Slaves? Seriously?

I don't know why it would be cheaper to purchase and maintain highly complex machines rather than provide food and clothing to a slave. It's not like either the food, clothing or shelter is of the highest quality. Human beings in the real world are more resilient than you'd think. Especially when you get into pictures of starving people in Africa as the result of persecution, there are pictures of people on their feet marching, when they are skin and bones to the point that they don't even look like they should be alive.

Star Wars is not so graphic. For the cost of purchasing a car and keeping it maintained, I could probably feed, shelter and clothe several people. They would enjoy the crappiest quality of living, but since when is being a slave luxurious?

It seems more like a prestige thing in the Star Wars universe. I have command over another person's life, they are my property, that conveys greater power than buying some droid that is programmed to obey. A lot of money was tied up in slaves in the American South. They by no means enjoyed luxury and a stern slave driver was not going to tolerate disobedience from something he viewed as his property, just as many dog owners will not tolerate a dog that would bite them.

But my understanding is that the harshness is often exaggerated. It's not like a slave master would intentionally work his slaves to death in the field. He spent an incredibly large amount of money for that slave and he only gets that money back if the slave is productive, working the fields (i.e. alive).

With Jabba the slaves just seem like servants and symbols of status. His money largely derives from smuggling and other illegal activities. Oola isn't out there making any real profit for Jabba. She just dances for him, is implied to be used in some kind of sexual manner, and is otherwise expendable to him.

In instances like Wookiees. As someone else said it's largely a scare tactic, I think. Make an example of them. Maybe droids would be more efficient, but having a bunch of droids in roles of servitude is not as intimidating as Palpatine forcing opponents into servitude.

 

Maybe, but if slaves were generally cheaper than machines, we'd still be using them instead. Again, the human race didn't just have an inexplicable and unprecedented attack of conscience in the mid-19th century, even if it was pretty indisputably the height of the western culture. There were plenty of opportunities to get rid of slavery before, and we didn't. On balance, machines are cheaper for just about everything.

Starting with the understanding that all slavery is horrible, the truth about plantation life was that every situation was different. Some plantations and other slave businesses were relatively better or relatively worse than others. Thomas Jefferson, for example, prided himself on being a fair, decent, and merciful master to his slaves, and although one can certainly wonder aloud whether his entire proposition was one big contradiction in terms, by the standards of 18th century chattel slavery, he actually was.

This is certainly a good point - conspicuous consumption is often a trait of the rich and sleazy. Does anybody honestly think that some 22-year-old rapper with an 8th grade education who grew up on McDonalds Happy Meals and grape Kool-Aid really has a refined enough palate that he can taste the difference between a $300 bottle of Cristal and a $12 bottle of Korbel? Of course not. Similarly, is there anything in Jabba's palace (other than sexy dancing) that couldn't be done just as well (if not better) by a droid? Probably not. But sometimes people buy luxury items just to be seen with them.

 

Not only is that untrue in the real world, but the Clone Wars proves how untrue it is in the Star Wars universe. The Separatist Droid Army produced "quintillions" of cheap, expendable droids in a mere 3-year time period. Even if we go by my generous estimates (reduce it to 1 quintillion to guard against propaganda, assume the SW year is double the length of ours), we're still talking about hundreds of billions of cheap droids coming off the assembly lines every day. Hell, even if we go with the assumption that a Star Wars years is 10 times the length of ours, that's still 91,324,200,913.2 droids marching off the assembly line each and every day. Just one day's production of droids could easily meet any labor shortage you might have.

Status and sex seem to be the only plausible reasons one could have for slaves in the SW universe.

 

The Empire wanted to make use of their technical skills in constructing the Death Star.

 

Nope. Organic sentients are still more adaptable, have greater mental flexibility (ability to think "outside the box" of rigid programming), etc.

 

There is still wide-spread use of actual chattel slaves in places like the Caribbean to this day for mass labor. Also, while they are not chattel slaves, it is arguable that groups like the migrant farm workers fill the same classification in modern agricultural production. Also "contract workers" in various industries like the garment industry are effectively slaves to their "sponsors" while they work off their indenture (which few ever manage to do).

Another good example would be American coal miners under the "company town" system prior to the 1920s-30s. "Free" labor, paid a wage. Problem was that wage was insufficient to meet the needs of their families so they were given "credit" at the company store (which had to be paid off before the a miner could even think about leaving for other work, which [again] it almost never was). So the company "paid" them with one hand, took it back and more with the other, and left them working for basically food and shelter, just like chattel slaves.

We didn't "end" slavery. We just redefined it and put a "free labor" face on it.[/quote]

 

If a droid army was more efficient, then the Empire would have used them. Instead it used a clone army and then replaced those clones with "shanghaied" individuals because it was cheaper.

Lucas talks about poor saps being "shanghaied" into the Imperial army in an interview with MTV from back in 2005 to account for the evolution of stormtroopers from clones to what we see in the OT. He even makes note that it is cheaper to force someone into service than using clones and it is also shown that the clones are better than droids. The majority of clones rolling off the assembly line were of the lowest quality - dumb and ineffective. Droids like Droidekas and Commandos were much more effective but prohibitively expensive to produce in mass.

In the Star Wars universe a droid army may be cheaper than a clone army, but that droid army was also made up largely in part of subpar droids that did not match up to clones. And when it comes to slavery and coercion, that apparently the best of both worlds - the ability to think creatively as well as being dirt cheap.

