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Dark Elf civilization is not economically viable.

First of all, it is in every sense fundamentally dependent on a vast slave underclass. Said slave underclass composes the vast majority of it's population. Such societies have been quite rare. Having an enslaved population composing 50% of the population is extremely unusual. The Romans had about half it's population as slaves during the high of roman slavery while a few Caribbean plantations (settlements that were dependent on external support to survive). However, this brings us to other issues involving Dark Elf slavery.

The first is the brutality of Dark Elf slavery. In ancient Rome slaves were treated differently based on their position, which ranged from disposable gladiators and miners to domestic servants, artisans, scribes and even high ranking figures in the roman government (depending on the time). There were rules (most non legal) for the treatment of slaves. It was understood that physical punishment would eventually make the slave less productive and eventually dead. In the plantations of the Caribbean, slaves were for the most part treated badly very frequently and were pushed hard until they expired. The result was an attrition rate which exceeded natural population growth despite the efforts of the slavocrats to encourage population growth. The Slavocrats of the Carribean were dependent on a constant supply of new slaves from the new world. The Dark Elves are by all accounts far worse than the Caribbean Slavocrats in terms of brutality. From all accounts the Dark Elves' soul method of motivation of their workforce is the threat of violence and pain. This is made worse by the fact that they will often randomly and pointlessly inflict pain and destroy productive slaves.

Related to the first reason is the second, Manumissions (or more specifically the lack thereof). In both the cases of Caribbean and Especially Roman slavery, it was possible for a slave to achieve or be granted freedom. This process motivated slaves to work well in their jobs and be obedient without fuss. Even if most slaves died without attaining freedom, the prospect of attaining freedom was a cheap and effective. This means slaves suffer less damage over their lives and require less manpower dedicated to oversight. This would create a class of Freedmen which would have complications to the social order (especially once a body of them had grown to sufficient size to allow the rise of a Nouveau Riche from it's ranks), but these can be worked around easily enough and the benefits outweigh the negatives in the end. Said benefits go beyond mere motivation, as such a class could be easily employed in a military capacity. Despite the advantages of doing so, Dark Elves offer no such opportunity to slaves.

Related to the first two reasons is the third, Punishment Saturation. This is summed with a story involving the Qin Dynasty, a rather brutal regime. One day he conscripted an army. He ordered that an army be conscripted, some conscripts in an area mustered, but were delayed by a storm making it impossible for them to arrive before the posted arrival deadline. One of the leaders asked what was the punishment for arriving late for conscription, he was given the answer of death. He then asked what was the punishment for rebellion? The answer again was death. As such, they chose the option where Death was non a certainty and started a rebellion which ended the Dynasty.

What this means is that there is a limit to what punishment can be applied to an individual. The function of punishment is deterrence, if a slave has nothing to look forward to besides subsistence rations and more brutality from his masters even if he remains quiet, utterly productive, healthy despite a heavy workload eventually in one individual or another there will be an instance in which something snaps and he turns on his master. If he dies in the process it stops there. If her succeeds, then he is in a position where the only options are agony, death or victory. To maximize chances of victory, he gets more slaves to his side and it will grow from there. A factor which can only be aided by Dark Elf employment of collective punishment. Fighting minimizes the chances of an agonizing death even in defeat. After all, the first objective of someone defending themselves from attack with lethal force is the simple quick neutralization of the attacker.

If this rebellion is contained, the problem for Dark Elvish society remains that members of the Dark Elf population had been destroyed, as did slaves that if treated differently would have lived lives productively. Indeed, a large servile revolt, even if quelled could mean economic ruin for the dark elves since so much of the labor pool would be destroyed.

