Slavery....in Space!

[kuros]

It occurs to me, as I watch the inevitable flamewar rising out of the Passenger Pods discussion in the Locker Room, that slaver ships and piracy in space is a very different experience than slavery/piracy in the Golden Age of Sail.

Back in the GAoS, hauling a cargo of slaves was merely an ethical choice. If you had the moral flexibility to do it without flinching then it was a no brainer, you trade dewdaws to African kings for slaves, through them in the hold and occassionally slop food and water down onto them, get em to America, make 'em wash out the hold, and then load it up with barrels of sugar and pallets of cotton, which you bring back to Europe and sell for dewdaws to give to the Africans, earning heaps of profits at each leg of the way.

But a cargo ship back then didn't require anything special to run slaves. Whereas in space, you'd need to buy into the extra life support models and whatnot in order to be able to haul that kind of cargo anywhere.

The cost of those ship modifications is proportional to the number of slaves you can trade at any one time, and the volume of slaves potentially traded is also a consideration factor.

I suppose massive banks of emergency stasis pods might figure into this equation somehow...


By the same token, while I've always just sort of assumed that space pirates exist, it occurs to me that repairing a ship on the high seas back in the Golden Age of Sail was usually just a matter of making some more rope, or slapping a patch of tar onto holes. I can't think of much damage that could be done to a ship that didn't either scuttle it completely, or could be patched up with some tar.

Whereas spaceships are EXPENSIVE. Expensive to make, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain.

I haven't nearly the skills or knowledge base to do it, but it would be interesting to see someone do an economic comparison between the cost of building and maintaining space ships in Trav versus the costs in Hornblower's day.

 

[HG_B]

The cost of those ship modifications is proportional to the number of slaves you can trade at any one time, and the volume of slaves potentially traded is also a consideration factor.

I suppose massive banks of emergency stasis pods might figure into this equation somehow...

Naw, feed them all Fast Drug and stack 'em like cord wood in the cargo holds, throw out some advanced CO2 absorbent and a couple bottles of O2.

You're good ta go mate! :devil:

 

[sabredog]

You can use emergency low berths - they hold 4 people and cost only 100k. If you have a 100 ton hold you'll be able to stick 100 emer L-berths in it for a total of 400 people. Figure you get 20k apiece (about what they go for in some spots IMTU) at market ...that's 8 million CR/trip....for just a Free Trader that is a lot of cash.

Small, fast ships could make a lot of money doing this sort of thing but you'd need a market that wouldn't be so far away that just fuel ate up all of your profit. In the old days the wind for the sails was free. You could use skim for fuel (or dip water if it is present along the way) but that has its own problems over time unless you use some military/scout surplus gear that doesn't have the same maintenance issues with frontier refueling. But even some small surplus Type S could generate a lot of money quickly depending on how much a slave goes for in your game.

 

[samuelvss]

It occurs to me, as I watch the inevitable flamewar rising out of the Passenger Pods discussion in the Locker Room, that slaver ships and piracy in space is a very different experience than slavery/piracy in the Golden Age of Sail.
....
it occurs to me that repairing a ship on the high seas back in the Golden Age of Sail was usually just a matter of making some more rope, or slapping a patch of tar onto holes. I can't think of much damage that could be done to a ship that didn't either scuttle it completely, or could be patched up with some tar.

Whereas spaceships are EXPENSIVE. Expensive to make, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain.

I haven't nearly the skills or knowledge base to do it, but it would be interesting to see someone do an economic comparison between the cost of building and maintaining space ships in Trav versus the costs in Hornblower's day.

Well, in the GAoS, in the Aubrey books, Aubrey is constantly wrangling for stores, most especially spars. He wouldn't want to go into battle without canvas, rope, spars, and caulking. These were a big logistical issue, thus presumably an economic one. I think in Trav, it should be the same. Thus the BPPR's, small modular drive components that one can ship as cargo for replacements in the field. Computers must needs be done the same way. The rest, some plating and a LOT of welding sticks. The key is, the same principals apply; without a "tug" (rare things in jump space), a ship needs to prepare for refit at sea/in space.

My cahracters always seemed to get blown up far away from A and B starports, even when they won. One of them, my son, is reading over my shoulder and laughing in recgonition.

 

[Garyius2003]

Sailing ships were the most expensive and complex machines on earth then. Slave ships required extensive hold racks and expensive chains and locks.

The Traveller issue is that you can't strike the racks and store them and the chains in 10 percent of the cargo space to fill the other 90 with cotton and tobacco.

