"I’ll go talk to the government and come back later."

It's important that the creation and subsidy of the program does not incentivize any other things that I also don't like for my foreign cultural reasons, like anybody owning slaves at all, or anyone dying. I don't have enough context to thoroughly analyze a program for those problems, so it'd need to be accompanied by a pretty robust analysis by someone who can model caring about the well-being of other sapients in general.

"...Would you like to discuss those issues yourself at your meeting with the government since you know more about your culture than anyone else here?"

I don't have a meeting with the government. It didn't sound like you were authorized to offer me anything for that meeting but money and you were going to try again with a more attractive offer later.

"Yes, but would 'and part of your meeting will involve ironing out the details of this program' be a more attractive offer?"

It would be more attractive. Are you authorized to offer that?

"I'm just trying to figure out what’s worth asking for so I don't come back here with an offer that’s even worse."

I would be favorably impressed by an agreement to set aside some substantial sum in addition to what is paid me in cash toward a program that reduces things I don't like in the world without requiring my personal ongoing administration of the funds toward that end, and expect to be willing to consult for some relatively non-life-dominating amount of time about what those things that I don't like are.

The person leaves.

Cool. Anybody else immediately accosting her or does she have a minute to look at the inside of her eyelids.

She can look at the inside of her eyelids.

After a while, the person comes back.

"So, how do you feel about a program that pseudorandomly selects visible slaves and asks if they would like their owners to receive twelve rings? It’s not much compared to the cost of feeding and housing them, so it's not an incentive to have slaves - it's also not much incentive to avoid torturing them, but it is some incentive. However, people with many slaves might have an incentive to keep the worst-treated out of sight. We could also try a similarly small payment for manumission, again only for a limited time and only in Mar Geru or another small area."

I don't think I understand command magic well enough to be sure if the slaves would be able to answer freely but I agree that it's a problem that the worst-treated slaves would be out of scope of the program. Subsidizing manumission is probably a good angle if there's not an easy way to come by more slaves without buying them on the open market.

"You can also make new ones if you or your slaves reproduce. Command magic could in theory not be used to compel an action but could be used to, for instance, prevent someone from breathing until they took that action - but it's often possible to check for that."

Oh can you. Fucked up. I have pretty high standards for freely-given answers; I could imagine a slave meeting that standard but it'd be very awkward to check. What about subsidizing manumission of slaves that someone's owned for more than five years and did not own as an infant?

"They can do a small geographically-limited short-term program lightly subsidizing manumission of slaves that have had the same owner for the last five years when that owner did not own them - for some period of time after their birth, I don't know how best to define it for different species - worse comes to worse, for the year after their birth, I guess. Putting the onus on the slaveowner to show that this is all the case and to show up to claim the subsidy, of course. In exchange for either some program meeting that description or something you prefer to it, will you go speak with the imperial government in Mar Geru tomorrow, making yourself visible to their knowledge magic within the imperial audience chamber?"

Well, I don't know the way, and I've never tried any transit methods common on this plane other than walking.

"I can show you the way. We can meet here at dawn."

I can plan on that.

"Good. Anything else you’d like to say to an agent of the imperial government while I'm here?"

My friends will be looking for me. I don't know how long they'll take, but they will be upset if I've been harmed for any reason when they find me or, if I'm dead, my soul.

"Harming you is probably illegal."

Yeah, but they'd be upset about it even if, for any reason, it should become legal! For foreign cultural reasons.

"Understood." Actually friends exist on this planet too but whatever.