Fourthly their is the matter of sabotage. A more covert attempt at rebellion. The example here is simple. Imagine a slave being employed to make crossbow bolts. Said Slave can quietly express his discontent with his slave master by deliberately making inferior bolts with inferior ballistics and as such inferior penetration and accuracy. It will be hard to identify this activity before it causes harm. If he is killed, then no bolts are made at all. Replacement would be costly in any case so some hesitation would be employed. This could be applied in numerous areas, shipbuilding, general construction, weapon making and armor making. All would compromise the Dark Elf economy. The solution to this problem positive motivation, rewards for the task met and quotas exceeded, general improvement of living conditions, general improvement of labor conditions, a reduction of negative feedback. Of course, for reasons of ideology and petty spitefulness Dark Elves don't do this.

Finally there is the matter of procurement of replacement slaves. Since natural reproduction is not viable for the Dark Elves, they have to collect replacements from outside. This has numerous complications in itself. The first one is that captured slaves are more likely to be rebellious. The second is more damning, the method of acquisition. For the most part, the Caribbean Plantations got slaves not by Europeans conquering or raiding African villages but by buying Africans from Africans who took other Africans as prisoners of war. The reason for this is simple. Taking slaves by force is tricky business, since they would resist attempts at capture and kill the slavers. Doing so would be risky and expensive. Far safey and cheaper to simply buy slaves for muskets, swords and cast iron cooking pots. But Dark Elves have to do things the hard way and take slaves by force themselves. A failed raid is doubly weakening for the Dark Elves, as it means that they lost members of their racially defined overclass (Reducing the number of eyes overseeing slaves and swords to retaliate against rebellion), reduction of total military forces (even with a highly martial population, the loss of seasoned officers and soldiers will have it's effect) for no gain to their labor pool.

The inevitable ultimate fate of Dark Elf civilization, baring sugnifigant social and economic reforms, shall basically be this times twenty.


If you want to know more about Caribbean slavery

When engineering a Civilization in world building, one should endeavor to make it as credible as possible. Otherwise the suspension of disbelief of your audience shall be tested.

Draven has Spoken

I quite agree with most of your points but the Dark Elfs do brings in enough slaves to replace the dead ones

We are discussing realistic economics in a world litterd with golden statues created by the Final Transumtation?

Suppose a slave rebels? Where does he go? The chill land of naggaroth?
Fear is especially potemt, and just because it has no real world comparison does not detract from its potential to work.

Dark elf society is one run by fear and brutality. I'd imagine that I would be pretty productive if I'd just seen the man next to me flayed alive or fed to cold ones for dissent or lazy.

There is also a short story in the old dark elf book way back when of a rebellion and a slave escape. Rebellion isn't particularly scary for Dark Elves, or even worrying. Its kinda looked upon like a sport.

Don't forget magic. Spells, curses and whatnot tend to blow up any "real world" theoretical applications.

Why isn't natural reproduction viable? The slave system of the antebellum American South was based on natural reproduction of the slave population (supplemented with some continued slave smuggling), and that system was economically successful, if utterly inhumane.

We also havre to consider that most villagers in the old world don't have massive standing garrisons, compared to the resources a Black Ark could dispatch, raiding for the most part would likely take negligable casualties unless brought to battle.

 Eetion wrote:
We also havre to consider that most villagers in the old world don't have massive standing garrisons, compared to the resources a Black Ark could dispatch, raiding for the most part would likely take negligable casualties unless brought to battle.

That's true as well, for every battle fought vs. DE on the tabletop, where a raid is contested, a dozen likely go off without a hitch.

Well youmake some intresting points, but when faced with really, really evil Elfs with more sharp instruments of death and missery than you can shake a stick at. Most slaves will rather suffer in silence, and beside if you rebel, where do you run? And for anyone caugth alive well the word pain gets a whole new meaning.

Death by COld Ones or other beasties would be preferebale to torture preformed by Dark Elfs.

 Vulcan wrote:
We are discussing realistic economics in a world litterd with golden statues created by the Final Transumtation?

Such a fact's consequences economically is simply that the gold standard is totally non viable. The existence of magic does not nullify all economic thought no more than the existence of Industrial Manufacturing does, though it does adjust the scenario. Never the less, despite the existence of magic the primary production methods are still at the levels of artisanry.

codemonkey wrote:
Why isn't natural reproduction viable? The slave system of the antebellum American South was based on natural reproduction of the slave population (supplemented with some continued slave smuggling), and that system was economically successful, if utterly inhumane.

