You have to be more objective. Historians realize it was a product of their time, but it's importance was tantamount in an agricultural driven society in which nation-states required even more resources as their borders expanded rapidly. Slavery is neither good, nor necessarily bad, and we can't make those types of judgments for people thousands of years ago for whom it was a part of life.

The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is much different than the slaves accumulated by the Romans for instance. Many slaves in Rome's had rights. Many we're teachers, home-owners, participants in society, but beholden to a master, but for no longer than 12 years.

In the world of Fallout, it's interesting to see how many of our ethics and moralities in a somewhat stable society hold up when society is no more. I would say that's the most important question. Will we cease to be who we are when everything falls apart? What are rights? What is morality? According to the law of nature, there is no right nor morality. We're the Legion acting on behalf of nature, in a sense, stripping away the weak and decadent, and creating something new and stable?

If you think "progress demands sacrifice", just say it. Trying to come across like this seems disingenuous and trying to put a friendly face on the whole thing.

Depends. Are we talking about pvssyl slavery? I.e. owning them as property

Or are we talking about a chain-gang?

pvssyl is murky, since it involves buying and selling people like cattle. But I don't see anything wrong with putting a convict to work. Honest labor can only help, not hurt IMO. As long as its not mismanaged like the NCRCF (i.e. doing something moronic like giving prisoners access to high-explosives).

Noooo...I'm not saying that. In a sense, we're here typing on a forum because thousands of years ago, the ancients used slavery to build and grow their civilizations. The "slave economy" as it's termed was important for our ancestors in shaping the world. It's an inconvenient truth. I'm not saying that I think people should be enslaved. But I'm not going to sit here on my laptop and bash those who came before as insensitive.

The thing is, if you've taken any western or even world history course, they bring this up in the very first chapters as their discussing the term "civilization" and how civilizations began. There is a very clear progression here from hunter gatherer to agricultural to eventually market and slave economies up to our present mercantile, capitalist and mixed economies. I'm not saying anything here that's different from what other historians have said on the same subject in more eloquent words and research. If you want to know more, don't attack me, attack the subject from those who are authorities on it.

edit: There is a thing in history where you don't attach your own bias of today to those in the past. A thousand years from now, they're going to see us as insensitive, you and I too, and where would that leave us. History is both chronology and understanding.

edit 2: If you lived in ancient Rome, even during the Republic as a member of the Patrician class, you wouldn't have owned slaves due to what we believe today? It's ridiculous.

I wasn't attacking you, I can see were your overly verbose point is. I'm just saying delivering it in this waffling manner does seem like the best way.

Not that any of that defence can defend the Legion either mind.

Yeah, that's what you Yanks call it. Chain-gangs. I can dig chain-gangs, forced labour, for the duration of someone's sentence. But not outright slavery for life and certainly not as an hereditary condition.

lol, overly verobose? I could be more verbose if you wanted me to. This is actually the way I talk. I'm surprised you don't like it! haha.

In any case, The Legion was cleansing the world, and good-riddance. Super-mutants, chem-junkies, the Vegas strip, ect, they were unfit for the new world.

I usually do, but when presenting points with a lot of rhetoric questions like that, as though the person reading it already agreed with you deep down, doesn't strike a cord well with people in my experience.

Which I don't necessarily should have came at the cost of enslaving genuinely innocent people that happened in the Legion's way, nor reducing captured women to a secondary class to perform reproductive services. That and they don't like gays in their ranks either and probably a great many other things which really have no bearing on removing refuse like the Vegas Strip. The NCR had the capacity to remove the Strip and they attained it without such ridiculous methods. Caesar got his head stuck in a book and wowed some backwards tribals with basic military tactics, rambled on a bunch too like Ulysses about [censored].

Better off to kill them and be done with it. Can't afford to deal with them escaping and the consequences of feeling responsible for what they do.

Well, maybe in your experience, but not mine fortunately.

