Draka question

[Norseman]

As to the ridiculous "slavery works better than a free market" idea: the SS tried that during the war. It didn't work. Reason? The cost of guarding the workers was greater than the value of what they produced.

Many of the rocket factories making V2 engines were made by slave labourers, and a lot of factories hired slave workers from the SS. In short I'd be careful with that claim.

[Norseman]

Ghetto Edit: What I mean is that slavery, though LESS efficient than free labourers, DOES provide a net surplus of production. However the slave labourers are best deployed in construction and farming, where supervision and output is easy to supervise.

[K. A. Pital]

Many of the rocket factories making V2 engines were made by slave labourers, and a lot of factories hired slave workers from the SS. In short I'd be careful with that claim.

Forced labour did result in net profits in some cases and net losses in other cases.

Take examples:
German industries, forced labour: profit (less wasted on guarding people than the labour produced. Advanced labour techniques and industrial machines made slaves profitable, even if they were treated hellishly and murdered and so forth - advanced machines made one's labour more valuable). A key factor was that this labour was not drained from the Reich citizenry as labour force, but instead from foreign citizenry taken captive.
Soviet ITLs and GULAG: net loss (very primitive labour techniques, loss of many able-bodied men from labourforce into inmates and camp guards)

[Baal]

Many of the rocket factories making V2 engines were made by slave labourers, and a lot of factories hired slave workers from the SS. In short I'd be careful with that claim.

Forced labour did result in net profits in some cases and net losses in other cases.

Take examples:
German industries, forced labour: profit (less wasted on guarding people than the labour produced. Advanced labour techniques and industrial machines made slaves profitable, even if they were treated hellishly and murdered and so forth - advanced machines made one's labour more valuable). A key factor was that this labour was not drained from the Reich citizenry as labour force, but instead from foreign citizenry taken captive.
Soviet ITLs and GULAG: net loss (very primitive labour techniques, loss of many able-bodied men from labourforce into inmates and camp guards)

Can you really use these examples since neither of these are even close to similar to the Draka system where the slaves outnumber the entire Draka population by better than 10 to 1.

[K. A. Pital]

Can you really use these examples since neither of these are even close to similar to the Draka system

Not really. Draka forced labour isn't similar to any other; it's a slave caste system. Not a penal labour institution. Not a POW/expat forced labour facility.

It's a huge society running on slaves. Frankly, the implications of such are not clear. I don't think such a society would function at all anyway; Draka are implausible crap and I'm sure most people here are of the same opinion.

[NecronLord]

To be entirely fair, the big (economic) problem with slavery in an industrial society is that you're invested in each slave; you're not just able to fire them at a whim, to keep your expenses down. A business magnate who's a chatell-slave-owner can't just fire (or rather manumitt) them without losing his money, he has to keep them fed and able to work, even when he has no work to give them. Serfs a la Draka would not suffer this particular problem; they're basically just the lower class, but picked on a hell of a lot more. You can take them on and beat them when you need them, and dump them on the street to starve when you don't.

As for Janissaries, yeah, they've lots of them. In most of human history, being a common person has sucked so badly most of us would be suicidal, and being a soldier has been better. While there likely would be revolts, just as many Janissaries would be glad to be out of the common serf herd. They're able to do what they want in most postings to everyone who's not actually a Draka; that's a big incentive for supporting the system. Their relative standard of living, for people who're not Draka, would be good enough to fight for. Once you factor in informing and the horrid deterrance of making trouble, you'd get a lot of resistance to armed rebellion; not that it wouldn't happen, but you don't need to outnumber the rebels, you just need to defeat whichever units are prepared to go into armed rebellion. After all, what's in rebelling for a Janissary? Being on the front lines (by default) against a well equipped foe, painful excecution, and at best, if they win, possible loss of their (comparatively) high social and economic standing.

Of course, to maintain this level of contentment they'd have to work very hard indeed to keep foreign ideas out of the Janissary corps. Good luck with that.

[K. A. Pital]

Actually if the Draka keep huge reserves of slaves they would be able to run some sort of a slave-cartel economy if all else fails; however, that'd be the most inefficient economy in the world.

That'd be like... Africa.

Yeah. And I wondered why they are in Africa that's because it's right. They're in Africa and with slavery, the current situation of Africa is all what they can hope for economically.

[NecronLord]

Actually if the Draka keep huge reserves of slaves they would be able to run some sort of a slave-cartel economy if all else fails; however, that'd be the most inefficient economy in the world.

