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So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?

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Fri, 2011-12-16 08:42
Cifer Cifer's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Firstly, as soon as one Corp is treating its workers better, everyone else will be looking worse, no matter whether people consider 24 hour days, mandatory mindwiping or casual deletion as bad - because that one corp shows they're not necessary. Other than that, I think there's one thing you're not factoring in: Immortality. Joe ExIndent is going to be around for a [i]long[/i] time. As are Jane, Jim and John. The chances that [i]one[/i] of them is going to make it big aren't too bad actually. And that one guy is going to remember where he started his career. If he makes Exec and is tasked with for example making a deal with some other corp, he's going to have a bias either for or against choosing his former workplace. Also, of course the clanking masses are important - because they're the clanking [i]masses[/i], which makes them automatically relevant for any corp with a mass market. Walmart, ALDI and all the others made their fortune by selling lots of stuff dirt cheap to today's equivalent. Considering how cheap processing power and storage are, it would all in all be really bad business sense to [i]not[/i] waste some on the indentures.
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Fri, 2011-12-16 14:00
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Cifer wrote:
Firstly, as soon as one Corp is treating its workers better, everyone else will be looking worse, no matter whether people consider 24 hour days, mandatory mindwiping or casual deletion as bad - because that one corp shows they're not necessary. Other than that, I think there's one thing you're not factoring in: Immortality. Joe ExIndent is going to be around for a [i]long[/i] time. As are Jane, Jim and John. The chances that [i]one[/i] of them is going to make it big aren't too bad actually. And that one guy is going to remember where he started his career. If he makes Exec and is tasked with for example making a deal with some other corp, he's going to have a bias either for or against choosing his former workplace. Also, of course the clanking masses are important - because they're the clanking [i]masses[/i], which makes them automatically relevant for any corp with a mass market. Walmart, ALDI and all the others made their fortune by selling lots of stuff dirt cheap to today's equivalent. Considering how cheap processing power and storage are, it would all in all be really bad business sense to [i]not[/i] waste some on the indentures.
I found two great articles in Sunward that explain the treatment of the poor class of infomorph infugees and clanking masses throughout society. One details the treatment of clanking masses on Luna, the other the treatment of indentures on Mars (the two biggest populations of the two in the entire system). Have a read of it:
Sunward, pg 64 wrote:
INFUGEES AND CLANKING MASSES To this day, the habitats in the Earth-Lunar system retain the highest number of infomorph refugees as well as the largest percentage of impoverished synthmorphs and indentures. The method of handling infugees varies drastically by station, ranging from incorporating them fully in local culture and society (though the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance officially does not consider infomorphs as citizens or grant them full rights or representation) to enslaving them to locking them away in isolated simulspaces or dead storage. The clanking masses are overwhelmingly indentured to the hypercorp or station authorities that resleeved them. While many of them have been put to work, especially constructing new habitats to ease overcrowding, many remain idle and essentially unemployed with no prospects. These synthetics face widespread discrimination, sometimes institutionalized (in habitats where synthmorphs are given less rights). Many orbital and Lunar citizens unfairly blame these refugees for their cramped conditions and general economic plight. It is worth noting that many refugee groups, having been uprooted from Earth and thrust into an entirely different type of existence, simply settled down wherever they ended up. Rather than embracing the full opportunities offered by transhuman society, some of these have in fact isolated themselves and become even more insular, partly due to suffering from combined culture and future shock. Bioconservative ideals are often rampant among these groups, despite many being sleeved in synthmorphs.
Sunward, pg 98 wrote:
INDENTURED SERVITUDE Most people in the Movement won’t dick around on this point: hypercorp and government use of indentured infugees is slavery, plain and simple. It’s only in recent years this issue has caught some real traction with the masses, though, because up until a few years back, the Martian working class wasn’t big enough that free Martians were competing with infugees for work. Those who know their history’ll tell you that citizens released from their indentures are in a place a lot like black sharecroppers after the United States Civil War. They’ve worked for years in agriculture or terraforming, and they ain’t got any opportunities in other industries … but the jobs they occupied previously’re filled by new indentures drawn from the billions-strong archives of lost souls uploaded during the Fall. The Tharsis League made up some homesteading programs such as they had in the antique United States to get people to colonize the interior, and of course the Planetary Consortium trumpets these loudly as opportunity for all. But you got limited infrastructure and transit networks in the back country. The railroads gouge everybody on rates, so getting supplies in or produce out is helluv expensive. Most would-be homesteaders wind up deep in debt, living on rented land with corp-built life support and agricultural systems. Although anybody who’s down with B agrees that infomorph indentures should be a thing of the past, there’s a lot of debate on the fate of the people who’re infugees now. Suggestions run from building more simulspace capacity so that all personalities currently on file could be instanced as infomorphs in a virtual Earth, to producing more case morphs and letting them compete in the labor market like everyone else, to simply writing them off as dead. As debates go, this one gets pretty sick.
As you can see, life isn't as pretty as you think for the poor. The clanking masses and infomorph infugees are looked down upon as worthless by most of wealthier society. They are blamed for society's ills, and face rampant discrimination. If you're wealthy enough to afford a biomorph, any attempt to sleeve into a synthmorph is looked upon with disdain... in many ways like being a moderately-wealthy black man in the 1960s and '70s. Sure, it would be nice if the world was better for them... but it isn't. Indentures have it far worse, as not only are they put in terrible work conditions in shit-poor environments, their lack of valuable skills means that they are likely destined to go right back into indentured servitude after any given term just to stay afloat. Many hypercorps even have planned obsolescence built into their morphs to ensure dependency on the part of the indenture; even after he's freed, he needs to continue to get quarterly GSPs exclusively from that hypercorp (no other group has access to the genetic data necessary; it's patented). Don't think that hypercorps would be that dickish? Well, apparently you're wrong, because [b]70% of the ruster population has a morph with planned obsolescence built in[/b]. Plus, while it might seem like treating them better would be good for the bottom line, you also have to remember that their clientele is probably just as discriminatory against the poor as they are. There's the very real possibility that they will gain small profits from new poor clientele, while losing massive profits from their already-existing wealthy clientele. Combine that with the very likely possibility that the hyperelite that own these hypercorps are probably biochauvinistic themselves, and you have a formula that probably doesn't add up to rights for the clanking masses or infomorph indentures. Remember, it wasn't good will and business savvy that freed the slaves... it was the Civil War.
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Fri, 2011-12-16 19:01
Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Before I go further, I want to answer this:
Decivre wrote:
I said half of a half billion. That's 250 million (though after a second reading, the number is actually 200 million). The indenture population includes virtually everyone that didn't have the skills to get an immediate body for hypercorp employment, and didn't have family or friends to free them. Only half of the bodiless infugee population had that luxury. Everyone else is easy pickings, and there are even people outside these groups that may be willing to sign themselves away for the possibility of a better life afterwards. And you are right, the indenture population will probably run dry very soon. But again, that doesn't necessarily stop hypercorps from running through them like a water tap. The oil industry is a perfect example of this in motion today. The risk of running empty isn't always high enough to force change... maybe it'll happen when the pool actually nears E. As for the speed they run through those masses, I don't think it's nearly that fast. If one indenture was hired every minute, the indenture reserve wouldn't run out for 380 years. That's plenty of time, and most hypercorps probably don't see it as a risk within the century.
Yes, I misread; I thought it was half of half of the 500 million you said there. That being said, the numbers are hard to guess; the Consortium population is one of the largest, but that 500 million that got off Earth is spread out quite far. There's some on Venus, some on Luna, some on Mars, some in the belt, etc. and of course, huge populations in orbit. The oil industry, meanwhile, has plenty of oil; there's a lot of it out there, it's just largely untapped. As long as society remains dependent on them, they can basically claim scarcity to make them pay through the nose. The future is one without oil as a fuel source, though, and I can't help but imagine that they're basically getting while the getting's good. They don't also have to deal with the issue of people crowing about cruelty to oil or the oil one day voting to get rid of them. As for the speed, it's hard to guess at. We don't know the population numbers. However, what we can assume is that, at any given time, the population of Mars has a certain amount of workers in the service industry and in the oversight industry that is filled by indentures. This number ranges from 15-to-1 to 5-to-1, with 15-to-1 being lower than modern and 5-to-1 being higher. It's hard to say which it will be, since cost-saving measures eliminate the need for labour but, at the same time, the importance of the service industry grows with increased digitalization and automation. Assuming a population of 300 million free citizens and 200 million indentures, a conservative look is around 20 million jobs available for indentures at any one time, with the opposite end being a very liberal 60 million. If an average indenture term is, say, 5 years and we set a start date for indenture contracts at around 5 AF (likely earlier but let's go with it), the first wave of indentures is free already. Conservative estimate on the number of years of indentured labour left: 45 years. Liberal estimate on the number of years of indentured labour left: 12 years. Either way, that well is going to run dry, and fast.
