Topic: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Kenny (and anyone else), I'm still trying to clean up my slavery scene set in the distant future.

I originally chose shovelling truckloads of rich topsoil as the slave task for my two characters because I wanted it to be backbreaking, sweaty work in an insanely hot warehouse/spaceport environment near the Imperial palace. I considered having them load or unload ships with other cargo, but felt that the entire process of moving pallets full of goods from inside a warehouse into a ship's cargo hold or back out could be entirely automated by installing repulsors and a computer in every pallet. The pallets could pretty much move themselves.

I tried to justify dirt as the choice as it can easily get into any exposed repulsor mechanisms, preventing full automation. However, once I switch to four-wheeled utility carts for the soil, automation again becomes a possibility, albeit with the requirement for ongoing maintenance of the automated equipment in a dust-chocked environment. I originally kidnapped 60 people in an earlier chapter (a reasonable number of people on an instellar transport), who are now spread out throughout the spaceport toiling away. I feel the immediate scene works best with two guards, so twelve slaves in one warehouse seemed like a reasonable number for them to guard. I should add that as soon as you put humans to work in that hothouse, you need electric fans (and tons of water) to keep them from dropping dead immediately. The fans would definitely kick up a ton of added dust.

The options seem to be:

a) Say something like "Using AI-driven equipment to scoop and load soil aboard ships was simply less economical than feeding synthetic slop to slaves due to the high cost of buying, incessantly maintaining, and replacing machinery that could readily operate in a dust-chocked environment."

b) Put enough "droids" to work (100?) shovelling and loading dirt that it requires a sizeable team of slaves just for the maintenance (cleaning dust/dirt out of the exposed parts of the machines).

Technically, I think the idea of having to constantly maintain automated equipment in that environment could be virtually eliminated by simply sealing exposed joints/circuits with flexible material, like rubber or even Saran Wrap (TM). :-) So, really, neither option is truly reaslistic.

Obviously, in that distant future, the cost of "feeding synthetic slop to slaves" could be as little as I want, therefore potentially cheaper than automation. That suggests option a.

Thoughts?

Thanks.
Dirk

Quote Post 1

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

What a monster! Topsoil, however, is only a few feet deep, at most, but let's assume there is machinery at the digging site. I assumed so when I wrote the scene, but didn't bother to write about it, since it was outside Joseph's POV. You still need a way to get it in and out of a cargo hold. Hence, the canvas utility carts. It's really about the most cost-efficient way of getting it from a dirt pile in the warehouse, dumped there by dumptrucks, into the ship by either slaves digging vs robots digging that are maintained by humans. I also considered some form of tractor front loaders (baby brothers to the one in your picture) to lift the dirt from inside the warehouse and dump it into the carts that are then pushed into the cargo hold by slaves. I probably have to include them.

Any other suggestions on real back-breaking work that cheap slaves could do?

Thanks.
Dirk

Quote Post 2

3 Reply by Tom Oldman (edited by Tom Oldman 2015-02-16 16:10:04)

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Hi, Dirk.

Is this setting a penal colony? If so, then being sentenced to "hard labor" doesn't really NEED a reason to be labor. Back in the old days before the Uniform Code of Military Justice, service confinees were made to dig random holes all over the countryside and then go back and fill them up.  No rhyme or reason, they were just order to do it as punishment.

In your situation, they are apparently slaves, so they are either being punished, or there are other reasons for them to exist. If they are forced to do something that could be done by machines, so what? You could even drive home the fact that they are slaves by letting them see machines also doing their jobs. That would take the fight out of them.

~Tom

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Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Hi Tom. It's slave labor for a shipping company that is moving topsoil offworld to seed new colonies on other planets. The slave/shipping owner would want to do this in the most efficient (lowest cost) way possible. He doesn't care if slaves die in his service, although he's not intentionally killing anyone or making them do work as in a penal colony setting.

Dirk

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Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Ah, now I understand better, Dirk.  How about this:

The shipping company, wanting to do everything on the cheap, has slaves only because they are too cheap to buy machinery that IS protected from the dust (premise 'a', above). So, they use slaves instead because their maintenance costs less than new, protected, equipment.

