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Can Essos survive without slavery? If so what would you propose to fix it after its radical transformation?


Varysblackfyre321

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13 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Just because they committed an action that has been recognized(rightfully so) as being totally immoral  in an entire culture in time where there's no stigma attached to it does not necessarily all indivual in that community who practice it  are simply flat out "evil". 

The problem is, they were eager participants.  The slave owning caste (for lack of a better word) benefited on the abuse of others for millennia.  People always have a choice.  Nobody forced them to own slaves.  They chose to do it because it served their interests.  The slavers are not victims.  They're the oppressors and just because they wrote laws that made it legal to practice slavery does not absolve them of crimes against humanity.  In my opinion, Dany was being more than reasonable.  Those who were willing to accept the wind of change and do the right thing were given a chance to live.  Dany even forgave the ones who gave up slaving.  Skahaz is a good example.  But the ones who continue to resists freedom can't be tolerated. 

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Braavos survives without slavery. Pentos expressly has slavery forbidden, but evades it. We do not hear details about Lorath.

England saw abolition of slavery in a 40 year period around 1100. In 1086, there were something like 30 000 slaves for 270 000 non-slave households in Domesday Book. 40 years later, slavery was written of as a thing of past.

Not that the slaves became free. Certainly some did; most were not free before. After abolition of slavery, just about one third of Englishmen were free. The rest were villeins.

And yet the difference between a villein and a slave was big. A lord was free to sell his slave, separate the slave from slave´s home and family. Not so with a villein. The villein was not allowed to leave of his own will, but neither was the lord allowed to make him leave.

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It's been awhile since I read the books and I do not have them with me at work.  If memory serves, Dany was not doing mass punishments for the crimes of slavery in the past.  She was willing to reconcile with those owners who gave up slavery which we know they didn't do willingly but at least showed a modicum of cooperation.  The only time they got punished was for the crime of crucifying the children on the road to Meereen.  Any punishment given in the future is not for the past crimes of slavery but for the crime of trying to bring it back.  Dany is perfectly reasonable to me.  A lot more reasonable than I would have been.  

I can say crucifying the children on the road to Meereen was an act of war against the Dragon Queen and therefore considered a war crime in addition to being an example of slave torture.  They were doing this to intimidate and scare Daenerys.  It was not only a crime perpetrated by slavery but also a war crime because it had a strategic purpose.  The execution of the slave masters was done during a time of war, against war criminals.  I have no problem with that.  More should have been executed.  What those slavers did to the children they crucified is a thousand times worse than the Red Wedding.  

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On ‎19‎/‎01‎/‎2018 at 9:28 PM, Widowmaker 811 said:

There is little point in this discussion with you because you do not believe that slavery is inherently evil.  If those people were so ignorant and so bereft of basic human compassion then they deserved to get destroyed.  If they were brought up totally lacking compassion for the weak and they have practiced exploitation of the weak and oppressed the weak for so long, then they deserved to perish.  Most criminals can be reformed, but they have to choose to change.  You cannot do the same with a masters who has been raised to know no other way but enslaving, oppressing, and exploiting weaker humans, when those masters refuse to change.  Basically, you give them a choice.  Accept change.  Those who do not can leave the Bay of Dragons and practice their craft somewhere else.  But they cannot choose to promote slavery and stay.  Those who fight against freedom will have to die.  

And rights.  Well, you know, those masters have been taking rights away from other people for thousand of years, robbing them of life, freedom, happiness, and dignity.  It's a lot different when the tables have turned.  We like to think everybody can be reformed.  For the most part, Dany gave them a chance to reform.  They can accept a free society or they can pack up and go somewhere else.  What they cannot do is fight freedom.  

You don t see people trying to enforce slavery in meereen. Actually you see people volunteering to be slaves.

I am not arguing that danny shouldn t punish those that insist in being slavers in meereen. I am saying that she can t punish ex slavers because she is prejudiced against them. They obeyed the law before danny arrived and are obeying the law now that danny is here. So she has to look out for their rights.

As I said previously. How would you feel if the vegans took over the world and decided you deseve to perish because you have eaten meat your entire life when it was completly legal to do it? Do you think vegans would feel diferently about you than how you feel about slavers? Probably not. However you have your rights!

