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EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Louella Dougans on 24 Mar 2015, 16:51

Title: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 24 Mar 2015, 16:51
Eve source has some numbers.

Free population of Amarr = 21 Trillion

Enslaved Minmatar = 10 Trillion

Average no. slaves per household = 2.3


lets say the minmatar are 100% of the slave population (untrue), that means there'd be 10/2.3 ~4 Trillion households.

Household would be married couple + children, so maybe 4 people. Which would mean only 5 Trillion people in the Amarr Empire do not live in a slave-owning household.

other figures say there's 3.8 Tn Caldari and 1.5 Tn Gallente, and they aren't allowed to own slaves. And that adds up to more than 5 Tn, which would mean that the entire population of the Amarr Empire would have to be living in a slave-owning household.

Which is demonstratably untrue.

If Minmatar were only 50% of the total slave population, then again, with 2.3 slaves per household, then, you'd end up with 8Tn households, which doesn't add up with the total population of free Amarr.


So the numbers don't work.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Iwan Terpalen on 24 Mar 2015, 16:57
[[Disregard, I am in fact suffering from a grand mal seizure]]
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 24 Mar 2015, 17:00
Falcon told me in a PM that slaves make up 49% of the population of the Amarr Empire.

Ergo, there are about 20-21 trillion slaves in the Empire, 10-11 trillion of of which are Minmatar.


The per house hold number is an average. Commoner families don't own slaves. Holder families do. 2.3 slaves per household does not actually mean that every household regardless of social class has at least two slaves.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 24 Mar 2015, 17:08
The per house hold number is an average. Commoner families don't own slaves. Holder families do. 2.3 slaves per household does not actually mean that every household regardless of social class has at least two slaves.

21 trillion slaves then.

Average number of slaves per household is still 2.3

which means there are roughly 10 trillion households.

and with a commoner+holder population of 21 trillion. that means 2.1 people per household, no ?
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Morwen Lagann on 24 Mar 2015, 18:00
I'm not sure your internal math is including the vast array of zeroes implied by the fact that commoner households do not hold slaves.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 24 Mar 2015, 18:34
commoners not holding slaves doesn't matter.

population of 10 slaves. Average number of slaves per household of 1.

0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,10 = 10 slaves in 10 households, average 1. Same as 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 Ten slaves, ten households.

Even if the Empress had all 21 Tn slaves, and no other household had any, for the average per household to be 2.3 then there'd be 11 Tn households more or less.

and with 11 Tn households, and 21 Tn people to fill those households, then that's a very low number of people per household. Too low.

too low by far.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Pieter Tuulinen on 24 Mar 2015, 19:42
I think there are fewer households, if that matters. Amarr is largely agrarian and agrarian societies usually have far more children.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Arkon Sarain on 24 Mar 2015, 19:57
I think there are fewer households, if that matters. Amarr is largely agrarian and agrarian societies usually have far more children.

Are they? I mean I know the Amarr have whole planets devoted just to food production (Joint Harvesting in-game corporate description), and their largest industries are agriculture, mining, and manufacturing (EVEWiki article Economy of the Amarr Empire) but this doesn't make their society agrarian.

I mean the EU, China, and the USA are the top three producers of wheat (FAO stats) in the world but their societies would certainly not be described as agrarian.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Pieter Tuulinen on 24 Mar 2015, 20:18
I'm referring to the fact that Amarrian agriculture is described as actually being less Industrialised than ours is now, in one of the books - that one where the two Gallenteans go to an Amarrian retreat.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Arkon Sarain on 24 Mar 2015, 20:28
I'm referring to the fact that Amarrian agriculture is described as actually being less Industrialised than ours is now, in one of the books - that one where the two Gallenteans go to an Amarrian retreat.

I am not sure if I agree with the position that Amarrian agricultural industry is less industrialised than our own modern day one. They are surely less industrialised than the agricultural industry of any other faction in New Eden (EVEWiki article Economy of the Amarr Empire), however this does not necessarily mean that their agricultural processes are less advanced than our own.