Slaves in the United States lived in somewhat better conditions and were not abused to the same degree when compared to Slaves in Brazil or the Caribbean.

Draven has Spoken

It's Warhammer Fantasy. It works if it wants to.

I hope the slaves can find time to reproduce on that sort of scale and raise their children while not being brutally beaten or worked to death.

Yeah, let's go rebel against those guys with the giant dragon kin and unnatural reflexes and magical affinity! While leading a group of malnourished, broken, unarmed and likely untrained men! And then rule over the cold, barren wastelands which our captors held us in!

Dark Elf societal structure is general and ambiguous for a reason.

 Eetion wrote:

Dark elf society is one run by fear and brutality. I'd imagine that I would be pretty productive if I'd just seen the man next to me flayed alive or fed to cold ones for dissent or lazy.

Such action is inefficient. Destroying a worker to motivate others? That means the worker would need to be replaced, delaying production until it can be replaced and requiring money be expended in procuring a replacement.

A far more efficient use of resources would be simply to offer a slave improved rations for exceeding a quota which he has a reasonable chance of meeting, or occasionally setting free an especially productive slave and then having a slave employed for wages.

Draven has Spoken

Except that slave can be easily replaced. The Dark Elf cities have hundreds of thousands of slaves. Sure, go flog and kill a hundred slaves, there's plenty more where they come from.

Additionally, Dark Elves continually raid areas, except for winter seasons, when the bigger ships cannot navigate through the ice. Even then, smaller ships not located at Clar Karond can certainly make the trip. Raids aren't conducted on a basis of need, they're always conducted. The raiding is a business in and of itself.

 Cryonicleech wrote:
Except that slave can be easily replaced. The Dark Elf cities have hundreds of thousands of slaves. Sure, go flog and kill a hundred slaves, there's plenty more where they come from.

It is still grossly inefficient. Better to treat your existing workforce better for motivation and instead of buying replacements enlarge the operation.

Additionally, Dark Elves continually raid areas, except for winter seasons, when the bigger ships cannot navigate through the ice. Even then, smaller ships not located at Clar Karond can certainly make the trip. Raids aren't conducted on a basis of need, they're always conducted. The raiding is a business in and of itself.

And if there is a major naval defeat or a bad year happens for raiding (many smaller raids fail, either destroyed or repulsed without acquiring slaves and those that succeed succeed with higher than normal casualties for lower capture rates) their would be economic consequences across Naggaroth.

Draven has Spoken

Enlarge what operation? Motivate? They're Dark Elves, if you're somehow not "motivated" to work then they'll replace you with someone else. Again, there is always a surplus of slaves. Slaves in the American south weren't motivated, the system still worked for its day.

If you don't believe in the power of fear to motivate a workforce then I don't know what to tell you.

So what you're saying is that if every raid fails/barely succeeds then the system is broken?

That's like saying if there was a nation-wide power outage across the entire world there would be serious economic consequences. Be realistic, many villages the Dark Elves raid aren't even worth a thing to the Lords/vassals/nobles who rule over them.

Additionally, there are many towns which the Dark Elves pass by in which the local governors offer up the prisoners and convicts (or townsfolk on a lean year) to avoid all the "mess" of raids, as well as a treacherous member to be killed so the governor can make a show of it.

As for "major naval defeat", even during Malekith's invasions into Ulthuan, which has one of the world's greatest navies, the slave trade continued to work.

 Cryonicleech wrote:
Enlarge what operation?

If a Dark Elf has a shipbuilding operation, rather than constantly buy slaves to replace those killed to make an example of them build new yards and make more ships to be sold.

Each slave represents a certain amount of productive effort balanced against the cost of procurement and resources required to sustain it. The longer a slave lives the more effort is provides. A slave pushed hard constantly dies quickly. It is an inefficient use of resources to have a slave that works a 18 day but only lives like that for a couple of years as a slave when compared to one who works 10 hours but lasts for 40 years.

