Would you Equalize a world of mages (RAR!)

[Steve]

Am I now? The muggle population is being opressed by the magi. People resent the idea of being "crippled" if it is them who are losing something. Magi are losing, but the vast majority of people are not losing anything as they can never become magi. It would be reasonable to assume that, given the class animosity and oppression, muggle slave parents would be killing their own children if they are born magi.

Uh.... why? Parents generally love their children, for one thing, and the idea that their child has a gift that will lift them out of their parents' station would just as easily embraced. On top of that, even in terms of selfish reasons, it's entirely probable that most of these systems would have mechanisms in place so that the parents of magi would enjoy elevation of some sort as well. Certainly their children, once trained, will probably take care of them (Although there will always be counter-examples).

There is nothing natural about the enslavement of the ordinary people, so my actions will probably be met with acceptance given enough propaganda. I mean, nobody sheds a tear about apartheid South Africa except white racist emigrants. I am sure there will be even less tears shed for the magi.

Not for the magi who enslaved them, certainly, but at the same time, the idea of raising kids who are magi and would be able to help the family with such gifts? The magi thing isn't a race thing like South Africa. It's a literal lottery. You might as well say parents would be okay with chemicals that prevented their kids from becoming the next Stephen Hawking because they used to be slaves to a meritocracy of super-geniuses.

I do not need to suppress this indefinetely: if I cripple the magi once, they lose magic abilities permanently. With no magi, their power structure will collapse. After that spraying the crops to ensure the abilities never resurface will be a matter of decree. Chemtrails, Karl!

Better hope nobody grows their own food while living in some podunk arid corner off the world?

Integrating the magi is an option, but not until the current generation of upper castes permanently loses magic. Because once they lose power, it will be a matter of education to ensure the newborn magi never capture power again. Needs to have several generations passed without magic so that the old magi die and cannot tell the young magi that they used to be a higher caste with muggle servants and slaves.

Well, since you and I would probably be gleefully hanging the slaver magi while singing "John Brown's Body", I don't think that would be quite the same issue?

And my approach would be simple. For the magocratic republics, be peaceful, and open up the ports for immigrants. For the slavocracies? Cue up "Marching Through Georgia", boys!

Well, after a while. The important bit early on would be to exploit existing differences. One suspects the magocratic republics would find the theocrats detestable, for instance. Ally yourself to them, offer them things like better medicines to fill the gaps the healer-magi can't and ingratiate yourself to the populace, and all the while stoke their disgust with the theocrats-slavers so that when you're ready, you can rely upon their neutrality, or even gain their support.

For the republics, I'd promote a long-term strategy of swaying them into giving more rights to non-magi. Do nothing threatening to them while still guarding your independence and with enough time, the pen and pamphlet can easily accomplish what the sword might not.

[Purple]

Aren't you just going too slow though? The kind of changes you want would take generations to implement even if they work. And that is generations of people living and dying in suffering and slavery because you thought it prudent to stall.

[Steve]

Well, for one thing, I'm not talking about spending generations to deal with the slaveocrats, I'm talking about generations to possibly liberalize the republics. The slavocracies are first in line for an ass-kicking,

And what happens if we do rush to avoid going "too slow" and the end result is our utter destruction and the imposition of a magocratic occupying authority on our republic? There's too much riding on this to just rush in.

[K. A. Pital]

I am not sure there are any republics with the social order implied... The magicians are a born-into, even if not hereditary, caste. Very likely that their social order is absolutism (pretty normal for the 1600s) or worse. We are pitting a modern society against essentially late medieval states, maybe tiny fiefdoms even. This is like the British Empire versus Mughal India, except the ideological differences are much more profound.

[Simon_Jester]

Am I now? The muggle population is being opressed by the magi. People resent the idea of being "crippled" if it is them who are losing something. Magi are losing, but the vast majority of people are not losing anything as they can never become magi. It would be reasonable to assume that, given the class animosity and oppression, muggle slave parents would be killing their own children if they are born magi.

I honestly am doubtful of this, because:

1) Normal humans do not work that way.
2) For an answer more likely to reach your cold-hard-calculating side, I would like to point out that it would be stupidly easy for these magocracies to set up systems under which the penalty for killing your child because you think they are a mage is very very much worse than most ordinary deaths.
3) Furthermore, it is also very easy for a magocracy to set up the families of actual mages as a privileged class- so if you are a mage, your parents, siblings, and children enjoy preferred status throughout their lives, even if they themselves are not a mage. Indeed, it's unthinkable that things would work any other way, because humans do not work that way.