I mean an agrarian society is one whose economy is based on producing and maintaining crops and farmland, and stresses the importance of this industry over any other. I don't see evidence for this myself, certainly the Amarr Empire seems to display in every other way the level of development we would expect of an industrialised society (division of labour, technological support for mass production, supporting a large population, etc.).
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 25 Mar 2015, 00:38
I think there are fewer households, if that matters.

that just screws the numbers up more.

For Holders to be a minority as they are portrayed in the PF, with the published numbers, then the only way that there can be 21 Tn slaves, and an average of 2.3 slaves per household, is if the vast majority of slaves do not live in anything that falls under the classification of "household", and are thus not used in the calculation.

Otherwise, every True Amarr lives in a one-person house with 2.3 slaves. Which is bunk.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Arkon Sarain on 25 Mar 2015, 00:47
But surely the vast majority of slaves aren't employed in a household, but are rather used in large industries?

I suppose I am not following what exactly is the issue with the numbers, I mean the total fertility rate of a female in 2005-2010 was 2.52 children (UN Data)... this doesn't mean that every female has 2.52 children, it is just a mean number.

Admittedly I am not really that great with maths, so further elucidation as to the numbers would be appreciated - why is 2.3 slaves averaged out across the free population an issue?
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Reinheart Novan on 25 Mar 2015, 00:56
Both TEA and TBL (which is the one with the Gallentean ladies) plus the a boy & his slaver chron, refer to the wheat being harvested by hand by large communities of slaves. They describe almost self sustaining subsistence communities of slaves. As I recall the scenes in TEA with the elder invasion sweeping down on very agrarian villages making the aerial spray of insorum practical.

While I agree with the slaves per household as a statistic based on the logic slaves/household gives that number in "reality" You would have some holders having thousands on said "wheat planets" and probably a similar situation with planets with good mineral resources having extraction and refining facilities if not right through to manufacturing on the single planet again with large populations of slaves. In more gentile planets I imaging you have the districts such as in "chained to the sky" with districts of slaves.

So in an earth context it may be Europe the US and Australia are all the slaves and the food and industrial production while the lovely Amarrians live in the nice places like, Tasmania & New Zealand.....
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 25 Mar 2015, 12:34
Admittedly I am not really that great with maths, so further elucidation as to the numbers would be appreciated - why is 2.3 slaves averaged out across the free population an issue?

If there's 21 Tn slaves, and the average Holder holds 2.3 slaves, then there are roughly 10 Tn Holders, making Holders the overwhelming majority of the population, without taking into account that a Holder would have a spouse and children.

Which goes against PF, that Holders are a minority.



I started looking at these numbers, because I wanted to try and figure out what proportion of the Amarr population were actually Holders, and what proportion were just Commoners. Previous PF indicates that Holders proper are a small minority of the population, with the vast majority of the population being Commoners.

But the numbers don't support that, not with that average number.

If the average number of slaves owned by a Holder was 23, not 2.3, then.. there'd be 1 Tn Holder households, and allowing for spouse and some children, then the Holder class would be <1/3rd of the Amarr population. Which is far more reasonable, though still a lot higher than PF would otherwise appear to show.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 12:52
The average number owned by a Holder would be thousands or hundreds of thousands of slaves. There's nothing about the 2.3 number that could be used to determine the ratio of commoner families to Holder ones.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Aelisha on 25 Mar 2015, 13:21
It is also likely that Holders maintain favour with their commoner subjects by allowing the services of slaves (house keeping, child care, mundane tasks such as shopping and logistics around the local town).  So long as the well being of the slave and responsibility of ownership has a transferable element, and the beneficiaries of delegated slaves are god fearing citizens, it is possible that a 'household figure' could represent the dispersal of centrally owned slaves to the subjects of that authority. 

Amarr society is far more complex than mere slave, serf, commoner, noble, holder tiers.  The interplay between holders and their less socially powerful peers is likely a large driver in where slaves end up - so long as they are being raised in the name of god and Amarr of course.

