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[Gesakaarin]

But they are not backwards either. They have their own military high tech, their leading companies on implant tech, etc.

I never said they were. What I am saying is that the Empire can afford inefficiencies in its economic system compared to the State because of its sheer size. It's a comparative thing, the State has the smallest population compared to either the Fed or Empire so in order to achieve the same productivity levels each citizen in the State has to, comparatively, produce more than the Fed or Empire. This is done through an emphasis on education, technological innovation and automation to name a few in order to maximize the output of every citizen in the State to levels above that of either the Fed or Empire - and this is in the PF, even with a significantly smaller population than either the Fed or Empire the State remains only just behind both (depending on metrics used). What drives the State and the reason it's so competitive is that it's purely a matter of survival, if it doesn't focus on efficiency, productivity and technological innovation then it risks falling behind and potentially no longer existing (At least in the eyes of its citizens) if the Fed or Empire attack it.

As for the efficiencies of slavery in the Empire that really depends on the sector they're employed in. Most of what I've read is that they typically get used in agrarian pursuits which really doesn't provide much if most of the economy in New Eden is driven by high-technology goods and manufacturing does it?

Or perhaps another analogy: What's more efficient in farming, a hundred peasants harvesting the fields by hand or a single combine harvester operated by a single man who can plan its harvest pattern via gps which then frees him for other work?

Edit: At the end of the day those hundred peasants and single automated combine harvester will still do the same amount of work in the same time, it's just that those peasants are like the Imperial slaves and the combine harvester is an example of State automation.

[orange]

I think we are underselling the willingness of a society to have highly educated slaves.

If we assume that the Empire is built on a Roman model of slavery vs the more modern models, then there would be many many highly educated slaves (in Rome, it is recorded that Greek slaves were the tutors of the children of a wealthy family for instance).

I think the Caldari dislike of slavery is firmly rooted in its origins on Caldari Prime where the idea of owning another person breaks down when the contribution of everyone to the survival of the community is paramount.  Modern economic theory simply doesn't factor into the equation for most Caldari - slavery is some jagii idea practiced by the Amarr (and ancient Gallente & Minmatar).

PS: the irony is, of course, that it was the Empire that had to bail out the State when it ran out of money.

This was a result of TEA and not any actual economic thought.

[Samira Kernher]

I think we are underselling the willingness of a society to have highly educated slaves.

If we assume that the Empire is built on a Roman model of slavery vs the more modern models, then there would be many many highly educated slaves (in Rome, it is recorded that Greek slaves were the tutors of the children of a wealthy family for instance).

Yes, it's made clear in several sources that many Amarrian slaves are educated. While there are the plantation and mining slaves that have very lowbrow work, there's also slave scientists, slave priests, slave teachers, and so on. Even the farm/plantation work is not done by manual labor. The slaves are trained to operate the proper machinery.

Slaves in the Empire serve a number of diverse functions. While the most common image is of Minmatar slaves tending fields of Amarr wheat under an intense sun, menial labor is only a part of slave duties. Particularly skilled, talented, and pious slaves may receive extensive education and training and perform duties normally held by respected professionals in other nations.

Of course, the majority of slaves do fill the tasks that are considered beneath or too dangerous for others in the Empire. Slaves are the primary workforce on Amarr agricultural worlds[29][33] and mining colonies[9]. Agricultural work is strenuous, but relatively safe. Slaves spend the majority of their days tending and harvesting crops, plowing fields, and eliminating pests. Contrary to the popular image, not all of these tasks are done by hand. While certain crops do require manual harvesting, many tasks are performed by slaves utilizing machines.

[...]

Slave children that show talent are often educated in Amarr schools.[10] Slaves educated in this way can wind up in a variety of jobs. Some become civil servants, working on behalf of their masters in local government jobs. Others are educated even further and become involved in academic or religious work.[21] Some slaves have been known to be experts in ancient, extinct languages or knowledgeable enough to invent new polymer synthesis techniques.[36] These slaves can receive a great degree of personal freedom and movement, and maintain lifestyles that can be better than many commoners.

-Slavery, EVElopedia

[Ciarente]

Economists argue that slavery is inefficient in all but a few instances for the reasons cited above, but also for three others: slaves have no motivation to work other than to avoid punishment and so are likely to do as little as they can get away with (not to mention, as many American slaveholders complained, employing techniques of passive resistance such as 'accidentally' breaking tools and machinery); slaves can be punished, but not fired, so slaveholders are basically stuck with their workforce, however incompetent it may be; and slaves are an expense all year round, not just when work is required to be done.