They're Dark Elves, if you're somehow not "motivated" to work then they'll replace you with someone else.

You do not understand that fact that Negative motivation costs resources. A slave driver requires pay to do his job and can only drive so many slaves, while gradually diminishing the effectiveness of the slave. Executing a slave destroys any economic output it might have yielded. Torturing a slave also does this, but is more expensive since it requires the services of specialists using specialized equipment. By being exclusively dependent on negative motivation, you require these individuals more and more.

Again, there is always a surplus of slaves. Slaves in the American south weren't motivated, the system still worked for its day.

US Slavery was comparatively mild compared to Dark Elf slavery and there was positive motivation employed in addition to negative motivation. There were freed slaves in the south and slave owners understood that there were instances in which a slab of bread or cut of pork was worth more than a thousand lashes.

It should be noted that Economic Development in the South of the US was significantly lower than it was in the North. The northern states grew faster and industrialized quicker.

Draven has Spoken

If a Dark Elf has a shipbuilding operation, then he has resources to leverage. He can send out raids of his own, most likely carried out by his sons, or loyal vassals, in return for slaves as well. It may be an inefficient system, but it appears to work for the Dark Elf society.

A slave driver does require pay. However, this is not strictly limited to coin. Payment in shelter, food, and relative safety in the house of a Lord of certain notoriety is wage enough for a Dark Elf.

Specialized equipment? They're already using whips to train their beasts, may as well re-purpose them to slave use. And how expensive is a whip to produce? Additionally, any torture devices used by the Dark Elves on slaves work equally well on any political enemies/rivals.

Executing a slave does destroy any economic output it may have yielded, but there are so many slaves that the output a slave has is low. So what if a slave lasts longer? It dies at some point, and will need to be replaced. When you have a large excess of slaves, the life of individual slaves and their usefulness is decreased tremendously.

If anything, positive motivation costs more resources. You're rewarding slaves who work harder with more rations, you're providing proper lodging for the slaves, and you're ensuring each slave's nutrition and life longevity, as well as happiness. You're ensuring they have proper working conditions and are happy with their environment. This isn't a modern economic system. The amount of slaves you own will drive these costs much higher than paying a few Dark Elves to do what they already enjoy doing, dominating the weak.

A freed slave in the South was worthless. With discrimination high, they ended up becoming sharecroppers, and what little pay they earned was immediately taken away due to incredibly high costs/debts. Additionally, the amount of free slaves "lucky" enough to earn this freedom was low.

I'm not arguing that it's an "efficient" system, I'm arguing that it's a system that works. It may not be the MOST economically viable system, but it works just fine.

Additionally, it's a fantasy setting. Why does it really matter? Giant Frog wizards lead legions of loyal Lizard servants, barbaric tribes in the north worship deranged gods to become giant Demons, and half man beasts roam the forests pillaging villages who never seem to learn the lesson.

It's a setting with a bunch of archetypes.

I'm disagree with using the Slaves punishment as purely a motivational tool. Because its not.

It is done because the Dark elves enjoy it. They look for slight indescretions in order to do it. They look for excuses to cut someones tongue out.

And if a slave won't work, or can't, cold ones and hydras still need feeding.
Its no real loss, simply expected. No different to them than a human eating chicken that cannot lay eggs anymore.

Slaves are not human in this setting, meerly an expendable resource which you have to go harvest.

I'm disagree with using the Slaves punishment as purely a motivational tool. Because its not.

It is done because the Dark elves enjoy it. They look for slight indescretions in order to do it. They look for excuses to cut someones tongue out.

Such actions are of no utility. Damaging workers pointlessly, punishment saturation and undermining the deterrent effect of negative motivation through randomness.

And if a slave won't work, or can't, cold ones and hydras still need feeding.

Pigs, Goats and Cattle are more efficient sources of protein. They breed and mature considerably faster and consume less calories to achieve said mass. Feeding such predators slaves is the economic equivalent to taking out perfectly functional machine tools from factories to melt them down to make cans when you have a yard full of derelict vehicles.

