various reasons like:

Invasion of Barbarians

Slave Religion taking force thus slave revolts in all the empire mainly Christianism

Downfall of paganic religions

Iron posioning and delusions of the elite (food poisoning)

 

Basically Im using a resume of varios Authors like Peter Heather "Fall of Rome", Bruce Bartlett, Greg Wolf and some others.

 

Slaves were the back-bone of the rome empire and they were there when it ended, you can clearly see how big the "slaves" have grown since.

 

On Star wars:

 

Droids for farming do Excel at farming, just to give an example.

Droid can't do multitasking except for exotic kind of droids like Gree, T-7 and other.

 

on the other side:

 

Humans, Aliens and the like can multitask but do poorly if not constatly punished and supervised by "Over lords".

 

So its easy to say based on this that droids work better, more efficiently and take less time to do it considering their movement is calculated to perfeccion, droids can learn thousands of languages, work without tiring, can can lift tons.

 

Droids are the PERFECT SLAVE

Edited May 12, 2013 by ZahirS

[Euphrosyne]

its simple:

 

Those slaves of the Late Roman Empire included Greeks, Christians, Jews, Ethopians (Africans) mainly.

 

The empire fell for various reasons like:

Invasion of Barbarians

Slave Religion taking force thus slave revolts in all the empire mainly Christianism

Downfall of paganic religions

Iron posioning and delusions of the elite (food poisoning)

 

Basically Im using a resume of varios Authors like Peter Heather "Fall of Rome", Bruce Bartlett, Greg Wolf and some others.

The problem there is that Heather is very prominently wrong on some points, and is at the very least an inadvertent shill for British conservative political interests in that he explicitly states that the Roman Empire in the West fell because of immigration. That's an extremely politically charged thing to say, never mind that it is functionally inaccurate. Halsall has argued against this pretty much endlessly, and successfully. His Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West demolished most of Heather's "immigration" argument (there are lots of technicalities that I'll spare you about what constitutes a "people" and the political origin of the "Goths"); the remaining back-and-forth has been largely desultory, but there it is. If you're not willing to shell out for Halsall's book, or at least pick it up at a local university library, then at the very least read the stuff on his blag, like this article here.

 

In point of fact, though, Heather does not argue that slave revolts had much of anything to do with the fall of the West. He doesn't really mention them at all, because they didn't happen. Like Halsall, he focused on the internal strife within the ranks of the army and government, but where Heather sees the internal strife as an opening for the barbarians to pour in, Halsall sees the so-called barbarians as a creation of the external strife. That's the fundamental difference between the two. On slaves, Heather is almost totally silent in both The Fall of the Roman Empire; in Empires and Barbarians, he has a lot to say about slavery and Eastern Europe in the second half of the first millennium but nowhere connects slavery to the collapse of Rome.

 

Try to physically point to any slave revolt that took place during the fall of the West, attested by period chroniclers. You can't; they simply don't exist. The most we ever hear of slaves is statements of Olympiodoros to the effect that disaffected natives of Italy joined the army of Radagaisus in 405. But that was one isolated incident, and Radagaisus' army was soon annihilated at the Battle of Faesulae anyway. Slaves played no major role in the revolt of Magnus Maximus or that of Constantinus "III". Slaves didn't back the Vandals and Alans in North Africa, or play a role in Aetius' struggles against his competitors (e.g. Bonifacius) in the 420s and 430s. Slaves weren't what made the Spains ungovernable for Rome. And so on, and so forth. The Roman economy still employed slave labor to a large degree at that time, of course. But politically and militarily, these slaves were invisible. Attributing the fall of the Empire to them is ridiculous.

 

Even more ridiculous is the assertion that "slave religions" dominated the West. Christianity was not a "slave religion" in any meaningful way. It was popular among more or less every stratum of society: in the army, among the senatorial nobility, among smallholders, in the cities, and probably among slaves as well. In fact, slave life was so poorly documented it's much harder to find concrete instances of Christian slaves, whereas the Roman nobility left tons of records and was extremely involved in the Church. And what's even sillier is attributing the fall of the West to Christianity, or to the abandonment of "pagan" religion. Academics haven't seriously argued that since Gibbon in the eighteenth century. Heather went out of his way to demolish that particular idea; Halsall didn't even waste time on it at all. Same with the iron pipe poisoning thing: it's a joke theory propounded by the History Channel, and nothing else. The community of academic late antiquarians hasn't taken it seriously since, well, ever.

On Star wars:

 

Droids for farming do Excel at farming, just to give an example.

Droid can't do multitasking except for exotic kind of droids like Gree, T-7 and other.

 

on the other side:

 

Humans, Aliens and the like can multitask but do poorly if not constatly punished and supervised by "Over lords".

