Some Vanda Nossëo citizens are, say, children, and they still get basic income and so on. The law is affected by what the people deciding on it think is right, but it's not exactly the same thing. It's not illegal to, say, laugh at someone meanly even if that makes them cry, in situations that don't involve one of those additional responsibilities (so, it could be emotional abuse if you were doing it to your child, but to basically anyone else, not a legal matter).

He didn’t think Ristrell would allow that kind of thing and also the hypothetical is about a crime he by stipulation committed despite being a host but in that case he is pretty indifferent to prison again. Yay.

Do they openly admit to making laws against things that aren’t wrong or are all crimes supposed to be bad even if not all bad things are crimes? Do they think giving children money is because of some kind of buy-in from the children?

Some laws are about things that are more about coordination than morality, like a park making a rule against picking flowers because even though you picking one flower wouldn't making a difference everybody picking flowers at will would make a big one and a rule that only the first person to ask every week gets a flower would be higher overhead to implement. I do think the federal laws are all about trying to prevent some kind of bad outcome, but some of them are pretty speculative or indirect or complicated or controversial. The children are not expected to buy in, they just get the chance to opt out later instead of opt in.

Does it seem to you like I should become a citizen?

If Ashkon doesn't think it's a terrible idea for some reason he can see and I can't, I think it would make sense.

<I think it's fine, at least on the scale of things you do already. You might wind up ruminating on stuff but you do that about almost all stuff.>

<You really think so? It seems like...> Imaginary shrug. He’s already articulated his biggest concerns as well as he can. <I don’t know. Seems like it gives me strictly fewer choices if I ever break a law.> It’s less option value except insofar as money opens up options, which it doesn’t really if there’s nothing he can think of to spend it on.

<No, you can renounce your citizenship and choose exile if you want, if you don't like the sentence you get. - Uh, you might want to spend it on subtle arts? The waiting list is probably... longer... if you can't pay them.>

That seems like a good argument. He’ll at least talk to someone about it next time he has the time.

On with Ashkon's life studying music as part of the exchange program!

It’s a very nice life.

It does occasionally include breaks when his host can do things. He looks up where and how people become citizens of Vanda Nossëo.

Here are citizenship offices conveniently located in any of these several dozen bus stops! You tell them you want to be a citizen and they can do it on the spot. They like to have a name and photo and a bank to drop your basic into, and they will take more info if you'll give it to them, and they'll give you an ID number and answer your questions and stuff.

Fuck, he wants an ID number. That sounds incredible. He drops by one of those bus stops while Ashkon is feeding.

"Hello, how can I help you today?"

He does mean to say something but his throat doesn’t want to cooperate with that. He figured that might happen, though, so he has a note already written.

I was thinking I might want to become a citizen of Vanda Nossëo.

This doesn't faze the desk person at all. "Great! Do you have any questions you want answered first?"

He shrugs shyly and then does think of something he might as well double-check.

No one will expect me to answer to the ID number, right? It’s just something disambiguating?

"If you didn't give any other name and they needed to call for you out of a crowd then they might hope you'd answer to it?"

That hasn’t come up so far so it seems adequately rare.

What happens to it if I decide to renounce my citizenship?

"Then we'd archive your file and stop paying you basic and regard you as a noncitizen if you came into contact with the federal system again."

And I could forget about your number because it’s how you disambiguate citizens and not something you expect anyone else to remember?

"A lot of people don't even memorize their numbers and just look them up whenever they need them. If you needed the archive for some reason we might want the number to find it by and you would have the same number back again if you ever wanted to resume citizenship."

He smiles shyly and tries to hide it and nods vaguely and raises his eyebrows.

"...shall I go ahead and issue you a number, then?"

Shrug.