Decivre wrote:
The problem with that line of thinking is that we're assuming three things. [list=1][*] That the rest of Consortium society has a problem with the mistreatment of indentures (which they don't necessarily have). [*] That these indentures will accrue enough wealth to be viable consumers in the future (which they likely won't). [*] That reducing work hours and granting vacation time will somehow create more work output than simply funneling out workers that are working inefficiently (which it probably won't).[/list]
1. Keeping in mind that almost every Consortium citizen is a former infugee themselves, it's likely many, if not most, are sympathetic to the plight of indentures. It might not be much but it's enough to keep corps at least a little gentler, especially as indentures grow in number. 2. Indentures are viable consumers. Everyone is. They might not be high-end consumers, but they're still consumers. More to the point, they're going to be a growing element of the population. They'll vote and, more importantly, they'll have hands to pick up a gun. Eventually, they might just outright get colonies declaring independence, as happened with Venus. It happened once, it can happen again. 3. The list of studies showing that vacations increase productivity is extensive. Giving employees down-time to relax and avoid burn-out is a huge enhancer in increasing productivity, as well as improving product quality. The cost of a revolving door work system to deal with employee burn-out compared to giving employees time to relax (which, when you're talking about time-accelerated simspace relaxation, is not a huge issue) is definitely in favour of relaxation. The company that pushes its employees might see a small, temporary increase in output, but will see a large decrease in quality.
Decivre wrote:
You have to remember that just because this is the future doesn't mean that these people are somehow more mature or kind than people today. Biochauvinism runs rampant through Consortium society; the very idea that people who have synth bodies are disgusting and worthless. Guess what the indentures usually get for bodies? The reality is that most of the consumers for any given hypercorp are going to be far too wealthy to be counted among the clanking masses or digitized indentures, and the people who sympathize with them amongst the wealthy probably are the minority. Eclipse Phase takes place in the future... the world is different, not necessarily better.
Biochauvinism in the Consortium is different from bioconservatism; a synthmorph isn't disgusting, it's just a sign of lack of wealth. Synthmorphs are usually poorer people, more likely to be involved with criminals, and are generally just "not the right sort of people". It's a lot like racial profiling, to the point that I can actually imagine upper-class theatre performers painting themselves silver and doing "chromeface" bits. People still have the same old human prejudices, even if they are smarter or more savvy. I just expect that the Consortium is also composed of intelligent people whose rational self-interest makes them treat their employees a little more humanely.
Decivre wrote:
Remember, it wasn't good will and business savvy that freed the slaves... it was the Civil War.
Sorta-kinda. The Civil War ignited when southern states declared the right of secession from the union and used violence to expel soldiers from forts in their territory. Lincoln refused to recognize this, and then used the attacks as a sign of aggression on their part to instigate the war. Slavery only really came into the picture later, to justify the war and to win support of the abolitionist voters who were much more present in the north than the south. Slavery was abolished to gain the political will to maintain the ideal form of government espoused by a federalist party over those preferred smaller government. Non-whites were still not equal before the law, just as at the drafting of the Constitution, equal rights to women and non-whites were not afforded to ensure that all state representatives signed on. What was, however, won over, at least in part, by good will and business savvy was the various equal rights movements. The vote for women, equal rights for non-whites, etc. were provided by public conscience alone; those suffering were without suffrage, and, hence, it was only by influencing the consciences of the unshackled that they were freed. Similarly, before legislation forced stores and businesses to admit non-whites, companies still desegregated anyway, because it provided a competitive advantage; the consciences of their customers favoured equality over inequity. Similarly, Gandhi's crusade was won by influencing the hearts of the British; cruel occupation tactics rebounded against those using them. This works only if you have a sympathetic public, of course, as Gandhi admitted himself; it would not have worked against Russia, for example. On PC-controlled Mars, the vast majority of people are infugees, who know what it is to struggle, and the voice of indentures grows regularly. Everyone's been through the Fall, and it is unlikely that the cry of the infugee falls on deaf ears.
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Fri, 2011-12-16 19:34
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Yes, I misread; I thought it was half of half of the 500 million you said there. That being said, the numbers are hard to guess; the Consortium population is one of the largest, but that 500 million that got off Earth is spread out quite far. There's some on Venus, some on Luna, some on Mars, some in the belt, etc. and of course, huge populations in orbit. The oil industry, meanwhile, has plenty of oil; there's a lot of it out there, it's just largely untapped. As long as society remains dependent on them, they can basically claim scarcity to make them pay through the nose. The future is one without oil as a fuel source, though, and I can't help but imagine that they're basically getting while the getting's good. They don't also have to deal with the issue of people crowing about cruelty to oil or the oil one day voting to get rid of them. As for the speed, it's hard to guess at. We don't know the population numbers. However, what we can assume is that, at any given time, the population of Mars has a certain amount of workers in the service industry and in the oversight industry that is filled by indentures. This number ranges from 15-to-1 to 5-to-1, with 15-to-1 being lower than modern and 5-to-1 being higher. It's hard to say which it will be, since cost-saving measures eliminate the need for labour but, at the same time, the importance of the service industry grows with increased digitalization and automation. Assuming a population of 300 million free citizens and 200 million indentures, a conservative look is around 20 million jobs available for indentures at any one time, with the opposite end being a very liberal 60 million. If an average indenture term is, say, 5 years and we set a start date for indenture contracts at around 5 AF (likely earlier but let's go with it), the first wave of indentures is free already. Conservative estimate on the number of years of indentured labour left: 45 years. Liberal estimate on the number of years of indentured labour left: 12 years. Either way, that well is going to run dry, and fast.
A second readthrough on indentures actually states that 5 years is a minimum contract, with contracts generally being written out up to 20 years (page 65 of the core book; it means that my earlier example of a 3-year contract was ridiculously lenient). Adding up the extensions that often get tacked on, the average indenture time ends up around 8 to 25 years, potentially more. If we took the median of the two, that means the average indenture sentence is about 16½ years. Factoring in your estimate of 20 million jobs at any given time, the 200 million strong pool will last until 165 AF. Plus, plenty of indentures have gone free. The indenture programs have been around since 20 BF or so, so the fact that it's effectively slavery isn't news to the system.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
1. Keeping in mind that almost every Consortium citizen is a former infugee themselves, it's likely many, if not most, are sympathetic to the plight of indentures. It might not be much but it's enough to keep corps at least a little gentler, especially as indentures grow in number.
That doesn't mean much. Read 153 of Sunward, and you'll see that only wealth buys you good treatment within the confines of the Consortium. From the middle-class upward, life is very good within the hypercorporate jursidiction of the PC. Below that, the Consortium becomes a sordid life of discrimination and disdain. Uplifts and AGI face constant bias from most groups, while the clanking masses form massive mechanical ghettos out of the sight of wealthier citizens. This treatment often causes an upswing in crime, which just furthers the all-too-common belief among the upper class that the clanking masses aren't worth saving to begin with.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
2. Indentures are viable consumers. Everyone is. They might not be high-end consumers, but they're still consumers. More to the point, they're going to be a growing element of the population. They'll vote and, more importantly, they'll have hands to pick up a gun. Eventually, they might just outright get colonies declaring independence, as happened with Venus. It happened once, it can happen again.
In theory that's a possibility, but not one that people within the Consortium probably fear. I'm sure that most plantation owners didn't worry about a massive slave uprising when we still had slave states either... you have to remember that the upper echelons of society look down upon these people with disgust. A nice member of the hyperelite simply won't give them the time of day... the lesser type probably calculates ways to wipe them from the habitat on his time off. They aren't considered people, even if they are people. They are leeches siphoning off the Consortium teat, worthless dregs that are unfit to be a part of society. And Venus wasn't as big a revolution as you make it out to be. Venusian habitats voted for independence. There was no war or uprising; it was a simple reform caused by refusal to completely terraform the planet. Morningstar citizens are still very friendly to the hypercorps, and the political bloc does plenty of business with them. It's not even comparable. Morningstar was more akin to the Philippines' split from the U.S. than it was the U.S.' split from the British Empire.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
3. The list of studies showing that vacations increase productivity is extensive. Giving employees down-time to relax and avoid burn-out is a huge enhancer in increasing productivity, as well as improving product quality. The cost of a revolving door work system to deal with employee burn-out compared to giving employees time to relax (which, when you're talking about time-accelerated simspace relaxation, is not a huge issue) is definitely in favour of relaxation. The company that pushes its employees might see a small, temporary increase in output, but will see a large decrease in quality.
True, but those studies assume that you actually give a crap about the survival and well-being of your employees. Furthermore, I've already stated that indentures are generally used for work where quality doesn't matter. A Venusian mine has no care whether or not the minerals you pull out of the ground are well-shaped, just that you get it done. An indenture door-opener doesn't need to do it elegantly or artistically, just open the friggin' door. When quality matters, the hypercorps turn to talent which probably won't be found among the clanking masses.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Biochauvinism in the Consortium is different from bioconservatism; a synthmorph isn't disgusting, it's just a sign of lack of wealth. Synthmorphs are usually poorer people, more likely to be involved with criminals, and are generally just "not the right sort of people". It's a lot like racial profiling, to the point that I can actually imagine upper-class theatre performers painting themselves silver and doing "chromeface" bits. People still have the same old human prejudices, even if they are smarter or more savvy. I just expect that the Consortium is also composed of intelligent people whose rational self-interest makes them treat their employees a little more humanely.
You really have to read the books. Biochauvinism isn't as simple as "I'm not fond of synthmorphs". Even a cursory read through the books will show you that. A perfect example of this is Luna. Not only are synthmorphs frowned upon by society, AGIs are hunted down and killed, and any person in infomorph form is refused voting rights and representation. Those in synthmorph bodies are often refused at businesses, harassed by policing services, and more. In fact, some regions of Luna have such bad synthmorph discrimination that it has turned violent, and synthmorphs flee the violence by inhabiting locales that are inhospitable to biomorphs, like the vacuum of space (all this is on pg 84 of Sunward). The PC doesn't generally have this bad discrimination (yet), but it's not much better. Uplifts aren't generally given citizenship rights, and it's not uncommon for them to be born to indenture contracts (they don't get a choice... their contract is the price of coming to existence). Planned obsolescence is commonly used to force them to remain in service to a hypercorp perpetually. Clanking masses are socially isolated, and restricted from going to regions that aren't designated for their habitation. This apartheid-esque social structure is enforce on all levels... not just by the hypercorps, not just by the government, but even by society itself.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
Sorta-kinda. The Civil War ignited when southern states declared the right of secession from the union and used violence to expel soldiers from forts in their territory. Lincoln refused to recognize this, and then used the attacks as a sign of aggression on their part to instigate the war. Slavery only really came into the picture later, to justify the war and to win support of the abolitionist voters who were much more present in the north than the south. Slavery was abolished to gain the political will to maintain the ideal form of government espoused by a federalist party over those preferred smaller government. Non-whites were still not equal before the law, just as at the drafting of the Constitution, equal rights to women and non-whites were not afforded to ensure that all state representatives signed on. What was, however, won over, at least in part, by good will and business savvy was the various equal rights movements. The vote for women, equal rights for non-whites, etc. were provided by public conscience alone; those suffering were without suffrage, and, hence, it was only by influencing the consciences of the unshackled that they were freed. Similarly, before legislation forced stores and businesses to admit non-whites, companies still desegregated anyway, because it provided a competitive advantage; the consciences of their customers favoured equality over inequity. Similarly, Gandhi's crusade was won by influencing the hearts of the British; cruel occupation tactics rebounded against those using them. This works only if you have a sympathetic public, of course, as Gandhi admitted himself; it would not have worked against Russia, for example. On PC-controlled Mars, the vast majority of people are infugees, who know what it is to struggle, and the voice of indentures grows regularly. Everyone's been through the Fall, and it is unlikely that the cry of the infugee falls on deaf ears.
We really have to stop these tangents. At this rate, our dialog is only going to get longer. :P While you are right that civil rights didn't come about until much later through more peaceable means, I think it should be noted that it was far slower than what you want to imply should happen in Eclipse Phase. Indentures have only been around for 30 or so years, and you're expecting that they should have decent rights and be treated relatively well. On the other hand, Slavery in America lasted for 3 centuries, and African-Americans weren't given equal rights in accordance with the law for nearly 90 years after that. It was a long uphill battle that took an inordinate amount of time. I have no doubt that the same will be true for the indentures and clanking masses. I'll even make another prediction; you're likely to see the end of the indenture program long before you ever see an end to the rampant discrimination against the people that suffered under it. Yes, they will likely [i]eventually[/i] get their freedom. Yes, they will likely [i]eventually[/i] get treated as equals. And yes, what the hypercorps are doing right now is wrong. Unfortunately, the society lives in the now, not in the "390 years from now", so freedom for the clanking masses may be a long ways away. Though in a more optimistic statement, social revolutions might happen faster in a world as fast-paced as Eclipse Phase.
—
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Fri, 2011-12-16 21:11
Cifer Cifer's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Firstly, it appears that at least one and possibly several of the Sunward quotes are written not from a neutral matter-of-fact point of view, but from a quite opinionated in-universe perspective, likely with anarchist tendencies, and thus should be taken with a massive grain of NaCl. Could you please clarify? Secondly, all of the benefits of suppressing indentures the way you propose hinge on one crucial point: That everyone does it and noone defects, although defecting would personally benefit them for the reasons already mentioned - low additional costs, good PR among clankers and infomorphs, assured loyalty, heightened efficiency, additional customers. Yes, it's not impossible that the corporations manage to form a unified front in that regard. But it's highly unlikely. I'd expect it from the Jovian Junta which is quite good at suppressing dissent. I'd not expect it from a bunch of corps all looking out for numero uno first and not being above using any and all possible advantages that present themselves at the cost of others. We're not talking about a couple southern plantation owners here, but about a bunch of the most ruthless capitalists sleeving Exalts, Mentons and Sylphs aided by state-of-the-art AIs for projecting results. I really don't think there wouldn't be at least one who doesn't let a little biochauvinism get in the way of profits - and profit is what you get when you're the only one lending a sympathetic hand towards a continually growing number of immortals that aren't discriminated against so heavily that not putting them down in the harshest way imaginable would tarnish your own repuration.
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Fri, 2011-12-16 21:52
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Cifer wrote:
Firstly, it appears that at least one and possibly several of the Sunward quotes are written not from a neutral matter-of-fact point of view, but from a quite opinionated in-universe perspective, likely with anarchist tendencies, and thus should be taken with a massive grain of NaCl. Could you please clarify?
True, it probably is, but most of the info within the Core book tends to be from a neutral point of view, and it still refers to much of what I'm talking about. These sorts of things are pretty well-described throughout the books. That said, I would find it heavily bizarre that a Martian rebellion and large amounts of negative public opinion would form around a friendly indenture atmosphere, and a society that is receptive to the clanking masses. As I've asked before, would we be having this discussion if we were talking about any other discrimination topic? If we were talking child labor, would you be protesting that children were handled with care when they worked in coal mines? If we were talking woman's suffrage, would the counter-proposal be that women's lives were great when they didn't have the same rights as men?
Cifer wrote:
Secondly, all of the benefits of suppressing indentures the way you propose hinge on one crucial point: That everyone does it and noone defects, although defecting would personally benefit them for the reasons already mentioned - low additional costs, good PR among clankers and infomorphs, assured loyalty, heightened efficiency, additional customers. Yes, it's not impossible that the corporations manage to form a unified front in that regard. But it's highly unlikely. I'd expect it from the Jovian Junta which is quite good at suppressing dissent. I'd not expect it from a bunch of corps all looking out for numero uno first and not being above using any and all possible advantages that present themselves at the cost of others. We're not talking about a couple southern plantation owners here, but about a bunch of the most ruthless capitalists sleeving Exalts, Mentons and Sylphs aided by state-of-the-art AIs for projecting results. I really don't think there wouldn't be at least one who doesn't let a little biochauvinism get in the way of profits - and profit is what you get when you're the only one lending a sympathetic hand towards a continually growing number of immortals that aren't discriminated against so heavily that not putting them down in the harshest way imaginable would tarnish your own repuration.
Incorrect. The only thing my premise hinges on is the assumption that mistreatment of indentures and the clanking masses is the status quo. In every point of history you have scenarios where conditions could vary from place to place. Mid-U.S. plantations tended to treat slaves better than plantations further south, but this didn't magically force the southern plantations to treat their slaves better; on the contrary, southern states tended to have better crops and higher yields along with richer sales (though much of that is due to the better climes). Hell, the societal integration of blacks that occurred in the post-war north didn't stop the Jim Crow laws from being passed in the south. The absolute disdain for the mistreatment of Jews in Germany didn't stop the U.S. government from putting Japanese citizens in internment camps during WWII. This is the problem with your argument: your entire premise rests on the idea that good will always creates good will, when history says that this is absolutely untrue. I have no doubt that there are plenty of hypercorps that actually do try to be good to their indentures. Some might not even do indenturing at all, instead hiring infugees on as full employees. I'm just saying that this is the exception, not the rule. In the end, those hypercorps that do these sorts of good will efforts likely have lower output (because their workers work less hours), higher liabilities (because they have to pay salaries) and a less efficient employee rotation (because they aren't willing to throw away worthless indentures). This gives them a disadvantage. It is only through regulations that these sorts of practices would likely be eliminated. You can see evidence of this in China today. China's market is almost completely unregulated, and mass-production factories have formed sweatshops as a result. Without regulation, there is no urge to shift toward better pay, less hours or worker's rights. Businesses that have tried that model have failed miserably (I can't remember the name of it, but there was a toy factory that went under only because it tried to give its employees a health care package). This exploitation creates an edge that forces all businesses to use exploitation in order to compete. Such is the nature of business. Besides, not all of your proposed advantages are necessarily valid. I don't see better treatment for the clanking masses having a low overhead considering that the population is so damn big. Hypercorps that utilize the clanking masses do so with large quantities, not just a few at a time. Giving an indenture force 2,000 strong just a day off results in 48,000 man-hours of lost labor. That's hardly a small sum. Furthermore, assured loyalty and PR with the clanking masses is probably worthless when the clanking masses will likely never be wealthy enough to be customers themselves. Hell, they probably couldn't even afford to eat if they were sleeved in biomorphs. Lastly, you'd have to show me how you could produce heightened efficiency from workers given more time off and more relaxing conditions over working them at all times then replacing them when they can't take anymore. The latter is crueler, but probably pulls a better payoff, especially considering that the poverty-stricken in the system always have plenty of people out looking for an indenture contract.
