do you recall when the war was just a game?

"Are there things that some námor are more deserving of than others?"

"- sort - of?" says Nelen. "I get paid for doing my job, so I deserve that money and someone who does not do that job doesn't, but if they worked the same job they'd get paid the same. We have no idea how to keep a Sauron or Melkor alive safely, so whether they have the right to life in spite of being unrepentantly catastrophically evil has not really come to be a major topic of debate. Noncustodial parents are entitled to visitation with their own children if the children want it, and no similar effort is made to ensure that they can meet other people's children, or that parents whose children dislike them get as much time as parents whose children love and miss them."

"...In Sesat we make a distinction between those who get what they want by taking it and those who get what they want by convincing the former sort of people to give it to them. It seems as though in Vanda Nossëo only the second way of earning things is... respectable?"

"...ish. It's also respectable in sufficiently - extreme circumstances - to get things by taking them from the first sort of person, like the aforementioned Golden usurpation of the vampire shadow government in Aurum."

"Hm. Can you... explain in more detail why that is and how these things are seen in Vanda Nossëo?"

"Why there's that exception or why in the general case there's -"

"Those are not the only two ways to come by things. You can also make things," mentions Tarwë.

"Oh, that too - can you be more specific, please, Feris?"

"...Well... from my perspective, I served on the border with Iral for a while. They wanted to take what was ours. But what was ours had been theirs before they took it from us. But the land and people they took from us had been part of Sesat before. I might be able to find, deep in our oldest records, an answer to whether Sesat or Iral started it. But by the time our ancestors started fighting over that border, surely some of them had taken other things by force of arms already. And yet I think you're saying something other than that it's better to leave women and the physically infirm out of the way of your fighting - not even all of those, I guess Bells are at least one and usually both of those and you did just mention Golden's conquest."

"That's one reason we don't try to settle conflicts like that, just obviate them," says Nelen, "they go back too long and complicatedly and generationally to sort out neatly. Anyway, the ways people can come to have things are to make it themselves, or to trade for it or buy it, or to receive it as a gift like basic income, or to get it by coercion like taxes, or to straight-up steal it. And which of those things are going to happen and how much we might approve of them depends somewhat on what they are and what the situation is. Vanda Nossëo doesn't use taxes, it started off with donations mostly sourced from Elves who sold magic items and now there are investments and some voluntary subsidies mostly earmarked for specific programs, but many individual member states use taxes, that's not unusual if you want to have public funds for things like schools or infrastructure maintenance. It is far less common for a society to decide that they don't care who owns things at all, they aren't going to enforce private property in the least, anyone who finds anything there can pick it up and take it - though this is not actually a member state requirement, so there may be a few. Uh, we don't see a lot of call for fighting, most of the time, we have enough magic that it seldom comes down to that, though pre-pealing there's often little other choice - uh, Golden was usurping a government that allowed vampires to eat humans whenever they wanted, if that matters to you? She outlawed eating people when she had control of the - I worry I have gotten off on some kind of tangent that has nothing to do with what you wanted to know, but I'm afraid I'm still not clear on what you want to know."

"I think what I'm confused by is - Golden got to where she is by force of arms, so did Loki, and in general I don't expect that 'only from those who themselves take things by force' is a narrow enough qualifier to... I don't know. I thought at first that something to do with this would explain why, when you gave me a list of things only some people deserve, it felt so oddly slanted. And I didn't uncover an obvious connection there. Although now I also want to read about member states' tax policies at some point."

”So - Golden was in a situation where, there was this Earth with humans as normal but also there were vampires, who normally killed humans drinking their blood about once a week apiece. The vampires were kept secret from humans by the enforcement of a government called the Volturi, who also routinely used various magic and superior numbers to kill or recruit anyone they perceived as a threat. Towards the end of their reign they had a number of vampires kept in small chunks in a basement because they had a way to use their magic that way without needing to, even magically, secure their voluntary cooperation. Golden objected to this and didn't have a non-combative way to change the situation; if she had tried to, say, start a competing government, or enlist human help in enforcing laws against murder on vampires, the Volturi would have taken that as a provocation and attacked her anyway. Leaving the situation as it was wasn't really an option, too many people were being killed. Does that make sense?"

"It sounds like the Volturi were a terrible government to live under and Golden defeated them, but I don't know what you mean when you say leaving the situation as it was wasn't really an option."

"...Golden, like Bells in general tend to, considered herself responsible for the well-being of arbitrary innocents in her sphere of potential influence."

"Sure. I'm not confused about why someone like that would choose to take up arms. I'm confused that when I asked about those who are more deserving than others, you didn't list her."

Nelen blinks rapidly. "It... would probably be more efficient to, all else being equal, allocate some unclaimed resource to her rather than a randomly chosen person? I guess? But that's a different - do we need to get linguists in to work on 'deserve' too -"

"...Maybe we do! What does the word you're using mean?"

"To be entitled to something because of your qualities or achievements? I guess she might have won some award at some point, but if we're talking about things like safety and material abundance we don't consider that something you need a quality besides being a námo to be worthy of. If we're talking about power I guess she sort of deserves power for being a Bell but it's kind of a tortured phrasing, I wouldn't normally say it that way, I'd say that she is expected to be trustworthy with power because of being a Bell."

"I would have expected her to have won a title from the Volturi or - I'd expect it more with the more powerful Bells but no one has ever said that Loki or Gem is owed anything for their continued protection of their worlds - do you generally give power to people solely on the basis of their trustworthiness with it and not as a reward?"

"...basically, yeah. Trustworthiness and likely intent to further our values with it as opposed to just not doing anything with it, when there's limits on how much we can give out or how many applicants we can screen. Uh, she did style herself Empress after she took over, that's just not as relevant in interdimensional politics so it doesn't come up much. I think Loki does actually draw a salary but I would be surprised if it were more than, oh, two or three times mine, for any big projects she can draw on project funding, personal salary is just for things she wants as indulgences when she's taking downtime. I don't know about Golden."

"...How wrong is it to say that your worth is a private matter between you, the state, and your employer - so those who are criminals have their income taken away to pay for others to imprison them, and ordinary people are offered something just for being alive and not criminals, and those who provide some service to someone receive yet more than that, always entirely in cash rather than some combination of cash and kind and general courtesy?"

"It's not always entirely in cash. I can use my teleport for personal use, and wouldn't have it if I hadn't wanted an envoy job," says Nelen. "But otherwise that is - again framed a bit oddly but not wrong in the material facts. I don't think any of those transactions are about evaluating a námo's worth, just the worth of their labor, or the cost of their upkeep, or the health of the Vanda Nossëo economy because that's where the basic income is from."

"How quickly do you think anyone who wasn't trying to make sure they understood everything exactly right would catch on to the difference in framing, interacting with Vanda Nossëo?"

"Probably not very quickly. Some languages use metaphors like 'he's worth millions' to refer to someone having millions, even."

"Great! I think at this point... I almost have what I'd need to get you a membership vote that isn't a disaster. Not that I'm sure that's the best we can do, yet, but it might be."

"I'm glad to hear it," says Nelen. "What is it that you're going to tell whom?"