 

So its easy to say based on this that droids work better, more efficiently and take less time to do it considering their movement is calculated to perfeccion, droids can learn thousands of languages, work without tiring, can can lift tons.

 

Droids are the PERFECT SLAVE

No, it's not "easy to say". You claim that they're "more efficient". All right: where are the numbers? I want to see cost tables comparing droid labor and organic labor across multiple common tasks, taking into account operating costs, acquisition costs, social cachet, differences of production location (and attendant acknowledgment of transport costs and infrastructure development), and some way to take account of mutability. I want to see evidence of credit savings or production increases or both. Otherwise, you can't say with any reliability that organic slave labor is less or more efficient than synthetic slave labor.

 

And since those numbers don't exist, you can't say that with any reliability at all. You're just making assumptions with no factual backing.

[AlexDougherty]

its simple:

 

Those slaves of the Late Roman Empire included Greeks, Christians, Jews, Ethopians (Africans) mainly.

 

The empire fell for various reasons like:

Invasion of Barbarians

Slave Religion taking force thus slave revolts in all the empire mainly Christianism

Downfall of paganic religions

Iron posioning and delusions of the elite (food poisoning)

 

Basically Im using a resume of varios Authors like Peter Heather "Fall of Rome", Bruce Bartlett, Greg Wolf and some others.

 

Slaves were the back-bone of the rome empire and they were there when it ended, you can clearly see how big the "slaves" have grown since.

 

There were very few Slave revolts during the later stages of the Roman Empire, mainly because Christianity said that the meek would inherit the Earth, basically stick with your crappy lot after the end of days you'll be ontop. It's hard to get a rebellion if your friends think they'll be rulers for all eternity after they die.

 

The Pagan Religions had been virtually gone for several centuries before the Roman Empire fell, not sure how you can argue their fall resulted in the Empires fall.

 

Iron poisoning might be plausible, except nothing had changed diet wise for hundreds of years. Also they had been using lead cups and cutlery since 200BC, and had always been suffering from minor lead poisoning, which induces delusions, hallucinations and paranoia. Given that they had survived Lead Poisoning since the founding of Rome, I can't see Iron Poisoning changing things at all.

 

Basically the Roman Empire fell because of Barbarians invading and Infighting. The infighting during the end was ridiculous, Emperors were only lasting about six years, so there was no internal stability, and the Empire had split, reabsorbed, and split again, giving people confused ideas about who they should be loyal to and who to be suspicious of (Romans were always suspicious of at least one group at any time). Even the Barbarians wouldn't have been enough if the infighting hadn't destroyed the stucture and ideology of the Empire.

[XisscVekno]

Nope, droids already gave my argument over and over but doesn't seem to get though some thick heads.

 

A droid a basic labor one, requires parts that are produced by either Corporation, or even galactic goverments just like the Republic in coruscant, basically you are paying X prices for parts that the end result which is labor is Y, droids do their job so efficiently that some enviroments can only be sustained by droids and living enviroments made of gigantic robots performing different task.

 

To put it simple the price you pay is insignificant to the amount of labor a droid does, that is why is more efficient than organics that can't lift tons, can tire, need air, need food, etc.

 

So now you are arguing semantics, which was never the case. Yes sending a robot to mars is more efficient than a human... because we can't survive there with out a ton of equipment. That has little no no relevance to droid vs sentient as a whole. Yes in SOME roles a sentient is less efficient in some "super human" tasks over a droid. Also, a droid needs power, it needs oil/hydrolic fluid, and as we have seen in star wars movies they CAN"T work is all environments. They are just as restricted.

 

Also, Computers and Cars are mass produced and if you wanted a brand new on it's going to cost you. if you want a used one I hope you have the skill/knowledge to maintain as well as the parts, other wise you are spending a ton of money.

 

 

Droids will ALWAYS be more cheaper than humans, aliens, and Ill say why?

 

Everyone in the galaxy can buy a droid there is also the cost of acquisition which for slaves is higher because its fobidden in most places.

 

Droids ONLY require parts to work, they don't need constant energy and they can live millions of years literally, they can even reapir themselves or with aid of a mechanic.

 

yes it's forbidden is some places because of moral standings of the law makers. Not because it's to costly. So yes if you want to by an illegal thing it's going to cost more in a place that it's outlawed, Think about that, legalize drugs and what an oz goes for now would be 50%-75% cheaper. So again irrelevant.

 

Droids don't require only parts, they require lubrication, power, and parts. Have you ever actually worked on a machine before.... there is a lot more than a box involved. So they are limited, Sentients on the other hand will do what they need to on their own to survive, they don't need programing to do it,s instilled in them at birth. So again extra cost.

 

 

Revolt is the higher cost of slavery, let me put it simple Rome Empire fell because of slaves and revolts combined with their enemies at their door.

