space Arda and Peka's world
+ Show First Post
Total: 2221
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"I would be delighted."

Permalink

The city of Ched does not shoot at him.

Permalink

He's here to meet with the Allocator, where should he go?

Permalink

These greys will escort him to the office!

Permalink

Great.

Permalink

And there is a very stressed out blue haired fellow behind a desk. "Hello," he says wearily. "Are you Prince Nelyafinwë -"

Permalink

"His brother. Prince Morifinwë Carnistir, nice to meet you."

Permalink

"Likewise I'm sure." Sigh. "Allocator Savo."

Permalink

"Do you want a summary of what's going on on our end, or should I have an explanation of the food mess first?"

Permalink

"Probably the latter." Sigh. "What do you already know -?"

Permalink

"People on this planet have hair colors that are taken as indicative of the occupations and social position appropriate to them. We don't have that at home. This is inherited but with a little bit of flexibility, enough to suspect it's not tracking some intrinsic natural category, but everyone treats it like an intrinsic natural category. The red-hair class of people are regarded as unclean, and their handling of the food does not appear to have produced food that is in any respect inferior to normal food but people are terrified of it because it's unclean, so they're either going hungry or eating it and then sometimes getting sick - looks like just out of sheer terror. Some of your citizens were unhappy about this, and your neighbors took that as a sign it'd be appreciated if they invaded. They've invaded."

Permalink

"Oh, they invaded to take some farmland - I think the local discontent is just an excuse - whatever." Sigh. "People hate the reds, and it was never going to get better, and I thought - it had to be almost all the food producers at once, you see, or any of them who sold red-handled food would go out of business instantly same as if they tried to sell moldy food - coordinated that, but people are reacting worse than expected. Especially the Tapai, I - should have expected that, didn't think they'd take it this far -"

Permalink

"Meddling with markets for social good usually doesn't work."

Permalink

Allocator Savo looks at him dolefully. "You have lots of company in just wanting to leave the reds where they are, I suppose. Maybe you're even right."

Permalink

" - no, I think we probably want to let them emigrate. Find them a nice place on Endorë if the Valar make faces at the idea of your people in Valinor. If you treat them appallingly I bet they'll all choose to leave."

Permalink

"That would be even worse - no one else will do their jobs, we'd have corpses rotting in the streets, sewage everywhere -"

Permalink

"Your society's totally unsustainable without an underclass who everyone loathes and mistreats?"

Permalink

"...are you a diplomat?" wonders Allocator Savo dubiously.

Permalink

"Not in the slightest. I do our economic policy. If you want someone who can phrase things nicely for your superiors I can get Nelyo on the phone, but what I want is to figure out why people are hungry and why people are desperate and how we can fix this stupid planet and its appalling misallocation of its resources without ripping up things we're not set to replace."

Permalink

"People are hungry because they'd rather indulge their squeamishness about red caste than eat anything they've bagged. I thought - maybe we were ready -"

Permalink

"Maybe would've worked if you'd gotten some scientists to claim they'd developed a procedure that could purify food red people handled. Or done it with some industry where squeamishness hits less close to home. Or rolled it out with the right PR - you're not wrong that it's stupid, it's just a really bad idea to try to starve people into social progress -"

Permalink

"Claiming we had a food procedure might have opened food handling jobs to reds but it wouldn't have helped the underlying idiocy. Reds install toilets, and then somebody wipes them down with six kinds of antiseptic and they're fine, it doesn't help."

Permalink

"I have no reason to expect I'd be unusually helpful with your social problems, but I do think that opening more jobs to people of different castes might help more than expected - giving people more options generally does -"

Permalink

"The purples find it threatening and they're more than half the population, I wouldn't have courted that just to get reds the chance to pick apples."

Permalink

"Okay. Well, you tried this and it didn't go well, are you going to try to press ahead with it?"

Total: 2221
Posts Per Page: