"He's still green, it only goes off hair color for people we find on doorsteps."

"Ohhh."

"Most places it goes off what your mother is but in Anitam it's what your father is."

"Why?"

"I dunno."

"In most places it's who the mother is because we always know who the mother is. In Anitam it's who the father is because we used to have some regions that were each, and when we decided we should have a uniform policy and were deciding which one to have, we looked at in which regions intercaste children did better, and it was the regions where caste was patrilineal, and so we went with that."

"Why'd they do better?"

"Probably because since most places are matrilineal, people for whom matrilineality won't work try to swap into patrilineal places, and that makes those places richer."

"Oh."

"Anitam is easy to swap out of because we are one of the few patrilineal countries. That's good for our people, so I'm glad we settled on that."

"Why don't other places change if it's good?"

"Well, it'd be complicated to change, and if lots of people changed it would stop having that effect, and people like their culture and don't want to change."

"Why do they care if their culture has this thing or not?"

"- cultures are like homes. You might not think that yours is better than other peoples' - though obviously it is better than some other peoples', and worse than other ones - but you know it, and it's yours, and there would be costs to moving into a different one even if it was just as good."

"'Cause you'd have to pack and learn where stuff was?"

"And you might be unpleasantly surprised about how something that worked great for you doesn't work here anymore."

"Like what?"

"Do you mean in the analogy or in cases where countries try to force culture changes?"

"Both."

"In the analogy, like, having the dining room next to the courtyard was really convenient because you could duck out with the baby once they started fussing but you didn't really think about that in the new house. In history, like, allowing mixed-caste schools means that rich purples all send their children there and that means there are fewer parents of children in standard purple schools who know how to file a regulatory complaint and the schools get worse."

"Huh. - what things do schools do wrong if no one complains?"

"Uh, have unsafe classrooms and buildings, inappropriately restrain disabled students, have too high staff-to-student ratios, not keep good track of their students..."

"Is it very complicated to complain?"

"To me it seems very straightforward and if I explained it to you you'd think it was straightforward but poor people mostly don't do it."

"...it doesn't cost money, does it?"