Finally, I agree that slavery is always wrong. However the slavers don t need to be bad people. It depends on if they understand what slavery is and if for them slavery is a natural thing... 

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On 01/20/2018 at 5:54 PM, Agent Orange said:

  What those slavers did to the children they crucified is a thousand times worse than the Red Wedding.  

I'm  a bit curious about your moral value scale. How the (horrible) killing of 250 children can be "thousand times worse" than butchering your guests plus thousands of soldiers? IMHO it's like saying Hitler was worse than Staline, or Idi Amin Dada was worse than Saddam Hussein: it doesn't make sense, it's an epidermal reaction, not the result of an educated reflection.

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40 minutes ago, Nowy Tends said:

How the (horrible) killing of 250 children can be "thousand times worse" than butchering your guests plus thousands of soldiers?

Because killing soldiers even when they're guests to end and win a war is far less immoral than just inflicting a torturous death on some children just to spite someone?

Like, the red wedding was bad it isn't anywhere close to the vileness the Slavers had done.

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Until technology reaches the point where labor intensive positions are no longer required for a large civilization to support itself, slavery or serfdom are the defaults. Honestly, I never really understood the Westerosi taboo on slavery, when the serfdom there was pretty much just as bad.

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On ‎1‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 3:49 AM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Like can it recover from the economic turmoil that'd be brought about from having uprooted the system that its economy rests on? Will more people suffer more with the outright ban?  If so what should the new system be? Serfdom? 

Braavos flourishes without slavery, and is indeed, the wealthiest State in Essos.

One of the facts of slavery that is often overlooked is that it is economically inefficient.  Slaves do the bare minimum they can to avoid a whipping.  Free, paid, labour is more efficient, and the replacement of slavery by it would lead to big gains in productivity, benefitting almost everyone.  However, the masters would lose status in a world where ex-slaves could rise in society.

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7 hours ago, SeanF said:

Braavos flourishes without slavery, and is indeed, the wealthiest State in Essos.

One of the facts of slavery that is often overlooked is that it is economically inefficient.  Slaves do the bare minimum they can to avoid a whipping.  Free, paid, labour is more efficient, and the replacement of slavery by it would lead to big gains in productivity, benefitting almost everyone.  However, the masters would lose status in a world where ex-slaves could rise in society.

That is one of the problem in the slave-owning states of Essos.  Inefficiency.  The slave-owning class have no clue what efficiency is because they don't do the work themselves and sad to say, human life has been devalued to the point where the slaves were disposable assets.  The masters treated their slaves as if they were paper towels.  There were slaves who had great economic value, such as the eunuch soldiers and the skilled pleasure workers.  But the children that were nailed to the crosses had little economic value and I would place a bet they were worth less than a good sheep.  It is truly sad that life could mean so little and thrown away so easily.

One of the myths, to me at least, that the story is trying to burst is the more advanced the civilization the kinder it is.  This is so far from the truth in SOIAF.  The east is so far advanced and on their surface appear like gentle folk.  The tokars are symbols of high civilization and refinement.  Look beneath the tokar and you see something unspeakably ugly.  Westeros is bad by today's standards but Slaver's Bay shows you just how much worse it can be.  The red wedding and the Wpt5Ks are bad but when you compare that to the fighting pits and the training of the unsullied and slavery in general, it starts to look pale.  

I am not sure what the role of slavery is in the story.  Maybe it is meant to teach Dany that Westeros is not perfect but it could be far worse.  Dany is idealistic, a trait shared by many intelligent (but inexperienced) young people.  Her experience with the Ghiscari may make her less idealistic and more accepting of an imperfect world.  For that matter, perhaps that is why Jorah, Tyrion, and Barristan are in Slaver's Bay, because they too need to learn to have a better appreciation for the feudal system in Westeros.  I know, feudalism sucks by our standards but it is better than what the system that the Ghiscari built.  I am calling it now.  Dany and her entourage will be faced with a difficult choice:  fight the masters or fight the white walkers.  I honestly cannot say which Dany will choose.  I myself am not sure which way I would go if given the same choice.  

