IC - Questions and Answers

[sythyry]

Perhaps I have spent too long on some Herethroy farmers who aren't even traff. So, I shall answer questions to-day. Perhaps I shall answer them wisely and well, perhaps flippantly and falsely, and, if you are very lucky, you or I will be able to tell which I did.

But beware! If you ask me a question, I may ask one back, which you are morally obliged to answer as well as I answered yours, if not better or worse!

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Indentured servitude does exist in the World Tree. Draconian punishment in general is typical, especially for non-primes.

I think you can separate the 'employer of last resort' angle from the 'advance against future earnings' angle. It's called 'garnishing wages' -- you don't forgive the debt, you just defer it until they can pay. Not until they *want* to pay, until they *can* pay.

Then the threat isn't 'do this or we toss you off the branch', it's 'do this or don't do this and still be in debt'. If the other choice is *real* then it's not slavery.

All you need to keep people from gaming the system is for option B to be unattractive. You don't need to punish every crime without fail, you just need to make it so that crime doesn't pay in general, so that people respect the law.

...also, defining exile as useless if it's possible for people to come back is pretty much saying that you're really executing them when you 'exile' them and just trying to pretend that they'll survive. x.x

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

That sounds reasonable enough, re: "make it so that crime doesn't pay in general, so that people respect the law."

As for exile being useless... Hmm.

It's effective against law-abiding people, but if they are law abiding, they wouldn't get exiled.

Magic might make possible a more effective exile though! Say, if you took some kind of link from people who were to be exiled, then gave that to a guardian spell and told the spell not to allow them back into the city, then exile could be effective and not require banishment to some Other Part of the Worldtree.

Which is fine by me, IMO.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Or make them eat a maraleni berry, so that if they ever got within a few dozen miles of the city, everything they did would be watched. That would encourage them to stay away, and make it easy to deport them again if they did come back.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Hm, do they have access to these?

Wouldn't there be fear that maraleni spreading to other cities might by default make any exiles become suspect? They don't necessarily have to actually be there, just the rumor of it might cause exiles to be rounded up and thrown out.