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Sat, 2011-12-17 09:33
Cifer Cifer's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
That said, I would find it heavily bizarre that a Martian rebellion and large amounts of negative public opinion would form around a friendly indenture atmosphere, and a society that is receptive to the clanking masses.
I don't think I've ever talked about a "friendly" atmosphere, just about one that doesn't encourage foremen to name themselves Clankercrusher McIndentfiend.
Decivre wrote:
As I've asked before, would we be having this discussion if we were talking about any other discrimination topic? If we were talking child labor, would you be protesting that children were handled with care when they worked in coal mines? If we were talking woman's suffrage, would the counter-proposal be that women's lives were great when they didn't have the same rights as men?
I'm really not sure where you're going there. Did I ever say that indenture was "nice"? Of course indenture is exploitation of a person in a plight! Still, there's no reason to make it pointlessly cruel beyond what's profitable.
Decivre wrote:
Incorrect. The only thing my premise hinges on is the assumption that mistreatment of indentures and the clanking masses is the status quo. In every point of history you have scenarios where conditions could vary from place to place. Mid-U.S. plantations tended to treat slaves better than plantations further south, but this didn't magically force the southern plantations to treat their slaves better; on the contrary, southern states tended to have better crops and higher yields along with richer sales (though much of that is due to the better climes).
It would have forced them to, had slaves been allowed to travel and choose their employer.
Decivre wrote:
I have no doubt that there are plenty of hypercorps that actually do try to be good to their indentures. Some might not even do indenturing at all, instead hiring infugees on as full employees. I'm just saying that this is the exception, not the rule. In the end, those hypercorps that do these sorts of good will efforts likely have lower output (because their workers work less hours), higher liabilities (because they have to pay salaries) and a less efficient employee rotation (because they aren't willing to throw away worthless indentures). This gives them a disadvantage. It is only through regulations that these sorts of practices would likely be eliminated. You can see evidence of this in China today. China's market is almost completely unregulated, and mass-production factories have formed sweatshops as a result. Without regulation, there is no urge to shift toward better pay, less hours or worker's rights. Businesses that have tried that model have failed miserably (I can't remember the name of it, but there was a toy factory that went under only because it tried to give its employees a health care package). This exploitation creates an edge that forces all businesses to use exploitation in order to compete. Such is the nature of business. Besides, not all of your proposed advantages are necessarily valid. I don't see better treatment for the clanking masses having a low overhead considering that the population is so damn big. Hypercorps that utilize the clanking masses do so with large quantities, not just a few at a time. Giving an indenture force 2,000 strong just a day off results in 48,000 man-hours of lost labor. That's hardly a small sum. Furthermore, assured loyalty and PR with the clanking masses is probably worthless when the clanking masses will likely never be wealthy enough to be customers themselves. Hell, they probably couldn't even afford to eat if they were sleeved in biomorphs. Lastly, you'd have to show me how you could produce heightened efficiency from workers given more time off and more relaxing conditions over working them at all times then replacing them when they can't take anymore. The latter is crueler, but probably pulls a better payoff, especially considering that the poverty-stricken in the system always have plenty of people out looking for an indenture contract.
Giving an indenture force 2000 strong a day off results in 800 man-hours lost - thank you, simulspace with *60 time compression. If that day off comes after 2 weeks of work, you've just lost 0.1% productivity. And the idea has already been noted by Axel: unmotivated workers will meet quotas, but they won't exceed them. In any work environment where work isn't entirely tacted (via conveyor belt), it will be possible to raise productivity.
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Sat, 2011-12-17 11:18
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Cifer wrote:
I don't think I've ever talked about a "friendly" atmosphere, just about one that doesn't encourage foremen to name themselves Clankercrusher McIndentfiend.
Cifer wrote:
I'm really not sure where you're going there. Did I ever say that indenture was "nice"? Of course indenture is exploitation of a person in a plight! Still, there's no reason to make it pointlessly cruel beyond what's profitable.
I don't see anything I've said as being pointlessly cruel. I've never claimed that hypercorps forced indentures to fight to the death, or randomly beat them for funsies. It's not about pointless cruelty, but rather cruel efficiency. Think of infomorph treatment as similar to the treatment of narrow AI (not AGI, though many probably treat AGI the same way). No one lets a narrow AI take breaks, vacation, or even cares what it feels. Indentures sign their right to an opinion away when they take up a contract. If they don't like it, there's always someone else to take their place. And in many ways, the treatment of narrow AI is the primary reason that indentures have to be treated with cruel efficiency. If you have to reduce the work-hours of your mass-labor force below 24/7, then suddenly an AI workforce seems like a better prospect. They aren't going to complain, aren't going to rest, and are going to have a constant output. If an indenture that live up to that expectation, they aren't worthwhile.
Cifer wrote:
It would have forced them to, had slaves been allowed to travel and choose their employer.
How would an indenture travel and choose its employer? Many indentures are in cold storage, where their minds aren't even active... they might as well be in a coma or dead. When their first chance to be alive since the Fall comes with a contract, they probably sign. It's either that or worry about the fact that you may never wake up again. Furthermore, the clanking masses don't have much of a chance to travel either. Do you know how much it must cost to catch a shuttle to the next hab? Probably more than you can afford, if you can't even afford your own case body. Furthermore, there isn't much choice... indenture demand is finite for any given hypercorp, and the need for indenture jobs among the masses is probably larger than the overall demand is. If you want a contract, you take the first one offered; because if you don't, someone else will and you're going to be waiting for the next one to crop up.
Cifer wrote:
Giving an indenture force 2000 strong a day off results in 800 man-hours lost - thank you, simulspace with *60 time compression. If that day off comes after 2 weeks of work, you've just lost 0.1% productivity. And the idea has already been noted by Axel: unmotivated workers will meet quotas, but they won't exceed them. In any work environment where work isn't entirely tacted (via conveyor belt), it will be possible to raise productivity.
800 man-hours isn't exactly a small number either, so simulspace isn't effective enough. If they could take a small enough break to result in 1 man-minute, then we're talking a worthwhile effort. As for productivity, they aren't expected to exceed quotas. Hell, with 24/7 work expected, their quotas are probably higher than they would be for a workforce that's treated well. If an indenture doesn't meet quota, his contract is lost and it goes to someone else. He doesn't get his reward, and all the effort he has already put forward is in vain. If that isn't a good enough motivator to keep people working, then nothing is.
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Mon, 2011-12-19 18:54
WooMod WooMod's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
As for productivity, they aren't expected to exceed quotas. Hell, with 24/7 work expected, their quotas are probably higher than they would be for a workforce that's treated well. If an indenture doesn't meet quota, his contract is lost and it goes to someone else. He doesn't get his reward, and all the effort he has already put forward is in vain. If that isn't a good enough motivator to keep people working, then nothing is.
It's not, it so very much is not. Actually motivating your work force is a whole beast more complex than simple reward/punishment schema, which pretty much do nothing. Rewards only work for mechanical tasks, the kind of shit you want an AI doing since you get consistent 24/7 output. Punishment is utterly and completely ineffective at motivating anything, we punish for the sake of sadism and control, not efficiency.
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Mon, 2011-12-19 19:28
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
WooMod wrote:
It's not, it so very much is not. Actually motivating your work force is a whole beast more complex than simple reward/punishment schema, which pretty much do nothing. Rewards only work for mechanical tasks, the kind of shit you want an AI doing since you get consistent 24/7 output. Punishment is utterly and completely ineffective at motivating anything, we punish for the sake of sadism and control, not efficiency.
There is no punishment here. Again, no one gets beaten, no one gets tortured. If you fail to meet quota, you are replaced. Like replacing a faulty cog in a machine; we don't give cogs breaks, we don't give it a pay raise, and we don't beat them... we just replace the cog with a working one, and start the machine back up. Indentures are cogs of a hypercorporate machine. Nothing more.
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Tue, 2011-12-20 01:42
WooMod WooMod's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
There is no punishment here. Again, no one gets beaten, no one gets tortured. If you fail to meet quota, you are replaced.
Being put back into cold storage because you didn't meet quota is definitely a punishment.