Specialized equipment? They're already using whips to train their beasts, may as well re-purpose them to slave use. And how expensive is a whip to produce? Additionally, any torture devices used by the Dark Elves on slaves work equally well on any political enemies/rivals.

But their number is finite and they can only do so much at a time. Leaving aside the fact that as you said they have others to work with.

Additionally, it's a fantasy setting. Why does it really matter? Giant Frog wizards lead legions of loyal Lizard servants, barbaric tribes in the north worship deranged gods to become giant Demons, and half man beasts roam the forests pillaging villages who never seem to learn the lesson.

All that amount to is an adjustment of factors to the situation. And remember that despite this, the basis of most manufacturing remains at the level of artisanry.

People would make comment if a fantasy book had the winning strategy of a battle be a comparatively mundane cavalry charge right into an elite pike formation or a similar example of bad tactics. The difference between making a comment on tactics verses one of economics is effectively meaningless.

Draven has Spoken

You're right that DE society doesn't make a lot of sense the way it is set up. There should be full-scale slave rebellions every six weeks the way GW describes it. But it's still an improvement over the "inspiration" for DE society; the Drow from D&D. Their civilization made even less sense than the DE civilization.

And you're quite right about the existence of magic altering things a bit but leaving the underlying problem unchanged... just because a wizard can turn someone into a toad does not mean that basic economics stop functioning.

However, as Devil's Advocate, I should point out that no society in any Warhammer setting is really all that well thought out beyond getting the "flavor" or "feel" that the writers are tyring to put across. The DE are supposed to be eeeeeeeeevil, so lump slavery, sadism, and abject cruelty into one lump and call it a civilization. The Dwarves are grumpy, greedy, tough, and never forget an insult. Never mind that all the grudge-holding would make their civilization more prone to internecine warfare than any other (even moreso than Orks) its just part of giving players an idea of how Dwarves "feel"...

I would be interested in knowing if the Warhammer Fantasy RPG (the previous edition, not the current one) ever put a book out on Dark Elves... I ask because their book on Brettonia was fabulous and actually did the kind of well thought out world building that you want to see when explaining a civilization. The book explained how the Brettonians could be the same bright, shiny knights of earlier army editions AND the cruel, exploitive feudal douchebags of the more recent edition... If they made a book dor Dark Elves, it might address the issues you raised.

I'm disagree with using the Slaves punishment as purely a motivational tool. Because its not.

It is done because the Dark elves enjoy it. They look for slight indescretions in order to do it. They look for excuses to cut someones tongue out.

Such actions are of no utility. Damaging workers pointlessly, punishment saturation and undermining the deterrent effect of negative motivation through randomness.

I think the answer we're looking for is: "Some (all?) Dark Elves just want to watch the world burn."

As Eetion mentioned, the DE *like* hurting people. It's what make life good for them. They don't care if their system isn't the pinnacle of organized, efficient production. If they wanted to maximize their economic output, they would stay home and build factories instead of going on raids. Why don't they do that? Because they *like* going on raids.

The waste and mismanagement in this system exists, in large part, because it doesn't really matter to the people running it.

Let's try this another way.

We are arguing about realistic economic theory... in a world where a serpentine dragon with a 4" long neck can't eat the dude sitting 1" off to his side because he's not in the dragon's front arc...

 Vulcan wrote:
Let's try this another way.

We are arguing about realistic economic theory... in a world where a serpentine dragon with a 4" long neck can't eat the dude sitting 1" off to his side because he's not in the dragon's front arc...

QFT

I think you're also placing economic standards on a society that doesn't care how well the current fiscal status of the nation is doing.

They're a nation built on one premsis, War, and war against the traitors of Ulthuan.

The Dark Elves are brutal creatures, since the time of Aenarion Nagarythe was and always will be a kingdom built on the principals of warfare.


I wonder what the dark elves eat... slaves perhaps?

