Slaves and prolong

aairfccha wrote:Slaves can't be cheap to buy as their price has to include the cost of raising them for usually at least about 16 years, so most buyers should want them to keep them useful for as long as possible.

Joat42 wrote:Hmm... That wasn't the passage I was thinking about, but it kind of fits except that I have a clear picture of Du Havel, slaves and prolong being connected somehow. I'll see if I can find the reference.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Maybe the slaves get the opposite of prolong: something that causes accelerated growth, so they are market-ready within 8 years or less, but as a consequence shorten the lifetime and make them incompatible with the prolong treatments.

Please note that the text quoted says that an escaped slave CAN take prolong, provided that their age is appropriate.

We have an example of a degenerative disease that attacks despite prolong and some of the slaves do have built-in genetic disorders that will shorten their lives, even with prolong; but that was not done deliberately to counteract prolong, but as a side effect.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

aairfccha wrote:Slaves can't be cheap to buy as their price has to include the cost of raising them for usually at least about 16 years, so most buyers should want them to keep them useful for as long as possible.

Maybe the slaves get the opposite of prolong: something that causes accelerated growth, so they are market-ready within 8 years or less, but as a consequence shorten the lifetime and make them incompatible with the prolong treatments.

Possible, but we never got any textev or pearls about advanced tube growth or changes to the human growth pattern. I would think a 3 month tubing and a 5 year human growth cycle (for example) would be notable.

tlb wrote:We have an example of a degenerative disease that attacks despite prolong and some of the slaves do have built-in genetic disorders that will shorten their lives, even with prolong; but that was not done deliberately to counteract prolong, but as a side effect.

Perhaps that is what I was thinking about because that sounds very familiar.

There's a discussion of slave longevity between Jeremy and Saburo in to End in Fire

My twopence



SEX SLAVES

I would wager that the human element strikes again. Carrying with it, human nature. I would wager again that men dominate the market. At any rate, why would anyone think that the particular market of men in question, would be interested in an emotional relationship. These type of men don't want long-term relationships. They don't want long-term commitments. They trade their sex-slaves as often as they trade their air cars. Slaves that become long-lived become less slave and more family/familiar/personal. IOW, none of the things you originally bargained for.

1. Nobody wants to mix BIG business with pleasure.

2. The client list includes people like the Mandarins, and their friends and associates. Six degrees of separation within this social circle is a lot of influence. And that type of super slimey sleezy entitled rich will view sex slaves as throwaway items. Show me a married man living today who wouldn't have opted for the planned obsolescence model. LOL

3. This clientele does not want a common law marriage.

4. She is the flavor of the month.

5. Not century.


SLAVES

Ditto for all other slaves. For all slaves, but moreso for this type of slave, you must consider the human element of having a very advanced AI embedded in your tool. Slaves are simply tools. But even a lowly slave is more intelligent than a machine. They can go and fetch the groceries as well. That makes them multi-use tools. And I am sure it is a status symbol.



Afterward:

But as far as not being economical? I wouldn't be too sure about that when it comes to sex slaves. Our problem is that we simply cannot fathom the price tag of a single sex slave. These are sexy Ferraris. Fast Ferraris. Supercars. You've got to really pay to play with these tramp stamps. And they fetch the same price for each trade in.

Why go for a complicated reason, when the high price of prolong can account for slaves not getting it?

As for not wanting a long term relationship; that is not an argument against prolong, because anyone who would think that way would find 40 or 50 years too long (less than even a non-prolong lifetime). They probably would consider 5 to 10 years too long. The solution would to resell the slave if a market exists, otherwise dispose of the unwanted life. Django Unchained had gambling events where slaves fought to the death.

tlb wrote:Why go for a complicated reason, when the high price of prolong can account for slaves not getting it?

As for not wanting a long term relationship; that is not an argument against prolong, because anyone who would think that way would find 40 or 50 years too long (less than even a non-prolong lifetime). They probably would consider 5 to 10 years too long. The solution would to resell the slave if a market exists, otherwise dispose of the unwanted life. Django Unchained had gambling events where slaves fought to the death.

