Archived Discussion Main / WeWillUseManualLaborInTheFuture

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We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future launched as We Will Use Manual Labor In The Future Discussion: From YKTTW

Working Title: We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: From YKTTW

Ununnilium: Okay, got some problems here, let's see...

• Virtually any fighter-pilot/humongous mecha-oriented series set in "The Future" which ignores the technological advances that will very likely soon eliminate the need for human operators of combat vehicles.
  • But notably averted in Macross Plus, where the introduction of unmanned fighters that make the pilot protagonists redundant is a crucial plot point.
  • Avoided in Andromeda, where the title spaceship actually does have drone fighters.
  • This is also a major plot point in Neon Genesis Evangelion with Jet Alone and the Mass Production EVAs. Possibly toyed with when the manned EVA project secretly sabotaged the competing Jet Alone project.

Anyone who's ever played a video game with both player vs. player and player vs. enviroment play will tell you that fighting a computer is very different than fighting a human. Oh, you can create an AI that's powerful enough to do such things, but it's not the sure thing that this is putting it up as.

• Battle Beyond the Stars: the warlord Sador commands a massive, high-tech army of mutants, a ground force of sonic tanks, a fleet of space fighters, and a giant battleship with your standard star-destroying super-weapon. Still, Sador and his Malmori warriors have to plunder tiny agricultural planetvilles for food and spare body parts, when logically, given their level of technology, they could probably clone or otherwise synthesize both.

This seems to fall under Technology Levels. Are they ever shown as actually having cloning or synthesis technology?

• The aliens in Independence Day are described as locusts that go from planet to planet stealing its resources and leaving it incapable of life after ruining their own homeworld. Yet their FTL is slow enough that scouts arrive 50 years before their worldship, meaning that they have the recycling and life support technology to keep billions fed and clothed for that time with no resupply. So really, they ought to have no realistic need to plunder a planet to death other than the sadistic pleasure from it, and could easily colonize such worlds permanently.
  • Note that nowhere in the film or screenplays is it stated that the mothership was actually en route to Earth the entire fifty years, so it really could have been doing almost anything else (like, say, daubing up the last few crumbs from their previous conquest) while smaller vessels scouted for other candidates.

The second part shows why the first part doesn't really fit. As well, what if the FTL is that slow, but the plundering is what gives them the stuff that keeps the billions fed and clothed?

• Despite having access to intergalactic spaceships and Time Travel, the Daleks of Doctor Who frequently use conquered species for slave labour instead of exterminating them immediately. Of course, the Daleks are frequently touted as the universe's ultimate sadists, so they could be enslaving civilisations just for the hell of it.
  • However, Daleks don't have hands (just a plunger and a whisk feelers), and difficulty accessing areas that aren't flat and wide. Slave labor is required to do much of anything. Or at least that's supposed to be the Hand, sorry, Feeler Wave.

There's no real reason why they should exterminate people if they can be useful somehow. `.` I mean, they often want to exterminate, but that doesn't mean they have to.

• Alien Nation. 'Nuff said.
  • Not quite 'nuff. Genetically engineering a slave race is definitely more cost-effective in the long run, and is probably easier.

Another case of "no slaves ever 'cause technology".

Later:

• Which is pretty flimsy, because a backup targeting system would probably be a lot more compact than a backup human, eat less food, live in smaller quarters, and demand less recreation. Also, it wouldn't miss.

So... you know the exact tech-specs of such a thing in the Honor Harrington universe? >>

Still later:

• This troper always wondered about the practicality of Wookiee slavery. I mean, yes, they're physically suitable. Very physical suitable. Physically superior, you might say, to humans, who make up the majority of the Imperial fleet, with a long warrior history and very short tempers. Even if you do possess the vast military superiority or numbers to do conquer a world of these people, the damage the rebellious ones cause probably wouldn't be worth it. Most likely it was revenge for letting Yoda escape; there's no other practical reason for it.
  • Except that, with Knights Of The Old Republic, we see that the practice has been going on since long before Yoda's great-great-grandfather was a twinkle in someone's CG eye. It probably has something to do with the fact that droids have to be constructed, programmed, and can only act within the parameters of their programming (maybe, AI and all), while a Wookie just has to be captured, broken (or tricked into swearing a Life Debt), and set to work.

  • The practical applications of their technology are rather limited.I doubt they could enslave the Horta, the replicators need a lot of energy, and the ships would probably go evil and try to take over the Earth to mine it.
  • I was actually thinking they could hire the Horta...
  • Never mind logic; it is logistically all but impossible. They're holograms, and the Federation does not have mobile emitters; they must therefore have dug the mine for their miners—the EMH's reach extends no farther than the range of their longest tool. (please don't make me do the pun.)

Justifications! Natter! Bah!

Some Guy: Rewrote some of the page. This passage specifically was what bugged me: "Slavery really is the ultimate economic productivity machine; all the great powers of history were based on it at some point." This simply isn't true. Slavery isn't economically productive in the long term. It's only economically productive at all in very specific situations. Great Britain outlawed slavery right before they became a great power for this exact reason- the morality was dubious and they weren't receiving any obvious economic benefit from it.

Ununnilium: Thank you. ~.~

Peteman: I'm curious... given that the Necrons are practically soulless robots themselves, would them working be considered manual labour or using automated machines? Or do they have actual robots working for them?