Tradegate and selling souls

I'm not sure I completely agree with VanWormer.
While one can't argue that such a fate is preferable to many that await individuals on the Great Wheel, there is an underlying belief that
freedom = good
loss of freedom = not good
Even if it is slavery to a benevolent master, there is a taint to the idea of slavery. In most minds, freedom is a gift that was given to us and it has an aspect of sin to throw it away. Even if the choices one makes of a free will lead to a far worse scenario or if one's circumstances result in one not really having a choice, we like to entertain the idea that we are masters of our fates and that that should be cherished. A lack of freedom is a fate only deserving of animals (hence the many arrogant, ignorant rationalizations found in the darker chapters of history).
Now if it were a case of indentured servitude where one works for a set period of time or towards a set goal, then it is more like a job (albeit, one that you're not free to quit). This would have a lesser taint to the concept
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Back to the original thread, I don't have that resource so I don't know the context of these "sales".
Are the petitioners selling they souls to individual traders in the town? Or to the entity of the town itself?
What is the purpose of these transactions? Are the petitioners used as slaves? As public workers?
The only thing I found on this site (the only thing I found after a exhausting 20 seconds of looking) was a line
"It’s even rumored that a body can barter away his afterlife in Tradegate if he doesn’t have anything else to trade."
To me this sounds like a person is able to barter his soul solely for some money to gain material possessions. Even if this sale is just indentured servitude (which I would strongly suggest as flat-out slavery sounds too evil for a Bytopian gatetown - IMHO), bartering your freedom for baubles seems to have a taint of materialistic greed and evil (or at very least rampant foolishness)
Personally, I think this makes sense regarding your original premise. I could see some diabolical merchant(s) setting up shop amongst the honest vendors (and most of the time he would engage in honest trade); but when a rube walked into town, he would try to dazzle him with baubles or with a slick sales pitch.
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Whether you use the concept of enslavement or indentured servitude, it allows for some role-playing opportunities. Imagine the PCs visiting Tradegate and running into such a person who had been sent ot the market on an errand. He pleads with the PCs to either smuggle him out of town (an Underground Railroad scenario) or to help him accomplish the task that was the condition of his indentured servitude.
Sure he signed the contract willingly and his "master" isn't the worst person in the multiverse; but, he has grown weary of his years of servitude and wants to go on to his final reward

Tradegate being a city of trades, though, I smell one possibly severe problem with this: namely, that you're also agreeing to the possibility of being sold off later, to an unpredictable god or master. And I could see the Merkhants being big buyers, with resale to fiends at reliable profit. It's probably not often that a fiend gets their hands on a verifiably neutral or better soul.

Tradegate isn't on Bytopia, after all. It's a gate-town, and the Outlands will probably evaluate all comers fairly. So, in a lawful, contractually-organized way, you're really playing dice with your ultimate fate.

Good gods might be willing to purchase a soul free, if the soul in question is worth it (makes themselves worth it); and there is the very interesting possibility of what might happen if the petitioner bought out his contract. Godhood? Or maybe this is the standard ending ritual that concludes in merging with the plane?

This isn't true. Well, at any rate, it's only completely true if you're chaotic good. Well... actually, it's not exactly true even then.

For chaotic good types, individual freedom (which is to say, liberty) is absolutely an essential part of good. Something is good only insofar as it allows you to be free to find your own bliss, with the caveat that you can't be infringing on the freedom of others (if you could be free to infringe on the rights of others, you'd be chaotic neutral or evil).

If you're lawful good, freedom isn't an essential part of good at all. Being lawful means you have to put the good of society ahead of your own personal desires. Your right to personal expression ends where society's right to be harmonious and conflict-free begins. There are, of course, degrees of this. Not every lawful good type is Hardhead. In Arcadia, social order is more important than kindness, altruism, and mercy (which is to say, Good). In Celestia, law and good are equally important, but freedom isn't an essential part of the equation. If you're born into a lower social caste and unable to move out of it, this is okay, as long as you're treated with kindness and dignity. For a chaotic good type, lack of social mobility is intolerable, no matter how good and stable the society might be. You have the right to some personal expression, even in Mechanus (though less in Mechanus than anywhere else), but there's nothing inherently good about it.

From the point of view of an "extreme" lawful good type (a throne archon, for example), a strong desire for individual liberty isn't just irrelevant, it's sinful. Being chaotic good is, from the enlightened, objective point of view of the celestial hierarchs, just as wrong as being lawful evil. An asura is just as fallen from the cosmic ideal as a baatezu. Archons have a word for people who desire liberty as the highest good. Several words in fact.

Anarchists.
Rebels.
Deviants.
Selfish.
Hedonists.

And if that mindset is hard to get into or appreciate... believe me, it exists. Browse the more socially conservative regions of the internet, and see what they say about people who think everyone should be able to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. Then try to put yourself into their heads for a moment, and accept, for the sake of argument, that these people aren't "evil" - that they're as benevolent as the social libertarians in their way (even if you think they're wrong). They simply fall more toward the lawful end of the law-chaos spectrum than you do. And then remember that millennia-old personifications of cosmic order are far more conservative than anyone on the Internet. No matter how benevolent they are.

