"To have a baby you need to get permission from a blue, and blue ones are allocated via complicated politics."

"...are we bad at that?"

"Any specific person is pretty good at allocating their share of the credits in a way that advances their personal goals, and any specific person doesn't have that much effect on the stability of the country so sacrificing all their personal goals in order to very slightly increase the stability of the country would be awful and mostly not even have an effect, and so not very many people do that."

"...can you explain that in a longer way."

"Yes. Okay. So imagine that we have ten purple credits to give out. We could just find ten good hardworking purples who will be good parents and raise good purple children, and give them our permissions. Some people do that. But not very many, not enough that hoping someone will find you a good hardworking purple is a good way to get to have children if you are purple. More people do things like 'if you are my housekeeper, and you are a very good housekeeper, then you will get permission', and some people do things like 'if you steal these files from my rival, then you will get permission'. And in general, you can accomplish lots of things and get very rich and successful if you are clever and careful about who you give your permissions to. Using your permissions to become rich and successful is not good for the country - it makes it slightly less of a country where you can have children just by being good and hardworking - but it's a big country, and you personally won't have much effect on that no matter what you do."

"Oh, I get it."

"People are mostly good. People are mostly not very good. They will do the good thing if it is easy and encouraged, but they will not do it if it is a big costly sacrifice and does not change very much. Part of building good countries is building countries where the good thing is easy and encouraged."

"Like how?"

"No one should directly benefit from breaking the law or coercing people or destabilizing the country, for one thing."

"How do you make that be?"

"Well, you write good laws and you enforce them."

"Yes but what kind of law does those things."

"Legal restrictions on what blues can do, even powerful ones, and protection for people who report that they are breaking those. A way for powerful people to be safe and earn children by serving the country and for that to be easier than being safe and earning credits by hurting the country. Some people think laws providing special protection to criticism of powerful people is helpful. A predictable population control system like an auction where no individual decides whether you get children."

"How did you get me?"

"People who can't have children can sign up on a list to adopt any children who are taken away or, I guess, found on doorsteps, though that doesn't happen very often."

"There was a whole list?"

"There are always lots more people who want to adopt a child than there are children up for adoption."

"How'd you get picked off the list?"

"We must have been at the top. Possibly at the top for people not in the area where you were found, I know they try to be very certain that the original parents can't find their child."

"Why?"

"Because then people could have children without a credit by having a child and then 'finding' the child on their doorstep."

"Oh. They can't check?"

"They can check that one specifically, but there are a lot of relatives you could leave the baby with and it's hard to check all of them."

"How many relatives do I have now?"

"Well, I have one little sister and Aitim has six little brothers. My father and Aitim's father are brothers, and they have another brother who you have not met yet, and he has two children. Aitim's mother has a sister, who is married with no children yet, and my mother has a brother who is expecting a baby this spring."