Hey, I never said it'd work. Even at best, branding people as serfs without upward mobility is a bad idea. I don't know if it's actually possible for some genius like, say, Alan Turing, born as a serf to get out of the domain of menial toil, but it really ought to be if they hope to survive.

[Big Orange]

A population of slaves being slaves for many generations would be a comparatively better work force than recently seized slaves in Nazi Germany, since they have no knowledge of (relative) freedom before hand and are more socially conditioned to be docile, so would not be needed to be over guarded by huge garrisons of soldiers and police better off suited on the frontline.

And foreign ideas drifting into the more privaliged serfs and Janissaries, holding the Drakan system together, may not be so easy, considering the derf of worldmedia in the early to mid 20th century, being stuck in the vast stretches of Africa and the Middle East, with a heavy handed Drakian propaganda apparatus getting in the way (how come North Korea lasted so long?).

But I can see the Janissary Corps getting erroded later if many Janissaries are getting stuck in Europe, with Janissaries having a extended first hand experience with non-Drakan societies, and the RAF air dropping anti-Drakian leaflets.

[NecronLord]

A population of slaves being slaves for many generations would be a comparatively better work force than recently seized slaves in Nazi Germany, since they have no knowledge of (relative) freedom before hand and are more socially conditioned to be docile, so would not be needed to be over guarded by huge garrisons of soldiers and police better off suited on the frontline.

Historical evidence suggests that the average slave is not a particularly productive worker; they have no incentive to work hard, because advancement is not possible. The C19th charicature of plantation slaves being too lazy to care for themselves isn't entirely fact-less; slavery reduces people to an essentially infantile state, where they depend on others totally.

And foreign ideas drifting into the more privaliged serfs and Janissaries, holding the Drakan system together, may not be so easy, considering the derf of worldmedia in the early to mid 20th century,

A dearth of media doesn't help much. There wasn't exactly TV in the time of the Russian Revolution, but the communists managed to survive anyway.

being stuck in the vast stretches of Africa and the Middle East, with a heavy handed Drakian propaganda apparatus getting in the way (how come North Korea lasted so long?).

North Korea is not Drakia. While oppression is a constant, communism and outright serfdom are quite different; for a start, in theory, if not in practice, communism allows people to fulfil their potential. North Korea isn't lasting, either, it owes its very existance to Chinese and Soviet aid.

[Darth Hoth]

Ghetto Edit: What I mean is that slavery, though LESS efficient than free labourers, DOES provide a net surplus of production. However the slave labourers are best deployed in construction and farming, where supervision and output is easy to supervise.

I was referring to to the purely SS-run factories, which did turn out a net loss. As someone else pointed out, so did the GULag. The war industry examples do present a problem, though.

[Darth Hoth]

A population of slaves being slaves for many generations would be a comparatively better work force than recently seized slaves in Nazi Germany, since they have no knowledge of (relative) freedom before hand and are more socially conditioned to be docile, so would not be needed to be over guarded by huge garrisons of soldiers and police better off suited on the frontline.

And foreign ideas drifting into the more privaliged serfs and Janissaries, holding the Drakan system together, may not be so easy, considering the derf of worldmedia in the early to mid 20th century, being stuck in the vast stretches of Africa and the Middle East, with a heavy handed Drakian propaganda apparatus getting in the way (how come North Korea lasted so long?).

But I can see the Janissary Corps getting erroded later if many Janissaries are getting stuck in Europe, with Janissaries having a extended first hand experience with non-Drakan societies, and the RAF air dropping anti-Drakian leaflets.

That just about makes sense as long as they stay in Africa (how they manage to conquer it is another question altogether...). They can then stay alive in their garrison state society, even if this won't produce much progress. Never mind that workers that cannot read will probably not be ver useful in a modern society.

But it utterly fails to explain how they can conquer regions like Europe, or even Asia and the ME, so quickly and so thoroughly as they do. The influx of formerly free people into a neo-Spartan society should be enough to topple it all by itself, even without foreign aid (which the Alliance does provide, if in ridiculously small amounts). Instead, it's all more or less pacified within a few years.

[Adrian Laguna]

Far as Janissaries go, I think defections would be more far likely and common than uprisings. In fact, the enemies of the Draka would probably go to great lengths to encourage defections. Imagine the happy fun times when entire formations switch sides in the middle of battle.