"That's actually not the safe thing in context. The officer isn't expecting a bribe and might be insulted. The safe thing is just paying the fine to the government."

Her democracy is somehow worse than Korvosa, wow, okay.

"If the traffic officers don't want money, then what are they getting out of stopping drivers." She doesn't understand this part. She's never understood this part! Ileosa does not understand what is wrong with people like Cressida Kroft. "I mean, obviously, the officers are paid to meet their quota, and if they dread punishment for taking bribes I can assume that the lord - or, rather, the elected representative - I can assume the representative appointed an ideological Hellknight from the Order of the Snail as his magistrate of traffic officers, and the Hellknight is religiously committed to punishing everyone who exceeds the snail's sacred pace. I have seen systems like this, the Korvosan Guard is like this. But what I don't understand is why anyone is steering for it!"

She struggles for the words. 

"No one should want this. The representative shouldn't want it, because he'll have to better pay his magistrate, the magistrate shouldn't want it, because she'll have to better pay her traffic officers, and expend unlimited energies policing her police force, the traffic officers shouldn't want it, because however well they're paid, they could be better paid by also taking bribes, and we citizens being accosted do not want it, because we cannot bribe the officers! And yet you say I risk offending the traffic officer by offering a bribe, and, to my infinite frustration, I cannot say, four years now a resident of Korvosa, that this is not in keeping with my understanding of human nature. And I am certain that in the hypothetical scenario, my fellow citizens, of whom I am a subject, are incredibly satisfied with the disaster they've imposed on us."

"To begin, carriage crashes are more destructive at speed. They can kill and injure people, damage carriages, and create road obstructions. The purpose of speed limits is to prevent crashes. Nobody is a member of the Hellknight Order of the Snail."

"The representative selfishly wants to slow traffic because they can use some tax revenue, and dead people don't pay taxes, and injured people and people with damaged carriages are worse at it. Plus, he profits from fines. The police chief is plausibly selfishly in favor because in the absence of traffic laws, she wouldn't get the funding to hire any traffic officers, and she might also profit from fines. There's, uh, actually a bit of a problem where some towns will set poorly indicated speed limits to profit from people missing the indicators and then not contesting charges, but that's tangential. The traffic officers will be fired for taking bribes and are acculturated to find bribery disrespectful and an attempt to evade fair punishment."

"And the citizens want speed limits because they don't want to be harmed by carriage crashes. Most crashes are caused by reckless driving. A lot of people who get into crashes were thinking something like 'well, I am such a good driver that I can drive however I like without crashing'. It's convenient to penalize these people before they actually get into a crash, the same way it's convenient to have it be a crime to throw knives around even if you don't hit people. Plus, reckless drivers force other drivers to be more careful on the road, which is annoying, so it can feel nice when some other reckless driver is pulled over by traffic officers."

Ileosa is reassured by the traffic officers in small towns hiding the speed limit indicators; it's grounding to see sane behavior from villagers even in the dream democracy. 

"To be clear, I understand that a representative might selfishly want everyone else on the road to drive slowly, and I am grateful for it. This is why Lawful humans live better than Chaotic harpies; tyranny brings prosperity. Certainly I, like anyone else on this planet, would rather be the tyrant who the streets are cleared for so my coachman can race at any speed, but if I can't be the tyrant, by all means, let the roads be policed! I am no friend of Chaos.

"What I find mystifying is..." everything. The whole thing is fractally mystifying.

"I'll describe what I'd expect speed limit enforcement to look like in a democracy, and perhaps you can tell me where my expectations fail me.

"The representative is annoyed by carriage crashes, and decrees that henceforth no one will exceed a certain speed, excepting only his soldiers, his officers, the clergy, and so on and so forth. Every sensible person applauds this diktat, which will reduce their odds of being hit by an incompetently piloted carriage. Alas, it is in no one's personal interest to be the only one driving slowly, so until traffic officers are appointed, no change is made. 