The Japanese and Germans in WWII both tried to work prisoner groups to death in various places. The idea was basically a complete fail, with little productive labour being achieved. Turns out that if you beat and starve people they work very slowly, so slowly in fact that you're better off just having the guards do the work.

thelordcal wrote:
I think you're also placing economic standards on a society that doesn't care how well the current fiscal status of the nation is doing.

A society doesn't have to believe in gravity in order for a bridge to fall down if it is on a shoddy foundation. The same is true of economics.

There are no economic issues that the Dark elves cannot solve with more raiding.

The north is frozen and we just did Brettonia, ok, let's try ind, cathy and araby.

Raiding is not seasonal, its constant, and permanent and nigh inexhaustable resource to harvest. Unlike farming which is entirely dependent on season and weather, and in Naggoroth the outlook is bleak. Raiding will likely be far more successful than agriculture.

I think that the problem here is that the OP is correct, but the people debating with him are also correct, but in a different manner.

Dark Elven economics don't work. People trying to say that the answer to the problems of a slave economy is more raiding and more torture seem to be misunderstanding the whole point of having a slave economy in the first place. The Romans, after a time, found it hard to acquire new slaves to keep their slave-centric economy going; thus they stimulated slave-selling among the Germans, for example. Not to mention the severe problems with slave economies; for example, they are inefficient in the long run, not least because it leaves no incentive to innovate and create new labour-saving technologies. Slaves, especially chattel ones like people are thinking of here, are economically speaking really no more than an oxen with hands. There is a reason that people invented steam technology; because it is much more efficient than oxen.

However it doesn't really matter, because the WFB background is focused solely (solely!) around cool people stabbing each other in stylish yet easily-modelled fashions. Why has Bretonnia not updated its technology - even saying 'magic!' doesn't seem to account for the fact that the Empire should have steamrolled them long ago. After all, the Empire has weapons that make a mockery of any fortification. The simple fact is that, like many fantasy settings, it is aiming only to cram together a bunch of archetypes in close proximity that can appeal to wargamers. There are other ways of building background, but this is probably the easiest. You see it all over, especially in roleplaying (7th Sea, GURPS Banestorm, and Eberron all are examples of it).

I recently read an excellent point about the difference between WFRP and WFB; that a wargame needs a very certain kind of background, and that is one which is military-heavy, doesn't talk about society or economic issues, and which has everybody at war with everybody else ALL THE TIME. The point of such a background isn't really 'to make sense'; the point is to appeal to the eyes and the imagination, and let a player get just a feeling for who it is that he is controlling and who he is fighting against.

All civilizations have a cycle and it has been as accurately as I can find best described by Alexander Fraser Tytler and this is known as the Tytler Cycle:
"The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."
Most Western Civilizations are ahead of most of the 3rd world on the scale are somewhere between an Apathy to Dependence stage. If you look at America's history the gold rushes of 1848 and of areas and terroitories like the Dakota Black Hills through the Industrial Age and even up through Prohibition and WW2 we were in the stages of abundance to selfishness, then through the 60 and 80s we moved quickly from Selfishness to Apathy and clearly we are in the Apathy to Dependency stage as almost 50% of Americans do not pay taxes and have no stake in the system other then to take and the Government needs to tell us what to eat, how much to work (looking at you France) and limits the size of our sodas which is rapidly moving us to dependancy. Whereas the Arab Springs we are seeing is somewhere between Spiritual Faith to Courage.

Therefore no civilization is economically viable and all civilizations are doomed to fail, all things good or bad must come to an end.

Hargus56 wrote:
clearly we are in the Apathy to Dependency stage as almost 50% of Americans do not pay taxes and have no stake in the system other then to take and the Government needs to tell us what to eat, how much to work (looking at you France) and limits the size of our sodas which is rapidly moving us to dependancy.

I think that your personal politics are showing through clearer here than the strength of Tytler's theory.

Therefore no civilization is economically viable and all civilizations are doomed to fail, all things good or bad must come to an end.

I'm not totally sure how this relates to a discussion on Dark Elven economics, personally.