"Not that many wizards can read minds. Or bother reading Muggles' minds. Or would make the connection."

"If I could read minds I'd probably never stop, it would be so useful," says Sinkali.

"Really? I haven't the slightest temptation to learn Legilimency, it seems like it'd mostly be things I had no business knowing and things I didn't want to know with maybe the occasional thing worth noticing which Timothy picked up anyway by watching them scratch their nose."

"Well, I assume Timothy's like Aitim that way, but I don't usually have Aitim handy to tell me what people are feeling and how they're receiving what I say and whether they're lying."

"They're doing Veritaserum for the courts, now, right?"

"It's been testing well in Britain so now we're doing it in Chile too. It's going to be hard to do everywhere because the prison costs're going to really add up if we're holding people for the rest of their lives."

"You kill people for all kindsa stuff."

"It'd really bother people if the person who blew their credit savings on fraud or molested their niece or operated machinery high and crushed someone to death with a backhoe don't hang for it. I can imagine a society working fine that way but the way things are now, awful crimes are capital crimes and lessening the sentence would seem like saying they're not really that bad."

"Right, which is precisely the thing we want to change by not letting you use Veritaserum to convict and execute people for those things. Like, if it's better not to execute people for those things, and there's going to be a painful transition which is slightly less painful if there's a reason for it, then better to do that now for a reason."

"I guess if you're really sure it's better not to execute people for those things."

"Uh, I'm fine with 'molested niece' getting you executed, but the other two - you could just give the money back, right? You could just not let them operate heavy machinery?"

"There are moral hazard concerns when the government reimburses fraud victims - in particular, often what they'll do is offer unusually good returns or otherwise exceptionally great terms, and they're offering those terms because it's a fraud, but if you'd get that money even if it turned out to be too good to be true then everyone would flock to probable-scams all the time. We reimburse thirty-five percent of what you put in, fifty percent if you're blue."

" - why fifty percent if you're blue?"

"Because if you're blue money you invested is also your livelihood, and if you put in a lot you probably lost much of your income in addition to your credit or retirement savings."

"I see."

"And then everyone also gets whatever of the assets can be seized, it's just that sometimes that's a fairly small percentage."

"I see. Is there a list of all of the laws that are different for blues?"

"I am sure someone has written that but I don't know it offhand."

"Meke Aslen has," says Nanha.

"Am I wrong in thinking ninety-nine percent of the population without even counting humans would be in favor of ending all the special privileges."

"No, no, it's better-designed than that, there are special privileges that are blue and green and special privileges that are blue and green and yellow and so you get green and yellow opposition to ending even the ones that are just for blues lest theirs go too."

" - so seventy percent of the population not counting humans would be in favor of getting rid of all the special privileges."

"Probably."

Very mildly judgmental wizard.

"I don't see what the problem is," says Sinkali.