Nod. "The girl had one unauthorized because somebody forced her; she would have been murdered if she'd tried to complain, though, she's red and he's not. Should I expect that happens here, too?"

"We don't murder reds over accusing their betters. Especially not if they've given birth to proof."

"And if they haven't?"

"Then it's much harder to prove, and we certainly don't let them accuse at random and see whoever they wish to point at punished, but that's true of any caste."

"So when the Tapa tell me that their way of doing things is the best that can be done, it seems I am justified in disagreeing."

"I could see it being legitimately hard to switch away from the child credit system - people who have four kids already will have them in reserve, or be saving up, they'd feel toyed with."

"Do countries without any population controls experience mass starvation or something?"

"Overcrowding. Homelessness, no space on the trains, fifteen people trying to share a two bedroom apartment. Population control is the gentle solution. Some places forcibly resettle families in less crowded places or just kill all the purples in the worst neighborhoods."

"I see. When you say 'accusing their betters', what do you mean, exactly?"

"What about that is confusing you?"

"I am puzzled as to what it means to you to regard some groups of people as better - is it a claim that they're of more moral worth? That policy ought to prioritize their interests more? That they're of more value, worth expending more to protect?"

"Moral worth seems like something of an empty phrase. The other two, assuming you mean that as I understand it."

"Can you explain to me why policy ought to prioritize the wellbeing of not-red people over the wellbeing of red people?"

"Somehow I doubt the attempt would lead to your understanding."

"It seems like a very important thing to understand."

"It comes in handy, but it might be beyond you."

"Would you have an easier time explaining it to someone with black hair?"

"Not particularly. The hair is a marker, it is not the thing we care about."

"How do you think you'd run your country differently, if you personally believed that all your citizens merited equal concern?"

"I haven't given it much thought and suspect that's a trick question."

"Not really. I mean, to be clear, I think that that's how you should be running your country, but I don't expect I can insist that people behave as if they valued one another, and I'm much more optimistic about giving you robots and then taking your reds off to people who don't have to battle a couple decades' cultural conditioning to mistreat them. I'm mostly just curious."

"I expect there would be problems of opportunity cost. A green getting a poor education costs us an intellectual, a red getting a poor education maybe installs someone's toilet wrong. A poorly adjusted orange takes it out on a classroom of children, a red's emotional problems don't go farther than their family."

"A red who could be an intellectual spending their life installing toilets costs you an intellectual."

"Reds are simply not that bright."

"I am sure someone was responsible and tried getting them adequate prenatal care and nutrition and early childhood education and checking if that changed, right?"