"Also, part of the logic is that no system of eugenic pressure - based on the correlation with monetary acquisition or otherwise - can consistently generate results in the scale of short generations. When you put that against the inevitable trade-off that someone getting a third or fourth credit means someone else not getting a second or first credit..."

"It's kinda weird that rich people can get an obscene number of credits at all, although I suppose with a high enough number of rich people some of them will have a lot of money... But on the other hand that was selected against in blues, at least here in Anitam, exactly because rich people who had lots of kids tended to eventually leave poor descendants so the ones who stayed rich had milder springs, so that one seems like a self-correcting problem? And it's awfully paternalistic of the government to care about individuals who cannot get a credit when the reason they can't get a credit is actually good for the government."

"People in that situation produce eugenic value through the demonstrated ability to live through springs. Blues on average have milder springs, exactly because of that self-correciton: even with jobs like judges and university board seats our need doesn't scale as directly as having enough doctors, retail workers, guards and teachers to serve your entire population. And a lot of our value is too indirect to be properly allocated, so blues mostly get their money from land so there isn't an alternative."

"What do you mean by awfully paternalistic? Also, now I am curious about what you think of the Voan system."

"I mean that—the fact that some people can't ever get any children is a good thing, under a credit auction system. It means that the people who didn't manage to generate enough value to purchase a credit won't reproduce, which is exactly what the system is going for, so that to the extent that value-generation is genetic our society generates more and more value as time passes. The Voan system is optimising for a different thing, it's not actually trying to do that at all, it's trying to maximise current societal welfare under the constraint that there mustn't be too much welfare inequality.

"And the system you're describing doesn't seem like it has such a straightforward goal—or rather, it seems like someone grabbed the credits system and said 'how do we modify this to incentivise milder springs?' instead of trying to come up with an entire new system that has that as its goal in the first place. That's why it's kinda weird."

"Ah, that's both nicely put and pretty much what happened."

"We still have people that never get to afford a credit. The vast majority of the population still only ever affords two like in every other credits country."

"We do have larger percentages of people that only ever afford one and people that afford three."

"Well, if it works it works."

"You think that straight up credits is preferable?"

"Oh I have no opinions on the subject, without a blue education I couldn't hope to know better."

"How terrible that all the key concepts are forever beyond your reach in this day and age of easy-access information."

"The key concepts? No, but I don't have the—the practice, all the case studies, all the ways different ideas have failed in the past for subtle reasons, all the years having things drilled into your head..."

Teo glances over at Seni's enamored face and smirks.

"Is that the kind of thing you would be interested in then?"

"Or a green education. Either would be pretty swell."

"Huh, you'd want to be green if you could choose?"

"I'm not sure which of the two I'd pick, if I could choose. I'd fit both of them better than I fit grey—actually only ones that're worse would be purple and red..."

Well, that's not the most comfortable to say at the dinner table.

"I could see myself doing well as a civil engineer, actually. But Karo and Seni are very, very blue."

She shrugs. "Of course I might just be talking out of my behind. What are the odds a random grey sex worker would actually be cut out for one of the castes of the mind?"

Karo reaches out with a hand to squeeze hers. "I would say pretty good."

She grins. "Well, no, not that a random grey sex worker would, perhaps that this random sex worker would yes."

Karo lifts her hand and kisses it. "Excellent odds."

"I would say that the chances are pretty self-evident."

"Only you to say that like a movie actor complimenting someone's eyes."