Is it evil to buy a slave from a race that accepts slavery of their own people?

I agree, but I also believe evil exists.

what if they became a slave as punishment for a crime

Still immoral even if no one will ever be wrongfully convicted.

A structure built by slaves is flawed, and the labor of a slave, even a criminal one, robs an honest man of a chance to earn his keep.

Yes, you are right it's up to GM to the end. However I wanted to know what Veeky Forums thinks to help compose the idea since my character shouldn't be doing explicit bad things.

I don't plan to turn them into sausages, I would just use them to simple labor. Since they are accostumed with slavery and completely expect it (goblins usually have a tendency to obey the strongest) I would think it would fall into neutral.

You could punish criminals by torturing them, that doesn't make it not evil.

Typical WHITE MALE QUESTION
SLAVERY WAS ALWAYS EVIL
NO DISCUSSION.
OH. MY. GOD. IT'S 2017 JUST WOW

low effort user. try to actually be funny next time.

If in your world goblins tend to obey the strongest, why have them as a slave? Just show that you (and your group) are the biggest and strongest around and use them like a hireling.

Fuck off Dany

Oh, what if I promise to release them after the campaign end? Since they wouldn't matter anymore anyway.

Suppose the God of Lawful Goodnes is the one doing it, then wouldn't torture or slavery be Good?

Yes.

I mean seriously: attitude on slavery differed in world's history but no one got a free pass just because they bought slaves in another country.

I always tought laws weren't really important in lawful allingment, amusingly enough.

I mean, I see elves as having written laws alright. Perhaps less than, say, dwarves (i see dwarves' courthouses as a pretty big deal actually, but not elves'), but it's not really that: being lawful is being organized, tidy, dull even, not upholding to the written laws but to an organized society. Just as being caothic doesn't mean breaking the law - I see elves as being kinda dumbdfounded not really by how dwarves are predictable, really, but by how much they need their society to be explicitly predictable.
Written laws are just a byproduct of that, and even regarding dwarves, I don't think isolated clans really have those, for example, they're still lawful alright.

In such a case, that god would be misnamed.

If you are taking slavery to be evil, then you would be committing an evil act for a smaller amount of time, which would be less evil, but still evil.

If the gods are the ones who decide what actions are what alignment, then sure, you could have the gods decree that slavery is Good. But that gets into where it's up to the GM and at least partially dependent on setting.

You're disgusting. God help you.

Less misnamed, more arbitrary. You could have a world that had an objective set of nine alignments, but the actions associated with those alignments completely separate from what we might presently ascribe to each of them. LG could be the alignment of slavery, CN could be the alignment of following a strict personal code, NE could be the alignment of hedonism. The naming scheme just stops making sense and you lose consistency within alignments.

IE the "Good" god could still be the one no one likes, having said a bunch of nasty stuff is "Good".

Hirelings are a constant drain (which is doable), but the problem is that hirelings don't have much incentive to stay around when things go bad.

>inb4 a slave is even more likely to escape

Not really. Slaves are usually branded and you probably know what happens to an escaped slave. In a slave-master society it's utmost important to make sure slavers stay in their place, so slavers who bail out are punished exemplary.

So they would be like conscripted armies in the past: low morale, but they know if they retreat they are fucked so they go on.

>If you are taking slavery to be evil, then you would be committing an evil act for a smaller amount of time, which would be less evil, but still evil.
I could justify it as 'communitary service' in order to earn their freedom.

Personally I believe slavery is one of the nastier evils, as I value freedom above anything else I can easily think of. So from my perspective the only way to justify buying a slave is if you intend to free them.
That would be fine if you and your players are willing to accept that Good and Evil are completely arbitrary and the only thing that makes a thing good or evil is what God practices what behavior.

Sorry, by "hireling" I meant more "NPC follower," not necessarily that they'd have a salary. Depending on goblin culture and values, as they've been described in a limited fashion, the individual might stick around just because they're good candidates of people to follow.

Also, what you're describing for keeping slaves under control is one of the main reasons slavery may be considered evil in many settings.

