Even the real world slavers and corporations know better than to treat the labor in a way that will lead to death and waste said labor. Slave labor is an asset that cannot be so easily replenished, even with the labor force of Syl'anar, the elves, being in the billions. Once they die out, so does Syl'anar. That makes the labor much more valuable than what the labor is used for with only one exception, breeding more into the labor force, but because of how that works, the offspring would live shorter lives from the start and would be even more valuable alive. Dead bodies don't contribute to the economy.
Yeah, no, that is really not the case. They will work their employees to death, if they are not prevented. I know, because I was one of those people who was forced to do the work of 3 people, got hurt on the job, and they just paid the fine, and pushed me onto the government to care for. So now I am permanently disabled, and even if I were to try to find work again for some reason, like them taking my benefits away, I am blacklisted from ever working there again, because they had to pay my medical bills for making me disabled in the first place.
We catch corporations knowingly selling poison, we have them happily killing off their customers and employees, as long as it turns a profit. Long term is not the goal, it is all about that fiscal quarter, and the next quarter is the next quarter's problem. In fact, corporations are some of the worst examples of this, because of the way it is designed to care only about short term profits. Since that is how their higher ups are rewarded.
But then, when the cash cow lies dead on the floor, no more money, short term or long. Profit for a single individual or company is one thing, supporting an entire economy is another entirely. Thinkiing in the short term works for the former, but try that with the latter and the society the economy is for will end up either indebted to another or dead in the water.
But for that to work, people have to give a shit about the company and the people who work there. They milk it for everything they can get, and move on to the next one when/if it fails. The main issue here is that corporations are controlled by the board, which answers to the investors, who only care about their investment, not even the company. In the old days, we could take short term losses to invest in the futures, but now short term losses are not acceptable. We can even see examples of that here on this site, where a dev can work on a game, drop it, move onto another one, and repeat this as long as people still support them.
We also have the tax incentive, the lower the highest tax rates are, the less incentive the leaders of that company have to invest that money back into the company. As an example, at one time in our country, we had the highest tax rate (for income over a certain amount), was about 90%, so rather than take that money as income and give most of it to the government as taxes, they would reinvest in their companies, pay their employees better, and so on. Then they lowered that tax rate, and all of that stopped, the less they have to pay, the more they keep for themselves and the less they put back into the company. History speaks for itself. While greed has its place, it is an addictive beast, and it blinds you to anything other than how to get more.
Some humans are, some are fully capable of long term thought. The latter tend to be the ones who don't take up positions of authority over entire economies, though, while the former are typically politicians and the like, people who hold that power and squander it for short term gain when they could get so much more out of their position over a longer period. I'm not going to get into the example specifically because that would most certainly derail the thread and get us off of the base topic we are discussing, but if one does not think of the consequences, then they have already doomed themselves to fail sooner rather than later. Case in point, the mistreatment of the elves, which will eventually lead to an extinction that will end Syl'anar when, not if, it happens. In this case, yes, it IS going to happen no matter what the humans do, but what they are doing now is speeding up the process and that economy they have will be quite the rude awakening when, again not if, it comes crashing down and total chaos ensues.
The real world DOES know better, the problem isn't that they don't know, the problem is they don't care, which is actually much worse. In both cases, they believe(d) the enslaved are lower than humans and anything at that level or lower deserves to be treated like trash. That kind of thinking will lead to resource depletion, the resource being the labor provided by the elves in this case. Like with real world countries that rely on cheap labor or that did at one point, or even the colonies that became the US, the humans of Syl'anar won't want to get their hands dirty with the same labor when, again not if, the elves die out. Much like how the nobles that came to the new world, now the US, did not want to work, neither will the humans of Syl'anar and that will grind the economy to a screeching halt instantly.
That's my point, the elven birth rate WON'T stay at or above the death rate if this keeps up. Sooner rather than later, the death rate will overtake the birth rate. There's also the issue that those being born aren't necessarily pure elves and that means they don't share the super long lives of elves. This makes the labor of these offspring even more valuable because they are going to die sooner whether they are mistreated or not. Elves will last hundreds or even thousands of years if treated well enough, anyone less than a full elf will not and will have varying degrees of declining longevity depending on the amount of elven DNA they possess. Then you take mistreatment into account and they might even struggle to last a decade.
That WOULD be a problem of tomorrow if there wasn't mistreatment potentially shortening the lives of their laborers. By mistreating the elves, the humans of Syl'anar have turned the issue into a problem of today because they are making the elves die out faster and shortening the time they have to use the elves as labor. Then you take into account the lack of responsibility and will to work the humans will no doubt have, as has been the case in nearly every slave owning scenario in the real world, again I point to the colonies that became the US, and there's a major problem.
The people who do look to the future, are not only rarely drawn to power, they are rarely willing to do what is needed to obtain that power, and in those rare cases when they do, they are then indebted and/or controlled by those special interests who control everything with their "donations".
You are right, that the birth rate may not always stay at the rate it is, which might be part of why they are not including half elves in the elf rights laws, creating a new workforce. Forced breeding is a thing, look at Handmaiden. But here is the thing, by the time this becomes an issue, those people who are in charge will be long dead, or at least out of power, so they just don't care. 'The birth rate drops, they can start up factory farms, cloning, etc., whatever, that is something the future generations can deal with ...not
my problem.'
Even if they cut the average lifespan of elves in half, none of them will live to see the end result. Those elves still would outlive their average human several times over. It will take far longer for that problem to show than it did in any real world examples, since no slave here could live for centuries.
Look at climate change, we have been warning about the damage of pollution for most of the last century, but we still refuse to do anything about it, because short term matters more to the people in charge than longer term. They only care about staying in power, and will do anything to make that happen, no matter how stupid and short sighted it is, as long as they get money and power.
This is the case with almost every issue pollution, elf slavery, robot warriors, whatever the issue, long term only matters, if it aligns with their short term goals. While yes, many people are capable of thinking long term, the hard part is getting society and the people in charge of it to care enough to do anything about it.
Which, brings me to another way in which we could change society in this game, once Kali's dad dies, and the girls inherit most of his empire, we could start funding anti-slavery people, use smear campaigns against the pro-slavery candidates, and so on. That could be one way to get Vanessa elected.
