The better question is do descendants of slaves have a claim to slaver owner's plantations, their property. Because the station isn't just land to be settled, its a structure built and owned by another group of people. With the exception of shady shit in places like Zimbabwe I think most of the time when giving reparations to former slaves/subjects they are directly given their former masters property.Simon_Jester wrote:Being kidnapped and forced to live in a place against their will does not give your descendants less of a claim to it. Or do the descendants of the early US's slaves have less right to live in America than the descendants of its slaveowners? How the hell does that make sense?
And I already pointed this out- the inhabitants' inability to repair or maintain the station is irrelevant to whether they have a right to it. You probably didn't build the structure you live in. And you certainly didn't build the continent you live on. If that continent it suddenly started sinking into the sea or undergoing an Ice Age, you'd be pretty helpless to do anything about it except run for your life, now wouldn't you? Does that mean you don't really have a right to a say in what happens to that continent? Could some random aliens with super planet-engineering powers just roll up to the Earth and say "lol, these people have no idea how to maintain or repair their planet, they don't have any real claim to it, they just happened to evolve here?"
If anything, the zoo inhabitants' inability to control the zoo makes the imperative to not fuck up their home without permission even stronger, because they are totally helpless and we are just straight-up murdering them in that case.
But this is beyond property as the thing is a completely artificial construct floating in pure death that requires outside help to function and not kill everyone. Yes the continent I'm on might sink but not because I don't know how to wire a light switch. Without the robots or some Earth scientists replacing the robots the station will degrade and eventually break.
It is like a slave ship carrying loads of African tribals over to work in some fields for douchebags who descendants will say it totally wasn't about slavery. It is a completely artificial construct floating in a sea of pure death that requires outside help to function and not kill anyone. If the crew abandons the ship the former tribals will have no way of keeping it afloat. They have no knowledge of rigging, sails, hull repair, ballast, navigating, or anything. They have even less knowledge then I do and the sum total of my experience with boats was floating down a stream near my house on a leaky kiddie pool as a child and watching crap tons of naval themed movies plus Waterworld.
The station is even worse then a relatively simple wooden sailing boat, it would be more like the same tribals on an operating oil rig. Without constant vigilance by skilled workers and engineers with an understanding of the systems and how to repair them it explodes.
Even if the zoo humans have claim to the station there is no way to let them stay without either keeping them in their current life of being zoo animals without even asking them because to even approach the people we'd need to go through all the robots that will try to stop us or we'd need to figure out the station enough to run it and have engineers take over from the robots for atleast decades while we work to educate the zoo humans to do it themselves if our own engineers can even figure it out in a reasonable time frame in the first place and do so without compromising the integrity of the station.
They are totally helpless anyway it goes, we cannot even ask permission without making them more helpless, anything we do beyond leaving them alone creates more danger for them.
Ralin wrote:Hell, worse really, since we don't know how badly off those original humans were or even if they actually agreed to go in the first place. As oppression goes, having to follow rules like "Don't kill each other" and "Don't shit in the water" are pretty damned mild ones.
Note how there's nothing stopping them from having whatever literature and arts they please.
I also like how Joun has also spontaneously generated what amounts to a new racial epithet for these hypothetical people and jumped right ahead to the "We have to civilize them and teach them how to act like real people!" part of imperialism without a trace of irony or self-awareness.
Did you miss the part where they have their reproductive abilities dictated to them, where they are forced to live where they are, where their ancestors were kidnapped (unless you think extremely primitive people can actually consent to being abducted anymore then African tribals or Native Americans could have consented to get on the white people's boats and there is even any way anyone can consent to being a zoo animal and owned property)? Its a bit more then "don't fight" or "don't shit in the water".
Big whoop, they can draw. That doesn't make up for their loss of freedoms. Or would you be okay with being put into a nice comfortable cage where everything is dictated to you, you can only breed when they want and with who they want even if you don't want to because they have to maintain the population and breed certain traits, where you can be drugged or killed anytime by robots if they deem you to be trouble but you can do art or play with balls? Sure you can't leave or fuck or have any control over your own life but there is nothing stopping your from having whatever literature or arts you please.
Its not imperialism or being racist to what to teach people how to be human who are not being treated like human beings, are being treated like animals, like zoo animals. Its not imperialism to think they need freed being sapient beings, its not racist to think that because they have been breed to be good little docile zoo animals who lack much of an education will need to be educated or "civilized" to even be aware of what happened to them.