Quote:
Like replacing a faulty cog in a machine; we don't give cogs breaks, we don't give it a pay raise, and we don't beat them... we just replace the cog with a working one, and start the machine back up. Indentures are cogs of a hypercorporate machine. Nothing more.
Humans make for inefficient cogs.
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Tue, 2011-12-20 04:59
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
WooMod wrote:
Being put back into cold storage because you didn't meet quota is definitely a punishment.
Depends on the context. If you refuse to pay your electric bill, and the electric company shuts off your power, did they punish you, or simply follow through with what is necessary when it comes to people who refuse to pay their bills? It's not a punishment, it's simply about fulfilling a contract. If you fail to fulfill your end, they will stop trying to fulfill theirs.
WooMod wrote:
Humans make for inefficient cogs.
Modern humans? Certainly. But take a human, eliminate hunger, exhaustion and the need for sleep... and suddenly we become far better cogs than we are right now.
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Tue, 2011-12-20 13:44
WooMod WooMod's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
Depends on the context. If you refuse to pay your electric bill, and the electric company shuts off your power, did they punish you, or simply follow through with what is necessary when it comes to people who refuse to pay their bills? It's not a punishment, it's simply about fulfilling a contract. If you fail to fulfill your end, they will stop trying to fulfill theirs.
That's like saying you being put in prison or killed by the police is "simply fulfilling a contract". Your threatening someone with negative reinforcement if they don't comply, in other words punishing them.
Quote:
Modern humans? Certainly. But take a human, eliminate hunger, exhaustion and the need for sleep... and suddenly we become far better cogs than we are right now.
Nonsense, a human being is an inefficient cog because of it's core programming, it's not what there designed to do. Repetitive mechanical work isn't mentally stimulating to a human ego, and thus engenders a low level of motivation and investment in the worl.
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Tue, 2011-12-20 14:06
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
WooMod wrote:
That's like saying you being put in prison or killed by the police is "simply fulfilling a contract". Your threatening someone with negative reinforcement if they don't comply, in other words punishing them.
You signed a contract that says the police can kill or imprison you? That was a terrible idea. I would have recommended negotiating better terms. It's actually quite different. An indenture contract is completely voluntary. You cannot be entered into one against your will, unless you are a prisoner or an uplift/AGI and the contract is for your existence. If you don't want to be thrown back into backup for failing to meet your end of the contract, refuse to sign and it shall be done. No punishment exists, outside of what you consent to.
WooMod wrote:
Nonsense, a human being is an inefficient cog because of it's core programming, it's not what there designed to do. Repetitive mechanical work isn't mentally stimulating to a human ego, and thus engenders a low level of motivation and investment in the worl.
Probably not, but their minds will never get tired doing it. An infomorph or synthmorph indenture can never fall asleep on the job or pass out from fatigue. Plus, one can potentially engender attention or focus from their workers through the use of narcoalgorithm software (and it does not have to be addictive). The repetitive motions may remove all sense of investment, but a hypercorp doesn't care if their mass labor is invested in their work anyways. They just want it done. The problem with all current research regarding employees is that they simply do not take into account tireless human workers... because there are no tireless human workers. Factoring that into the equation has the potential to change the game dramatically.
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Tue, 2011-12-20 18:55
Cifer Cifer's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
You signed a contract that says the police can kill or imprison you? That was a terrible idea. I would have recommended negotiating better terms.
It's called a social contract - you agree to be bound by the laws of a country in exchange for everyone else living there being (hopefully) bound by the same laws. If you don't like it, most modern countries allow you to leave and search for a better deal elsewhere. Other than that, I'm wondering whether Hypercorp Management has really unlearned everything business science has provided over the last few decades. I'm referencing Frey/Osterloh, Lazear and Adams here, from what little I recall of their theories when I heard them at university. Motivating your workers with incentives [i]will[/i] have better results than punishing them or just switching them out (which obviously is a form of punishment, just like prolonging their indenture), especially since there is hardly any job that doesn't benefit from an employee with some experience working it rather than a trainee: Mining operations will have a higher yield and fewer costly accidents, door systems will have faster and more extensive screenings, construction work is going to be quicker and, again, less accident-prone - which is rather helpful if an indenture could easily damage something a thousand times more valuable than the Case he's working to get hold of. As WooMod said: If what you really want is a cog, why aren't you using a cog? No transhuman is ever going to be as efficient a cog as a cog is. You're using a transhuman because the job probably requires at least some thinking, even if it's just a little. And an indenture that's motivated properly just thinks better. There's no way around that. And finally, regarding the civil rights that may come to pass in 300 years - or maybe a bit sooner as societal changes have always accelerated in pace: What your corporate execs are ignoring is that [i]they're going to be around for that.[/i] And so will be the present-day indentures. That's the fun thing about immortality: You can't offload your debts onto the next generation. Anything that will have bad consequences somewhen in the future means that these bad consequences are going to hit [i]you[/i]. And I'd say just outright ignoring that makes the hypercorp elite with their Mentons, Exalts and Sylphs aided by dedicated AIs and expert systems as cliche and uninteresting comic book villains as the ever-present Jovian overlords twirling their totally-not-Stalin mustaches.
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Wed, 2011-12-21 03:25
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Cifer wrote:
It's called a social contract - you agree to be bound by the laws of a country in exchange for everyone else living there being (hopefully) bound by the same laws. If you don't like it, most modern countries allow you to leave and search for a better deal elsewhere.
Social contract is an intellectual framework by which laws are explained, not an actual concept used in lawmaking, so it's not necessarily valid. Plus, it falls apart in certain contexts. The very concept of social contract requires that all parties enter into it willingly, so any legal elements that do not fit such a model technically do not count as social contract. Drug law, taxation, and theocratic recognition are three such examples. Slavery also fits the bill, though indentured servitude is a gray area.
Cifer wrote:
Other than that, I'm wondering whether Hypercorp Management has really unlearned everything business science has provided over the last few decades. I'm referencing Frey/Osterloh, Lazear and Adams here, from what little I recall of their theories when I heard them at university. Motivating your workers with incentives [i]will[/i] have better results than punishing them or just switching them out (which obviously is a form of punishment, just like prolonging their indenture), especially since there is hardly any job that doesn't benefit from an employee with some experience working it rather than a trainee: Mining operations will have a higher yield and fewer costly accidents, door systems will have faster and more extensive screenings, construction work is going to be quicker and, again, less accident-prone - which is rather helpful if an indenture could easily damage something a thousand times more valuable than the Case he's working to get hold of.
Hypercorps aren't necessarily ignoring business science from the modern day, but they probably are applying business science that has yet to exist. Indentured servitude hasn't existed in the United States for 3 centuries, and no real sociological studies have been applied to its efficiency or effectiveness. Furthermore, most business studies regarding the incentivization of employees are likely only considering companies that actually want to reduce employee turnover and increase long-term efficiency with the employees that they have. Indenture programs are the exact opposite; hypercorps benefit when employee turnover is highest and efficiency is relatively static. After all, an indenture who leaves forfeits their contract reward, and that means lower employee costs. As for training, you've excluded skillsoft as an integral component of hypercorp business. Indentures likely never have a "training phase", because they are loaded up with necessary skillsofts on their first day of the job, providing them all the protocols and skills that are necessary for working the assembly lines and mines. Training time becomes completely unnecessary.
Cifer wrote:
As WooMod said: If what you really want is a cog, why aren't you using a cog? No transhuman is ever going to be as efficient a cog as a cog is. You're using a transhuman because the job probably requires at least some thinking, even if it's just a little. And an indenture that's motivated properly just thinks better. There's no way around that.
Not really. You're using an indenture because the cost to either develop AI software or contract it from another source is far higher than the cost to simply use unskilled labor. It's that simple. Plus, developing that AI software takes time, while hiring an indenture has instantaneous payoff. Furthermore, indenture contracts get the impoverish off the streets and into employment, helping to mitigate the ever-growing population of the clanking masses. There are plenty of benefits to using indentures as opposed to AI workers. On the other hand, it is this replacement effect that gives hypercorps incentive to treat them so harshly. An indenture is expected to work as hard as an AI would. This is made far easier when you are put in a body that can't tire and your mind is incapable of exhaust, but it is still a high expectation.
Cifer wrote:
And finally, regarding the civil rights that may come to pass in 300 years - or maybe a bit sooner as societal changes have always accelerated in pace: What your corporate execs are ignoring is that [i]they're going to be around for that.[/i] And so will be the present-day indentures. That's the fun thing about immortality: You can't offload your debts onto the next generation. Anything that will have bad consequences somewhen in the future means that these bad consequences are going to hit [i]you[/i]. And I'd say just outright ignoring that makes the hypercorp elite with their Mentons, Exalts and Sylphs aided by dedicated AIs and expert systems as cliche and uninteresting comic book villains as the ever-present Jovian overlords twirling their totally-not-Stalin mustaches.
