"Aitim doesn't like doing good things in a way that makes it obvious he's doing them because he wants to do good."

"That's not fair, I don't like doing good things in a way where people who disagree with me about goodness or the merits of pursuing it won't have common ground with me."

"Huh. Well, observers aren't watching me, if you want a go-between?"

"That would be useful, yeah. What I really want is a wider circle of people involved in decisionmaking here, to think of things I won't and catch things I'll miss and be credible in ways I don't tend to be credible - and as necessary to take credit for stumbling across things that I couldn't have learned about through any known channels..."

Nod. "And you can't just tell your secretary or interns or whatever, right."

"Yeah, which means I'm missing approximately ninety-nine percent of the resources I use to solve problems. Last time that happened I made a lot of mistakes."

"Last time?"

"My family was closely involved in the decontamination efforts, but not really through traditional channels at all. It was very challenging."

"I know you're related to Isel."

"Kan's sister." Fond smile at Kan. "They're in Aleta, with a baby, and could not be coaxed out here for all the morally dubious property rights in the world. Other people were involved also, but quietly."

"They take issue with morally dubious property rights or they're just really attached to Aleta?"

"Wanting to enjoy some quiet and normalcy, I think, and not really possessed with skillsets in demand here right now - we took mostly judges and municipal policy people. Mind, I'd have arranged them some morally dubious property rights if they wanted to come."

"- I don't think species as a group have rights but it's just sort of castes all over again if humans can't help run their planet because they're human, and I have what is probably a predictable opinion on castes for a half-orange grey who can barely walk."

"We do have human regional advisors with meaningful influence, or is that not the kind of thing you mean?"

"I'm just kind of mulling over Minor's preference for human governance."

"It seems culturally specific but certainly not unique to him."

"Do blues currently own all the land on Earth according to Amentan law?"

"There's some not yet allocated and we're supposed to manage competing ownership claims by trying to buy it off people and not charging them rent for it for the next few decades, but pretty much, yes."

"This seems similar to casteing humans as 'not blue'."

"So obviously there's no moral defense of announcing all the land in the world is ours - it's a nearly standard part of conquest but so is mass murder - but there are quite a few practical considerations. The point of giving out parcels is to encourage investment in those parcels. It's going to take a long time to fill this planet, most of it's going to be nearly worthless for our entire lifetimes. So right now you have people competing to turn the land they own into somewhere people are going to want to live, and they're competing mostly by investing their own resources and securing investments from businesses, and that produces nice places where people want to live, a lot faster than anything I could do.

I can award humans a significant share of the land without accomplishing anything at all, because their sections of land would just stay not-worth-very-much-money while someone who cut a deal with a major airline to host the first commercial airport in France is doing quite well for themselves. It's not a question of the humans being smart or having blue strengths, many of them are and do, but the disparity in ability to attract investments is going to be really hard to overcome. It could be worth it anyway, on the principle that they have a right to it or that their children will be appropriately motivated to figure out how to make their land valuable or that they'll keep it undeveloped and this is because of a genuine human preference for undeveloped land which would otherwise not be represented, but in practical terms the primary effect will definitely be redirecting the flow of capital away from those areas.

The second practical concern is that the current arrangement aligns incentives neatly, such that whenever I announce a trial of some new thing people who think it's a good idea and will make their region more desirable to live in compete for it and people who think it's a bad idea and will make their region less desirable push back. The blues with stakes in Massachusetts have been furiously following up on those idiots who sterilized somebody, because vaccination rates dropped and that damages their investment. I don't think very highly of the priorities of my caste but 'trying to make their territory a really nice place to live' is about as good as we can get, on that front, and it means that right now we've got a powerful political faction pushing for more investment in Earth and I need that, this is such an expensive project.

The third practical concern is that it gives me personally lots of leverage, since I can decide to divert resources to any given region as part of perfectly reasonable policy prioritization and so people are trying much harder than usual to have a good relationship with me, and that can be converted into effort with respect to humanitarian goals which don't fit under 'make your place a desirable place to live'."

"If we figured out hybrid kids blue humans could just marry in."

"That would help a lot. Blueing them without that is really really hard, the connections are a big part of ability to actually accomplish anything while blue. The ex-reds might've gotten a rocky reception but they're interfertile and our grandchildrens' generation won't care. Blue humans, without the ability to cross-marry with us, would be their own separate not-really-usefully-blue thing."

"They could theoretically be competitive on the basis of being human and administering things humanishly if their would-be constituency had more power - more purchasing power, more freedom of movement..."

"We are trying very hard to accomplish both. I bet humans would rather live under humans but not necessarily strongly enough to overcome those areas being severely resource-impoverished and investment-impoverished."

"That's how I'd bet too."