PT Why didnt Padme save Shmi from Slavery ?

I’m of the same mind. I would’ve loved Anakin to raise this with Padme in AotC. Say that he & his mother helped save your world ten years ago. How could you not do anything to help her in return. Better yet, just as someone mentioned here, have the Naboo arrange her freedom back then but she decided to stay & marry Cliegg. As it stands Padme looks mean and thoughtless.

 

I claimed no such thing, that is a gross mischaracterization of my point. FYI it is incredibly, incredibly bad form to mis-use quotation marks in the way that you are.

I can't understand what you're trying to saying here.

There's no way of knowing for sure if this is true.

I never said Shmi has a "great setup." There you go doing that thing again. What you are doing is highly dishonest and obviously intentionally designed to get my goat by insulting me and imparting frankly repugnant views to me that you know very well I do not hold and have never argued for.

 

The odds are that Watto's next slave will not be up to Shmi's standards, mainly because Shmi (as you pointed out) has come to accept her slavery. Think of it like customer turnover. Just because you get a new customer doesn't mean you've simply filled the hole of a long time customer that recently left. The cost of customer retention. Watto will be susceptible to the cost of slave retention. That lowers the value of slave ownership. That's the opposite of propagation.

And of course, there's no way of knowing for sure if Watto will even buy a new slave. It will most likely just be that Tattooine has one less slave.

What was Padme thinking?

 

But your arguments don’t oppose the slave trade very well. You don’t slam QG’s actions, which makes your moral position seem one of convenience in order to defend the movie rather than a real conviction. You don’t support the Queen attempting to free Shmi in a way that also removes Watto from the slave trade. Which alleviates your concern. All you seem interested in doing is defending Padme, & using selective morality as a way to do that.

 

Whatever slaves replaced Shmi and Anakin sure did a lousy job on Watto's morning shave.

 

Downunder has the right of it: if we’re gonna slam Padmé, then why not Qui-Gon? He was the reason Watto was minus one (1) slave! By this logic, Watto should’ve taken the prize money from Shmi, bought another slave and told Shmi to basically deal with it.

Calamari, if we’re gonna do the “a slave goes, another takes his place” dance, then we need to also look at Qui-Gon’s actions. Why didn’t this cause Watto to immediately and automatically go buy another slave to replace Anakin? I hate to talk about human beings like property here: slaves cost money. If Watto doesn’t have money, he doesn’t get any slaves even if he wanted another one.

 

Qui-Gon's gambit left Watto with less than he started with. The net effect of Qui-Gon's actions was extracting wealth from the slave system.

 

Wrong. QG’s first bet delivered Watto a lot of money. The entire Boonta Eve winnings. The second bet gained Anakin’s freedom. How do you know Watto lost in his dealings with QG? You think all of the winnings from a Super Bowl sized race couldn’t buy a replacement slave?? Watto only lost bcs he placed large additional bets on Sebulba. Nothing to do with Qui-Gon. QG engineered a situation where a slave owner would lose a valuable slave & have a pile of cash to spend on replacing him. Are you going to keep avoiding criticising him or be consistent?

 

I think it makes the most sense that she took some early steps to do so but on consulting with the Jedi they discouraged it, better to not continue the attachment, or that in the Republic buying a slave from elsewhere even to free him or her is illegal.

The Republic and outer territories did seem pretty disconnected, with Qui-Gon seeming surprised Republic credits weren't accepted but Watto firmly refusing them and Padme being surprised slavery was practiced despite Republic laws.

 

Tatooine is outside of Republic & Jedi jurisdiction.
Freeing Shmi has nothing to do with Anakin’s attachment. She wouldn’t move into the Jedi temple. She just wouldn’t be owned & have explosives in her body.
It’s obcene to think the Jedi would block the freeing of a woman from slavery just to keep her son focused on his Jedi studies!

Did Qui-Gon buy Anakin as a slave? No, he showed that you can negotiate the release of a slave with their owner.

 

True he didn't pay (although the wager could still be an illegal financial transaction) but later Watto wouldn't part with Shmi for another bet or anything else other than money.

I think that was meant to be controversial by the in-universe ethics; Qui-Gon, despite disliking slavery, didn't think freeing a few particular individuals was obligatory or particularly good (the Jedi in general valorize impartiality and the collective good rather than particular goods), he ended up deciding to do so both from personal gratitude but also because of the wide collective benefits there could be to Anakin with his potential becoming a Jedi.

 

That’s not the point I was making. There’s a clear difference between buying a slave & compensating an owner to remove the implant & set them free. QG did the latter. The Naboo would be doing that with Shmi. That’s not buying a slave.

 

Yeah but I don't think Watto would accept compensation aside from money (and giving non-monetary goods could also be considered financial or financial-enough and thus also an illegal financial transaction).

 

Even paid money to remove the implant is not buying a slave. It’s perfectly legal on Tatooine.
In the case of the wealthy Naboo they could offer Watto all kinds of other options. Including a generous relocation to a non-slave world. A big house on Naboo. Etc. They could release Shmi & reduce the slave trade by removing a slave owner. All of that is nothing compared to the help Shmi & Anakin provided.