NAZI DETECTED
SOMEONE CALL ANTIFA

I would say its only moral to make slaves of former slavers.

depends who you ask

It really depends. Do they accept it because they have resigned to the fact that there is no other option? Or do they accept it like house elves in harry potter where the thought of not being a slave is offensive to most?

It also depends on how they are treated. Slavery isn't inherently malevolent, you could have a slave who, for all purposes, is really just a live-in servant who has nice living quarters, food provided, healthcare when needed, gets to be friends with the other slaves, so long as the work isn't horrible and the owner isn't cruel it's probably as good as working and middle class or lower job in modern times desu

Can you elaborate on that philosophy? Wouldn't that be like saying it's moral to torture people who have been tortured before?

Re-read his post.

Nah, that's still immoral.

I sincerely find a goblin hireling more likely to bail with my repository blades than a goblin which their own society would probably disembowel if he attempts to escape.

And yes, it's a pretty shit situation. But the thing is that goblins are used to this shitness. It's like a staple of them, like being send to rush the giant or suicide-bomb a wall. In a culture where domination is a sign of strenght, being 'nicer' would be seen as a sign of weakness.

So yes, they are evil. And they expect my character to act evil. But if I treat evil an character that wants to be treated evil because that's what they want of me, am I being really evil?

I mean, are you going to abuse them, have them sleep on the dirt, work forcefully from dawn to dusk, rape their women, take all their rights away, kill the ones that get sick or old and all that?
Cause all of these are rather evil, yeah.

ITT

...If you yourself believe that slavery is wrong, and that, consequently, it would be unethical for you to buy a slave, why would anything about the nature, origin, or circumstances of the slave matter?

I can think of a few possibilities:

1) You might be a utilitarian attempting to save the slave from a worse fate.

2) The slave might possess a mental capacity so low that it would not be reasonable to consider it capable of owning itself; i.e., it might not be conscious. Notably, though, it is entirely possible to have a gradation in rights: you can own a cat, but you can also be convicted of animal abuse for torturing a cat, so clearly this case does not constitute an ethical get-out-of-jail-free card.

The posited scenario does not fall under either one of these headings, and I cannot imagine why it would constitute an exception to a more general belief that buying a slave is unethical.

I missed an r. I'm going to go sit in a corner now.

You're not funny. Be funny.

Okay heres a variation. Is it morally wrong to free someone who voluntarily placed themselves into slavery?

Example is the Atans in David Eddings. A Race with so many offenses that require a duel to the death that their King voluntarily moved them all into Slavery to stop them from killing each other into extinction.

If you serve someone voluntarily you aren't a slave. To be a slave one must be held against one's will in servitude to another.

This.

A "willing slave" is either an idiot or a pervert.

What if I buy slaves for the express purpose of setting them free since I feel I cannot stop a system I find abhorrent on my own?

Just checking that I have this straight: Super violent race, their king put them all in slavery to stop them from killing themselves.

If that's correct, isn't that still someone imposing slavery on a race against their will, even if it was a member of their race who's responsible?

I think what it boils down to is the notion that removing an individual's power of self-determination is a fundamentally evil act. An individual could consent to it, voluntarily entering slavery, but it would be like volunteering to have your fingernails pulled out as a form of torture. The act would still be evil.

Then you're just freeing slaves by paying money, I don't see how that would be evil, unless someone's going to make the argument that slavery is likely so widespread in the world that the individuals you freed are just re-enslaved, and now suffer extra due to their small taste of freedom.

Just chiming in, the wording user used was "voluntarily placed themselves into slavery" which necessitates only that the initial contract was consensual. This would be a form of bonded slavery, where one sells their labor in perpetuity to pay a debt of some sort or trade for something.

I don't think you could blame the person freeing the slaves for that though.

Depends on the players

Because retarded players will complain about how you are promoting slavery. Smart players will just accept that's life

>Cowards will just accept that's life
Don't be a coward user.

