Élie isn't really in the mood to respond to this line of argument. It's not like he knows how long a republic can last.

"I've seen it argued that celibate religious orders lead to a stronger nobility, as they don't end up dividing their land. ...the person arguing this thought it was a good thing, but I suppose you could take it the other way and say that such orders ought to be discouraged, so they do end up dividing their land."

"In Sarkoris it was customary - that understates it, I would say it was the law but for it not being formalized or written down - for all land and property to be divided evenly among all sons. It is the same in many of the other northern kingdoms, and especially compared to Taldor the nobility in those places is much weaker... that could be an accident but it's suggestive."

"I could do that in liberated Encarthan. ...I did a survey of lots of places and how they were governed, before Arazni died when I had the time to work on it, but I didn't go to Sarkoris for the obvious reasons..."

"You wouldn't have gotten the warmest welcome ever, I expect, but it's not like your presence would have been illegal or anything like that."

"I am not a wizard but there are a bunch who keep trying to kill me, and relatedly a bunch in my escort, I did most of those trips with Arazni babysitting me over a scry. It just seemed to be stretching the spirit of the rules, if not the letter. After the war, maybe...I do want to get a good look at more governments, if there's not going to be much innovation in Encarthan after I ascend. It makes it more important to have it right from the start. Though I'd really rather they go figure it out themselves and maybe if they aren't punished for their ambition with Arazni being raised as a monster they'll be more willing to."

"Do you want them to figure it out for themselves? I mean, if they figured out something you disagreed with?"

"It would be fairly astonishing if with a thousand years of practice and access to more examples than we have to reason from they couldn't do any better than I could do on a first attempt!"

"We're going in circles again. I – 

– To be perfectly honest, I'm confused. To me, wanting your people to figure out on their own what form of government best suits them is fundamentally a democratic impulse. You have to trust their reason, their judgement, their character – but you don't, because you don't trust them to have power over their government. I think I must have a very imperfect understanding of what you do expect of them."

" - I think that people who work in the government have an obligation to improve on it, compare to other forms of government, figure out how to deliver peace and prosperity and freedom and every other good that is possible to attain through government. My skepticism is of the claim that votes of the entire populace are an effective way to make that happen, not skepticism of the claim that it is part of the business of government. And I don't know that trust has anything to do with it either. It's their duty to surpass us, as it's our duty to surpass our fathers. I don't know if they will do it, but I should certainly attempt to set things up to give them good odds."

"I don't think we disagree on the duty of those who work in government so much as whether they're likely to fulfill it if nobody else has the power to make them. If that's not by vote, then it's by threat of rebellion. There is no other choice. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned your ministers are to begin with. If they only ever have to listen to other ministers, if they're not used to thinking of their subjects as fellow reasoning beings with the wisdom to know their own interest, then there isn't any freedom – and I think very little prosperity, and a very sorry kind of peace."

"I have tended to think of it as - peoples' actions will be a product of their convictions and what their environment rewards. The more you can design an environment that rewards doing the right thing, the less it is necessary to attract people who will do it whether the environment rewards it or not; but there are people who will do that, and it seems to me that sometimes you want to build systems that rely on that, because the expense of building systems that work regardless of the decency of the participants is too great, or because we don't know how to do it at all. And separately from that I've tended to think of getting good information as one of the primary challenges of rule, because it's one of the primary challenges of everything - but once again votes do not actually seem, to me, to make that problem notably easier. I find myself frequently agreeing, when you speak of what virtues are important or what makes for a good life, but very lost as to why you think that this one particular system of government promotes it, either at all or more than a dozen other things one could try."

"I'm tempted to say that if it were possible to get decent people in government and keep them there, I could point to an instance of it ever having happened – but I don't think you'd accept the fact that it hasn't been done before as an argument. And neither do I, really. You know, despite everything I've said, I do believe that most people in most circumstances are fundamentally decent. It's just that power is a terrible sort of circumstance. The more one has, the and the longer one has it, the worse they'll be. There's only so long ideals can stand up against it. And then there's the real problem: it doesn't matter how virtuous your first five or ten kings or lord watchers or whatever you want to call them are. The first tyrant is enough to corrupt the whole state and destroy your beautiful system forever, if he's not checked. 

That's why I don't think there's any cure for power except making sure that it's limited. It's not just in the interests of obstructing would-be tyrants. Democracy keeps rulers decent. If you know you answer to their people, that you serve them in reality, not just as polite fiction, you're no better or worse than them and when your term is over you'll be one of them again – well, I like to think it keeps the ego in check. That's why I'm so hung up on voting. One can quibble about the form, of course, and I have, but in the end the thing that matters is that the people have power over their rulers and not the other way around."  

"I see why that would be very valuable, if achieved. And I imagine opportunities to experiment with it at all are very precious. I hope it works as you describe it, and I hope that Encarthan is, if not a place that'd experiment with it, a place that'd adopt it given reason to think it works in practice."

"I may be too harsh on them. I don't think their system works without you personally supervising it, but you are and it does and it's done a great deal of good for it." 

"I'd much rather have a system that works regardless of that - not least, until you arrived here, because there was always the chance I would not successfully ascend - but I'll take a system that works only supervised over one that might not work at all, I think, and note for them the costs of doing it that way and the hope they invent something better. I do think that to the extent they failed to surpass us it might be because of - Arazni - being a particularly bitter lesson at a particularly formative time. Maybe, if we set them up to do better, they will. It is after all the first precept of their faith that one is supposed to personally grow up and surpass the gods."

"For what it's worth, I'm not sure I'd be trying to do better than Lastwall if I didn't have a Lastwall to resent."

He wonders if his Lastwall was more interested in surpassing their gods before the death of Aroden. He doesn't suppose Cansellarion would know or want to talk about it if he did, but there's probably archives, and he'd like to know. 

Iomedae pretends to be taking notes. "Go about...everything...in maximally smug and annoying fashion...so as to inspire archmages to prove themselves better than you..."

"Does that work? Are we really so easily manipulable? I may need to rethink my entire life."

"Now I'm worried that if I inspire you to make them less self-righteous I'll throw off the whole course of this world's history."

"Oh now you're worried about that."

"It's all right, I have heard it said that paladins are just as easily manipulated as archmages. Just become a Good god and they'll worship you without checking at all if they should instead try to fire you and take your job."

"It's a very serious weakness of character!"

"Absolutely dreadful, really, worshiping the beings that happened to get there first. They should hold a regular election and whoever gets the most votes from all the Good people should get to be the god for the next ten years."

"- ah, see, there's an idea, actually. I should ask Heaven to try various kinds of government and then tell us what the best one is. This assumes that everyone in the society is Lawful Good but perhaps that won't pose any particular challenges for implementation on Golarion."