~Tom

Quote Post 5

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Thanks, Tom. I agree option "a" seems better. Unless I can think of something else, I'm going to go with it. I think I have a little more leeway since it's space opera rather than hard-core sci-fi, so "entertainment" is also a factor, hence the many plotholes in the Star Wars series. I try to stamp out as many of them as I can, so I appreciate the help.

These days, a real sci-fi story set 2000 years in the future would be forced to pretty much automate everything, probably also excluding the insane flying taxi ride that takes place later in the chapter as the slaves try to escape. Self-driving vehicles are only about 10-20 years away, so I wonder what will happen to taxi and bus drivers at that point. Not to mention speeding tickets (a major source of revenue for some towns). A vehicle could pick up passengers, drive them where they want to go, accept Apple Pay, and then continue on to wherever the dispatcher programs it to go next. I've been on airport tramways that were fully automated almost ten years ago. I did wonder with those what happens when someone gets stuck halfway through a closing door. Yikes!

Dirk

Quote Post 6

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

As an aside, I worked for six months on a computer program involving the Jacksonville (FL) monorail. There are electronic & mechanical safeguards everywhere that refuse to let a train move if just one of them has tripped.  Getting a stuck door (by a foot, for instance) would cause the train to just sit there and electronically call for help. In that instance, all the doors pop back open.

In a lot of SF and Space Opera stories, displaced drivers end up piloting some sort of tramp freighter around asteroids looking for "the big deal".

Cheers,

~Tom

Quote Post 7

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Hi Dirk,

I'm coming into this discussion late, but I wanted to throw an idea out there. It might avoid writing an overly complicated rationale for why the shipping company is using slave labor versus machines.

What if they are selling the soil as some sort of "organic, untouched by machinery, virgin, etc" topsoil from Earth, and it sells at a premium? That would justify the use of humans. Of course, the company is using slaves instead of paid workers to increase their profit. People right now pay a premium for stuff like that (with a perceived purity to it, whether it's true or not). I'm sure that won't change in the future.

Cheers,
Don

Quote Post 8

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Thanks, Don. It's an interesting idea. Mama does do organic (see below).

I eventually decided to include a bunch of tractor front loaders inside the warehouse to scoop/dump the dirt into the utility carts. It's the warehouse-scale version of that monstrosity in Kenny's picture. I was trying to avoid using them because I wanted the work to be backbreaking. What I eventually settled for was "exhausting". It's still a nasty Warming-exposed work environment with cooling fans blowing dirt everywhere, so the filth and discomfort level is about the same.

Funnily enough, it turned out Mama does ship organic stuff. After I started rewriting to incorporate everyone's feedback, I added a couple of extra guided missiles during the taxi chase. They end up plowing into one of Mama's trucks labelled Organic Fertilizer. Naturally, the truck expodes in the middle of rush hour traffic sending manure raining down on everyone below.

Don, I included a chase through a crowded open-air market in response to your suggestion for a more interesting escape from the spaceport. Also added a paragraph addressing your questions about the terraforming process, and a part where Leonardo is about to kick Joseph and Paul out of the cab when the hunters show up. Turns out he lost his boys to his ex-wife so he finally decides to help them. Plus, let's face it, he's the crazed cabbie. He'd probably do it for kicks.

K, if you're reading, I added your suggestion of the pizza drone. Awesome! The cab buzzes past it and the drone gets whacked by a guided missile, exploding into "a fiery ball of metal, plastic, and mozzarella". :-)  I also gave the cab's AI a personality, so it's less like HAL, and made it smarter than 3PO, except that Leonardo keeps hitting it with his fist on the dashboard. It keeps resetting, eventually frying the altimeter, so the AI doesn't know precisely how low they are to the ground when that moment comes.

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I love the result.
Dirk

Quote Post 9

Re: automation vs slavery in a dust-chocked environment

Soylent Brown: "Our topsoil is guaranteed to be 10% human!"

Ewww...

Quote Post 10