I agree, discrimination and the exploitation of the poor seem like comic book clichés. So does racism, the conspiracy idea that we never landed on the moon, or the notion that the president of the United States is the antichrist. Yet, these are things that actually exist. It seems nuts when you think about it, but reality tends to break the mold with regards to how we want to define it. And you're right; society has to adjust to the idea of immortality when it comes about. It will probably change how we think about people in every conceivable way. But that won't happen overnight. It might not happen in a few years. Hell, when immortality hits, it's likely not to even change the attitudes of people within a century or two. Most importantly, it's not going to fix humanities flaws and issues. Racism and sexism might end when both are as changeable as the color of your car, but discrimination isn't going to go away. Greed, xenophobia, and all the evils that society faces now will simply take on different forms and mannerisms in a world where we count our lives in eons. But yes, I'd like to think that people of the future wouldn't be so soulless as to oppress people in renewed indenture programs. I'd like to think that Napoleon isn't foolish enough to wage a land war against Russia. I'd like to think that the Japanese Empire wouldn't be idiotic enough to draw the United States into a World War they've stayed out of by invading Hawaii. I'd like to think that African warlords wouldn't be such monsters that they would subject the people of their land to brutal oppression, torture and rape. These are things I'd like to think. But if there's one thing that you can learn from humanity, it's that you will always underestimate what they can be capable of, both good and bad.
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Wed, 2011-12-21 09:52
LatwPIAT LatwPIAT's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Quote:
As for training, you've excluded skillsoft as an integral component of hypercorp business. Indentures likely never have a "training phase", because they are loaded up with necessary skillsofts on their first day of the job, providing them all the protocols and skills that are necessary for working the assembly lines and mines. Training time becomes completely unnecessary.
To nitpick, using indentures with skillsofts doesn't seem to be that beneficial when (rules-wise), skillsofts cannot give any form of benefit to a (trans)human that it can't give to an AI. If an off-the-shelf AI can be told to work on something with the same efficiency that a transhuman, there's almost no benefit in giving the work to indentured info-refugees.
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Wed, 2011-12-21 13:49
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
LatwPIAT wrote:
To nitpick, using indentures with skillsofts doesn't seem to be that beneficial when (rules-wise), skillsofts cannot give any form of benefit to a (trans)human that it can't give to an AI. If an off-the-shelf AI can be told to work on something with the same efficiency that a transhuman, there's almost no benefit in giving the work to indentured info-refugees.
Software, including AI, isn't going to be sold to businesses for any given purpose. If you've ever bought a program like Adobe Acrobat, you know that there's a personal license, and a business license. A personal license is for limited use to one person, while a business license is expandable for multiple uses... and they are far more expensive. This gets the company bigger profits for the use of their software in business purposes. So when you buy a stock AI and try to load it in a crapload of bots to start up an assembly line, you better bet your ass that you're going to get a message from Exotech that you've exceeded the limits of your license, and must purchase a business license or face lawsuits and fines. And boy, that's gonna hurt your bottom line. So then there's internal development. A mining company could hire programmers to make them mining AI, thus cutting out the need to share their profits with another hypercorp. However, programming that AI takes time, and it's time that you could be using mining out that ore you want. Not to mention that you have to pay those programmers to make that AI, and potentially pay them long-term to make sure there are no kinks in the software. That hurts the bottom line, AND puts a delay in your project... which hurts your bottom line as well. Now there's indentures. An indenture can start work right away. No need for fussing and whatnot, just working. You can start by hiring the indentures that have the skills necessary for mining... looking up their past experiences before offering them a contract. Certain jobs might not need any experience at all to learn (what is there to learn with hitting rocks in a mine? it's not like you have to teach them safety in their synth bodies), so you can even potentially take the unskilled and throw them in, perhaps giving them a reduced quota for a time to allow them to situate. Hell, you get the contract written right, and any time spent training doesn't even count towards fulfilling the contract! Either way, the work comes near-instantly, and the payoff begins right away. Plus, a contracted AI with a contracted skillsoft is going to cost you for both pieces of software; but if you purchase just the skillsoft, you can probably get away with using it on new indentures until they have learned the skill themselves, and then swap it to another indenture without having to extend your contract. But the benefits don't stop there. The biochauvinists within the Consortium are disgusted by the clanker ghettos, and getting them off the streets would probably be a plus in their book (and those biochauvinists are potential contracts and customers... you want them happy). So hiring those indentures becomes a charity work in the eyes of the people that can pay you. It can also be a means for profit. If a hab has an infestation of the clanking masses, they may be willing to pay you in order to convince you to take some. AND you still get that good PR (not amongst the clanking masses, though). Win-win. You can even cheap out on their reward, granting you some more cost-cutting options. After all, screwing the impoverish is far easier than trying to cheap out on an influential hypercorp. Maybe you contract multiple indentures to work for a reward of travel, then ship them in bulk. Maybe you contract them to work for the reward of a new morph, then buy the blueprints and fab it yourself. The possibilities are out there. Indentures are a cheap and effective option. Lastly, I think you guys are seriously underestimating the desperation of the indentures themselves. Sure, a human makes a terrible cog... but a desperate man can do amazing things in order to achieve something. Put it all in context; an indenture is someone who was so desperate, so in need of help that they were willing to [b]sell themselves into slavery[/b]. I've read plenty about the horrors of slavery and indentured servitude, and I have to say that I would never want to be subjected to that. I would sooner sell my body than I would sell my freedom. Yet these people have gone that extra mile. A normal employee might make a terrible cog, but a desperate man is a man possessed, capable of near-anything. So there's your motivator folks. Desperation.
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Wed, 2011-12-21 18:48
Cifer Cifer's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Programming an AI or licensing it is a financial nightmare, yet the licenses of skillsofts are so lax that you can transfer them to other workers as soon as the first generation is done learning? Biochauvinistic societies are happy to pay hypercorps a nice sum of money for them to take the clankers on, yet they don't object when it's the corps that hand them their first body and turn them loose on the streets in the first place? The skills needed to work are so simple that positive motivation isn't helpful, yet the tasks still require a human intellect to do them rather than a simple program? This argumentation sounds rather self-contradictory, as does the idea that people who have been along for the entire published timeline (assuming someone was 50 years old at 60 BF, he would have snatched the longevity treatments at 40 BF aged 70 and be 120 years old in 10 AF) wouldn't be [i]quite[/i] wary about any unforeseen consequences of their actions that may develop some years in their own future. So... not buying it.
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Wed, 2011-12-21 20:30
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Cifer wrote:
Programming an AI or licensing it is a financial nightmare, yet the licenses of skillsofts are so lax that you can transfer them to other workers as soon as the first generation is done learning?
When it's limited on a per-user basis, yes. A skillsoft program could theoretically be used on one indenture for a period of time, then unloaded and granted to another indenture without necessarily violating the license terms. It's not quite the same as running an unlimited number of AI at the same time, but more akin to running that AI, shutting it down, then running it again without being forced to pay more money. So, if you bring on indentures in waves of 10, with a total workforce of 2000, and provide them with skillsofts on their first few weeks of work before the next wave, you only have to pay for 10 licenses at a time. On the other hand, you would have to pay for 2000 AI licenses for the same effect. I can see that being a big difference.
Cifer wrote:
Biochauvinistic societies are happy to pay hypercorps a nice sum of money for them to take the clankers on, yet they don't object when it's the corps that hand them their first body and turn them loose on the streets in the first place?
My guess is that the mindset of a biochauvinistic person is to believe that clankers don't [i]have[/i] to form ghettos, be a blight on society or drain the resources of a given hab. They choose to, and for that reason they don't deserve respect. It is similar to the opposition against the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. A common mentality then was that African Americans "deserved what they got". It is quite common for those with a discriminatory bias to blame those they discriminate against for all the world's ills. Go surf an anti-zionist site on the web if you don't believe me. In that regard, they probably blame the clanking masses rather than the hypercorps for the problems of society. After all, the hypercorps provide all that is good in the Consortium. It's kinda like when Herman Cain told the world "if you aren't employed and don't have a home, it's your fault". He ignored all the issues that underlied the economic crisis and the employment downturn, and squarely blamed the victims for the crime. Such is the nature of bias and ignorance.
Cifer wrote:
The skills needed to work are so simple that positive motivation isn't helpful, yet the tasks still require a human intellect to do them rather than a simple program?
Some might, most won't. Positive motivation is just worthless because indentures aren't expected to be motivated. If they don't work right, they don't finish out their contract... and the last thing that an indenture wants to do is fail to achieve their contract and lose out on the very reward they are working on.
Cifer wrote:
This argumentation sounds rather self-contradictory, as does the idea that people who have been along for the entire published timeline (assuming someone was 50 years old at 60 BF, he would have snatched the longevity treatments at 40 BF aged 70 and be 120 years old in 10 AF) wouldn't be [i]quite[/i] wary about any unforeseen consequences of their actions that may develop some years in their own future.
