"The plan was to start you off on 35 auder a week - each, not collectively - and adjust that if it turned out to be unreasonable in either direction.  If it's obviously off already, we can do that preemptively."

He may remember that Lornell said they usually made about 20 a week in their description of the local economics, and the coin purse in their kitchen did indeed start out with 70 auder in it.

"I think that should be fine, we have more expenses than most people but not so many that we can't manage on that."

"Fantastic; do let me know if that changes.  - How much is it normal to work where you're from; we ought to make sure we're on the same page about scheduling."

"It varies pretty widely based on, like, field, and how much you like your job. Kyeo's used to long hours but that doesn't mean it's good for him - I'm used to like four hours a day of classes and more of casual education-adjacent stuff but have never had the kind of job that pays. I think... eight hours with a lunch break carved out is typical for service jobs?"

She nods.  "It varies here too, of course; we might trend longer per day on account of having fewer physical needs, but people generally don't work weekends or, hm, seasonends is I suppose a reasonable translation.  Why are people working long hours if it's not good for them?"

"Kyeo's planet is - different in complicated ways."

"A summary?"

"Ibyabek does not use money and there is a lot of work to do. For reasons I still do not really understand this results in there being - more work? I think Sarham believes I'll be offended if he explains. I could go and he could catch up with me."

" - If that would be more comfortable."

"I certainly can't explain it to you and it seems it would be easier for Sarham to explain it without me."

"You're not wrong." Sarham kisses Kyeo goodbye and Kyeo goes.

"Goodbye," she bids Kyeo before turning her attention back to Sarham.

"Kyeo's planet is communist, does the word come through?"

She takes a moment to consider it.  "No."

"Occasionally a society will go - 'some people are rich and some people are poor, that doesn't seem right, what if we just shared everything'. And then they have a revolution, overthrow the government, create a powerful replacement state that doesn't let anyone accumulate wealth, just centrally distributes stuff and forces people to work. And unchecked authoritarian governments generally have awful corruption and abuse problems even if they aren't communist but also separately communism does not work. Or at least it doesn't work at any tech level so far achieved - it might work with more robots, but Ibyabek has fewer robots, because it's hard for them to - develop human capital, motivate innovation, that sort of thing."

"Hm.

"What makes a government authoritarian?"

"Exercising power in a way that limits personal freedom in exchange for securing strict obedience to the state. ...it's a spectrum, obviously."

"Obviously," she repeats somewhat distantly.  "Tell me about robots?"

"They're machines with computational components sort of like a lens governing how they move, so they can be used to automate some kinds of work."

"Hm!  So - with robots, there could be less work to do, by enough that . . . how does it fail to work, precisely?  Or, how does it work enough that it's still run that way despite failing; why do people work more than is good for them if you can't even - ensure they're of a cooperative disposition - "

"Part of the reason that we don't have Robot Communism is that the kinds of institutions and cultures that give rise to a lot of robotics are not the same kind that have obvious ways to universally distribute the proceeds - someone owns the robots, and feels entitled to own what they make and if you told them they couldn't they wouldn't send their robots to work, and you can tax them but the more you tax something the less of it you get, and you can buy robots for the government but if you start giving people free stuff that creates bad marginal incentives and also non-profit-seeking institutions are often very slow to adapt to feedback and become inefficient, rent-seeking, corrupt, etcetera, and you can get charities but they have some of the same problems and can be scattershot. Most capitalist planets have settled into systems where there is very little poverty but there is still wealth inequality with meaningful effects on people's lives, with some but not too much taxation and some but not too much incentive-warping handout programs. On Kyeo's planet, uh, they have coercive setups to punish people for not working, or for - demonstrating uncooperative dispositions. It's self-perpetuating."

"Oh dear.  - It occurs to me that we should probably compare our concepts of poverty; those seem likely to be different."

"Probably, the understanding's changed over time as the middle class emerged and standards of living updated. What's yours?"

"Well, I don't think we really have it in Cretari cities, except perhaps with people coming in from other places - I'd say someone who couldn't afford an apartment or buy new clothes was definitely poor, or maybe if they couldn't ever get theatre tickets or tip people who they were copying from.  But that's all fairly temporary, generally, whereas out in the country it's actually possible to go hungry, or lack other basic things that we can easily copy for free, for extended periods.  And apparently there are some poorly-run cities in other countries where they can have the same sort of issues even though they have a high enough density that they'd be able to manage it if they were better organized."