"But traffic officers are appointed shortly. These officers are to chase and halt horseless carriages, boarding them if necessary. If a traffic officer writes your name in too many places, you will lose license to drive your horseless carriage, which is your primary means of transportation and self-defense. Being a traffic officer is a dangerous job, but many nonetheless apply to this government program, because they want to make the streets safer, or punish the guilty, or avenge themselves on enemies, or circle up, but mostly because they want to collect bribes.

"So the traffic officers fan out, stopping who they please and extracting bribes from them. And because those who are exceeding the speed limit have more to fear from being taken to court, the traffic officers can extract larger bribes from them, likely exceeding the value of nominal fine, since no one wants to lose their license to drive a carriage. And so everyone tries to avoid the traffic officers' attention, and the roads are consequently safer.

"Now, the representative and the police chief doesn't get as much revenue from fines, this way, as the representative would, hypothetically, if the traffic officers were stopping just as many carriages and taking them all to court. But... in practice, almost everywhere I've ever been, enforcers just collected bribes and also collected fines? The traffic officers wouldn't be able fine as many people through the formal system as they're able to solicit bribes from! It'd be worse for enforcement! The police chief is already setting a quota for fines. She'll get her cut. And the representative will get his. If the traffic officers can't take bribes, they need to be paid more in their regular salary, which comes from the public purse, and this seems worse in every way."

"Firstly, the representative is not going to formally exclude himself or the clergy or such. He does exclude various government employees, but only when they're using government carriages and are playing a special horn they're only supposed to use for emergencies and which also directs other drivers to pull over. If someone takes a government carriage with the special horn running to a restaurant, instead of to the hospital or the site of an emergency or such, citizens won't be happy."

"Secondly: Being a police officer involves some danger, but it's so far as I can tell more than 8 times safer than logging, and also safer than fishing, roofing, garbage collection, and many other jobs. There's no real benefit to the danger either, nobody circles up."

"And there aren't that many chases, because of license plates. Every carriage is supposed to have identifying marks on it which the government issues. They make it easier to find vehicles involved in crimes, so even if the driver gets away, the government can go after them later. Anyway. Normally the traffic officers direct a speeding driver to pull over by using the horn and lights on their car. If the driver ignores this, they can face much more severe penalties, so they'll usually pull over. Carriage chases do happen sometimes, but they can be risky to police and bystanders, so they're considered undesirable."

"Drivers don't lose their licenses from first infractions, generally. People argue over whether it's too hard to lose one's license."

"I really don't know what to tell you about the bribery. I'm not familiar with the exact details myself. My understanding is that people will try to be police officers because they like the idea of doing good, they like the idea of doing interesting work, and the state pays well. I think there is some indirect corruption sometimes, like, police officers will sometimes be more lenient on people with visible signals of having donated money to local-police-related charities, but most drivers don't make donations like that."

"I think citizens and elected representatives think things are better when the police don't take bribes, even though that means they need to spend more tax money on police. When the police aren't out for bribes, the public tends to trust them somewhat more, which is useful for policing. Judges also tend to trust testimony from officers more when the officers aren't taking bribes. Also, the people who would get pushed for bribes are often voting citizens, who don't like being pushed for bribes, and they'd prefer representatives who made the police department stop doing that."

Being a police officer involves some danger, but it's so far as I can tell more than 8 times safer than logging

Because logging happens in forests! Gods of the pit, you can't compare logging to other kinds of work.

and also safer than fishing, roofing, garbage collection, and many other jobs.

Oh, huh, alright. That undercuts her point. 

Still, logging is an outlier and shouldn't be listed.

It seems like the dream person doesn't have much better an idea of why there's a culture opposed to bribery than Ileosa has.

(Which is a pity because Korvosa has a similar problem and Ileosa has grown increasingly frustrated with it.) 

"Thank you for your explanations and answers. I'm going to change my response, then, and contest the ticket in court."

"Okay. Next we have a vague political question, so feel free to not make up any hypotheticals this time."