Because surely only one atrocity has ever occurred in the entirety of civilization; humanity always apparently learns from its mistakes and history never repeats itself. You expect far too much from transhumanity in 10 AF. No matter how modified they may be, they still have all the character flaws of humanity.
Cifer wrote:
So... not buying it.
That's fine.
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Mon, 2011-12-26 21:00
WooMod WooMod's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
But yes, I'd like to think that people of the future wouldn't be so soulless as to oppress people in renewed indenture programs.
Then why do you keep trying to justify it? I think it makes perfect sense there doing the whole indenture thing. On some level, they want to save humanity after the the fall. But there hypercapitalism memes won't just let them resleeve people for free. On an entirely different level, there the ruling class and thus work to oppress the masses. Which the indenture system does. It's just not because it's efficient, but for fall more human reasons.
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Tue, 2011-12-27 02:54
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
WooMod wrote:
Then why do you keep trying to justify it?
Why do you keep trying to pretend that people are incapable of wrongdoing at all? Why do you have some ridiculous notion that the human race is without sin or flaw, and has never committed an atrocity in the whole of existence? Why do you want your post-apocalyptic transhuman fiction filled with hippies? I'm justifying it because according to the setting, it's happening. We can pretend that there are no indentures, but it's in the friggin' book. So unless you're telling me that it's a big blatant lie and there is no indenture program whatsoever (and maybe no exsurgent virus, no TITANs, and no weapons at all! after all, it's a peaceful system, no?), I'm guessing they exist in the setting.
WooMod wrote:
I think it makes perfect sense there doing the whole indenture thing. On some level, they want to save humanity after the the fall. But there hypercapitalism memes won't just let them resleeve people for free. On an entirely different level, there the ruling class and thus work to oppress the masses. Which the indenture system does. It's just not because it's efficient, but for fall more human reasons.
If that's the logic, then why did the indenture programs exist [b]20+ years before the fall even started[/b]?
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Mon, 2012-01-30 14:19
Michael Crichton Michael Crichton's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
If you get fired by a company today, do they have an obligation to make sure you have a place to stay? Hell, no!
If you work in a hazardous environment, they DO have an obligation to either provide transportation back to safety, or allow you sufficient time to arrange it. An ocean oil-rig worker who is fired isn't just tossed off the side of the platform, a logger working in a sub-arctic forest can't just be shoved out the gate of the camp, and a biosapient working on a corp-owned habitat probably couldn't simply be pitched out the airlock. If infomorphs have any rights at all, the currently running instance is probably considered to be "them", legally speaking, while the backup is just that, a backup. I think a fired indentured infomorph is likely required to be backed up at the point of firing. And when you think about it, that makes perfect sense from a "soulless calculating corporation" standpoint too: If someone screws up and squanders a few years of real-time effort and goes back to square one, you WANT them to remember it as a lesson both to themselves and others. For the same reason, potential indentures are probably backed up after every "job offer" too, to remind them that time is passing in the real world while they're sitting in cold storage, and don't they think it's a good idea to accept this contract being offered right now? As far as the mandatory psychosurgery, I have no problem believing it's legal. And with the level of technology in Eclipse Phase, it should be trivially easy to either tag sensitive memories for easy deletion, or set it up so that they don't get recorded in the infomorph's own memory at all, but in a secondary system that they can only access while employed.
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
The Civil War ignited when southern states declared the right of secession from the union and used violence to expel soldiers from forts in their territory. Lincoln refused to recognize this, and then used the attacks as a sign of aggression on their part to instigate the war. Slavery only really came into the picture later, to justify the war and to win support of the abolitionist voters who were much more present in the north than the south.
The southern states themselves made it very clear from the beginning that it was Lincoln's "hostility to slavery" in promising to prevent the expansion of said institution into new states that was the primary cause of secession: http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html . The other causes were minor in comparison, and only became exaggerated after Reconstruction to placate resentful southerners.
Decivre wrote:
I'm sure that most plantation owners didn't worry about a massive slave uprising when we still had slave states either...
And you would be wrong. Slavers lived in pretty much constant fear of "servile insurrection", and went to great lengths repressing anything they thought would lead to it: Everything from not allowing slaves to learn to read, to restricting the rights of free blacks, was predicated on that fear. Read up on the brutal suppression of American slaves and freedmen after Haiti's successful revolt, it's both depressing and enlightening.
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Mon, 2012-01-30 14:21
weaver95 weaver95's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Michael Crichton wrote:
And you would be wrong. Slavers lived in pretty much constant fear of "servile insurrection", and went to great lengths repressing anything they thought would lead to it: Everything from not allowing slaves to learn to read, to restricting the rights of free blacks, was predicated on that fear. Read up on the brutal suppression of American slaves and freedmen after Haiti's successful revolt, it's both depressing and enlightening.
Because I feel like going off on a tangent, don't forget to data mine current (and recent) day news stories for story ideas. The OWS protests, the GOP nomination fight(s) and the recent state of the union speech by the President...even the recent online SOPA/PIPA protests. these are all things useful to someone writing a campaign for Eclipse Phase. the conflict between the 'rights' of corporations and individuals and impact of that struggle on society at large is only going to be MORE important to the survivors in the EP universe. If you get stuck on how to run a Barsoomian protest, hit up the OWS twitter feeds and see if something jumps out at you.
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Mon, 2012-01-30 17:31
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Michael Crichton wrote:
If you work in a hazardous environment, they DO have an obligation to either provide transportation back to safety, or allow you sufficient time to arrange it. An ocean oil-rig worker who is fired isn't just tossed off the side of the platform, a logger working in a sub-arctic forest can't just be shoved out the gate of the camp, and a biosapient working on a corp-owned habitat probably couldn't simply be pitched out the airlock. If infomorphs have any rights at all, the currently running instance is probably considered to be "them", legally speaking, while the backup is just that, a backup. I think a fired indentured infomorph is likely required to be backed up at the point of firing. And when you think about it, that makes perfect sense from a "soulless calculating corporation" standpoint too: If someone screws up and squanders a few years of real-time effort and goes back to square one, you WANT them to remember it as a lesson both to themselves and others. For the same reason, potential indentures are probably backed up after every "job offer" too, to remind them that time is passing in the real world while they're sitting in cold storage, and don't they think it's a good idea to accept this contract being offered right now? As far as the mandatory psychosurgery, I have no problem believing it's legal. And with the level of technology in Eclipse Phase, it should be trivially easy to either tag sensitive memories for easy deletion, or set it up so that they don't get recorded in the infomorph's own memory at all, but in a secondary system that they can only access while employed.
Perhaps, but I stand by the fact that backups are a process that costs money, and hypercorps have no obligation to do such a process. Furthermore, hypercorp lawyers have likely already fought this issue tooth and nail to give hypercorps the right to simply delete the instantiation of a haughty indenture; today's topic is "are corporations people?", and 10 AFs topic is "must I backup a bad employee if he already has a backup?". I'm sure it's been pushed through by the hypercorporate council. That said, the other reason that they have no incentive to back an indenture up is that they simply have no need for said indenture anymore. Your company is likely to blacklist this indenture, and you or your bosses could probably care less if they get hired again... so there's no real need to back them up once more and give them a better understanding of the passage of time. You cease to care about their well-being the second that they refuse your offer or void their contract. They actually have a new implant in Panopticon that I can see being utilized by hypercorps for the purpose of indentures. It effectively prevents you from forming memories at all. However, one thing that could be problematic is if the indenture needs to comprehend something and record it to memory. For instance, learning a schematic that they will be assembling. In this case, I can see them using memory editing to erase it after the fact. The way I see it, if Foxconn can treat their workers [url=http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-16-2012/fear-factory]this badly[/url], then I can see hypercorps from the future treating their workers at least that bad, if not worse.
Michael Crichton wrote:
The southern states themselves made it very clear from the beginning that it was Lincoln's "hostility to slavery" in promising to prevent the expansion of said institution into new states that was the primary cause of secession: http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html . The other causes were minor in comparison, and only became exaggerated after Reconstruction to placate resentful southerners.
Exactly. Virtually all of the economic, social and political reasons for the Civil War were innately tied to slavery. The northern states' increase in trade tariffs and the heightening tax levies against the south were explicitly to encourage plantation owners to free their slaves. The rapid shifting of southern soldiers to posts distant from their homes was to encourage slave-owning families to give up their slaves in exchange for having their sons, husbands and brothers back. So yes, there were many reasons for the war, but most of them had to do with slavery.
Michael Crichton wrote:
And you would be wrong. Slavers lived in pretty much constant fear of "servile insurrection", and went to great lengths repressing anything they thought would lead to it: Everything from not allowing slaves to learn to read, to restricting the rights of free blacks, was predicated on that fear. Read up on the brutal suppression of American slaves and freedmen after Haiti's successful revolt, it's both depressing and enlightening.