This reasoning is purely focused on domestic slaves, not industrial, specialist or other subdivisions a post-space-flight society might require or desire.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 25 Mar 2015, 13:31
The average number owned by a Holder would be thousands or hundreds of thousands of slaves. There's nothing about the 2.3 number that could be used to determine the ratio of commoner families to Holder ones.

but there is.

If you're told there's 2000 slaves, and 1000 Amarr, and the average number of slaves owned by a Holder is 10, then you can work out that, there are 200 Holders, and 800 Non-Holders.

Source seems to tell us there are about 23 Tn slaves, 15 Tn Amarr, and the average number of slaves owned by a Holder is 2.3, so there must be 10 Tn Holders, and 5 Tn non-Holders, more or less.

and those numbers don't make sense to me.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Lyn Farel on 25 Mar 2015, 14:06
It feels just like a number they threw because it sounded fun at the time they wrote it...

Not the first thing like that in Source afaik ?
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Aelisha on 25 Mar 2015, 14:09
TBH having even close to half of your population enslaved is asking for trouble unless you have a massive synthetic/automated population corralling them.  Eventually the 49% are going to figure out they can bring down an Empire just by taking the lash over swinging the scythe for as long as it takes. 

Rome suffered serious slave revolts with a far smaller (proportionally speaking) slave population compared to their plebeian and higher classes. 
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 15:03
The average number owned by a Holder would be thousands or hundreds of thousands of slaves. There's nothing about the 2.3 number that could be used to determine the ratio of commoner families to Holder ones.

but there is.

If you're told there's 2000 slaves, and 1000 Amarr, and the average number of slaves owned by a Holder is 10

We aren't given this information. Nothing in Source says anything about the average number owned by Holders.

Quote
and the average number of slaves owned by a Holder is 2.3

Source does not say this. All it says is that there are 2.3 slaves in Amarr for every household. This number does not mean that every household actually has ~2 slaves, and it does not mean that every Holder has only ~2 slaves.

The number might be wrong, but where it is wrong is in overestimating the amount of households. What you can't get from any of these numbers is the ratio of Holders to commoners, because none of these numbers say anything about Holders.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 25 Mar 2015, 15:11
only Holders own slaves.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Arkon Sarain on 25 Mar 2015, 15:23
only Holders own slaves.

I feel like you may be taking the "Average number of slaves per household" too literally, to my mind it is just a useful phrase that could be easily changed with "Average number of slaves per free Amarr" etc.

All it is meant to do is to frame the mean value that follows it.

For example:

Free population of Amarr = 21 Trillion
Enslaved Minmatar = 10 Trillion

Calculating a mean value is simply a matter of dividing 21 trillion by 10 trillion, which gives us 2.1. I could then frame that value as either 2.1 Minmatar slaves per household, or 2.1 Minmatar slaves per free Amarr citizen, etc.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Ibrahim Tash-Murkon on 25 Mar 2015, 15:24
You can't take the number of slaves and the average number of slaves per household and figure anything out besides the number of households. Those numbers tell you nothing about the true distribution. You could have one household with every single slave and 8.7 trillion households with zero, or 8.7 trillion households with 2.3 slaves and one without, or 4.35 trillion households with 4.6 slaves and and 4.35 trillion with zero, or 8.7 trillion households with no slaves and every slave in the empire is kept in a massive warehouse owned by nobody. In each case the statistic 2.3 slaves per household stands true because it tells us nothing about who owns the slaves or the ratio between holders and commoners or anything else it only lets us know the answer to the division problem "Number of Slaves"/"Number of Households".
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 15:27
only Holders own slaves.

The 2.3 number has nothing to do with actual ownership.

"There are 2.3 slaves for every household in Amarr" does not mean that every household in Amarr has 2.3 slaves, or that every Holder has an average of 2.3 slaves. It means that IF you were to take the entire slave population and divide them up evenly between all free people in Amarr, there would be enough slaves for every household to have ~2.

So, you can get a rough idea of the number of households of any social class from the number. You can in no way get a ratio of Holders to commoners.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Aelisha on 25 Mar 2015, 15:27
only Holders own slaves.