Tell us first about your characters' faith or about the thing that requires him to be scared of doing evil.

Coward and bravery has nothing to do with someone accepting shit happens.

I like how Elite: Dangerous handles Imperial slavery to this end, which is more or less just debt slavery in space. Long story short for those not familiar with the concept, the basic idea is that you can sell yourself in slavery to pay off your debts or as a safety net of sorts if you are just barely treading water, resulting in a fixed period of servitude.

It is of note, however, that you sell yourself to the government rather than another party directly and the government pays off your debt and/or pays out that amount, rather than selling yourself off to a private citizen or group directly, although you can be freely traded after that. I think it was something so the government could more easily track your term so fuckery doesn't happen as often.

Simply accepting shit is what makes you a coward.

>slavery
>safety net

Slavery is more like one of the spikes underneath where a safety net should be

Accepting isn't a synonym of being a coward. You have no argument.

This sounds like doing labor to pay off expenditures. Isn't that just a job with a contract?

It's indentured servitude.

Accepting something terrible that is currently happening is being cowardly. This is not an argument.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage
I think the Empire has standardized slave "wages" as to stop someone from being kept there forever, though.

Oh, definitely in real life, but it at least seems to work kind of passably in universe although it is still a shit option to have to take. Plus, I think at the end of it you work for a lump sum after you're done paying off your debt as money to sustain you long enough to get a job again, to my memory.

>This is not an argument
Indeed it isn't.

Again accepting and being a coward aren't synonyms. You can accept anything and you will never be a coward, accepting is not a requirement for being a coward.

Accepting something terrible currently happening makes you a coward.

Except it doesn't. Learn2English.

No matter how many times you claim the sky is red, it's still going to be blue by the definition of the word blue.

You are a coward if you accept something terrible currently happening.

But you aren't and can't be.

But you are. Accepting something terrible currently happening makes you a coward.

Nope. Accepting something has nothing to do with cowardly.

Accepting something terrible that is currently happening has everything to do with be a coward.

]

two people arguing semantics in a world of bad syntax.

what fun

What? Are you pretending dumb or something?

Not at all. People who accept terrible things currently happening are cowards.

That's wrong though. Acceptation has no relevancy to being a coward.

Accepting terrible things currently happening has everything to do with being a coward.

What? That doesn't make any sense.

In mad max many people volunteer for slavery so that they can eat every day.

You complete fucking mongoloid, I'm not even involved in the conversation and its clear that they mean that acknowledging that things happen, especially in societies based off older cultures, not just accepting that they're there and that we shouldn't do anything about it.

Why did you make this post? You said nothing at all.

So everybody on Earth, yourself included, it automatically a coward by your definition.

Sure it does. Accepting terrible things currently happening is cowardly. How is that hard to understand? Is English your second language?

Yes, it is. And no, it isn't. As acceptation has no relation to cowardly.

Not true, there are people who actively work to correct terrible things currently happening, rather than accepting them.

Accepting terrible things currently happening has everything to do with being cowardly.

I called you a mongoloid, though, and now I'm going to call you an autist because you obviously can't read social cues and understand that you two are using different forms of accepting here.

Except it doesn't.

People actively work to correct 1 or 2 terrible things currently happening. Nobody is actively and truly trying to correct all terrible things happening. So that makes everybody a coward, no?

You say it like if I was talking to myself. Are you okay? Does calling people mean names make you feel better about your empty life?

Except it does.

No, those currently trying to correct terrible things currently happening have courage and are not cowards.

>Nobody is actively and truly trying to correct all terrible things happening.
Way to piss on the people who give everything for others.

>Except it does.
But it doesn't.

Accepting terrible things currently happening makes you a coward.

Except it literally doesn't.

>This entire exchange

Except it actually does.

That's wrong in virtually every scenario.

It's correct in every scenario. Accepting terrible things currently happening is cowardly.

Nope, you have to be functionally retarded to believe that.

Not at all,in fact, you must be a coward to believe otherwise.

What? That makes no sense. English doesn't work like that.