Talk:Logic of Empire

I have cut the following from the article:

''Insofar as it is part of Heinlein's "Future History" series, the story has some interesting minor anachronisms consistent with it being written some time before other material in the series. We are not told when the story is set, but towards the end, the slave-owning planter speaks of things being different on Venus "when he was a boy". The planter we might surmise to be an overweight middle-aged fellow in his late fifties or perhaps older. Therefore at the time "Logic of Empire" is set, there would have been a colonial plantation culture on Venus for not less than fifty years. We read elsewhere in Heinlein (references needed) that the initial settlement of Venus took place in the 1970's or 1980's. Therefore, "Logic of Empire" is arguably set sometime after 2030. But, almost the finishing page of the story contains a reference to the coming of the First Prophet, Nehemiah Scudder, who we know became President of the United States in 2012 (Methusalah's Children, Time enough for love). This would lead to a suggestion that the story is set before 2012.''

It doesn't hold together logically. An assumption about the age of the planter, and that he was being literal in his references to boyhood, conflicts with what the author has written. It seems reasonable that the assumptions are wrong, in that case. The simplest explanation for the apparent conflict is that the planter, portrayed as a rather pompous man in late middle-age (I agree ;), was not being literal when he referred to his boyhood, but rather was referring to his late teens/early twenties - neatly tieing up the loose ends. 190.213.54.98 (talk) 00:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC) Josh


 * Much of this page is unsourced and needs some references. Especially at the end, where I'm seeing some Original Research. Wellspring (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

OR? POV?
''Ostensibly a tale about a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his struggle to free himself from the oppressive circumstances in which he is plunged, this story also serves to explain how slavery develops in a new colony. Even in the future, the technology available to a new colony is always initially low. If a machine to do a necessary job is too expensive to import (say a wheat harvester, a water pump, or even a washing machine), a human must do it instead. If too many jobs must be done by hand and there is a shortage of labor compared with independent resources that free labor could take up ("land", although this condition is not clear in the story), a market for slavery develops. Decades later, while there is still an abundance of land, this market remains because the colony itself has quotas to meet and debts to repay - they cannot spare the resources to develop local industries to make the machines themselves and free labor does not have to bid its price down enough to out compete slave labor.

''Throughout the story, Heinlein takes the view of the objective narrator when describing Venusian society. Logic of Empire places different rationales on the people who participate in slavery. There are no real villains; everybody's just doing their job, trying to maximize income in a capitalist system. Even the plantation owner who owns the hero is portrayed as a struggling — and failing — small businessman, whose main motivation is to secure a livelihood for his daughter.''

The above is written as if it was a stealth apology for slavery, or possibly a takedown of capitalism. Or could there be two authors? 178.39.122.125 (talk) 14:11, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Inaccuracies
This article seemed filled with wild speculation and inaccuracies. "Throughout the story, Heinlein takes the view of the objective narrator when describing Venusian society.", the story is told from the perspective of Humphrey Wingate And I just generally disagree with every point of the general description. This article seems to be saying slavery pops up when it is needed. Whenever real works need to be done, the most economical and efficient system in existence, slavery, pops up to solve this need. While Heinlein's description (in Jone's ending speech) is far more complex it definitely does not consider slavery an efficient way of producing labor. That is actually rather the main point. Heinlein rather hits the reader over the head with the fact that the runaway slaves work significantly more and better as runaways than as slaves. "cannot get to sleep at night without rhira, an expensive local narcotic, thus increasing his debt every day." I believe the statement was half a days pay for that rhira, but I am not sure if that was multiple doses (latter he makes himself only take some right before bed instead of being high for longer period, so may have been using less than half a days pay worth at that point or not). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.61.204.116 (talk) 01:54, 6 September 2016 (UTC)