"Parentdebts are very large and - the magic system gives sex and violence a lot of weight compared to most faeries. They're sort of - opportunities to generate surplus, in a way - because the universe cares and we mostly don't -"

I don't think I'd be as generous as calling it surplus, violence is probably usually deadweight loss, isn't it? Unless there's a really high incidence of sadism in the population. I guess it's surplus in the same way that my being open for fifteen minutes at dawn is a shortage because the system isn't tracking convenience or speed.

"I don't think very many people enjoy inflicting punishments though maybe a solid share of the people who pick it as a career do. It's a thing that is worth a lot more in debt than its disvalue for the involved parties, though, and there aren't a lot of things like that."

This is a career? I suppose it would be inconvenient to have everyone who one has had had any remotely careless interaction with line up to kick one.

"It's not a full-time occupation or anything but there's a bunch of skill to doing exactly as much harm as you intend to and not more, and for most things you want pain but not injury and you want to be credibly competent not to injure someone, physical punishment is far more unpleasant - and not even in a way that gets you more credit with the debt system - if you think they might mess up and cripple or kill you -"

...well, now I can't decide whether I should be making a point of exporting capsaicin or not.

"What's that?"

The stuff that makes the burny-tasting food taste that way. Popular in small doses, for varying values of 'small', but it gets worse if it's more concentrated. Does not generally cripple or kill people. And I wouldn't like it a bit but if it'd be harm-reducing to have it handy...

"It might be. You could stipulate that people have to choose it, if you wanted."

I guess. I mean, I'm not sure how much that would help under the circumstances.

"I think it matters kind of a lot. Even unpleasant things are different if you chose them because they were the best way to get what you wanted."

Yes, but I perceive a difference in kind between "you can eat a ghost pepper and get this over with, or we can hang around for months while you perform tedious services" and "you can eat a ghost pepper or we revert to our default plan of beating the crap out of you".

"Those seem different to me but I think I'd still care for the choice in the second case."

I guess. I have pretty high opportunity cost though, you know?

"Sure. It can be somewhere on the list for a hundred thousand years from now when you've done everything else."

I'm hoping it'll be even less low-hanging metaphorical fruit after that long.

"I think certificates will replace a lot of use cases of punishment once they're widespread. You can fine people. But they won't replace everything."

They're faster than beating people up! If people have enough savings...

"Yeah, exactly. Most people will have some going spare and can hand them over. But some people have nothing and still make trouble."

Yeah.

"How do the future people solve that?"

Depends on the trouble but they don't make them eat ghost peppers.

"I was curious if they do something I'd prefer."

Sometimes they lock them up but the prisons can be nice and aimed toward trying to fix whatever situation led them to go committing crimes.

"And people don't commit crimes just because nothing very bad will happen if they're caught?"