In the real world it is easier to make something complex with machinery because the cost of maintenance is less than the wages of skilled laborers. A slave can carry out unskilled labor like picking crops or hauling materials. But take some slave and tell him to build you a rocket ship and it's likely not going to happen. Have a bunch of humans build one by hand and it would be ridiculously expensive because of the way our economy works. If holding those people at gunpoint and making them do it without pay were a valid practice in the economies of most developed countries, then I would think that would be cheaper than maintaining a machine. But instead we have things like minimum wage as well as unions, and the simple supply of and demand for skills that allows those with those skills to negotiate a wage for themselves. Comparing the costs of human labor vs. machine labor in modern countries like the US, Canada, Australia, England, Belgium, South Korea, Japan, etc. is completely different than what the world would be like if I could just hold those skilled laborers at gunpoint and not pay them a cent. Pay them instead in dirty rags and the McDonald's dollar menu.

 

Weren't the Separatists planning to make their own clone army? Why did they try and steal Jango DNA in "ARC Troopers"? I think living vs droids is debate that depends on the application. Keeping in mind that the finest things are often still hand made IRL. In the case of the Zygerrians it was a part of their culture deeply ingrained that they didn't want to let go. The Separatists though they had use for the Zygerrians and possibly slave labor so they encouraged it. I figured there were lots of breathing beings involved in the building of the Deathstar and many likely worked about to death against their will.

 

Uhm... what? I'm skeptical of that, unless you mean that Cuba, as one of the few remaining old-school 20th century-style crushing Marxist despotisms, counts as being essentially one huge slave plantation, in which case I agree with you.

Sudan may be another story; there's reputable reports of some agricultural chattel slavery in the countryside there, but rural Sudan is such a dismal backwater that they'll be lucky when the 19th century shows up, much less the 21st.

I'm skeptical of that too. It's possible to broaden a term until it could describe virtually anything, and thus loses its meaning. If everything is slavery, then nothing is.

I think they were just trying to deny the Republic access to their clone template source material. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the days of VHS tapes or music cassettes, but I gather that cloning kind of works like that - make a copy of a copy, and the quality degrades. Steal the "master tape" DNA, as it were, and the Republic will have to use copies of copies, and the quality of the clones will decrease.

 

There are so many immoral reasons someone would want and would have living slaves. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just being naive.

 

If I remember correctly the Seppies wanted the "Master Copy" to tailor a virus that would kill only clones.

As many have said before about slavery a droid only has its programming and can only do what it is programmed to do. Organic Beings can think outside the box and react to things going on around them.

Anakin said that selling living beings made the Zygerrians wealthy. The Queen also said something along the lines that slavery is a natural part of life. That the weak were made to serve the strong blah, blah, blah.

And I would imagine having a living, breathing bed partner would be better then a droid one. Xixor seemed to prefer organic females to Guri. He would use Guri in that manner but a real female can't be replaced.

 

Among other things..

 

I don't find it shocking at all that they still practice slavery, different forms of it are all through out the Star Wars Universe. Take the Jedi Order for example. If a child is born in the republic that is deemed force sensitive, that child is taken away from their family and put into a religion that they had no choice in choosing. Raised to believe that this is the only way to live their life to serve the republic. They are slaves of the republic. You might argue that yes, they can leave the order if they so chose it. But that is only once they become a padawan. When they are still younglings they have no choice. Jedi really are no different then Clone troopers. They are raised and enslaved for a purpose that is outside of their control .

 

I agree with this for the most part, but the choice to take away a Force-sensitive infant/child to be raised as a Jedi is ultimately up to the parent; the Jedi would not forcibly take a child away from a parent against their will. Many parents allow the Jedi to take their children because of the promise that they would achieve great things in service to the Republic, but as you said, they are really little more than "slaves of the Republic" because the younglings themselves have no say in the matter due to being taken away at such a young age. Then years of lifelong Jedi indoctrination ensures that the vast majority of Jedi never leave the Order of their own volition. The Order, after all, is the only family they have ever known. The same holds true for clone troopers as well, only more extreme, as they are bred and raised (both in nature and nurture) to be obedient to the utmost degree, and only a few defective clones like Slick and Cut Lawquane ever really end up questioning the Republic's treatment of the clones and the future they have after the war is over.

 

The question of how clean the Republic's, and the Jedi's, hands may be regarding the issue of slavery is a very interesting one. The Jedi certainly don't see themselves as having dirty hands here, and certainly have the best of intentions, but having the best of intentions if no guarantee of always doing the best of things.

 

Oh me, I feel a great disturbance in the force............force?....sorry, I meant trousers

 

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/"Baby_Ludi"_custody_case

 

You maybe think Droids are for free!?

 

Nah.

 

Well, that sheds some new light over this. They should probably have made an TCW episode based on that.

 

Thats worse than any fanfiction. EU is realy low quality entertainment knowadays.

 

I don't know if they would have, but based on the last arc of S5 I think 6-8 would have seen more and more eps where the public was being shown to be turning not only against the war, but the Jedi as well.

You might also look up "anti-Jedi sentiment" on Wookiepedia for more.

 

Why is it assumed Droids are both cheap and easy to maintain?

 

Because they're frakking EVERYwhere. The parts are so cheap that a slave can scavenge enough to build his own protocol droid.

But they aren't as mentally or environmentally flexible as sentients. Droid labor is best suited for VERY high danger, extremely simple and repetitive, or extremely high-precision tasks (all of which play to droid strengths).

 

Among other things:

1.They are seen abundantly, everywhere, from major galactic hubs like Coruscant to crappy backwaters like Tatooine. A child slave can acquire enough parts on his lonesome to build a fully functional protocol droid.

2. Obi Wan comments, when R2-D2 is lost, that "R2 units are a dime a dozen" and recommends Anakin get a replacement.

3. A little thing called the CIS Droid Army. Quintillions produced in a scant three years.