I've had this idea stewing in my head for a while and with no chapter this week I thought I would throw this out there. It seems like the Shichibukai have a crazy amount of privilege, seemingly second only to the celestial dragons.

The two events I'm specifically referring to are declaring people to be subordinates, such as Doflamingo to Caesar (along with what Law could have done for Luffy) and Doflamingo's wholesale slaughter of Dressrosa.

First, a short summary of the Shichibukai's value to the World Government: intimidate/kill people/pirates into not being pirates and to help counter the Yonko. Supposedly they do other stuff like give 10% of their plunder to the government and "liberate islands" but considering we haven't really seen this at all I'm guessing those aren't the important reasons to retain the Shichibukai.

For just those purposes, the world government has shown themselves willing to do (or overlook) almost anything to maintain the Shichibukai.

On the subordinate thing, Doflamingo declaring Caesar to be a part of his crew without a problem wasn't surprising. Although Caesar is basically a deranged war criminal with a 300 million bounty, given the marines behavior in the past overlooking that was pretty much expected.

Fujitora offering that to Law if he does the same for Luffy and his crew strikes me as insane. Consider what Luffy has done:

1. Bounty of 400 million, fairly substantial.
2. Considered responsible for destroying Enies Lobby, declared war on the world government, led breakout of Impel Down, invaded Marineford.
3. Possibly most damning of all in the eyes of the Marines, Luffy is the son of Dragon. (Remember that Ace's execution was first and foremost about being the son of Roger)

There's more of course but the point is, it strikes me as insane that the marines, now led by blood knight Akainu especially, would even consider pardoning the Strawhats just for being subordinates of a Shichibukai. Particularly a Shichibukai who couldn't possibly have been one for much longer than a year. Also, while Law is clearly formidable he's no Mihawk. I could understand not wanting to piss off the greatest swordsman in the world but a particularly talented rookie can't possibly be worth overlooking Luffy's crimes.

The second requires much less explanation. Doflamingo is basically killing tens of thousands of people to cover up being probably the worst criminal in the underground. One would think either the killing or being the underground kingpin would be enough to lose one's position but it appears otherwise. This may be a special case though as I don't believe we have found out yet what Doflamingo said to Fujitora that has prevented the marines from acting.

It seems the only real ways to get kicked out are to lose a fight, publicly rebel, or to just straight-up quit.

So after all that I suppose my questions are: why do the Shichibukai have nearly unlimited benefits? Should it really be considered worth it from the world government's point of view to let them continuously do awful things mostly because of the threat of the yonko? Also, isn’t it seriously crazy that it was even considered that the Straw Hats be pardoned?