[Dragaera] Is Kelly foolish?

[Scott Schultz]

>One apparent change is increased literacy, which leads to the ability to do
sorcery, which fixes many of the social problems 
>Easterners have.
>Diseased, dirty, ignorant scum doesn't really apply if you can do sorcery
at some reasonable level. 
> I'd love to see an Empire sponsored education program. It would be sort of
cool way to piss off the Jhereg, while making them up their game a bit.

>Mark

Why would the government want to piss off the Jhereg? Zerika makes no bones
about the fact that the Teckla and the other lower to middle classes are the
natural prey of the Jhereg. Why rock the boat?

More to the point, though, is whether your basic premise is true or not.
Sorcery does not seem to raise anybody's standard of living. Primarily it's
used for the sorts of reasons that we use machines in our lives. A bit of
labor saving and travel, and the travel is a relatively new perk of sorcery.

Sorcery isn't simple. Vlad knows a few handy spells, but his study has never
gone beyond that and it may be that his skill is just that limited. If it
was so dead simple that anyone could learn it and be proficient, then
everyone would already be proficient.

As an example of an Easterner who learned sorcery, Vlad doesn't really lend
a lot of weight to an argument that sorcery, in and of itself, improves
one's quality of life.

Then there's the question of citizenship. Sorcery requires a link to the Orb
and that link requires you to be a member of one of the Houses. The only
House that's generally available is House Teckla. You can apparently walk up
to the local rep, say "I want to join" and they'll sign you up, link you up,
and put you to work toiling for the nearest noble. Of course, that probably
means you'll be too busy to learn much sorcery. If joining House Teckla was
so awfully attractive, it seems like the Easterners of South Adrilankha
would have done it a long time ago.

It doesn't seem very likely that an Empire-sponsored social program aimed at
increasing sorcery literacy would also include a title of nobility.

Mostly, though, the Empire needs an underclass to do the work that nobody
else can stand doing, such as the leather tanning and what not. The
Easterners provide that. Lifting them up would hurt the Empire in exactly
the same way that destroying them would hurt. There's very little incentive
for the Empire to develop a social conscience and improve life for the
Easterners. This reality feeds into Kelly's stand that if anything is going
to change, it's going to have to be that the lower classes demanded change
and forced the upper classes into making the changes against their will.