13 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

Until technology reaches the point where labor intensive positions are no longer required for a large civilization to support itself, slavery or serfdom are the defaults. Honestly, I never really understood the Westerosi taboo on slavery, when the serfdom there was pretty much just as bad.

Religion is not all bad even when many bad things were committed in its name.  The Faith of the Seven forbids slavery, iirc.  The Drowned God has its thralls.  The First Men and their Old Gods do not promote its practice.  It just goes to show that even savages know right from wrong.  

 

16 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Because killing soldiers even when they're guests to end and win a war is far less immoral than just inflicting a torturous death on some children just to spite someone?

Like, the red wedding was bad it isn't anywhere close to the vileness the Slavers had done.

:agree:

 

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On 1/21/2018 at 8:26 PM, Nowy Tends said:

I'm  a bit curious about your moral value scale. How the (horrible) killing of 250 children can be "thousand times worse" than butchering your guests plus thousands of soldiers? IMHO it's like saying Hitler was worse than Staline, or Idi Amin Dada was worse than Saddam Hussein: it doesn't make sense, it's an epidermal reaction, not the result of an educated reflection.

I'm a bit curious about your bias.  An educated reflection should tell you that the torture of innocent children is way more immoral than the unethical war tactic that resulted in the deaths of soldiers.  Those children did not break an oath to an ally, nor were they combatants in a war.  They did not choose to rebel against their lawful king and proclaimed a rebel their king.

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16 hours ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

That is one of the problem in the slave-owning states of Essos.  Inefficiency.  The slave-owning class have no clue what efficiency is because they don't do the work themselves and sad to say, human life has been devalued to the point where the slaves were disposable assets.  The masters treated their slaves as if they were paper towels.  There were slaves who had great economic value, such as the eunuch soldiers and the skilled pleasure workers.  But the children that were nailed to the crosses had little economic value and I would place a bet they were worth less than a good sheep.  It is truly sad that life could mean so little and thrown away so easily.

 

 

:agree:

 

Arguing against myself, there are ways of incentivising slaves to work hard, eg giving them freedom if they work hard and well for a period of years, allowing them to marry and raise a family, paying them tips or small salaries.  The Romans used all these tactics with slaves that they valued.  There probably are places in Essos where this is done, but I imagine that Slavers Bay is not one of them.  There, chattel slavery is practised in its most brutal and unimaginative way.

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Yes what Daenerys did was the best for everyone. And those who don't get inline when she returns are going to burn. If you don't follow the orders of the queen then you burn and the slaves will still be free. The people there can learn to support themselves just like when Daenerys gave those girls a loom to make fabric. 

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7 hours ago, SeanF said:

Arguing against myself, there are ways of incentivising slaves to work hard, eg giving them freedom if they work hard and well for a period of years, allowing them to marry and raise a family, paying them tips or small salaries.  The Romans used all these tactics with slaves that they valued.  There probably are places in Essos where this is done, but I imagine that Slavers Bay is not one of them.  There, chattel slavery is practised in its most brutal and unimaginative way.

The Romans had their brutal amusements too.  They had their own fighting pits. 

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  • 3 months later...

Simple the rich masters pay the slaves for work they previously did for free,many slaves may try to do something else but find they have neither the skill nor oppertunity to do something new.  The masters who adjust to the altering economy by investing say in property/cheap ghiscari food restaurants  etc will stay powerful and those who cant adjust will join their former slaves toiling in the soil etc. 

 

With so many free people there will be more efficency but any unemployment that brings will be compensated foe with the extra jobs that that will be created by the now free slaves wanting lil luxuries etc.

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On 1/17/2018 at 11:04 PM, White Ravens said:

Of course they can.  The slavers will suffer some major set-backs, but the slaves will thrive and prosper. 

Correct.  

Ending slavery is the right thing to do and it must happen.  Growing pains is unavoidable but it will be worth it in the long run.  The South suffered greatly after the Civil War and it took a long time before the children of slaves gained equality.  But it doesn't mean we should have allowed slavery to continue.  

Essos has more resources than Westeros.  It will take time but  yes, Essos can prosper without slavery.  

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