 

[kuros]

Naw, feed them all Fast Drug and stack 'em like cord wood in the cargo holds, throw out some advanced CO2 absorbent and a couple bottles of O2.

At 2000 cred a pop, you would need a specialty supplier to handle the quantities involved. Feels like an additional hassle to me compared to the emergency low berths option.

Figure you get 20k apiece...

According to this unverified site, you'd be lucky to get ~18000 Cr for a slave (assuming rough parity with the 2004 $, which I think is a somewhat reasonable assumption). As a space slaver, are you really going to inspect the herd for quality? Or are you just going to grab the entire village and throw them in the hold?

Small, fast ships could make a lot of money doing this sort of thing but you'd need a market that wouldn't be so far away that just fuel ate up all of your profit. In the old days the wind for the sails was free. You could use skim for fuel (or dip water if it is present along the way) but that has its own problems over time unless you use some military/scout surplus gear that doesn't have the same maintenance issues with frontier refueling.

Ah, another excellent point! Space slavery has to take them far enough away that the slaves are not familiar enough to cause political upheaval, or for the local populace to think of them as equals.

most especially spars. He wouldn't want to go into battle without canvas, rope, spars, and caulking. These were a big logistical issue, thus presumably an economic one. I think in Trav, it should be the same. Thus the BPPR's, small modular drive components that one can ship as cargo for replacements in the field.

I'm not familiar with "BPPRs," and sadly, far too many of my traveller books are in storage still. What is?

A logistical and economic issue, yes, but also a technological one. A spar is relatively easy to build. One could set up spar-manufacturing facilities on a well forested island with minimum difficulty. Starship components on the other hand...why would anyone capable of creating them encourage piracy in their region? Privateers, certainly, but outright piracy?

I'm not saying it wouldn't happen. I'm saying that it is a far more politically nuanced existence than I imagined at first.

 

[BillDowns]

According to this unverified site, you'd be lucky to get ~18000 Cr for a slave (assuming rough parity with the 2004 $, which I think is a somewhat reasonable assumption).

Where do you get that from? A "Fair/Ordinary Man" figures from $26k to $29k, depending on which inflation calculator you use.

 

[Dragoner]

Slavery largely appeared for lack of population, and then disappeared because it was an inefficient way to handle labor. IMO, in a universe with a high level of automation of tasks, the bigger question is what people are going to do? So the idea of slavery is rather redundant.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Naw, feed them all Fast Drug and stack 'em like cord wood in the cargo holds, throw out some advanced CO2 absorbent and a couple bottles of O2.

You're good ta go mate! :devil:

Dude....food! Gotta feed them. I mean, you want live slaves, right? o:

My gut is that wealthy people would be able to afford artificial people to satiate labor and "other" needs Poorer people needing able bodies might splurge on slaves, but compared to robots/androids, it just doesn't seem to be worth it. You got to feed them, house them, give them air, blankets, clothe them, keep order among them.

Having said that, some low income despot, who can't afford automation, on some far flung world that's skimming or just blatantly flaunting Imperial law, might have a large slave population.

My 0.02 Imp Cr.

*EDIT*
Oops, you know, I take some of what I said back, because I think it would depend on tech level, general wealth of the area, and environmental factors. So yeah, slavery probably exists somewhere. It's probably not rampant throughout the Imperium, but some worlds might have slaves.

Freeing or rescuing some hottie from a "fate worse than death" would be a great adventure to write up.

 

[HG_B]

Dude....food! Gotta feed them. I mean, you want live slaves, right? o:

Fast drug is 60:1 So, one jump = ~3 hours...

 

[HG_B]

At 2000 cred a pop, you would need a specialty supplier to handle the quantities involved. Feels like an additional hassle to me compared to the emergency low berths option.

Do the math. More slaves at less cost. But, if you aren't in it for the money I can see going with LB's.

 

[sabredog]

According to this unverified site, you'd be lucky to get ~18000 Cr for a slave (assuming rough parity with the 2004 $, which I think is a somewhat reasonable assumption). As a space slaver, are you really going to inspect the herd for quality? Or are you just going to grab the entire village and throw them in the hold?

Well, 18k Cr. is only 2000 less than 20k so that's still in the ballpark. And as for the whole village thing - why not? In the Demon Prince series (Jack Vance) the whole thing starts because the protagonist's family was taken, along with the rest of the area's townspeople, by slavers in one fell swoop. The concept is hardly unknown in space opera and pulp scifi. If you are going to have slavery is has to be profitable - the best way to make it profitable is volume, volume, volume. And taking a whole village means no witnesses, too.

