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"At least you aren't Voan. They don't love it when people use their second free credit after having multiplets."

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"It's not particularly popular back home. Our parents even considered co-raising us with our uncles."

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"You're from an auction country, though, no? Why would they wanna do that, isn't the probability of multiplets priced in the credit?"

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"Part of it was pressure from our grandparents. Mild pressure, mind you."

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"The other part is that even if you consider the effort of co-parenting, we are still a one-for-three deal."

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"Okay, so I guess I have to come up with a point to say? ...Oh, right. I guess our country - while not Voa - still puts some social pressure for people not to have tons of babies since those are a limited resource."

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"That's weird. And also priced in."

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"What's weird about it?"

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"Well, having triplets doesn't make next year's credits more expensive or scarcer on average, so it's not like you're taking any resources that weren't already going to be taken by whoever replaced you, except for—like, food and stuff but you're blues. When people buy credits it already factors all of that in. I guess it's not a super rational worry, though."

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"Ah, yes. The idea is that it's unfair to factor multiplets in because it means more families going through an empty spring and instead some supposedly fairer solution should be found. It's not actually really kind or rational, but wanting babies has that effect on people."

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"I suppose that's true," she sighs. "Must be some cultural thing, here there isn't much of a sentiment one way or another—other than envy, I guess—towards multiplets."

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Nod. "We actually do incentives for milder springs. I am sure that plays a factor."

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"—you do? Like what?"

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"In practical terms, we subsidize credits. The bonus is directly proportional to how old you are, the age you had your first kid, the time since you had your last kid and inversely proportional to how many children you already have."

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"Huh. That's... weird."

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"Which part?"

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"All of it. Subsidising credits like that at all."

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The three of make a "go on" gesture.

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"...what's unclear?"

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"I think we are just curious about your perspective. And we have heard many counter-arguments about it."

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"It's dysgenic. It tries to be both Voan and Credits without being either. It lets useless wackos get away with just existing."

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"Hmm, okay so for one it seems like it defeats the point of eugenics if you're going to help people who can't or don't pay for credits do it. The reason we have auctions instead of straight-up sales or anything like that is that we want the top percentiles of the population, in ability-to-generate-and-therefore-capture-value terms, and you're skewing the whole maths there if you do anything else. You're incentivising people to have children later, which I suppose is incentivising people with milder springs, but you're also incentivising people to in general have fewer kids which is also sort of counter to the eugenics logic."

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Seni apparently finds this explanation very charming. "Well, first of all, the subsides are not the price of a full credit, they're a discount. It means that fewer people reach their twenties childless. It does go against eugenics, but in a sense it's also against eugenics not to create artificial pressure, like only selling credits in bundles of five."

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"Allegedly, some island-nation tried that and their government didn't even have the time to come up with a name for itself before being usurped and then taken over by another."

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"Yeah, there are other similarly eugenic measures that are just plain bad ideas, some other things are more debatable, like the ratio of crimes that should be punished with sterilization. But our method isn't entirely dysgenic, it just means that rich people that would buy obscene number of credits will have to, on average, pay more per credit than people that buy two."

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