"Of course! You can become someone's property one of two ways: by being convicted of a crime or by being born. It's important that convicted criminals and people who can't understand the law are someone's responsibility. Or dead, of course, you can kill your slaves, it's just usually about as smart as burying money in the woods. If someone hasn't been convicted of a crime and is able to understand and follow the law, you can free them but there's no requirement to. It can be slightly and temporarily economically advantageous to get rid of a slave in some states but you're usually better off selling them if that's the case. If there's no reason society benefits from having you enslaved, you're usually free if your master dies and it isn't your fault. A lot of people free their children, maybe half? Three quarters? I almost wasn't, but fortunately my mother decided not to listen to my father. Oh, uh, fathers don't own their children, mothers do. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"...That is appalling and I am sorely tempted to try something stupid and I need to walk away from this conversation for five minutes. Be back soon."

And she, perilously calmly, stands up, and heads out the door to Milliways' backyard.

"Bar, can you recommend a book containing an explanation of reasons people might find the existence of slavery frustrating and upsetting?" Valanda asks and doesn't go after Link.

I will try my best.

Bar provides books about why slavery is terrible.

Some of the reasons explained are: Slavery increases the total amount of suffering. Slave-owners consider their slaves as resources not people, this is immoral. Slaves do not earn anything for their work, this is unfair. Slavery violates declarations of human rights (international agreements on morals?). Slavery is enforced through violence. Slavery causes unnecessary deaths. Slavery causes racism and does damage to the social peace. Slavery permits abuse of children (who should be protected).

Valanda considers taking notes but eventually realizes there's a single key insight from which he can rederive everything later.

Everyone knows that laws exist to force people to cooperate in stag hunts and prisoner's dilemmas: situations where no one cooperating is much worse for everyone than everyone cooperating and one person unilaterally deciding to defect has the potential to ruin everything for everyone. Laws exist, specifically, to cause peace. They exist to prevent people from fighting each other, to prevent people from needing to defend themselves, to allow people to spend their time farming or inventing immortality.

Morals are like laws but for happiness rather than peace. Like Link said, wanting the best flourishing of everyone. If everyone wants that, they can get it. For everyone. Including themselves.

It seems difficult to legislate what people want and Valanda isn't clear on the enforcement mechanisms. "Thank you, Bar! Can you recommend any books that would explain why people in societies with morals don't just unilaterally decide not to act morally when they're not being watched?"

Link seems to be taking a long time but that's fine. Valanda is learning so much.

Bar provides some philosophy and sociology which might help. It's a complicated topic, though.

Link comes back, glances at Valanda with some kind of complex emotion in her eyes (not that he'll notice, not looking at them), and asks Bar for a book and doesn't initiate conversation.

Valanda asks Bar for the history Link's reading. Examples of people enforcing cooperation in making everyone happy will probably explain it better than abstract ideas. Talking to Link went badly last time he tried it, so he doesn't try it again.

Bar is happy to provide it.

It's about the history of the Rito being integrated into the Kingdom of Hyrule.

The Rito are a people sort of halfway between human and a bird! They had a lot of customs and traditions involving singing and hunting. They had a rite of passage that every male had to pass to be considered an adult. A dangerous flying obstacle course and other physical ordeals. All the females had to learn and perfect a concert and sing it in front of the whole tribe. These tests are supposed to exemplify the best virtues of the Rito.

The then-King of Hyrule didn't like that the Rito males sometimes died doing their challenge, nor how those who failed would be cast out and nobody was allowed to talk to them. He asked the Rito to make the challenge easier, or at least less lethal. The Rito refused for a while, even kicking out Hylian merchants and visitors in offense, but the next time a young man died in his rite of passage they relented.

