PeterZ wrote:Which brings me back to an idea discussed a while back. Buy Harchong slave women and children for resettling and emancipation in Charis. Encourage immigration for sure, but why not also buy slaves make free where their labor is more needed?
According to the textev, Harchong doesn't practice slavery. It practices extreme serfdom where the serfs are tied to the land and subject to their master's justice, but they aren't bought and sold. So
theoretically there shouldn't be any Harchong slave auctions.
Desnair on the other hand
does practice outright slavery, although we aren't given specifics. I'd bet that slaves make up the majority of its gold miners, for example, since primitive mining requires much more strength than skill, and the high mortality rate among miners would make employing them prohibitively expensive, while making slaves economically viable.
I can't find any posts on slave auctions or even slavery on Safehold from RFC, so the textev we have for the existence of each is entirely from OAR and a bit from the other books. HFQ quotes OAR verbatim about why serfdom was abolished in Charis. If anyone has a link to RFC shedding more light on this subject, please point me to it.
Unfortunately for the proposal that Charis purchase slaves and then emancipates them, if someone provides a demand for a product, more of that product will be produced. Buying slaves means that slavers will procure more slaves. Ultimately, Charis would be actively paying for the
spread of slavery, no matter how many slaves it bought and then emancipated. The basic laws of economics make it likely that the increase in slavery that Charis would be funding would
always outpace its ability to purchase and emancipate the ever-increasing number of slaves, making the situation worse and increasing human suffering.
I recognize that there's a moral issue here, but it's also a money-losing proposition, since Charis would be encouraging the slave trade, while the slaves it bought and emancipated would never pay enough in taxes to recoup their purchase price. Silverlode or not, the EoC doesn't have an unlimited budget, and putting silver into the hands of slavers is a
very bad idea.
Should Charis ultimately recognize the futility of the effort and stop buying slaves, the outcome for the "excess" number of slaves currently in the hands of slavers would be... unfortunate.
Better to kill off the slavers and get your money back if you're going to actively buy slaves. That stifles the slave trade, since there would be fewer slavers. Do it enough and you'd no longer have any slave sellers to buy from, and a bunch of these dealers in human misery would have met an appropriate end.
That isn't realistic, since slavers would simply quit doing business with Charis or anyone buying slaves for them, but it's the best way I can think of to deal with these barbarians who barely deserve to be called human, especially in a society with a universal religion that theoretically teaches people to love and respect their fellow man. Too bad it's so corrupt that it tolerates and actively practices serfdom and slavery...