And this isn't just about sex, or nonstandard sex practices. From the lawful vantage point, everyone has a place in society, and society functions because people don't, as a whole, behave as if they know better than millennia of tradition. They get married, they have kids, they do the same job their parents did, they take care of their parents in their old age, and the cycle repeats. What's the alternative? Social instability. Unemployment. Elderly people with no support. Children with no parents. Not everyone can be a king, not everyone can be a merchant or fine artist or novelist, and not everyone can be rich. Someone has to take out the garbage, and society functions best if people don't spend their time fighting over the best jobs. Instead, the goal of those of good alignment should be to make life for the poorer classes as happy as possible, rather than to lie to them and tell them they can be something they can't.

And yes, in that situation, you can have slavery, or a system that might as well be slavery (serfdom, indentured servants, etc... stuff that even the most benevolent medieval fantasy nations will likely have), even if you're lawful good.

Neutral good means seeing social good and individual freedom as approximately equally desirable, and attempting to, more or less, balance the two.

Chaotic people object strenuously. Sure, not everyone can be rich, but everyone has a right to try.

Except, as I suggested before, petitioners aren't really free. A chaotic good deity will encourage the souls under her care to seek out their dreams as best they can... but their souls still belong to their deity. That's a constant no matter what the god's alignment. And if they're not bound to a specific deity, they're bound to a plane. And is being bound to a plane really more morally abhorrent than being bound to a gate-town?

And there are other weird things in Planescape, like the city of Polykeptolon in Arborea (see Planes of Chaos, which remains in Arborea despite being supported primarily by slave labor so that the philosophers who rule the city don't have any manual labor distracting them from their contemplation. Maybe it's the will of the Greek pantheon that keeps it there.

I think this avoids my second argument (which might not have been posted during the time you wrote this up), the relationship of a person enslaved to another person is a different set of rules than a person obedient to a divine entity or concept.
What is happening in Tradegate (as I read it), is definitely the former.
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With regards to worldly religious organizations laying down edicts of "good" behavior based on what they believe is divine command, this can lead to some of the greatest evils every seen.
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Sure everyone in a lawful society gives up some freedoms for the benefits of the social contract; but I think this is a HUGE cry from the concept of "traditional" slavery. Giving up the freedom to take whatever thing you see that is lying around (or the reverse of forgoing private possessions in a communal society) is a rule that has to be obeyed and limits freedom but it's not the same as being enslaved

I acknowledge that throughout history there have been many types of slavery that were not as blatently evil as the slavery that afflicted captives brought to the New World.
The serfdom of medieval Europe or the patron system of ancient Rome would qualify as slavery; but they were considered socially acceptable and "good" for the social order. But often these people lived with the promise that in the afterlife, they would be rewarded in a land of plenty with more freedom (if manna falls from the sky, there is no need for the former serf to farm the land).

While these social systems might exist in Arcadia, I never saw them existing in any of the other Upper Planes. I see that at that point, one is defined (in the lawful side) by one's devotion and servitude to one's god; not to the wills of other individuals.
Sure the devas might enforce some tough rules and law down commands that MUST be obeyed but that is only because they receive those commands directly from the god in question.
This differs from the rules that MUST be obeyed based on mortal members of a church, society or organization thinking that they undeniably understand what God wants and forcing people to obey.

I don't think we really disagree with one another very much, if at all. There's certainly a difference between believing a slave is property with no rights and believing they're human beings (or whatever species) with the same rights to dignity and compassion as everyone else... but without the ability to legally quit their job.

Different societies, and different gods, will definitely have different specific laws that they expect people to obey. The lawful mindset means giving due deference to those social norms, but doesn't mean there are any universal set of commandments that all lawful good people must follow.

That's a fair point regarding slavery. Hence I wonder if the town would in fact put people to work afterward.

What if they're not selling their soul... they're selling their afterlife? Do not become petitioner, do not go to godly domain, go directly to Tradegate and merge with the town, augmenting its planar presence? That way the town actually gets something out of the deal -- conceptual oomph, like any other plane that merges a petitioner -- and it would explain why the soul can't be resurrected afterward.

It would be interesting to come across, or play, a person like that, with fiends or just circumstances constantly tempting them to do evil. What do you care? Your afterlife is guaranteed. (The response being that Tradegate is good-tinted neutral, so your existence will be best retained if you're good-tinted neutral at time of death, but that's not philosophically obvious necessarily. Of course, there's also the simple desire not to be a nasty person.) Godsmen would probably be horrified; Athar might find it a respectable choice.

Guvners would point out that there's a loophole: you can become a god and not need your afterlife anyway. ^_^

But would such a "strengthening" of Tradegate make it MORE likely or LESS likely to shift in Bytopia?
I would think less, as it isn't really a form of hard work to sell something you've just been carrying around.
On the other hand, once one's "afterlife" is the property of the town, is there a lot of unavoidable heavy labor involved?
How much of one's individuality remains after one become part of the town?

If we pursue the idea that the merger process might lead to the deificaiton of Tradgate, what would his portfolio be? Shrewd trade?
If the new god is an amalgamation of various souls (who would have different, albeit similar personalities), would this new power be slightly eccentric or quirky? (Actually, that might be a good fit with the gnomic pantheon.)