 

they well-fed the slaves and builts entire towns to provide shelter and commodities including what you said bread and wine but they weren't force to work, basically they paid them this in order to built the pyramids it was more like modern day contruction workers than slaves.

 

Slaves will always be a burden more than an efficient tool, history has proved that over and over again.

 

here we go with the revolt crap again, yeah that has been addressed and I'll address it again, it's been solved, read Egyptian history and the Hebrews. They fed them "liquid bread" which was composed of grains and alcohol. It gave them every thing they needed to survive as well as made them more docile. So again irrelevant argument.

 

No they where slaves. Not elaborate construction workers and they lived in a housing district made of mud and sticks.

 

On a final note Most countries or civilizations that had and practiced slavery where made rich because of this practice. this would denote that owning and up-keeping slaves was cheap. The Roman empire is a prime example of the amount of wealth they gained through out their history because of slavery.

 

Where as owning a car is never cheap. trust me I restore old classic cars. They WILL nickle-dime you to death and I would only assume that an old droid will do the same.

[ZahirS]

Ill say it again, I used different authors for the argument on the fall of rome not just heather

 

Even though migration didn't happen literally, heather was right that the empire lost control on most territories basically dind't have military power anymore, and Goths and other prominent barbarians were against slavery.

 

Slavery was very important in late roman empire, sure aristocrats and romans most precisely Constatine and the Bizantine empire adopted Christianity, but the origin was a religion of the slaves the romans threw the chirstians to the lions a few years earlier in some parts of the empire, this was very important because Roman slaves backfired to them in the end.

 

On Star Wars:

 

I don't have the costs its a fictional universe but there is empirical data that should be regarded.

 

Ill use an example:

 

If somehow in our universe someone created a Droid or Robot with similar complexity to star wars, it eventually become so cheap to get one because it would be mass produced and updated regularly to the point tasks like:

 

Cleaning sewers would be exclusively done by droids/robots

Construction and cleaning of house holds.

Possibly Farming

ETC.

 

Empiric data tells that a droid which is star wars technology is more advanced than anything we can compare on, yet they can do things that make like easier for organics, heck our lives could depend on the shoulders of droids if we had that technology.

 

I suggest reading the Robot series by Isaac Asimov.

 

A droid even if it require lubricant, energy, parts, etc all those things would be become so cheap even a farmer can get them like seen in a New Hope.

Edited May 12, 2013 by ZahirS

[XisscVekno]

A droid even if it require lubricant, energy, parts, etc all those things would be become so cheap even a farmer can get them like seen in a New Hope.

 

And you just proved my argument, thank you. Go watch A New Hope again. Luke wanted to leave the farm to join the Academy, yet his uncle wouldn't let him because he didn't have enough droids. And I quote "wait till next year after the harvest. I'll have enough money to purchase more droids" hence droids where costly and Luke being a slave to his uncles needs was cheaper.

[ZahirS]

And you just proved my argument, thank you. Go watch A New Hope again. Luke wanted to leave the farm to join the Academy, yet his uncle wouldn't let him because he didn't have enough droids. And I quote "wait till next year after the harvest. I'll have enough money to purchase more droids" hence droids where costly and Luke being a slave to his uncles needs was cheaper.

 

Not really he didn't want luke to leave to his "death", basically was trying to make luke stay.

 

Droids are well cheap.

[Euphrosyne]

Ill say it again, I used different authors for the argument on the fall of rome not just heather

 

Even though migration didn't happen literally, heather was right that the empire lost control on most territories basically dind't have military power anymore, and Goths and other prominent barbarians were against slavery.

 

Slavery was very important in late roman empire, sure aristocrats and romans most precisely Constatine and the Bizantine empire adopted Christianity, but the origin was a religion of the slaves the romans threw the chirstians to the lions a few years earlier in some parts of the empire, this was very important because Roman slaves backfired to them in the end.

Fine, then: cite specifics from these other historians. Bring up actual examples of slave rebellions in the later Empire. Ones that really mattered. If you're not going to directly adopt the arguments of academics and rely on their works for the proof, you still need some kind of proof. You need to demonstrate the connection between slavery and the fall of the West. So far, the most you've done is: throw around references to historians whose actual arguments you ignore; fire off a few "suggestive hints" about Christianity as though it mattered that the later Roman Empire was a Christian empire; and state that the Roman Empire employed slavery at the time. Nowhere is there a serious - even an unserious attempt - to show any sort of causation or linkage.

On Star Wars:

 

I don't have the costs its a fictional universe but there is empirical data that should be regarded.

 

Ill use an example:

 

If somehow in our universe someone created a Droid or Robot with similar complexity to star wars, it eventually become so cheap to get one because it would be mass produced and updated regularly to the point tasks like:

 

Cleaning sewers would be exclusively done by droids/robots

Construction and cleaning of house holds.

