Oolite Bulletins

A question for those who have a broader knowledge existing OXP mission content, are there any that deal with the issue of slaves? Freeing slaves, that sort of thing?

Capt. Murphy's Illegal Goods Tweak.

Thanks!

As I recall, one of the UPS Courier missions also does.

Another couple of questions: I understand that GALCOP is more of an admin body that maintains the Coriolis stations and witchpoint beacons. They also allow a planet's produce to be traded on the stations. GALCOP will tag traders as offender if they launch with illegal goods in their hold, but I'm assuming this is independent of the planet's stance on those goods. Ie. A planet might be in the middle of a civil war, so trading in firearms might be fine for the planet, but GALCOP still considers it an offense.

So, if a planet decides that trading in slaves is illegal, and (more importantly) they do not want slaves traded in their system, would they have the power to force GALCOP to stop the practice (eg making the cost of slaves 0CR or something)? Or would their agreement with GALCOP mean they have to accept that this trade might take place and it's out of their hands?

I'm also trying to get a picture on each of the government-type's basic stance on slaves. Here's what I have so far:
Corporate states and democracies are against slave trade politically (being against the slave trade is good PR), although there might be some elements of society that still want it.
Confederacies are mostly on board (same as for Corp States and democracies), but might need motivation
Communists are ... no idea. Against I think.
Dictatorships are variable - some are, some aren't.
Feudals are for slave trade - slaves form a part of society
Anarchys are for slave trade - slaves trade is profitable

I'd really appreciate some other takes on this.

phkb wrote:

Corporate states and democracies are against slave trade politically (being against the slave trade is good PR), although there might be some elements of society that still want it.
Confederacies are mostly on board (same as for Corp States and democracies), but might need motivation
Communists are ... no idea. Against I think.
Dictatorships are variable - some are, some aren't.
Feudals are for slave trade - slaves form a part of society
Anarchys are for slave trade - slaves trade is profitable

I'd really appreciate some other takes on this.

Sure, or it could be the other way round.

Corporate States: slaves are much cheaper than workers. The extra profit lets you hire enough marketing staff to avoid serious PR problems, and besides, all your competitors do it so you can't afford not to.
Democracies: slavery means a low-tax high-services economy. The voters approve. Who cares what the slaves think - they don't have a vote.
Confederacies: the systems of the neo-Confederate movement, who are still bitter about the South losing the first US civil war
Dictatorships: the concept of slavery implies that there are people who need not obey the Supreme President For Life. This is clearly ridiculous.
Feudal: While there are some whose place in society is that of serf, they are no more a slave of their overseer than a Duke is the slave of Her Majesty - and just as the Dukes collectively may if united require Her Majesty to act, so may serfs united require their overseer to act.
Anarchy: Rejecting the hierarchical exercise of power obviously implies rejecting slavery. Sure, the rest of the Cooperative hates us for it, and their trade embargoes harm our economy, but we shall not give in. Even now our pilots are striking back against them, rescuing slaves, obtaining the weapons and combat drugs we need to defend ourselves, and destroying the Vipers they use to keep other planets in fear.

Slavery has been normal throughout recorded history. By some estimates there are more slaves now than at any previous time, we just don't talk about it any more. (There are certainly more pirates now than in historical times. Olde Time pirates are famous because they were exceptional men, modern pirates are unknown because they are unexceptional.) I think it safe to assume that all the human planets will have slaves.

As to lobstoids, felinoids, etc, their societies are so different that human socio-political concepts are meaningless. I suggest neither economy type nor government type are relevant. When you're trading between species, one man's slave is another lobstoid's zoological specimen. Hence the import/export asymmetry; exporting slaves is wrong, but importing biodiversity is righteous.

Wildeblood wrote:

I think it safe to assume that all the human planets will have slaves.

I agree, but not all human planets will have legal slaves (of course, here we enter the realms of semantics: in the USA, prisoners are legally used to perform all manner of jobs for, at best, a nominal wage, and lack almost all employee rights; in the UK, the dole office has the power to force unemployed people to go and work for large companies for no wage, or lose all state support and be forced to rely on charity for food, housing, etc.). There's a fine line between "slavery" and "forced labour" - and of course what is meant by "forced" (in the UK, for example, nobody is forcing anybody; after all, they could choose to starve on the street).

"Slavery" is a vague term, and could be applied to a huge range of situations, from bonded labour (where individuals are contracted to work for others for set periods of time - and which in turn may have numerous clauses and responsibilities on both sides, as well as opportunities for cancellation) to the kind of gruesome chattel slavery practised historically in the Caribbean, much of South America, and some states of the USA. "Slavery" could be applied to a situation where, in a society with no social security, a destitute and friendless woman can be given a job looking after the children of a household, receiving in return food, shelter, and familial regard; she becomes a loved and respected member of another family and is cared for long after the children have grown up, lives a long and happy life and is mourned when she dies at a ripe old age. At the other end of the scale, there is no limit to the horror which some human beings will perpetrate on others, if given the power and the opportunity. Both sorts of situations could coexist, in the same society, under the heading of "slavery".