The cost of prolong for the MA? Prolong doesn't cost the MA anything. They produce prolong in-house.

cthia wrote:

tlb wrote:Why go for a complicated reason, when the high price of prolong can account for slaves not getting it?

As for not wanting a long term relationship; that is not an argument against prolong, because anyone who would think that way would find 40 or 50 years too long (less than even a non-prolong lifetime). They probably would consider 5 to 10 years too long. The solution would to resell the slave if a market exists, otherwise dispose of the unwanted life. Django Unchained had gambling events where slaves fought to the death.

The cost of prolong for the MA? Prolong doesn't cost the MA anything. They produce prolong in-house.

Actually, there is a massive cost for prolong. In a conversation lost long ago, David said that the infrastructure required for prolong is massive - each dose is custom made for each recipient. Most governments don't pass along the actual cost to the recipients because the service takes a person from a 40-50 year productive taxpayer, to a 200-250 year productive taxpayer, With higher labor quality rates (you do something for 200 years, you go well past "expert" for most of that period) and lower healthcare costs over that period.

Of course most of those costs is in the cost of the production infrastructure. So the cost to do one individual is nothing for a government, but the costs to do 1 million disposable "products".... probably will be seen to be too high, as you would need to expand the infrastructure to do so.

tlb wrote:Why go for a complicated reason, when the high price of prolong can account for slaves not getting it?

As for not wanting a long term relationship; that is not an argument against prolong, because anyone who would think that way would find 40 or 50 years too long (less than even a non-prolong lifetime). They probably would consider 5 to 10 years too long. The solution would to resell the slave if a market exists, otherwise dispose of the unwanted life. Django Unchained had gambling events where slaves fought to the death.

cthia wrote:The cost of prolong for the MA? Prolong doesn't cost the MA anything. They produce prolong in-house.

In addition to the information from Theemile, there is another thing wrong with what you said: Manpower Inc is the one involved in the economics of slavery, not the Malign directly (which is more interested in slavery as a testbed for genetic changes).

Robert Heinlein popularized the phase "There is no such thing as a free lunch" in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Saying that some commodity could be without cost requires magical thinking, but even magic has costs.

The cost of prolong is briefly mentioned in the books; from chapter 63 of Torch of Freedom:

The expense of paying for a complete suite of prolong treatments for her daughter was going to be at least as high as the expense of setting up Steph Turner in a new restaurant.

I thought that prolong was relatively cheap in the Honorverse, before I was pointed to this statement. Note that this on Beowulf, where the cost should be among the lowest in the Solarian League.

PS: a few years ago a Canadian forum member laughed at me for mentioning the medical costs of war. Although the cost to a individual might be zero in various nations, that does not mean that society as a whole does not have to bear an economic burden for the medical costs created by war.

Theemile wrote:Actually, there is a massive cost for prolong. In a conversation lost long ago, David said that the infrastructure required for prolong is massive - each dose is custom made for each recipient. Most governments don't pass along the actual cost to the recipients because the service takes a person from a 40-50 year productive taxpayer, to a 200-250 year productive taxpayer, With higher labor quality rates (you do something for 200 years, you go well past "expert" for most of that period) and lower healthcare costs over that period.

Of course most of those costs is in the cost of the production infrastructure. So the cost to do one individual is nothing for a government, but the costs to do 1 million disposable "products".... probably will be seen to be too high, as you would need to expand the infrastructure to do so.

And even in a command economy, with goods they can entirely produce internally (so they're only paying 'themselves') there's still opportunity costs.

IOW If you didn't use those resources to set up and operate this production line what could you have done with them instead; and would that alternate expenditure have left you (or your internal or external economy) better off?



Manpower isn't going to sink the kind of massive resources into setting up additional prolong production for slaves unless they can sell the longer lived slaves for sufficient extra to pay back that investment of resources. (And to pay for the longer term reduced demand for slaves that this would create -- if your current slaves are still fit and doing the job why would you buy replacements. Quadrupling their lifespan roughly quarters the size of your long term market)

And while Manpower does sometimes do things that don't make economic sense, in pursuit of their puppetmaster's real goals, I can't see any MAlign goal that would be served by mass producing prolonged slaves. (If anything they'd likely prefer faster turnover so they can get more field testing of their new genetic mods)