Khanid Reform

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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Last night I thought long and hard about what you said @Ameriya , about giving up my title, freeing my slaves, leaving the Kingdom and the Empire. It kept me up because of your conviction and for a moment I doubted myself. A sudden thought occurred to me and I drifted off to sleep and haven’t thought of you since. Lest till you came up in conversation just now.

You are a hypocrite.

You judge me for slavery? Really? How many people in the ‘free’ parts of space struggle all their lives to make ends meet? For all your posturing about how important freedom is how many people have to juggle multiple part time jobs because corporations in your Federation require full time employment come with benefits? Who ‘slave’ away for lack a better term ‘free’ to do as they wish expect the very corps who pay them have their hands out for utilities, food, water, medicine? So when they average citizen reach the end of the week they maybe have a few isk to rub together, they spend it on a pin up or a t shirt from you, just brighten their day a little before the grind starts all over.

How many backs do you stand on so you have a warm bed, three meals a day? Your own federation was going to abandon people to die. were it not for the actions of proactive people shining a light on the situation it wouldn’t have been any better.

Yes I have slaves but they are not put out because of some economic downturn. I don’t lay off a couple hundred thousand because it may hurt my pocket book. I have a responsibility to those that are mine not because they are mine but because I care.

You want to see the empire become a nicer place? Well it doesn’t happen over night and most certainly doesn’t happen by good people abandoning their posts.

You are a good person, I don’t lay everything bad about your Federation at your feet because a nation is both not and is defined by its citizens. But don’t think that for some reason that same judgement you cast on others cant be applied to you.

I’d thank you and anyone else in the future to remember that next time you put that high life food in your mouth.

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What do you tell your slaves when they put in their two weeks notice? In the federation it’s something to the effect of “I wish you luck in your next endeveor.” From the looks of it in your part of the cluster it’s simply the word “fire!”

Think of that next time you put your high Life food provided by slave labor in your mouth.

Aren’t we all beyond the “having a job is the same as slavery” thing? Obviously there’s a rather significant difference here and people’s stupidity is reaching offensive levels…

:roll_eyes:

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Apparently not.

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Who told you that you had to make this statement?

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How many times now have this nonsense come up lately? Comparing employment - no matter the workplace or societal conditions - with slavery is inherently disingenuous and fairly moronic on top of that. If this is the best AmarrBloc has to offer at this stage, I despair for you. There’s been some actually great orators and people who could argue in favor of slavery without needing to completely disregard reality while doing so.

I suspect it’s because they didn’t try to desperately twist the rest of New Eden into being as awful as the Empire is, while at the same time not trying to portray slavery as something it wasn’t.

Of course, those days seem to have passed. Today, we have the stellar minds of morons like Kithrus here, or Luzade and so on. Their ilk. It’s downright pitiful. Grieve, ladies and gentlemen. Grieve for the days when the Empire’s loyalists could turn a phrase. It didn’t actually go anywhere then either, but at least it had entertainment value.

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Who told you to reply?

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Knowing Arrendis it is more likely someone told her not to.

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Exactly my point, sir: Nobody did. You did this because you chose to. You exercised agency and expressed yourself to convey your thoughts, your viewpoint. And you do so without fear of reprisal, without concern that someone may decide that they don’t like what you said. No-one is going to decide that because you said this, you and your family need to go away, to never influence others to believe something that those deciding don’t like.

You can choose to say something people with more money, and more guns, don’t like… and you don’t have to worry about everyone you know and interact with on a daily basis dying because you said it, and they might agree with it.

Such a pity the property being slaughtered by the millions in Kahah can’t say that.

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You dont even know the conditions slave have. You just see these assuming hyperbole attack ads on the galnet of skin and bone worked to death, dropping the fields slaves.

They have houses, schools, their own possessions. They walk to town on their days off and take part in society.

Criminal slaves less so but for the sake of argument they don’t make up the majority and therefore do not count.

As for Kahah as I’ve said in public on record many many times; I do not agree, this purge is not the solution. I want to see reform in the Kingdom. Yes there is abuse but that means all the more good people need to shine a light on it and remove it.

The whole point is more good is done by that then standing on some misguided moral soap box and packing it all in.

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They have things they can use. Those things can be taken away at a whim. How do I know? Because they’re slaves. They are owned, and so anything that they have is owned by the one who owns them. And that individual can take those things away whenever they want to, for whatever reason—or no reason at all, just a whim.

They walk to town on their days off… unless their owner decides they don’t have days off, anymore.

Having things is irrelevant. Having things is… ephemeral. Things distract, they placate. Things mean nothing. What matters is to have yourself, to have the ability to decide for yourself who you will be, what you will do, and whether or not you will stand for things as you see them. You don’t have to be in rebellion against the universe around you, but you have to be able to rebel.

And you can talk until you’re blue in the face about things and creature comforts, but those people aren’t dying because they want more stuff. They didn’t rise up after the initial violence on the deathglow zones because they want a few more worthless items to clutch to their chests and hope the masters don’t take it all away again.

You’ve said on the record that you don’t agree with the purge. In doing so, you oppose the decision of your King.

Have the Uhlans begun artillery strikes against your family yet? Or is there some odd distinction between you… and a slave?

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What a thing to wake up to. It was someone else that said you should give up your title and leave. I just said you should free your slaves.

You keep telling me that they are criminals. Now it’s because they need room and board? Or a job?