The economic advantage of slavery is only apparent in situations where free labor is unavailable: that is, in places and for jobs that no-one would willingly do, but slaves can be forced to undertake, such as the Caribbean sugar industry, where conditions were so harsh life expectancy was measured in months.

Orange is right, Amarr slavery is explicitly described as including educated and trained slaves who work, for example, in civil service jobs, but the inefficiency arguments above still apply to educated 'professional class' slaves. For example, if you have a slave doctor to tend to the medical needs of your family, you have to feed, clothe and house her all year round, not just pay her when you're sick; you're stuck with her medical care (certainly without paying again for another doctor); and your slave is not motivated to provide you with the best possible care to ensure return custom.

[Khloe]

It's been my impression that the State has needed to take extreme measures to remain competitive with their adversaries, primarily with the Federation to avoid being re-absorbed. Due to their smaller size and (I assume) population (see: tube program), they don't have access to a large uneducated workforce like the Empire does, and importation would cost money.

Since I'm guessing that their infrastructure is already designed to be a high-tech manufacturing/agriculture society due to their shortage of workers, the cost to either 'educate' a larger number of slaves to perform the work or restructure their society to accommodate low-tech manufacturing/agriculture would also be cost-prohibitive. One also has to factor in the socioeconomic impact of introducing a 'slave caste' into a meritocratic society.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

One of the biggest inefficiencies with a Slave based economy is that of a lack of flexibility when it comes to developing markets and technologies.

New discoveries in materials, production methods and production techniques can greatly alter the skillset that is needed to produce an item of stock even in an established industry.  For example, wood used to be heavily used in the construction of automobiles, but iterative changes in design and manufacturing now means that very few manufacturers maintain a staff of carpenters.

In the Caldari State, this would lead to the position of Carpenters simply being made redundant. Former Carpenters with transferrable skills would find new jobs and those without would be forced to retrain or accept more menial roles.

In the Amarrian Empire there would be a tendency to keep using the older production method, since a large body of Slaves with those skills already exist. A Holder wishing to move to the new production methods would have to hire skilled workers and either pay to retrain his Carpenter slaves in the new techniques or train new slaves in those skills and find other work for his Carpenters. The broad difference between the experience of the Caldari Executive and the Amarrian Holder is that the Amarrian Holder is obliged to fully support his slaves during this retraining process, whilst the Caldari Executive is immediately rid of the burden of his redundant workers.

This pattern is felt throughout a Slave based economy. The worker bears the onus of supporting themself and their family and in being the most economic worker that they can. To this end workers will budget their own households, often bear the cost of new training in order to secure a more economically rewarding job and constantly seek to be relevant, economically, out of their own self interest.

Slaves, on the other hand, will perform precisely the work demanded of them to lowest quality that is enforced. They will not seek to innovate within their function, unless it is to achieve the minimum standard required at less effort. They have no investment in remaining relevant, since Amarrian law does not allow for their Master to do anything more than sell them to another - where they most likely will perform identical work under identical conditions.

[Gottii]

While its true that the Amarrian Empire has educated and skilled slaves, Im sure there are huge inefficiencies in simply monitoring and supervising these slaves.  The problem with pointing to the Roman model for slavery and take it whole sale is that it fails to take into effects technology and its impact.  In the Roman era, a lone slave trained in engineering and physics and given the right materials could likely build a water wheel.  Likewise, he could sabotage a bridge or a building or some such 

In EVE, a lone slave trained in engineering and physics and given the right materials could build very, very powerful explosives.  Given the chance, that lone slave could sabotage a massive communication and information network, a space stations orbit, or set of an industrial accident.

I dont think Amarrian slaveholders could be as liberal when it came to teaching their slaves various skills as their Roman counterparts, at least without significant (and likely costly and inefficient and stifling) safeguards.

[Samira Kernher]

Which is why only the most loyal and well-behaved slaves would get the education, while those who are stubborn and resistant get sent to the mining colonies. I also would imagine that first generation slaves would never receive that kind of education, it'd be limited to those who have been enslaved for generations, thus having become brainwashed by the culture and having less desire to rebel against it.