I also understood that spraying or vaccinating everything from people to crops with anti-magical substance is a viable solution. It will not take long to cripple the magi militarily, and long exposure removes the abilities permanently.

Yes, but you have to keep inoculating the population indefinitely to prevent mage abilities from re-emerging and becoming the nucleus of an alarmingly effective resistance movement against your rule.

After you win you have to continue demonizing not only the historical, oppressive mages, but also the innocent random children born with this ability, so that people will not ask "what if we allow the children to develop their magical talents without giving them political power over us?"

It is not a stable equilibrium state.

There is nothing natural about the enslavement of the ordinary people, so my actions will probably be met with acceptance given enough propaganda. I mean, nobody sheds a tear about apartheid South Africa except white racist emigrants. I am sure there will be even less tears shed for the magi.

One, in South Africa it was not random whether your own children would be born 'white' or 'black.'

Incidentally, this WILL tend to limit the maximum oppressiveness of a magocratic society. It is vanishingly unlikely that any mage will have mage children or grandchildren. So I actually do not think it likely that all non-mages will experience brutal oppression consistent with the way slaves are treated. There's nothing about being a mage that makes you a conscienceless sociopath, and members of the mage class HAVE to recognize that their own childhood friends, and loved ones, are members of the class they are oppressing.

Integrating the magi is an option, but not until the current generation of upper castes permanently loses magic. Because once they lose power, it will be a matter of education to ensure the newborn magi never capture power again. Needs to have several generations passed without magic so that the old magi die and cannot tell the young magi that they used to be a higher caste with muggle servants and slaves.

If you wait that long, there will be rebellions among the younger proto-magi, trained by the older and disempowered magi, and supported by non-magi loyal to the old regime. It is a predictable thing that will further increase the human cost of your proposed war.

I am not sure there are any republics with the social order implied... The magicians are a born-into, even if not hereditary, caste. Very likely that their social order is absolutism (pretty normal for the 1600s) or worse. We are pitting a modern society against essentially late medieval states, maybe tiny fiefdoms even. This is like the British Empire versus Mughal India, except the ideological differences are much more profound.

There are pretty much certain to be societies in which there are forms of power and wealth other than "being a wizard." Whatever republics exist are likely to be more like Venice or the 1600s-era Netherlands, but they will exist.

[Zor]

About the way the theocratic class work: mages begin to show some magical power around age six or seven. When this happens and is positively confirmed they are taken from their family to join the ruling class to be adopted by a mage household usually with the same abilities that they do. Those parents that produce a mage are seen as getting the blessing of god/s and as such would be afforded some special reward and special honors, even if they were still stuck in the generally hereditary role of Gong Farmers. Those non-mages born to mage couples would as a rule be given to members of the non-mage artisan class as apprentices or would be raised as priests to propagate the religion. Some internal variation would exist.

Zor

[K. A. Pital]

I understood that the mage is taken and raised by others. This is how new class loyalty is forged, and this is what ensures the mages do not really have strong family ties to the muggles - otherwise the system would already have undergone substantial liberalization. There is no doubt a majority of parents will give children away, especially coming from a tribal "communal family" structure.

After the current mages are overthrown (and it seems likely, given the fact that historically a small industrial power could crush a vast collection of nonindustrial kingdoms) I will not demonize the newborn, I will just control the crops and make "vaccinations" - hey, maybe couple the antimage thing with smallpox vaccine - until the current mages lose power and mostly die off.

Of course it will not be a stable equilibrium. History never is.

[Adam Reynolds]

Of course it will not be a stable equilibrium. History never is.

I feel like the ideal ending would be to use technology to tap into whatever energy source the mages are using and ultimately give it to everyone. Thus we could take the Syndrome approach. "When everyone's a super, no one is." And unlike the Incredibles, these mages aren't just trying to help people in danger*. They are lording over them.

* Though that movie does imply something interesting. When the superheroes disappear, their role in stopping bad guys doesn't seem to be missed. It is only after superheroes return that we again see supervillians. If not for Syndrome delibrately targeting the heroes, nothing would have ever happened. So ironically Syndrome brought back the same thing he was attempting to destroy.