[World Building] Alt-History TL 8 Earth with open RPM

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

I figure the big strike against the "freedom" side of the debate (although there WOULD be a very long-running debate) is that we're talking magic here.

Magic can literally kill and destroy you in every way possible, and in some ways you'd consider essentially impossible. People get really dang annoyed at you if you carry a loaded shotgun in public and owning a heavier type of gun (a LMG?) in even the relatively low gun control areas of the U.S. will at least require you to give up civil liberties (letting the police search your home without a warrant), IIRC. And magic is way more dangerous than a gun - RPM botches are 30 energy minimum and includes fallout like summoning daemons (Quick! Got a vial of holy water handy?) and 4d fiery explosions.

But yeah, I can see that there is a certain degree of instability introduced into societies - although the benefits of magic done RIGHT does cancel that out, to a certain extent...

The problem is, that magic is being done by people who are, to varying degrees, practically slaves. This does not have good precedents for that society (there's no direct equivalent, but slave-soldiers are fairly close, historically).

You have to look at it not only from the mundane PoV ('Those people are useful, but terribly dangerous!'), but also from the mages' viewpoints ('I will not be a slave any longer!').