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[Strik3r]

I am quite the Stellaris fan and I know what you are talking about.  I also play with Shared Burdens so all social strata are equal anyway for my civilization.   

In case you don't remember: Stellaris has about half a dozen slave castes, which run a gamut from livestock to chattel to domestic servants and all of them are considered "slaves" by the game.

I'm not arguing that we can't use various terms define various forms of slavery, but rather that they are all forms of slavery. Every form of slavery has distinctions from and overlaps with other forms, but they all fall within the bubble of "slavery". Again: It's about power over others and a lack of choice.

Spoiler: Stellaris (click to show/hide)

Let it not be a surprise that my favourite empire in Stellaris was a Spiritualist Monarchy with a God-Empress as its head. Dumb brutes were put in the mines, cute critters got to be domestic servants.

[GoblinCookie]

In case you don't remember: Stellaris has about half a dozen slave castes, which run a gamut from livestock to chattel to domestic servants and all of them are considered "slaves" by the game.

I'm not arguing that we can't use various terms define various forms of slavery, but rather that they are all forms of slavery. Every form of slavery has distinctions from and overlaps with other forms, but they all fall within the bubble of "slavery". Again: It's about power over others and a lack of choice.

Spoiler: Stellaris (click to show/hide)

Let it not be a surprise that my favourite empire in Stellaris was a Spiritualist Monarchy with a God-Empress as its head. Dumb brutes were put in the mines, cute critters got to be domestic servants.

The distinctions that exist between different forms of slavery in Stellaris have no bearing upon the definition or meaning of slavery, as what specifically you do with your slaves is not what makes them your slaves.  Mining slaves, household slaves and livestock slaves were all slaves prior to you deciding what kind of job they should perform. 

The mere fact of having power over others and them not having a choice does not make them slaves.  For instance if you have a person who lives upstream of a village that dumps their excrement into the river, when the villagers force him to dig a latrine in the ground instead; he is not the villager's slave simply because he was not given a choice about the matter.

[VABritto]

You did not answer my post GoblinCookie. Maybe you missed it because Strik3r's post made the page turn. You can find my post on the previous page.

[GoblinCookie]

You make some very good points, mate. I agree that defining slavery only as compulsory work is not enough and they must be also defined as property for the reasons you mentioned. But I would also have to enforce such rigor into your own vocabulary because the same reason that conscripts are slaves in almost everything except not being property, and yet still clearly are not slaves, thus we must also define outlaws as clearly not slaves. Neither carry the perfect prerrequisites of slavery, which we both defined as

1) forced labour being imposed on you
2) being considered property.

Both rigorously need to be true for a person to be a slave or else we enter into the problem of conscripts and outlaws.

That being said, with this definition we both agreed on, we cannot define a person with no rights as a slave because having no rights does not mean you necessarily are being forced to do labor or are seen as property. All it means is you do not have any guarentee that you will not be treated as such (that is what I meant by accepting it, in the sense that you are forced to it. There is a period before being forced to something in which you can choose to flee or resist and in which period you are not typically considered a slave). It might sound corny and Kanya West'y but it is pretty much a valid point in the sense that you really can't consider someone a slave if you haven't caught him yet or do you disagree?

With that said I still recommend calling the Slave-by-default the Outlaw-by-default, in order to maintain consistency on what we have agreed upon.

In the context of the actual members of an entity, it is very much Slavery-By-Default.  I would define slavery as what happens when you integrate an individual into your society by placing them under your control and requiring them to do work but without giving them the legal rights and status of a rank-and-file member of your society.

An outlaw does not have rights, but an an outlaw is also *not* part of your entity so he is not a slave. Basically I am defining slavery as when you make outlaws part of your society but without making said outlaws not outlaws in the process.  So random people who do not have any status in your society are made part of your society but not the reverse, your society is not made part of them. 

Under Slavery-By-Default slaves are outlaws but outlaws are not slaves. 

[VABritto]

So you are defining slavery as:

1) Being part of someone's society (You would need to define that precisely for me, because we are entering nebulous territory)

2) Is under your control (this needs a very clear definition)

3) Has no legal rights

Can I have this confirmed? And can you please define the terms marked in a more detailed fashion.

[GoblinCookie]

So you are defining slavery as:

1) Being part of someone's society (You would need to define that precisely for me, because we are entering nebulous territory)

2) Is under your control (this needs a very clear definition)

3) Has no legal rights

Can I have this confirmed? And can you please define the terms marked in a more detailed fashion.

1 means 2, which means that to be part of a society is to be under their control.  Legal rights excludes regulatory protections, so it has to be possible for the law to protect slaves in the same way that it protects animals, that is to say the state takes a lawsuit against the guilty party for violating regulations on treatment of slaves, but the slave cannot stand against his master in law as a legal person without his slave status being undermined.

[VABritto]

So you are defining slavery as:

1) Being part of someone's society (You would need to define that precisely for me, because we are entering nebulous territory)

2) Is under your control (this needs a very clear definition)

3) Has no legal rights

Can I have this confirmed? And can you please define the terms marked in a more detailed fashion.

1 means 2, which means that to be part of a society is to be under their control.  Legal rights excludes regulatory protections, so it has to be possible for the law to protect slaves in the same way that it protects animals, that is to say the state takes a lawsuit against the guilty party for violating regulations on treatment of slaves, but the slave cannot stand against his master in law as a legal person without his slave status being undermined.

But what exactly consists of being under their control? What I mean by this is what is the clear line between being under "society's" (we should probably use the word Civilization since that is the in-game term) control and not being. When can I definitely say X is not under a civ's control?