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conulyWe're not told if they just rolled up and enslaved some percentage or all of the population, or if this is some sort of punishment for something somebody in his family or general vicinity is alleged to have done against the new space-y overlords, or if it's just a bit of bad luck that when he was a child his family needed cash to pay taxes or whatever and made the painful choice to sell off some of their extra children. I'm beginning to suspect we'll never get an answer to this, which is a pity because I think that would really affect my view of the worldbuilding.
But at any rate, he's a slave, all his comrades are enslaved, they'll blow up if they try todesert escape. The evil military of the evil empire is controlling them through the triple threat of pain, instant death, and the intense loyalty they've been socialized to have for their teammates since childhood - no good running if you leave them behind, right? So far so good, but it still seems that this is an amazingly error-prone and inefficient means of running a military. I mean, coercion is always an inefficient means of getting labor out of people, but it just strikes me as ultimately a bad plan, no matter how many failsafes you think you have, to put the job of subduing new worlds into the hands of the people who are themselves suffering in a very personal way from the time you conquered their world. It sounds like the kind of thing that works right up until the very minute it doesn't and when it stops working, as it's bound to, sooner or later, the fallout will be spectacular and possibly literal.
I don't think the powers that be have adequately thought this through, is all.
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But at any rate, he's a slave, all his comrades are enslaved, they'll blow up if they try to
I don't think the powers that be have adequately thought this through, is all.
Meet some of the child goddesses of Nepal (Photos)
Girls Enter the Boys’ World of Flipping
The British Victorians who became Muslims
Where an Entire Day’s Worth of Food Came From
A Secret Cupid Is Emerging From a 17th-Century Vermeer
What Ever Happened to the Beetheads?
These leather-clad bikers will do whatever it takes to make abused kids feel safe
A knitted representation of how much men talk
The Tenants’ Rights Movement Is Expanding Beyond Big Cities
HUD Rule Targeting Immigrant Families Could Evict 55,000 Children
US births lowest in 3 decades despite improving economy (Yeah, with the coming climate apocalypse, and the ongoing dystopia, I'm shocked. Anyway, this is probably a good thing for the environment, but a bad thing for our economy in 20+ years, so let's stop being stupid about immigrants and especially refugees right now, okay?)
South Korea's latest big export: Jobless college graduates
How glass skyscrapers took over the world–and why we need to stop building them
How Brazil's culture wars are being waged in classrooms
Why copying the populist right isn’t going to save the left
New York medical examiner testifies chokehold led to Eric Garner's death
Trump admin is denying citizenship to some children of same-sex couples (Outrageous.)
The Story My Male Editors Kept Killing
I used to think America would age out of racism. What was I thinking?
Does being tough on crime actually deter crime?
The boy abducted to guide blind beggars in Nigeria
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