Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-226878-20140810021742/@comment-14909251-20140811181038

Merc, the Schnee Dust Company is a multi-national energy conglomerate with intimate ties to the aggressive military superpower of its age. We can safely presume that the company is corrupt. As far as the Faunus are concerned, I doubt there is anything akin to the slavery of the southern United States pre-civil war. However, there are many different forms of slavery that have existed throughout the years. Some forms are simply disguised.

For instance, in the early days when the American colonies were being settled, businesses would pay for people to travel to the New World and then these people would be put in a state of indentured servitude. Basically, they would work for free to pay off the people that so graciously assisted them in their travels. This concept of debt-slavery continued even into the early 19th Century.

Another form that is not generally considered slave-labor is prison labor. Typically it is seen as acceptable because it is usually for a serious offense, but in the aftermath of the American Civil War many southern states instituted Black Codes that could be used to arrest any blakc person person for, essentially, "laziness" and use the court system to put them to work for free. The Fourteenth Amendment was created primarily to address that problem. Nowadays one might point to practices like the laojiao system in China or various forms of illegal immigrant labor in the United States (including immigration prisons) as akin to slavery.

There are numerous historical examples, even in the modern era, of slavery-like labor practices that are simply disguised as something else. Never mind the possibility of there being facilities "outside the kingdoms" where there are fewer prying eyes and thus greater opportunities to abuse populations such as what you see in parts of the Third World. Any combination of these could be in place in the RWBY universe.

Personally, the way Blake talks of "Faunus labor" makes me think this is not exactly a voluntary employer-employee arrangement. Some form of coercion is involved and abuse of "empoyees" is undoubtedly rampant.

While you may think of the world in RWBY as advanced and thus likely to be more civilized, the context of their advancement and the dangers of their world are also important to consider. They live in an environment where there are massive monsters lurking mere miles from their major cities. A fortress mentality can fuel a lot of frightening ideologies and paranoia is likely to be rampant. You also have to keep in mind that the Faunus are identified as a separate species and thus are not going to have the same sympathetic connections as humans of a different race.