"Then--if that situation comes up it's a bad situation and there are only bad options, at least if 'look, we all vaccinated ourselves and we're fine' doesn't work. But--okay, another historical example. A few decades before I was born, my country's government subverted the elections of some foreign countries, turned them from democracies into dictatorships, to stop them from adopting bad economic policies. And that wrecked a lot of stuff and those countries are still suffering from it, maybe even worse than if they had just had the bad economic policies even though they were really bad. If you mess with people's freedom you can break a lot of things that weren't even obviously important. There are a lot of hard choices, but the consequences of forcing people to do things your way are always worse than they look."

"Hm. I will think about it."

"Thanks. I'm sorry about dumping this all on you, I know you don't make policy and even your sister doesn't unilaterally decide any of this stuff, I just--don't want to watch the same tragedies happen again if there's anything I can do to stop it. We can talk about something else if you want."

"You don't ever have to apologize to me for arguing with me about politics."

"I'm glad to hear it." It's a really admirable trait, he thinks, being able to listen to someone arguing that what your country is trying to do is immoral, and honestly think about it, and not even be resentful afterward.

Bounce bounce. "Arguing about politics is the best thing in the world."

"It's cool that you feel that way--honestly it kind of wears me out sometimes. Oh, hey, you're an econ person, do you want the history of communism and what I remember about why it's a bad idea?"

"Yes! What's a communism?"

"So, at a glance it looks like the economy is super inefficient, right? There are resources getting devoted to building, hm, boats for rich people and stuff, even though not everyone has enough to eat. Communism is the idea of, what if the government decided what things would be produced, and everyone had an equal share of the output."

"...then even more of the money would go to boats for rich people, have you seen the government lately."

This startles a laugh out of him. "Pretty much! But even if you had a government of perfect incorruptible servants of the people, it turns out that an economy is too complicated for any group of people to handle correctly. Too many things that are inputs to other things, too many changes in what people want to buy. So you need prices, as a signal of how much people want things and how expensive they are to make. I can try to rederive the more sophisticated math behind how prices convey information but for all I know you already have it; sorry if I'm repeating stuff you learned as a kid."

"No, I don't think we have that-- I've been working on some of it, studying corn prices and trade--"

"Neat! Can I see your notes?"

Eli passes them over.

(He's halfway to inventing the concept of comparative advantage.)

"This is really impressive; I would never have thought of this independently." It is a really cool but slightly intimidating bonus of having cheaty future knowledge that he gets to hang out with geniuses who would otherwise not find him at all interesting.

"Bet you would if you'd spent as much time as I have staring at charts of corn prices."

"Thanks." (He doubts that a lot but there's no way to test it, is there.) "I might be able to remember enough stuff to help with this, but--I worry it would be sort of like spoiling the ending of a story and I should work on other things I know more about and let you have the satisfaction of doing this thing yourself?"

Leo bounces. "No no no no no you have to explain it to me so I can work on new things."

"Alright, spoilers it is!" He can explain production possibilities curves, and with a bit of fiddling and re-deriving remind himself how you combine the ones from multiple countries to get a new one that lets you have strictly more of everything, and take a stab at extending it to n dimensions.

(Eli's curiosity is really excellent. And so reminiscent of his labmate back home and why is this the thing threatening to make him homesick, shut up and focus.) 

While they're talking Eli puts his head on Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce is not used to this level of casual contact! He stiffens a bit and then relaxes. If Anglians casually put their heads on people's shoulders to look at the same paper better then that's fine. Good, even. Where was he, oh yes, pros and cons but mostly cons of protective tarrifs. He writes and points at things and if his arm bumps into Eli's arm a couple times well that's how it goes.

Eli has some questions about the role of tariffs in developing economies and whether Anglia could be said to be a developing economy, relatively speaking!

Perhaps their knees can accidentally bump into each other too.

HER BROTHER IS RIDICULOUS.

The question of what it means to be a developing economy for tariff purposes, and whether it's more of an absolute or relative thing, is an interesting question! One of those things that looks like a philosophical question about the meanings of categories except actually it's a question about empirical causes and effects in a funny hat.

Accidental knee-bumps are totally fine. Ridiculous? Who, them?

And eventually it is time for Bruce's introduction to the Imperial Society!

Getting ready for it involves a bunch of etiquette pop quizzes and being fitted for clothes.