The descriptions of planetary government types are vague, too, and what they are actually like on the ground must vary wildly, even among human planets. It's not even clear if the planets get any say in how they're described: some Democracies might be about as democratic as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (which is a good example: is North Korea a democracy, as it claims? Is it a Communist state, or a Dictatorship, or - now it's into the second generation of inherited leadership - Feudal?).

My personal view is that the Co-operative, with its highly simplistic laws and definitions, is an attempt to cast a flimsy net of commonality across a teeming shoal of wildly different worlds. Even just one planet, even one with a single planetary government, might contain a vast range of mores, cultures and societies.

It's also worth remembering that not all goods on the station will be shipped up from, or down to, the planet below: some might just be trans-shipped from one distant world to another down the line. So even a planet which had absolutely no truck with slavery of any kind (chattel, bond, marital, wage, whatever) might have slaves in storage on the orbiting station, brought in by one merchant and awaiting pickup by another, to be taken elsewhere.

Slavery is a broad term in today's language, but I think "in game" it must be considered the worst of the options, rather than the milder versions, because trading in them is an offense. And with multiple species in play, I think the connotation of "slave" is still a negative one. Bringing "slaves" (of any species) to a lobstoid world, even if the lobstoid's are not tying chains to their feet and forcing them to pound rocks, it is still captivity against one's will.

In terms of what I'm trying to achieve, I'm trying to come up with a methodology that can be used across all eight charts for determining what stance an individual planet might take on slavery (the negative kind) so that a logical series of missions can be put together that make sense for that planet in turning their stance around. It may be that multiple factors have to be considered: government type, species, population and production. Each can have a bearing (low population might mean that there is a shortage of workers, high production might mean there is a large upper class that like jobs done for them by cheap labour, feline planets might value the individual more, that sort of thing). Will this methodology ever be 100% accurate. Probably not, but I'd like it to be feasible, at least.

There would be organisations in game whose job is to help free slaves, lobbying governments to abolish the practice, hunting down human-traffickers - that's the sort of thing I'd like to construct, but with the ability to, if not stop slavery, reduce it to an absolute minimum. I'm also expecting that this will be a long-haul type of mission. Not over in a couple of days, but going on for weeks and possibly months. I may be biting off more than I can chew here, but at this stage of the development process that's the kind of thing I'm looking at.

Trading in slaves isn't an offence; you can bring them in to any Co-op station and sell them, no questions asked. The only offence is launching from a Co-op station with slaves in the hold.

The problem is, for every argument in favour of why a planet might be anti-slavery (e.g. felines are individualists), it's just as easy to come up with arguments that show why they'd regard slavery as an integral part of their economy (e.g. felines are lazy, not to mention cruel). Leaving government type and species aside, factors which might point towards a planet condoning slavery would be, possibly, high population and low income. But if you're writing a mission, I think it might be better to manually select the planets where there might arguably be active abolitionist movements, and work from there - especially since the purpose of the mission will be to tip the planet from one attitude to another. Ones with "civil war" in their descriptions might be obvious candidates: the player presumably wouldn't have much hope of overthrowing slavery in a stable society where the large majority are happy with the idea.

Phkb, you seem to have the same attitude Murphy took with Illegal Goods Tweak. It's an orphan that needs updating. If you want to appoint yourself its new maintainer and use it as a starting point I doubt anyone would mind. You could add as much to it as you like and when it grows too big to sensibly be called "Tweak" change its name to Amnesty Intergalactic (IIRC that was its in-game name).

I'll certainly be leveraging some of the ideas from the Illegal Goods tweak. Happy to give it a home.

I too always felt it was a little weird how the game treats all slaves as equal and there is the weird asymmetry between slaves being on the open market at a coriolis station but it's illegal to even fly them around within the system (with the exception of seedy space bars/anarchy oxp dockables etc.). the New Cargoes oxp has an interesting feature where you can buy specialized commodities which are illegal in specific systems - for example you could purchase a unit of "Furs - Feline" which are illegal to import or export in any system colonized by felines. makes sense, and adds a bit of cool flavor. unfortunately the 'specialized cargo' part of that oxp is difficult to realize profit on, but I love the idea of doing the same with slaves to clarify the more touchy legal/cultural boundaries around forced labor or captivity - I don't remember if New Cargoes has specialized slave cargoes but again it's worth a look for reference!