Originally posted by flykiller:
I ask the questions because the proposed tenets sound very high-maintenance - sort of like what is being attempted in iraq. 'course, you're right, the referee does set things as he sees fit.
Ok, I'll toss out my ignorance. What do you mean by "property rights tenets"? (Did you meant tenants? If so, I still don't know what it means . . . help me out, my google-fu is shot right at the moment.)
Originally posted by flykiller:
imtu imperial jurisdiction pretty much ends at the starport gate. each world is free to pursue its own unique character, or to embrace and absorb the general culture of the imperium, or to do something in-between.
IMTU as well, as long as the world adheres to LMWA.
Honestly, for me, the whole LMWA laws and monitoring and enforcement ideas came about from asking myself questions about basic canon statements made about sohpont rights.
If the Imperium promised something like "freedom from slavery", what would that mean if there was no "freedom from fear of assualt or death"? I decided it would mean nothing, and be seen by most everyone who heard it to mean nothing as well. Why? Although there is great value in not being owned, if the world leaders and their gun-toting cronies come along and laser you into bacon arbitrarily . . . or drags your daughters (or wife or sons or you) off to be raped (for whatever reason, to satisfy the lusts of the sons of the powerful, as "comfort women/military-sex-slaves") . . . well, these things are, in many ways, just as bad and unjust and downright evil as being enslaved.
I figured that Cleon I probably saw a lot of the above during his huge journey through space.
"-34: Cleon Zhunastu begins a sabbatical tour of the rimward frontier, from Vland to Amdukan and Antares sectors and back to Sylea. Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 75."
While journeying, his wealth and blue-blooded upbringing saw him well greeted almost everywhere he went. I decided that during these times he had several accidental opportunities to see things no human with a conscience ever should. Worlds where it was legal for the ruling class to select whomever they wished from the lower classes to be raped, tortured, murdered, whatever. Overpopulated worlds where forced suicide was law. Underpopulated worlds where forced sacrifice for food purposes was the law. Worlds where the megolomaniacal set down laws that made their people weave their way through a life twisted and macabe, only to face random death in horrific manners. All on, say, maybe a dozen of all the worlds he visited. On a much larger set of worlds, though, he encountered a much more common theme of downtrodden lower class workers, under crushing tax and manual labor weights, who toiled endlessly for nothing save the betterment of a few posturing dictators. Overall, although he found much that was valuable in helping him plan his campaigns for Empire, the trip, he felt, was a rather depressing report on the state of humanity in general.
Cleon came through all this and decided over the course of the next several years that in his upcoming Empire, the worst of the worst wasn't going to happen, and anyone who didn't like it could face the might of the Imperial Legions he was going to shape and deploy to make his Empire happen. Notably, though, he didn't do much of anything to improve workers rights, just general over-all sophont rights.
The Imperial Human Rights Accord and the Justice Entitlement were *great* selling points for diplomats, as it gave the Imperium of the time a moral high ground.
Those worlds that would be most impacted, those that lived by their violence towards sophonts and felt that obeying the Justice Entilement would require re-wiring their leadership structure to a pointless extent, these were the worlds that were "brought into the fold" during the Pacifications.