Isekai Walking - Vol. 6 Ch. 52 - A New City

[Dorunga]

slavery in any form and at all levels is pure evil

yes

 

[StealthAria]

yes

My point is that they're not seeing anything but that.
Cutting people open is bad, but is still bad if you're doing to perform a life-saving surgery? Forcefully stripping someone without consent is bad, but is it still bad if it is done to resuscitate them with an AED? Breaking and entering is a crime, but is it still a crime when done to save someone trapped inside? By these people's logic, you should never do anything that causes anyone anywhere any level of harm or discomfort, even if it means abandoning those you could otherwise save.

The boy is traveling alone, but flashes a fat sack of cash to gain entry. He doesn't know who else might've seen the exchange, he might get 10 paces down the street and end up dead in a ditch because someone saw and wants that money, and with no references he's going to have to do that at every slaver he questions. He asked no questions beyond the "have you seen these girls? (no photo)" but the trader might have other useful information like where those two might have been taken based on the trade routes. He doesn't even actually know if the slaver might've lied to him (or if the slaver might have been lied to, or if the description he gave simply no longer matches them), if he had accepted the offer to see the slaves he might have gotten to the showroom and found the two of them in the line-up, or asked to see the training and found them being trained. His disgusted reaction could have even gotten him blacklisted and left him worse than useless in the search.
He gained absolutely nothing from the exchange, but potentially lost everything. For all he knows, they were there and he was lied to to encourage more sales, but now they'll never be found because the other two think he already properly investigated there. All because he (and a significant portion of this thread's participants) can't stand the mere thought of slavery. You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs; if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen; if he can't bear the thought of being in the proximity of slavery, he never should have offered to help with the search.


Heck, one of the arguments is even the pinnacle of hypocrisy and/or ignorance. If you have a problem with him buying and freeing what slaves he can on the basis that the money just persists the trade, you should be Amish. Every bit of electronics used to host and access this site, to make your life easier, and even to produce all the power for all those electronics, all rely on slave labor; by using the internet you are generating ad revenue that ultimately funnels back into slavery, by buying electronics you are funding companies that use slaves. Where do those slaves come in? They're the ones mining many of the raw materials needed, and are even used to process some of those materials and assemble some of the components.

 

[Wyrm]

If you have a problem with him buying and freeing what slaves he can on the basis that the money just persists the trade, ...

First, nobody here said that there is only one degree of evil. Morality is a scale, with context and purposes possibly influencing judgement. You described some extreme cases without context and then put them in perspective with special cases. That's stupid. For two reasons: 1. absolute morality (i.e. an act is always good or evil regardless of context) isn't a thing, at least when discussing in good faith; and 2. these cases are not examples of things that are evil. You're just strawmaning here. (And I'm pretty sure you tried that before with the "trapped inside" example, using a fire as additional context then.)
But, as much as you want to pretend that slavery is less evil when you treat your slaves humanely, it is still evil to some extent. I won't go back over the reasons why, I already made a post about this. It's even worse in fantasy worlds like this where slavery is often enforced by magic, completely removing any free will from the equation and solidifying the slaves' status as property.

Second, from the quote I kept above, that's not something that was ever discussed here, for all I can remember. (I might have missed something after I got tired of the discussion.) What was discussed was the idea of buying them, then bringing them along in the MC's travels while treating them humanely... but still enslaved . Freeing them was not discussed. Worse yet, the argument was to buy the best slaves who would be treated better even by other owners than the useless or injured ones. Because they could contribute to the MC's fighting or survival needs.

I would be more in favor of this new behavior, and I wouldn't call it evil if that was the idea. I'd still find it useless in practice, and potentially still harmful in a broader scope, but at least it would not be evil because it would end the bought individuals' status as slaves.

And I think the reason it wasn't brought up is because we were comparing this MC to the ones in other mangas where isekai'ed MCs buy slaves without feeling guilt. Because they're thinking of themselves as heroes who are (not really) freeing poor slaves from a life of hardships... while bringing them along into repeated life or death situations.

The comparison was not to the (few) MCs fighting to end slavery in their new world. I can think of a few, and none of them are going at it with "I'll buy one slave once in a while" approach. They are either OP and go at this with a frontal approach because they can fight the whole world if it comes down to it; or they have a long-term reasoned approach that aims for a societal change. Sora doesn't have the individual power to force his moral choices on the whole country, nor the personality to work politically towards the required change. Either of these two points might change over time, but right now that is definitely outside the scope of his power or behavior.

 

[Onsokumaru]

It's immoral for Isekai MC to not buy slaves. It sentences the slave to a horrible life. The MC has an obligation.