Humankind Is Intolerant | HFY | SciFi Short Stories

Humankind Is Intolerant

Story by u/atra55

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Original Story:   / humankind_is_intolerant  

Humankind is intolerant

OC
The deal was done. The treaty had been signed. The Strukl empire was the 234th space faring civilisation to join the galactic council. A great day for the entire free universe.

"I would like to congratulate you personally, said the galactic chancellor to the Strukl ambassador. You've made the right choice. You will soon find find out that not everyone in this galaxy is as tolerant as us. I'm thinking about a species in particular, relatively close to your space, which I think you should be warned about. They won't be much of a threat, more a general annoyance, but... Ah, were to begin?

So, back when the council was still a young organisation, we made contact with a species from outside the galactic core for the first time. They were one of the oldest and most developed specie in the galaxy at the time. To be honest, they still are, despite their isolationism. Although I guess you're not that isolated when your territory covers about 2% of every star system in the galaxy, and you made yourself a little coalition of brainwashed uplifts. But I digress.

This specie was called humans, and they were eager to join the council at first. Their two ambassadors worked tirelessly to treat every single little point about council regulations they would have to include in their own legislation, and seemed genuinely willing to do some sacrifices to get some new friends. Then, we reached commercial laws, and something incomprehensible happened.

The first law of commerce is, as I am sure you're aware, that you cannot ban the flow of any good through your territory, unless said good is prohibited by galactic law. The humans accepted gladly, yet when we got to the harmonization of taxes on products, thing went sour pretty quickly. We told them the recommended rates for a variety of common goods, they have not changed that much since then : luxury clothing 5%, rare ores and jewellery 7%, slaves 6%...

As soon as we mentioned the taxe on slaves, they seemed disgusted. My predecessor assumed than for them, like for many other species, slaves were very culturally important, and they were worried that these taxes would impact their way of life. She was quick to reassure them that these rates were just recommendations, and they could go lower if they wanted.

The Human's response was an unexpected one :




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