"Yes."

"Why?"

"I heard you found it objectionable. Not the word, the concept, but - they go together."

"Yes, I consider the idea of owning people in general objectionable."

Nod.

"I think I've made a reasonably credible effort to make it clear to her that she can get sent off to be slowed down and take a bunch of presents with her if she does, should she ever wish to, so I think in spite of the fact that I'm surrounded by people who wouldn't try to stop me if I decided to do traditional ownership related things I do not in fact own her."

"Why doesn't she want to slow down?"

"She doesn't have, or at least doesn't perceive herself to have, particularly good options among humans."

"I don't particularly approve of taking humans who don't know what all they're agreeing to but I can't really see - being someone's best option - as a kind of wrongdoing so long as you didn't screw around with their other options."

"Mm... I mean, you could imagine someone whose other options were all so bad that they'd take whatever you were planning, plus some gratuitous extra nastiness, and you'd still be better, but that doesn't excuse the gratuitous extra nastiness to my mind, and by a similar token I think there's a level of due diligence called for in my situation with her above and beyond what's required to be better than her best alternative to negotiated agreement."

"And if that - due diligence - made it not worth your bother then so much the worse for her?"

"I mean, in the sense that if I were stretched really thin and could not help but fail in some of my obligations then some of my obligations would get failed in, yes? What do you mean?"

"It just seems like your rule is that lots of mutually beneficial arrangements shouldn't happen on account of not benefitting one party enough."

"I don't think that's a consequence of what I've said? Where's that coming from?"

"So if, say, you vanish, and the human comes to me and says 'hey I prefer staying with you to being slowed down', and has a reasonably accurate picture of what I want, and this sounds good to me, and we agree, and we proceed, then a bad thing happened, right?"

"Sounds like it to me."

"That's what I mean about mutually beneficial transactions that shouldn't happen in your account of things."

"The bad thing that happened is mostly me disappearing! Obviously that would be bad, since if she preferred you she could announce that without my having to disappear."

"Oh! The rest is fine, given that happened, and given I didn't orchestrate it or something?"

"Probably but it might reflect poorly on your character?"

"Hmm."

"Like, there's obviously better and worse situations that could happen to be her best option? You seem great but I know very little about your personal habits but let's assume those are also within your cultural norms great. If she instead wound up in a court where the nicest person around who'd take her were in my sense of the word a worse person, then that would be worse; and so how bad the situation winds up for her is informative about how good a person you are."

"I think I'm not sure what 'a good person' is doing if it's not describing which actions are permissible."

"It's doing that and then also assigning extra credit for ones that give impermissibility a wider berth, and for bonus positive effects one generates!"

"Huh."