 

So... you're saying practically any argument pro-TPM as is in this thread is slavery apologia? Even a defense of Padme? That's absurd. How did we even get to this point?

 

You asked a question then answered it yourself then commented on your own answer!

If you’re asking me the answer is no. There’s no problem with presenting an argument that is favourable to Padme or any other character. However every argument is judged on its own merits. That’s all that’s happening here. Using the “funding slavery” excuse doesn’t stand up. It falsely presumes that the only possible way to treat with Watto is to pay him money. Then there’s the double standard of using that excuse but giving QG a pass RE freeing slaves while delivering the slave owner all of the race winnings. Not to mention Cliegg buying a slave.

 

I think that Padmé didn’t save Shmi because the Jedi Order would have definitely found out about it, and likely made some sort of connection between Anakin all of a sudden getting really close to Padmé at times and Padmé saving Shmi.

 

Padme would know that a Jedi Master already tried to free her. It’s likely that Qui-Gon was even fine with Shmi coming with them. What was he going to do, free her then say “Sorry, no room on the ship” ?

Again, the idea that the Queen thought about freeing Shmi but didn’t bcs it could upset the Jedi is outrageous.

 

Probably because it was out of her jurisdiction and despite her condemnation of slavery, didn't see it in her place to combat it then and there. Without risking the lives of those she was with and protecting.

But from another perspective -- how many would actually bring/want to bring their future mother-in-law with them. Maybe padme was clairvoyant could see the future and saw a life of Ani and his mom living in her apartment on coruscant and she was like --- "oh hell no"

 

Tatooine is beyond jurisdictions so they don’t matter. That’s why QG was happy to free Anakin & Shmi.

That’s the most sensible explanation so far.

 

RE: the argument that buying/freeing Shmi would doom an innocent person to slavery.

Disregarding that it is made up argument and disregarding that AotC implies that Watto did not get a new slave after he sold Shmi.

Let's take it at face value and see what it entails.
So Watto sells Shmi and he wants to replace her with a new slave.
If so, then this is not dependent on what Shmi's new owner does with her. Free her, keep her as a slave or feed her to his dogs.
So Watto will want to get a new slave REGARDLESS of what happens to Shmi.
So freeing Shmi or not will not affect Watto here.
And Watto wanting a new slave is what will cause a free person to become enslaved.

So this means that it is the SELLING of Shmi that will cause a free person becoming enslaved.
And why stop at Shmi, it would apply to ALL slaves that are sold.

So this argument not only says that the number of slaves is constant, it will always INCREASE every time a slave is sold.
So the number of slaves will keep increasing.

So Padme buying Shmi will not make a difference in this regard. As soon as Watto sells Shmi, this will make an innocent person become a slave.
So Qui-Gon has set up a situation where Watto is now deeply in debt and is quite likely to sell Shmi to pay off those debts.
And if he does, this will cause an innocent person to become enslaved.
So if Padme buys and frees Shmi that will at least keep the number of slaves constant.
If someone else buys her and does not free her, then the number of slaves will increase.

So this argument is both lacking in evidence but it also leads to absurd results and does not excuse Padme for not doing anything as she can at least keep the number of slaves constant and not have it increase.

But I don't buy this reasoning, it is not this simple.
Watto lost a lot of money and likely had to sell Shmi to pay of his debts and thus could not buy a new slave even he wanted to.
And the idea that a free person would suddenly become enslaved if this happens is baseless. We don't know what the normal source of slaves is or if the market is big or small. Until we do, we can not claim this with total certainty.
And it does not excuse Padme's inaction.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

I would give QG a pass on this one.
He was killed during the initail crisis and never got the chance to do something about Shmi

 

Fwiw, for anyone invested in the topics of this thread, I recommend reading this.

Although most of the reasons as to why it would all be a fruitless attempt have already been extrapolated here in this thread.

 

Watto didn't have any money left when the race was over. He had made such huge bets against Anakin winning, that the portion of money that he got from the winnings would have gone to paying off his debts. In other words, he was as he said, broke. He never bet on Anakin winning. So, say that he bet the equivalent of 20,000 credits on Sebulba. He lost all of that money because Sebulba not only lost, but I think he didn't even cross the finish line. Whatever cash winnings he would have gotten from the purse, was not enough to buy a replacement slave. It was barely enough for anything. Especially if he had to use that to finish paying off his debts. Qui-gon's money that he gave Shmi was from selling the pod to Sebulba.

As to Padme, she probably asked Palpatine to look into it and he would have blown smoke and it became forgotten about.

 

In the book, Padmé mentions to Palpatine that she is creating an effort to free/buy/trade for slaves on Tatooine and he offers to take over the cause for her and push it through the Senate with his "transportation of goods" bill, but of course the bill keeps getting stalled.

She also dispatches Sabé and a companion to Tatooine to free as many slaves as they can and to try to find Shmi, but not only are they in over their heads, and not only is finding Shmi proving to be difficult (for reasons explained), but, as we’ve said here, for every one of the 25 slaves they were able to free, their spots were just filled with 25 new slaves.

There's more to it, of course. The book covers this topic well. fwiw

This whole endeavor proved to be the first defeat among many in the early days of Padmé's senatorial career as she learns the corrupted ropes of the GFFA Senate.