"An individual's rights are more important than the rights of the group, correct?
A. Always
B. Sometimes
C. Very seldom
D. Never"

"Everyone thinks their rights are more important than the rights of the group, and no one else's are. I'm one of everyone, so I think my rights are more important than the rights of the group, and no one else's are. I guess that makes my answer C?"

"Okay."

"Should an entire group of people suffer for the sins of an individual from that group?
A. No. You never really understand why any individual does anything. Why punish the group for something we don't fully comprehend?
B. It depends on the severity of the damage.
C. It depends on what the individual did.
D. Yes. That's the natural order."

"Option C contains option B, and is also the correct answer. Collective punishment is sometimes, but not always, the answer. It depends on details."

"Yeah, sometimes answers will contain each other that way. One time I saw one where an answer was 'Step in and question the situation. Then try to find a fair and just resolution to the issue.'."

"While in prison, do you escape with other inmates, or snitch for perks?
A. Snitch and receive prison privileges until the next debacle.
B. I tell the warden because it's the right thing to do.
C. I tell the warden in spite of the privileges.
D. I tell another prisoner and trick them to tell the warden. We split the privileges."

 Ileosa wonders what the other answers were, such that such a specific thing as 'find a fair and just resolution to the issue' contained them, but she's distracted from chasing this down by - 

Ileosa doesn't want to be in prison! Ileosa really doesn't want to be in prison! 

"...Which is the option for escaping with the other inmates?"

"You know, there actually isn't one. I think the author made a mistake."

That... is really funny, actually. She may have been expecting too much coherency from this dream.

"As I have no option to escape, and as I have four options to tell the warden about the planned escape, I suppose I'll tell the warden! Option A, then."

"Okay. Next we have another horseless carriage question. They're called cars for short."

"You capture video of your neighbor hitting your parked car. They say nothing. What now?
A. What rock through my neighbor's window that very same night?
B. I take my dent and my footage to court. I'm suing!
C. I get my car fixed and ask the neighbor to reimburse me. If they don't, oh well.
D. I contact law enforcement with the footage."

"Like, hitting enough to do damage, maybe with their carriage or such."

Do! Not! Hit! Ileosa's! Car!

"Which option would cause my neighbor the greatest suffering?"

The questioner laughs. "Definitely B or D but I'm not sure which. I guess I'd expect D to actually be useful for B? If you go to the police with your footage and they decide not to investigate, you might still get police records useful for court. The thing is, suing your neighbor is more work for you, also. I guess I think B? It's the most effort on your part and the reason you'd go through that effort is wanting to win."

Why is Ileosa being laughed at? She doesn't deserve this.

"Then, my answer is A, B, C, and D. We can gloss that as 'D.'" 

(It's glossed as D because D is the most aggressive and hostile option.)

(Sorry, Ileosa, but 'I want the response to a car problem to be the one which makes my enemies suffer most' is just objectively funny when you're not actually torturing your enemies or such!)

"That rock really isn't going to help with your court case or such. Anyway."

"Do you share the abundant spoils of a thieving friend, or snitch for reward money?
A. I want to bring those who've broken the law to justice.
B. Rob the friend. Who are they gonna tell, the authorities?
C. I'd tell my friend that I intend to snitch to give them a head start.
D. I bribe my friend to reap some of the theft riches before I turn my friend in to collect the reward money."

"I'm surprised there isn't a regular 'share' option here, but it is what it is."

"There's no option to share and there's no option to stay uninvolved. Out of the options given, A is absurd, matched only by C, which is even more so, leaving B and D. Either option burns the friendship, but B leaves an enemy in play while D is more profitable. In for a penny, in for a dollar; I choose D."

"All right."

"Do you sacrifice your well-being for the comfort of others?
A. Never
B. Only if I can get something out of it
C. Yes. We're all in the 'soup.'
D. Only for friends and family"

"What is the soup. Am I in the soup."

"I think it's supposed to refer to 'we're all in our situation together' in some nebulous sense?"