"I think politics might be the art of the not really good enough. Maybe it'll come easier to you."

He nods.

He offers Miranda a Portkey.

Poke.

(He doesn't have the range to Apparate them all the way home, but he can drop them in the forest somewhere the Amentan city can't be seen and make the ground soft and hold his wife while he works on a Portkey.

"It wasn't your fault at all, you know.")

"What wasn't?"

"Catherine. None of it - none of it was your fault at all, it was everyone else being horrid."

"I was being stupid."

"And humans have done some stupid things but that doesn't mean it's our fault we got invaded. It's not - it's not always safe to assume that other people won't colossally suck in every way but it's still their fault if they do."

"It can be both our fault, can't it?"

"Dunno, I think sometimes it's important to say we didn't deserve this at all, we didn't deserve this even a tiny bit, it's on the people who did it."

"Your parents won't actually get in trouble, right, they might be scared but they'll stop."

"They don't do it that often. I'm - not sure what they'd do if it came up -"

Cling. Sigh. "We should add some bedrooms to the house."

"That's a good idea."

They go home.

Aitim forwards Timothy and Miranda ongoing focus-grouping on persuading rural people to move to cities, well-compensated voluntary sterilization for people who have as many children as they want or have intellectually disabled children, on persuading people to give birth in hospitals, on sending your kids to school, on announcing a rollout of mandatory school, on ensuring there is a computer in every home, on prenatal nutrition, on domestic violence, on hygiene, on cleaning up after your animals when they poop on the streets, on when to call the police and what they can do for you, on abortion, on family size.

If they're going to put "give birth in hospitals" and "get sterilized" ads anywhere near each other they better be excruciatingly clear that you will not be sterilized while you're in there and that in general as long as they're pushing sterilization people are going to wonder if it happens when they go where Amentans herd them. She thinks they're going way too fast on abortion and should start with, like, "don't judge anyone you know who may have had one", not "hey you pregnant lady have you considered", especially if it's a medically induced abortion PSA and they're offering prenatal nutrition pills, do you sense a theme here, go way less hard on AMENTANS WANT YOU TO NOT HAVE KIDS and everything else will be easier. She wonders if people might be suspicious that Amentans are not sending their children to the same schools. Have they tried installing public computers in neighborhoods and having someone to explain their use? Domestic violence should probably have fewer examples of wives beating husbands because it's too weird and people will dismiss it, they can circle back once they've made a dent in wifebeating. Why do they even want people to move to cities?

Provision of services is easier in cities! He understands that they can't push population control and other objectives in the same regions of Earth but he's going to need data to that effect to not look like he's being negligent on the population control front. It'd be nearly impossible to do public computers because they break pretty easily and get stolen pretty easily but they've given churches that will agree to it computers and people who can show everyone how to use it. Even among humans wives sometimes beat their husbands! 

That doesn't surprise her but it's still a very weird concept culturally and she thinks they will find more total progress if they address it from the other direction first. The condom has been invented to prevent disease transmission, they could push that with better Space Condoms to look less negligent without yelling AMENTANS WOULD REALLY LIKE TO REMOVE YOUR REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS FOR SOME REASON.

New things get focus-grouped.

The new wards on the house were expensive. Expanding the house is expensive. Hedging against possible future alien-related catastrophe is really expensive.

Aaron hops around the world buying ni where it is cheap and selling it where it is expensive.

The price of ni drops in Massachusetts.

He's set up little banks in places where it's reliably worth the money but the Americas are erratic, he can't give anyone else sufficiently reliable instruction. (He could probably hire an alien who had the math background to follow detailed instructions. He has so far been averse to doing that; the law would probably side with the alien.)

He goes to Boston himself, and buys ni for American dollars.

Some people have only a little bit from working construction. Some people have consultant fees. There's an androgynous fellow in an exquisite suit who has quite a bit and hums about how much to sell while waiting in line.