Chained to the Sky is a good chronicle for reading about slave education, and also about the kind of freedoms they have. The well-educated, highly placed slaves don't constantly have an overseer over their shoulder cracking a whip, and seem to be able to travel to and from work on their own.

[Davlos]

I've always found the canon Caldari argument that slavery = inefficient to be odd, because any devotee to the Austrian school of economics or FA Hayek would argue that the baseline Caldari worker is in no better condition than a serf in Amarr space.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Another point that is being missed here is that there will be a certain baseline standard of education in certain topics, such as religion and history, for lower-tier slaves in the Amarrian model. This demands an entirely separate and fundamentally different education system, which has to be supported and developed on its own, and which slaves will then spend a good portion of their day involved in rather than "productive" tasks.

Then we can get into the separate medical systems, separate travel arrangements, et cetera. Running all of these independent systems on top of whatever arrangements there are for commoners (let alone whatever Holders choose to make for themselves) will lend itself to a certain degree of inherent inefficiency.

[orange]

I've always found the canon Caldari argument that slavery = inefficient to be odd, because any devotee to the Austrian school of economics or FA Hayek would argue that the baseline Caldari worker is in no better condition than a serf in Amarr space.

But there is a difference between slave and indebted employee.  There are clearly areas in the State where an employee is paid in mega-script and spends it all on things supplied by the mega and its allies.   It isn't like the manager wants to pay them much more than is needed to live off of (especially if their skill set is relatively common) and for many people that is often sufficient.  And the manager knows what it costs to eat at the Cafeteria, rent the Hab Unit, etc plus 0.5-1% for savings or what not.

[Ciarente]

I've always found the canon Caldari argument that slavery = inefficient to be odd, because any devotee to the Austrian school of economics or FA Hayek would argue that the baseline Caldari worker is in no better condition than a serf in Amarr space.

Dav, that's an interesting point, one of the articles explicitly says that living conditions for most Caldari workers are no more luxurious than those for many slave in the Amarr Empire, in large part because of the Caldari cultural disapproval of spending money on material luxuries, with most Caldari spending their disposable income on gambling instead.

There is also a reference to the view held by many Caldari that worker's conditions have declined since contact with the Amarr Empire due to cultural contamination.

[Davlos]

I've always found the canon Caldari argument that slavery = inefficient to be odd, because any devotee to the Austrian school of economics or FA Hayek would argue that the baseline Caldari worker is in no better condition than a serf in Amarr space.

But there is a difference between slave and indebted employee.  There are clearly areas in the State where an employee is paid in mega-script and spends it all on things supplied by the mega and its allies.   It isn't like the manager wants to pay them much more than is needed to live off of (especially if their skill set is relatively common) and for many people that is often sufficient.  And the manager knows what it costs to eat at the Cafeteria, rent the Hab Unit, etc plus 0.5-1% for savings or what not.

That isn't any different from the contemporary American minimum wage worker who is stuck in that socio-economic class with little to no hope of climbing the socio-economic ladder, and is supplemented with Food Stamps et al.

edit: At the same time, there is also little difference between a serf and an "indebted employee". See: sharecroppers in post-Civil War USA and hacienda sharecropping in the Philippines.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

And yet recent PF states that the average standard of living for the Caldari worker is the second-best in the Cluster.

Admittedly, this means they only beat out the average of an Empire pulled down by slavery and the average of a Republic pulled down by poverty-stricken refugee camps, but still - it directly contradicts the idea that the average Caldari worked is only as well off as the average Amarrian slave.

Again, a large part of the inefficiency comes from the centralised nature of a slave economy, the number of personnel that must be used to guard a slave workforce and the inflexibility of a slave economy.

[Silas Vitalia]

I have no doubt the Imperial system is woefully inefficient, wasteful, and generally awful for most people unless you are on the upper ends of the pyramid.

The Empire is also used to having an extremely insular and 100% insulated economic system where these inefficiencies are irrelevant.  It's only when you start trading with other empires and having their products penetrate your markets that you have to worry about those sorts of things.

Contact and trade with the other Empires is likely causing all manor of economic upheaval.  I expect quite a bit of economic protectionism and outright embargos from various Holders on a variety of fronts. 

When the Caldari can make x billion widgets in a factory hyper-efficiently and sell them at cut rates, it would obviously blow any similar Imperial objects out of the water. In an open, fair market.

So far the Empire is still a relatively closed, unfair market.