It doesn't say what the king did. Maybe he threatened war? The Rito themselves sent merchants away, but whether they did it or the king did doesn't matter, the result is that not doing what the king said meant less trade. It's hard to figure out why the Rito relented right after the next time a young man died. Was it because they wanted to hold out long enough to have that happen one more time in defiance of the Hylians? The Rito are the immoral ones, right? Valanda's not sure how he's supposed to tell. The Hylians seem to have upset the Rito a lot and reduced the signaling value of the test, meaning Rito can't have as much confidence in each other's abilities anymore, but the Rito were killing people and shunning people.

But why didn't the Hylians leave them alone about it? Their king could have not insisted. Maybe then his subjects would rise up against him?

Justice is punishing immoral people, right? Link said that or something like it. That's clearly how it works, everyone figures out a set of morality-based laws and then enforces them just like any other laws, everyone agrees to pitch in because otherwise they will be punished, everyone punishes non-punishers so they have to all coordinate to stop punishing immorality all at once to stop it. It's stable once it gets started, same as any legal system, the two stable equilibria are everyone being moral and no one being moral. Obviously there's no chance of making the whole Empire stably moral and trying would undermine the stability of its existing institutions, so he definitely won't try to introduce morality in any existing states. But he's already planning to buy state-level sovereignty on some islands and maybe some unused parts of the mainland and when he does that he'll see if he can make a society that acts moral.

Looks like the Rito were in disagreement between whether to make it easier or not. When someone died enough people switched to viewpoints that the chief decided it should be that way. Once it was decided, they argued for days but all had to accept the chief's judgment eventually, none could convince him.

Rito are very good at flying and archery, while Hylians are good at magic and metalworking and melee combat. Rito Hunters and Hylian Knights working together were much better at keeping bandits and monsters off the roads than each of them alone.

The next problem came when a Hylian stole things from a Rito. The Rito wanted to punish them with clawing and pain and banishment, but Hylian justice said he should repay the damage with work.

The King visited again and made a deal with the Rito chief about how crimes are to be handled. The Rito resented what looked like Hylians slowly taking over their village. There was almost a war when a faction of Rito Hunters attacked Hyrule, but the chief apologized and punished the hunters.

Oh, maybe the Rito had a factual disagreement about how dangerous the test was and the death convinced some people it was more dangerous than necessary.

The disagreement about punishment sounds similar to problems with interstate commerce that unfortunately Valanda doesn't know enough about yet to understand. Everything else makes plenty of sense, though.

He wonders if any of this is any help at all for Link, it really doesn't seem like it's about any secret forests or secret swords, but he doesn't ask. He'll just keep reading.

"Hey, Valanda... Sorry I got all upset and stormed off. I'm calm now. I kind of freaked out about slavery but that's no reason to act like this to you. I don't like the idea at all but it's not your fault. So. Sorry."

"Not a problem. I don't suppose you could recommend a good book on the rules you have in Hyrule about how you treat your children?"

"Hmm. No, sorry. I think mostly parents teach their kids how they should treat their kids? Some places have schools where parents send their children and they learn things. It depends a lot. So, maybe I can help you think of ways to make slavery less bad or happen less often in your world. It'd be good if slaves can earn their freedom or something at least."

Oh no, she wants to change things, she's going to try to destabilize the Empire.

Nope, nope, moral arguments, moral arguments. "I'm afraid to touch what we have because it could be worse. Policy changes need government backing, but if it's the imperial government and it's unpopular enough, people might secede. I don't see a way to force parents like mine to send their children to school. We have tutors but they only had me tutored in magic because it was a marketable skill, they didn't pay for me to be taught reading or math. Hylian parents send their children to school because not doing that would be immoral and other Hylians will be angry about it, right? We don't have a society that would get angry about it."

"Sounds terrible. How does- How do you not end up with one guy owning everyone else? It sounds like the way things are set up that's the, like, stable end point. Ah, yeah, you send kids to school because that's what you're supposed to do. Some people have them help on the farm or whatever but they try to make people not do that. I think they handed out free meals for kids at some schools before the Calamity to try and get people to send their kids there with less grumbling?"

