"Are Amentans very logical about crowdfunding only for useful and uncontroversial things?"

"No, I'm just wondering if you could redirect their kindness somehow."

"My species, yes. Some other species - it'd last until the parent of a infanticided baby thought of getting on TV."

Sigh.

"Maybe with a lot of alien science papers your researchers could figure out how to make Amentans infertile by default and render them fertile when they get a credit. Perfect enforcement, no dead babies."

"That would be an improvement."

Other criteria! Extrajudicial deaths during arrest or in custody are really terrible, there's a special track for resurrections from those and if it happens often a lot of pressure gets brought to bear on helping police officers to stop killing people. They can have whatever government they want internally - "we're a monarchy, everyone finds us very old-fashioned" - but Vanda Nossëo votes are one-person-one-vote, no minimum age, no disqualifications for criminal record or mental illness.

"That seems very - idealistic - the no disqualifications for voting thing, I don't think anyone will have a principled objection to ending deaths during arrest if there's some unintrusive way to do it."

"There are stun weapons, there's also a separate resurrection pipeline for police killed in the line of duty so they can hopefully feel a bit less like if they're too cautious they might leave their children fatherless. We're very idealistic about the voting. Rule of the people by the people for the people, all that."

"But by people who think rape is oversold as a crime or that only two of the moons are real?"

"It's not that people are perfect at decisionmaking, it's that they're very imperfect at deciding which other people deserve a vote. And there are a lot of local customs and taboos and so on that you could get bogged down in forever or you could just say - yes, everyone, even the people you hate."

"Hmm. And no weighting."

"Again, you can do whatever you want for internal governance - we don't have elections at all - but for the membership vote and for other, periodic, consortium-related votes, yes."

"What sorts of things are the consortium votes on?"

"Membership - immigration - exceptions to equality under the law - your representatives to a few formal consortium judicial and legislative bodies - and every five Amentan years most polities renegotiate their allocation of goodies, that goes up for a vote."

"Hmm. Well, a lot of this will be - culture shock - but probably not a deal breaker..."

"We can absolutely ease into it."

"Oh, through what intermediate states -"

"Come up with a four-year plan or something similar to roll out in stages the changes that'd be required for membership...can't do a planet for a nonmember but I could probably get a lot of land area added to your coast right now if it'd mean the war could be resolved... do a shuttleport now and let everyone go tour the member planets and be at least reassured that all our idealism doesn't come at the expense of functional governments and peaceful societies..."

"People might be concerned that what idealism works for other species won't work for us."

"There are a lot of other species. Elves aren't a good example, we're more law-abiding than average, but I think you'd find some familiar challenges and familiar histories out there. And, of course, if some change doesn't make things better then we'd never object to rolling it back. Making things better is the point here."

"Well, that's very reassuring."

"Occasionally we come to some place with slavery or in the middle of a massacre and we do intervene there, but we very much prefer when we can collaborate with people to figure out how to get them rich and free and well-supplied with the tools to do even better for themselves."

"We abolished slavery long ago."

"Good for you! Can we end the war by adding some new landmass on the coast for you?"