In fact, there could be some central clearinghouse for the captured victims to be warehoused before transshipped to the market. This would allow for even less time and expense in transport by the slave-takers. Depending on what kind of mean n' nastiverse you run it could be big business.

 

[kuros]

Slavery largely appeared for lack of population, and then disappeared because it was an inefficient way to handle labor. IMO, in a universe with a high level of automation of tasks, the bigger question is what people are going to do? So the idea of slavery is rather redundant.

Darn good question, though it supposes that the destination planet has as high a tech level as the ship builders, which may not be the case.

Mining, maybe? Any sort of grueling work that is hazardous but profitable? Right now, I'm picturing species-prejudice based slavery. "They're not people like we are, using them for manual labor!"

The idea of hulking aliens being forced to manually drag terraforming equipment across deserts is appealing....

Do the math.

AFTER I've identified all the variables, I will! :devil:

 

[sabredog]

Do the math. More slaves at less cost. But, if you aren't in it for the money I can see going with LB's.

LB's only require 100Cr. each per trip. That's 25Cr. per person in an emergency LB. That seems to leave an awful lot of profit if you ask me.

 

[HG_B]

LB's only require 100Cr. each per trip. That's 25Cr. per person in an emergency LB. That seems to leave an awful lot of profit if you ask me.

Do the math on the DIFFERENCE in # of people you can ship AND, the cost of the LB's. Too simple to even discuss.

 

[sabredog]

Do the math on the DIFFERENCE in # of people you can ship AND, the cost of the LB's. Too simple to even discuss.

If you are going to go there then include the cost of the ship and just forget the whole thing. but since we were looking past that, and into what the costs and profit might be if you already had a ship and market I did the math and determined that LB's provided the best option for bringing intact and healthy goods to market at a good profit. If you figure that a slave brings 20k at market (and I still think that's pretty dang reasonable) then you are looking at the first cargo run paying for approx. (after regular expenses) 75% of the emergency low berth installation. That is a pretty good return.

Now maybe shooting them full of Fast and then stack them up might work if you don't care about their condition at the market, but prime quality pays for itself. And freezing them in LB would have less risks, even with the potential of losing 15% when thawing them out. Less worry about disease running lose ( a common problem during the historical Middle Passage, and one that could happen here and be worse if it did), less monitoring of the stock required. Less overhead on life support (a cheap tank of O2 and a scrubber won't cut it in a closed system under the Traveller rules as they stand).

 

[rancke]

A good rule of thumb for the value of an ordinary slave is five times the yearly salary of a free man with a similar skill set. This could vary due to local conditions (in Ancient Rome it might be as low as two years' salary), but it's not bad for ballpark figuring.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

Darn good question, though it supposes that the destination planet has as high a tech level as the ship builders, which may not be the case.

Mining, maybe? Any sort of grueling work that is hazardous but profitable? Right now, I'm picturing species-prejudice based slavery. "They're not people like we are, using them for manual labor!"

The idea of hulking aliens being forced to manually drag terraforming equipment across deserts is appealing....

Even low tech it is the least desirable solution, it just doesn't make economic sense. Why not hire a tractor that is way more efficient? Or giant mining robots to strip mine what they want and then move to another planet?

So if you want to create an artificial condition, sure, but that goes for anything; but the basic truth remains is that slavery just isn't economically feasible.

 

[rancke]

According to this unverified site, you'd be lucky to get ~18000 Cr for a slave (assuming rough parity with the 2004 $, which I think is a somewhat reasonable assumption).

The Imperial credit is roughly equivalent to a 1977 dollar, so by now we're talking more than 3 dollars to 1 CrImp.

EDIT: Changed '1979' to '1977'.

As a space slaver, are you really going to inspect the herd for quality? Or are you just going to grab the entire village and throw them in the hold?

Inspecting the herd for quality is exactly the way to select the slaves that are worth taking along. The quality in question will often be skills. (The kind of slaves where appearance affects price is out of bounds for Traveller publications ).

Ah, another excellent point! Space slavery has to take them far enough away that the slaves are not familiar enough to cause political upheaval, or for the local populace to think of them as equals.

In the case of the OTU, it has to take them far enough away that rumors of their fate won't reach the Imperium.


Hans

 

[aramis]

Where do you get that from? A "Fair/Ordinary Man" figures from $26k to $29k, depending on which inflation calculator you use.

The Traveller CrImp is approximately 1977 US$1, not 2012 US$1.