In any case, it was a fun a questline in New Vegas, but it also made us think didn't it? We're here discussing the importance of a questline in a video-game, but the questions that it begs make us consider our own history and our present lives. I would say the writers did something right there. I'm not going to lie, I did feel like a piece of crap after finishing the legion questline, but it definitely made me think. How will our moralities survive, and in what forms when the bombs fall? We would all hope for our society to continue as it has, with the same ideas of ethics that we've always had, but that's just nice thinking. Maybe reality will be much more different, much scarier.

ok so that bad guy is a bad guy because he's a slaver.

now you enslave him, so now you're the slaver = the bad guy, hence it's ok to enslave you.

likely, that bad dude even is bad just because he enslaved another slaver bad guy in the first place (which originally was the good guy who enslaved etc etc)

anything else where that type of logic comes from...? :-]

The only form of slavery that is ever ok is consensual slavery.

Because both parties are happy and want it.

Morality is a social construct ostensibly based on what is conducive to the community. We understand theft and murder as "evil" because of the detriment such acts cause to the group. Some people are better able to understand the "whys" of these rules, others need it imprinted on them.

Well that would clearly be wrong, I mean only consensual slavery that is entered into with no coercion at all. Like a couple that wanted to practice living this way, that sort of thing.

could just as well be part of "human nature" not to steal things because it makes them feel bad about it. so human nature decides what is considered evil and what is good.

Nope. Everyone here is operating from the same culture. The culture that says that slavery is wrong. Therefore we all enter this thread to discus the Western view of slavery and whether it can be consider it's morality (from what is assumed to be our common cultural consensus) dependent on circumstances. It's a reasonable discussion of Western ideals.

Coming at everything from this ridiculous viewpoint and calling everyone else morons for not seeing things from your oh-so transcendent perspective of human morality contributes nothing. It's empty, psuedo-lofty ideology with no basis in practicality. Whether it feeds your misanthropy or not Warpsmith, morality is a thing - it determines whether you go to jail or not - so deal with it.

I cannot fathom anyone who has not already been mentally subjugated wanting to reduce themselves to mere pvssyl.

"Human nature" that came about because humans are a social species.

Isn't enslaving bad people what prison is all about. Have to say I'm all for that.

If you're a good guy fighting slavers, it would be kinda hypocritical to keep slaves...right?

Youd be surprised.

No, that's what the edgy hipsters and 'Fight the Power' wanna-be revolutionaries like to say to look cool. Prison is a system whose intentions are to reform a troublesome member of society. This of course is the idea of prison but it's often and wantonly abused to just throw people in for a period of time. However, as time as come to pass, many prisons are working to offer their inmates opportunities to earn degrees, to pick up a trade and change their ways so when they are released they can become productive members of society. But there's still a lot of work to be done at reforming prisons that abuse the intentions of a prison.

Or it always existed and is what made humans how they are today.

Agreed. Laws aren't 'pretend', they are common clause agreement between others because it establishes a civil and orderly society. One where we needn't fear walking down the street without be shot or murdered or having your house robbed. There's plenty of high crime areas, but that's because they are areas usually neglected by society and as such are socially on the outskirts of our society. To say there's nothing wrong with murder and theft is insanity. The people who preach that Darwinist crap 9 times out of 10 are internet big mouths who are likely to be one of the first people to die if they were suddenly placed in a Darwinist world.

Enslaving evil NPCs? It makes you as evil as them, and it's inefficient. Just shoot em and pilfer the corpses. This way you help yourself, rid the world of the nasties and save the good wildlife; buzzards have to eat too.

Well personally...
Slavery is wrong. You rob a man or woman of their freedom and enforce servitude upon them without pay or regard. A slave is less than human.

If it's better to kill or enslave....even though I try my best to do good, sadly, there are just some folk who can't be reasoned or bargained with. Some folk just need a good killin' to put them straight.