"You're responsible for your property, if your indestructible sewing needle goes through someone's skull that's assault, if your slave kills someone that's murder, some people don't want the bother. I'm not sure why, but something like eleven twelfths of agerah free their children within a month of their children's majority, just... for no real reason. And people die, too, and usually if there's no reason not to their slaves are freed then. There are sometimes state laws that try to give people incentives not to have large numbers, because it's always a headache when they die, that helps distribute things more evenly. There's a sense in which the imperial government owns us all, of course, but not in a way that makes most people less free. It hasn't ended in everyone belonging to one person so far, anyway. Free meals... I don't think free meals would work for us, even if the teachers didn't need to be paid for their work, some people just don't like giving their children any power if they can help it."

"Well, people love their kids. And there's no way for a slave to get free except a master dying or deciding to free them...?"

"I don't think love is an insurmountable problem, people can be paid to give up things they love, I think my mother may have loved me and I still managed to convince her to let me go, but it does add that extra hurdle for us to clear. And those are just the legal ways, I once helped someone else's slave get away but legally he was just lost property, not free."

"No they free them because they love them and want them to... Be happy... Hylia's grace, your world sounds so sad. I'm sorry but it does. Even if we have monsters..."

Because they're not all cooperating on the project of making everyone happy, right, of course that would lead to less happiness.

"So part of loving people is wanting them to be happy? I think agerah might have that with their children and caralendri with their families. I'm surprised Hylians do, you said you were a lot like humans and I don't know very many humans but from what I've seen humans want other people to suffer."

"Some Hylians hide it pretty well. We can be nasty, evil sods. Just think about the Yiga Clan. But I think most Hylians - on some deep level - want the people they love to be happy. I do. I want people to be happy."

Valanda double-checks the exact proportions of sadism and indifference among humans he knows. "I think there are some humans who want everyone to be happy. I wonder if there's some fraction of the population wanting that for its own sake that makes having morality easier than not having it. Obviously, if it's twelve twelfths, the whole society would be moral. ...If you were designing a law code with morality in mind, what would be the two or three most important laws for it to have? Besides making slavery illegal, you've made that part clear already."

Link rubs her forehead. "I'm not Princess Zelda. She's the one who got taught how to rule people and how to do laws without fu- messing everything up more! Tutors in statecraft! A whole library to read! I'm worried all my suggestions will be terrible and make things worse. But... Morality's squishy sometimes. Like, what if someone threatens you to open a locked door or they'll kill you, and you know they're going to kill people inside, but if you open it they'll spare you? If you're a soldier or a guard, obviously your job, your duty is to call for help and fight them, not open it. Risking violence is part of the job, what you're getting paid for, and people trust and expect that you make the, uh, personally expensive choice because of that job. If guards ran away a lot there'd be no point to having them."

"If you're a civilian... It's kind of natural to want to save yourself. They might unlock the door and let the killers through even if doing that lets them go do murder, to save yourself. They didn't do the killing - the bandit they let in did, and they can't be responsible for the bandits' actions. But is it right? Should we have expected them to sacrifice themselves to save others? Some people say yes, some say no, some say 'only in this particular situation'. And what if it wasn't a 'let the bandits in' thing, just a 'warn people you saw a bandit'? That's negligence, not, uh, facilitation. That changes how people feel about it. There's not always a clear right answer. Not always a total agreement. You kind of... Have to feel it? So encoding morality in law might not... Not end well. Like, law should be influenced by morality but not define it? I think Hylia's teachings... Give us some good general guidelines for morality though."

Valanda takes notes: Link not taught to rule; Princess Zelda's statecraft library; encoding morality in law might not end well, morality squishy, complicated, dependent on situation; Hylia's teachings good general guidelines.

"It seems like every question I ask you about morality ends in you telling me I should talk to someone who has access to a library full of books on statecraft. Bar probably has a library like that, I'll borrow more books later and in the meantime it sounds like I should stop trying to get answers from you. So. Anything else you want from a defense mage?"