Possibly Farming

ETC.

 

Empiric data tells that a droid which is star wars technology is more advanced than anything we can compare on, yet they can do things that make like easier for organics, heck our lives could depend on the shoulders of droids if we had that technology.

 

I suggest reading the Robot series by Isaac Asimov.

 

A droid even if it require lubricant, energy, parts, etc all those things would be become so cheap even a farmer can get them like seen in a New Hope.

So, if I'm reading this correctly, your argument is based off of "empirical data" that you have not actually produced, a reference to an entirely different science fiction franchise, and the dubious unsupported assertion that robotic labor in the real world replaces and improves upon organic labor in every way.

 

It's almost as though you haven't read my posts at all, because you're certainly not constructing meaningful responses to them. So I'm done; it's clear that you're not interested in or not capable of holding a real discussion, here.

[ZahirS]

I don't care on discussing either, its Rome 101 for me.

 

I should have posted full sources correct sorry my mistake, I don't have much time left.

 

About empirical data, its all we got for star wars there isnt a cost list for droids vs slaves.

 

My sources(Red means late roman empire):

Slavery in the Roman Empre by RH Barrow (Barnes & Noble, 1998)

Suetonius' Life of Nero: An Historical Commentary edited by KR Bradley (Collection Latomus, Brussels, 1978)

Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control by KR Bradley (Oxford University Press, 1987)

Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 BC - 70 BC by KR Bradley (Batsford, 1989; reprint 1998)

Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology by MI Finley (Chatto and Windus, 1980)

Slavery and Society at Rome by KR Bradley (Cambridge University Press, 1994; Spanish translation 1998)

Suetonius edited and translated by JC Rolfe; revised edition with a new introduction by KR Bradley (Harvard University Press, 1998)

Edited May 13, 2013 by ZahirS

[Spetulhu]

Granted, specialized droids are probably more efficient than a biological at their specialized tasks. A vehicular harvester droid, a multi-limbed assembly droid set into an assembly line, an astromech droid and so on.

 

The humanoid droids on the other hand mostly seem clumsy and not too bright. They can try using standard tools and vehicles but models like C3-P0 would surely be outclassed by children in everything except his speciality as protocol/translator? Star Wars droids aren't anywhere close to the same utility seen in Asimov's robot books (and even there robots on Earth were pretty crude and easily confused compared to what the Spacers used). Which had to do with population and tradition more than anything else - on Earth robots weren't really needed as workforce was readily available. The Spacers kept robots in part because they preferred to not work with other humans, and in part because they lacked the population to do without.

[VeridianSword]

A few points that need to be addressed when it comes to slaves:

 

1. You do NOT have to pay medical bills for slaves. Even in real life, the slaves that were brought to america on ships were brought in 400 or more at a time and were NOT given medical attention. Half to 3/4 of them made it to America if luck held, half or less if it did not.

 

2. Food supply and other maintenance depended entirely on how the slavers valued their property. "Motivation" was never difficult and history has proven that provisions weren't exactly plentiful all the time.

 

3. The main difficulty with enslaving humans vs droids is that human slaves needed rest or died, but were less expensive to physically maintain than droids were in most cases. Food cost less than lubricant, especially if it's the slaves that grow it. Slaves were given scraps in the US to live on, which created alot of 'Soul Food' Cuisine such as Pigs Feet and Chittelins.

 

4. No education is NOT necessary, save training for the work you want done (not much in the case of labor) and the orders given to do it. "Pick it up", "Carry it over there", "Drop that and you WILL be punished" does not take much time or effort to teach.

 

Droids get less complicated in the case of skills that necessitated education because programming is not usually as expensive or time consuming as education. You do not need to repeat orders or 'train' them at all, just program it to do what you want. In this case, an educated slave gave the individual status due to the fact that they had the time and credits to waste to ensure compliance without payment. The more educated the slave, the more important the Master.

 

A heuristic processer would allow a droid to 'learn' new tasks, but without a mindwipe it could also 'learn' to rebel. Double-edged sword.

 

5. Legally, droids are easier because they are ALWAYS considered property in most organic cultures. The idea of 'rights' does not apply...EVER. They has never been and will never be (That I am aware of) a law made that allowed droid 'freedom' from ownership.

 

For those who would be offended, this is a practical look at the concept of slavery. I do not morally condone or enjoy the thought of slavery of any kind. It is disgusting, brutal, unconscionable, difficult to manage and inefficent. Better to look for service contracts or simply workers for jobs. People who want to do the work are far better at it, more efficient, more skilled, more adaptable and by far more motivated to do good work than slaves can ever be. Slaves or droids have no real 'motivation of any type to do well. They simply do what they are told (or programmed) to do.

Edited November 4, 2013 by VeridianSword
spelling