In theory my landlord owns my house.  Doesn't mean I can't pay for services rendered or facilities offered.  I imagine that slave delegation works similarly, though possibly less for cash and more for social capital and prestige.  that and a slave housed with a subservient free-citizen is a cost mitigated. 
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 15:29
only Holders own slaves.

In theory my landlord owns my house.  Doesn't mean I can't pay for services rendered or facilities offered.  I imagine that slave delegation works similarly, though possibly less for cash and more for social capital and prestige.  that and a slave housed with a subservient free-citizen is a cost mitigated.

Holders leasing slaves to commoners is canon. It's called a Custodial Servitude Contract. That doesn't have anything to do with the number being discussed here, however.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 25 Mar 2015, 15:32
So, you can get a rough idea of the number of households of any social class from the number.

And that number is wrong and unworkable.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Aelisha on 25 Mar 2015, 15:35
It does if ownership is actually counted by household instead of Holder, not only in the figures we have but in terms of who legally has 'custody' of a slave.  It is entirely possible that statistically speaking a household 'owns' a loaned or rented slave, with the 'responsibility' of the Holder as the true owner being the pursuit of reparations for crimes committed should the entrusted parties abuse their ownership.

As it is getting a little 'testy' in here I'll bow out.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Ibrahim Tash-Murkon on 25 Mar 2015, 15:37
So, you can get a rough idea of the number of households of any social class from the number.

And that number is wrong and unworkable.

I think Sami meant "you can't get a rough number". The only number than can be derived is the number of households, nothing about their class divisions.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 15:44
So, you can get a rough idea of the number of households of any social class from the number.

And that number is wrong and unworkable.

Then it's wrong and unworkable. The end. Errors can be made.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Lyn Farel on 25 Mar 2015, 15:48
I seem to remember that in the demographic wiki article there was a few ratios stated, like how many minmatar slaves for total slaves, that kind of things. Now that we know that there is 10 Tn Matari slaves (for 21 Tn free Amarr) in the Empire, Then we can also get rough estimates for other bloodlines in slavery I guess ?

The nice thing is also that if we know how many total slaves there are in the Empire, then we can also deduce how many individuals an average amarrian household actually counts (and see how big their family households are), since we know the ratio already (2.3 per household), as well as the total number of free Amarrians. With the total number of slaves, all bloodlines included, bingo.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 15:52
It does if ownership is actually counted by household instead of Holder, not only in the figures we have but in terms of who legally has 'custody' of a slave.  It is entirely possible that statistically speaking a household 'owns' a loaned or rented slave, with the 'responsibility' of the Holder as the true owner being the pursuit of reparations for crimes committed should the entrusted parties abuse their ownership.

As it is getting a little 'testy' in here I'll bow out.

Ownership is counted by Holder. This is explicitly stated. Only Holders can legally own slaves.

The 2.3 slaves per household number is exactly the same kind of number as, say, the fact that there are 90 guns per 100 people in the USA. This number does not mean that 90 of those 100 people own a gun. It means that for every 100 people, there is an average of 90 guns, even though in many cases multiple guns are owned by a single person.

The nice thing is also that if we know how many total slaves there are in the Empire, then we can also deduce how many individuals an average amarrian household actually counts (and see how big their family households are), since we know the ratio already (2.3 per household), as well as the total number of free Amarrians. With the total number of slaves, all bloodlines included, bingo.

20-21 trillion slaves in Amarr, of which 10-11 are Minmatar.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Lyn Farel on 25 Mar 2015, 16:49
So that would be approximately households of 9 persons average. That's extremely high, and even if I am expecting Holders to count by the hundreds or thousands, I also expect commoners (the huge majority) to have 'normal families', and also some people just being alone without any household to begin with.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Silver Night on 25 Mar 2015, 16:57
Sort of starting to get tangential, but if it is an average of 9 people per household, it could indicate that in large parts of the empire, people have a household that includes some extended family (this is a pretty common arrangement, though not so much in the US or western Europe). So, it might be include a grandparents, perhaps 2 or more married children and their spouses, and their children. Even with just part of 3 generations you get up over 9 pretty fast. Particularly if we assume an overall better (or at least more advanced) level of medical care.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Lyn Farel on 25 Mar 2015, 17:03
Yes, but that's why I said it's huge. You will only find similar results in the Minmatar.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Valadeus on 25 Mar 2015, 19:09
Maybe I'm saying something that's already been stated or agreed upon, but it seems to me like we simply have a case of a demographic that is very largely skewed.