I long ago realized that I am responsible for my actions and my actions alone. I vote for representatives and initiatives that I feel is correct. If the political outcome is different, that’s not my fault. I provide the best advice and care to my patients. If they go elsewhere and have a less than desirable outcome, that is not my fault. If someone in the cluster is hungry or homeless, that is not my fault. Though, naturally, I do quite a bit of charity work. I have set up five hospitals in economically disadvantaged areas that operate on a nonprofit-charity basis. Patients are not turned away and are not charged more than they can pay. If they can’t, they go away with no bill.

On that vein of personal responsibility, you directly own how many people? You, personally, Kithrus. Not some vague entity like ‘The Amarr Empire’ or ‘Khanid Kingdom’ where the responsibility is diluted into some solution of the body politic. You personally keep them property, to be sold at a whim, beaten on a whim, killed on a whim. Even if you do not sell, beat, or execute them on a whim, that is still the existence they have. Look at Kahah; if something happened on your holding, they’d all be purged, your objections amounting to nothing.

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I think I am just going to designate Arrendis as my spokeswoman. She’s saying pretty much everything I would say anyways.

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I didn’t post it here to have a debate per say. You had to go and I was being shouted down by those who wanted to speak with emotion rather then wit. You came up in conversations this morning when I was looking into treatments for Deathglow. I wanted to talk but you were unavailable so I got my thoughts down and left them where you could find them as you saw fit.

Sometimes the The Summit isn’t the best for conversation.

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You wanted this public. Otherwise, you would have sent a mail.

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So you brought it here? I’d say you must be new here, but I know you’re not…

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Well it’s great for grandstanding and blather, until you realize other people can come along and pick it apart. Then it becomes not very good for conversation.

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I laughed for a good, solid five minutes.

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The the time of the original conversation there were a few just shouting me out. Lest here it can be read uninterrupted was more the point.

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So, should I assume you’re not going to respond to me?

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Anyone that has not been subjected to actual slavery cannot speak about what it is like, or to compare it to other things.

Whether or not you have a difficult life is not the crux by which you compare life as a slave to the lives of free people. Not every slave has a bad life, and not every free person has a good life. It is a pointless comparison. The differences are in what it actually means to be a slave, compared to being free.

In slavery, you have no agency. You do not even get the illusion of having agency. You receive no income and cannot participate in the market system, excepting if your owner has granted you an allowance and access to a (predetermined) list of products. You do not get to decide whether or not you receive an education, even if education is free and available to people in your area. You do not get to choose what career you enter, how many jobs you have to work at the same time, and what, if any, breaks you get. You may have the ability to request things, or try to prove your worth to get a desired occupation, but your master will put you wherever you are needed. You can be renamed because your owner doesn’t like your name, is bored of your name, or is intentionally trying to deperson you. You can be married to whomever your owner chooses, or denied access to someone you care about. In some places, you can be used only for the purpose of producing children. You can be separated from your family and sold because it earns your owner a profit, or as a punishment. You can be punished with whatever severity your owner deems fit, for whatever crime he deems you having committed, or simply because he gets off on it. You can be killed on a whim. You can be forced into using addictive substances, or your life turned into a lie with TCMCs. You will be taught from birth, by your owners and by your parents (who were taught by their owners), that, true or not, you are inferior, lesser, something to be hated, and that you submit to others because they are biologically, culturally, and religiously better than you, and that you must be punished because you are not like them. And in all of this you cannot choose to leave if you do not like the conditions under which you are laboring, nor can you have any confidence that your owner, however good they may have been, might not change their mind on a whim.

There are good aspects to it, yes. I still sometimes miss my life in slavery, and I found free life very hard to come to terms with. A slave does not usually have to worry about being without a home, or without food, or without work. You do not have to worry about having responsibilities - everything important will be done for you. You have a good chance of being treated mostly well, physically - you’re someone’s property, afterall. And you can be guided into a proper, righteous living, doing God’s work, as true Amarrian slavery is supposed to be (but most Holders fail at the responsibilities they are given).

You can have a legitimately good, enjoyable life as a slave, and a worse life once you are freed. But while a free life is still bound to its own restrictions, to poverty, to poor work conditions, to cultural traditions, to abusive relationships, whatever, that life is still, for better or worse, yours. A slave’s life is not. What defines a slave is that a slave lives for their owners. Nothing you earn as a slave is yours. It is given to you, by the grace of your owner, and it can be taken away just as easily. You can have pride in being useful, and you can enjoy the life you are given, but you will forever live for others.

A slave is a slave, and no free person can compare themselves to that. “But the poor lives of free people!” is an insulting argument. “Yeah but what about…” is an insulting argument. It transparently tries to distract from the real issues suffered by slaves to talk about things that don’t ■■■■■■■ matter. Freepeople’s lives can have difficulties, but they are not slaves and their issues are not slaves’ issues. They do not belong in conversations about slavery.

This is not to say that there aren’t cases of people not “formally” in slavery who actually suffer under slavery. Certain family or romantic relationships can cross the threshold, ones in which anything you might earn is taken from you, your career and everything you might want is dictated by your superior partner, and even your free time and access to friends and the outside is dictated for you. Those are things I as a former slave can understand and empathize with. But most of the things people bring up in these kinds of arguments? No.

Most Holders sell off (or terminate) their slaves when it is no longer economically viable to keep them. Which can involve the separation of families and communities, or the death of the slave. Slaves are no more immune from being abandoned than anyone else, and they will be the first to go in such a situation.

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