Sort of. While slavers did suppress the rights of blacks regarding education, and bring them into the Christian faith, it was more to enforce their servility and not to prevent an insurrection. The Haitian revolution was the by-product of France's relatively weak military presence combined with economic troubles it was having due to the ongoing Second Hundred Years' War. Before the 1850s, the South had a strong military presence and was the backbone of the US economy. An insurrection was very unlikely. I think that the suppression of free blacks and literacy rights had more to do with the general disdain that the culture had for black men (after all, this suppression didn't end after blacks were freed... hence the Jim Crow Laws and segregation). Now that doesn't mean that the South wasn't wary of insurrection, but I wouldn't go so far as to claim they were in "constant fear" of one. At least no more than we are in "constant fear" of passenger plane-based terrorist attacks today. By the 1850s, they were more afraid of a Northern invasion intended to free the blacks than they were the idea that the blacks would free themselves.
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Tue, 2012-01-31 19:36
Michael Crichton Michael Crichton's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
I stand by the fact that backups are a process that costs money, and hypercorps have no obligation to do such a process.
Say that Joe Random is a free, non-indentured citizen who mortgages his morph to a hypercorp for some reason. Said morph is completely organic, so he's doing all his thinking on a brain almost indistinguishable from a modern human. Now, Joe is also a purist who doesn't believe in back-ups, and doesn't even have a stack. When he defaults on his debt and the repo-men come for his body, and he suddenly changes his mind about the no-backup thing, do they have an obligation to do so before erasing that mind?
Decivre wrote:
]While slavers did suppress the rights of blacks regarding education, and bring them into the Christian faith, it was more to enforce their servility and not to prevent an insurrection.
I don't have the books in front of me at the moment, but there's a wide variety of scholarly literature on the issue. While Stephen Budiansky's "The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War" mostly deals with reconstruction, there's enough pre-Civil War stuff in it to be a good start. So, I stand by my assertion. :-)
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Tue, 2012-01-31 21:31
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Michael Crichton wrote:
Say that Joe Random is a free, non-indentured citizen who mortgages his morph to a hypercorp for some reason. Said morph is completely organic, so he's doing all his thinking on a brain almost indistinguishable from a modern human. Now, Joe is also a purist who doesn't believe in back-ups, and doesn't even have a stack. When he defaults on his debt and the repo-men come for his body, and he suddenly changes his mind about the no-backup thing, do they have an obligation to do so before erasing that mind?
Tough to say. If they make Mr. Random sign a waiver at the time he signed the mortgage agreement, it's very possible that they [i]don't[/i] have that obligation. It might have only meant a couple extra cred in his pocket at the time, but it also means that his backup is no longer pre-paid... and that's on his head.
Michael Crichton wrote:
I don't have the books in front of me at the moment, but there's a wide variety of scholarly literature on the issue. While Stephen Budiansky's "The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War" mostly deals with reconstruction, there's enough pre-Civil War stuff in it to be a good start. So, I stand by my assertion. :-)
Fair enough :D
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Wed, 2012-02-01 15:08
Michael Crichton Michael Crichton's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre - I have the perfect compromise: Let's say that the corps are either required to do pre-termination backups, or do so out of the goodness of their hearts, BUT they also charge the unlucky ex-employee for the service, leaving them with an additional debt they have to pay if they ever get resurrected. If they inflate the price enough, then even if only a tiny fraction of ex-indentured are able to pay, they still make back more than it cost to do the backups. You get your soulless corporate greed, Axel the Chimeric gets a system with some tiny semblance of respect for sapient rights. Everyone's equally oppressed! Except the hypercorps, of course.
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Thu, 2012-02-02 11:47
Lilith Lilith's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Sounds like the most likely outcome to me. :)
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Thu, 2012-02-02 23:20
The Doctor The Doctor's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Decivre wrote:
Perhaps, but I stand by the fact that backups are a process that costs money, and hypercorps have no obligation to do such a process.
One could make the argument that if a hypercorp cannot be trusted to back up its workforce as part of a disaster recovery plan, then they cannot be trusted to back up their sensitive corporate data, either (be it financial information, source code, intelligence, or anything else). That hypercorp would be at a serious disadvantage, reputation-wise in the marketplace.
Decivre wrote:
Furthermore, hypercorp lawyers have likely already fought this issue tooth and nail to give hypercorps the right to simply delete the instantiation of a haughty indenture; today's topic is "are corporations people?", and 10 AFs topic is "must I backup a bad employee if he already has a backup?". I'm sure it's been pushed through by the hypercorporate council.
The argument could also be made that if the hypercorp council wrote the laws, there would be no need for lawyers to defend it. He who has the gold makes the rules, after all.
Decivre wrote:
That said, the other reason that they have no incentive to back an indenture up is that they simply have no need for said indenture anymore.
Even informorphs require time to get up to speed when a corporation boots them. It takes time to learn the system, become familiar with the codebase, go through the briefing virtuals and corporate architecture bootcamp VR... it might be just a single wall calendar day spent in time-compressed VR, but that is a day of value not being provided to the company.
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Sat, 2012-02-04 09:24
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: So I've been thinking... What about the "Average Joe"?
Michael Crichton wrote:
Decivre - I have the perfect compromise: Let's say that the corps are either required to do pre-termination backups, or do so out of the goodness of their hearts, BUT they also charge the unlucky ex-employee for the service, leaving them with an additional debt they have to pay if they ever get resurrected. If they inflate the price enough, then even if only a tiny fraction of ex-indentured are able to pay, they still make back more than it cost to do the backups. You get your soulless corporate greed, Axel the Chimeric gets a system with some tiny semblance of respect for sapient rights. Everyone's equally oppressed! Except the hypercorps, of course.
As I've already said before, I have no doubt that the level of ethics that any given hypercorp has is going to vary from group to group. Some will be soulless and uncaring, others will be humane and motivated to improve the human condition. I'm just saying that benevolence isn't a standard. In fact, we already see this today. Sure, there are probably plenty of Chinese businesses that are benevolent and do much to improve the well-being of their workers. But many don't. And in the US, we'd like to believe that our corporations want us to be unionized, want to improve our wages, and want us to have a beneficial standard for our work... but many don't. I mean hell, we have workers who get 35-hour shifts and are forced to live in cramped dorms in today's workplace; and the only suicide intervention methods used are catching nets for when they jump. Do we really believe that the future of Eclipse Phase is going to be much better? And really, why would it be? Eclipse Phase is post-apocalyptic fiction. It's not suppose to be a beautiful or idealistic future for the human race. It's suppose to be what the future would look like 10 years after the destruction of Earth. It's suppose to be a future where man built digital gods, and was rewarded with a conflagration of nanoweaponry and death. It's a future where the two largest political blocs of the system are a corporate-run puppet democracy and a bioconservative totalitarian state. Of course, that's probably the point of it all. After all, the fun in a post-apocalyptic setting is all in the clean up, and if there wasn't such a nasty mess, there'd be nothing for the player characters, or anyone else for that matter, to fix. The only direction the system can go from this point is up (or extinction, if you want to be a sourpuss about it). Who knows? Maybe by AF 20, indentures will be a unionized force and a revolution will install a new Republic in the Jovian sector. Maybe the Factors will help usher in a new renaissance. Maybe the Prometheans will be able to go public, and the human race will be brought ever-closer to a smooth singularity. Until then, bring on the crapsack.
The Doctor wrote:
One could make the argument that if a hypercorp cannot be trusted to back up its workforce as part of a disaster recovery plan, then they cannot be trusted to back up their sensitive corporate data, either (be it financial information, source code, intelligence, or anything else). That hypercorp would be at a serious disadvantage, reputation-wise in the marketplace.
Their legitimate employees? Sure. The ones they are terminating? Not so much. Your backups while you are indentured are likely to be stored on hypercorporate property. Furthermore, if websites today have no legal obligation to retain your files after the termination of your account, I see no real reason that hypercorps in 10 AF have a legal obligation to retain your backups after the termination of your employment. Those are the breaks. We can make arguments about the ethics of the deletion of memories and backups, but I highly doubt that backups have any legal standing on the same level as full people... at least until they are instantiated.
The Doctor wrote:
The argument could also be made that if the hypercorp council wrote the laws, there would be no need for lawyers to defend it. He who has the gold makes the rules, after all.
Exactly. Hell, people already make the claim today that corporations rule the governments of the world. At least today there is no overt evidence of this. The Planetary Consortium is explicitly controlled by an alliance of hypercorps. There's very little veil pulled over the eyes of the common citizen regarding this, other than the puppet representatives.
The Doctor wrote:
Even informorphs require time to get up to speed when a corporation boots them. It takes time to learn the system, become familiar with the codebase, go through the briefing virtuals and corporate architecture bootcamp VR... it might be just a single wall calendar day spent in time-compressed VR, but that is a day of value not being provided to the company.
True, but that warm-up day might not be much time considering time-compression. You could be looking at a training period close to a week, but equivalent to almost 3 hours in actual time. Of course, this is all assuming that hypercorps don't simply use a skillsoft suite to give new employees all the info necessary to start working immediately.
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