For instance, if you take into account the fact that Commoners should dramatically outnumber Holders in the Empire (something along the ratio of like 10,000,000:1) then you'll see the numbers more like this:

For every 10,000,000 Commoner families, there is 1 Holder family. That one Holder family will have anywhere from 10,000 - 100,000 slaves. Which means you have roughly 50,000 slaves per 10,000,000 people in the empire. Which is 0.5% of the population being slaves.

So, in a population of 21 trillion, the numbers would look like this:

"Free" population: 21,000,000,000,000 (21 trillion)
Slave population: 105,000,000,000 (105 billion)

To correct this, you simply have to elevate the number of slaves per Holder family, or the number of Holder families per Commoner family.

If we elevate the number of Holders per 10 million people to something more like 10,000,000:5 and keep the same ratio of slaves. Then you end up with something like 250,000 per 10,000,000 people which is 2.5% of the population being enslaved. So your numbers would be:

"Free" population: 21,000,000,000,000 (21 trillion)
Slave population: 525,000,000,000 (525 billion)

So on, so forth until you reach the desired ratio. The key is to determine what you raise: the number of slaves per Holder family or the number of Holder families per Commoner family?

No matter which path you take, you can arrive at the desired numbers; it comes down to what picture of the Empire you want to paint. Do you want a vastly Commoner Empire with few Holder families responsible for literally millions of slaves each or do you want a more spread Empire with slightly larger numbers of Holders and only thousands or hundreds of thousands of slaves each?



Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Pieter Tuulinen on 25 Mar 2015, 21:36
There's something more. I believe that the Empire follows the model of slavery that is based on the Classical system, not on the Chattel system. From what I've read slaves can actually occupy very different social levels within the Empire - I doubt that the clerical slaves (religious and administrative) or the other high status slaves look very similar to the field slaves or the mine slaves, and I imagine that many slaves go most of their lives without ever seeing the Lord Holder that they are ostensibly the property of - filling their lives with work similar to that of an Egyptian Scribe or a Roman Overseer and communicating mostly within a hierarchy of similar caste slaves.

I wonder how many slaves are even part of their Holders households and how many live in property simply owned by that Holder in the cities and other communities where their work is?
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Samira Kernher on 25 Mar 2015, 21:42
There's something more. I believe that the Empire follows the model of slavery that is based on the Classical system, not on the Chattel system. From what I've read slaves can actually occupy very different social levels within the Empire - I doubt that the clerical slaves (religious and administrative) or the other high status slaves look very similar to the field slaves or the mine slaves, and I imagine that many slaves go most of their lives without ever seeing the Lord Holder that they are ostensibly the property of - filling their lives with work similar to that of an Egyptian Scribe or a Roman Overseer and communicating mostly within a hierarchy of similar caste slaves.

I wonder how many slaves are even part of their Holders households and how many live in property simply owned by that Holder in the cities and other communities where their work is?

A significant amount, yup. The higher the generation, the more opportunities.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Valadeus on 26 Mar 2015, 03:52
I would agree, Pieter. Which is why the number of slaves a Holder is responsible for is so high. It's not like they're micromanaging a hundred thousand people.
Title: Re: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Louella Dougans on 26 Mar 2015, 13:21
So, you can get a rough idea of the number of households of any social class from the number.

And that number is wrong and unworkable.

Then it's wrong and unworkable. The end. Errors can be made.

that was my whole point.
Title: Re: Numbers of slaves in the Amarr Empire
Post by: Jekaterine on 27 Mar 2015, 10:35
[mod]Off topic split into new thread found here (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=6572.0) [/mod]