"There is not much bad enough that you can't find Amentans who will put themselves through it for a kid. Some places pretty much run off exploiting that, and once we take immigrants they're really going to have to shape up."

"Run off exploiting it?"

"In, like, Yvalta, the only way to get kids is to sign crazy long-term contracts - things like 'I will work for eight Amentan years for this company at the hours and pay they set, in exchange for a child permission at the end of the eight years if I'm not otherwise disqualified' -"

"That's a really long time."

"Yes. I think it's ten, occasionally twelve years for unskilled work, eight's for trades."

"...and they don't just compete themselves down because they don't have the permissions to hand out that would enable that."

"Yep. Permissions systems are the worst."

"Pelape said so too and I said 'okay but what do their proponents say' and she said 'they'd be highly eugenic if operated by some kind of ideal disinterested party whose only concern was flourishing but instead they are operated by blues, is the problem'."

"Most systems of government work if operated by some kind of ideal disinterested party whose only concern is flourishing. Seems a bit like saying your criminal justice system would be perfect if there weren't criminals."

"I bet it works really well if you can set it up."

"I think an empire with Aitim in charge and a permissions system would work if it was very very small, small enough he could do blues personally without them having to come to his attention through dramatics or idiocy. No other permissions system works at all."

"He'd have fun with it, if you did get him a teeny empire."

"He would love his teeny empire. - he tries not to act that way in public, did you guess off what his wizard variant is like?"

"Yeah. He was a prefect in school, which was small enough that his own House wasn't quite enough and sometimes he'd come meddle with us too."

"One point six billion is a lot. No one should have that, but I guess at least Anitam is slow and careful and stable and stuff."

"We could have done a lot worse."

"Hopefully everyone can figure out something that's better, now."

"I hope so."

And they have dessert!  

"This is tasty."

"It's a favorite of mine! I'll let the chef know that humans like it too."

"Humans may vary, be warned."

"In dessert preferences? That's not fair. How are we supposed to market to people if they're not all exactly the same?"

"Obviously you must sort us into color coded groups each of which is uniform in dessert preferences."

"And hope that they are very, very heritable!"