"A lot. We don't know as much as them about military tactics, we can't do a thing about unit disclipline and getting orders actually followed on the ground. The way it'll usually go is that we say to them 'this is the budget we'd have to achieve this military objective, can that be achieved?' and if they demur it's no go. Though they usually find a way to get it done."

"Huh. Interesting."

"People've pushed something through with reluctant or divided generals but it typically goes badly."

"With the Voa war people weren't super interested in thinking about what we were going to achieve or whether it was right. I actually felt kind of green, signing up."

"I just did it for the money, I wasn't really reading the atmosphere so much."

"I think people were mostly 'they poisoned the food, we're going to get 'em back' - it felt good to be able to do something -"

"Sounds about right."

"Anyway it might be that if I threatened to occupy Biyan they'd say 'sure, go ahead', they're so miserable, but I'm not running for office for two more years and by then one expects things will have changed."

"Well, I'd vote for you," says Isama. "Probably. I haven't heard your campaign speech."

"You haven't seen my tax reform! You will be very fond of my tax reform, eighty percent of the population does zero paperwork and sixty percent of the remaining do less than two pages of paperwork and you can go online and see everything you quality for."

"Marvelous. Might vote for you even if your campaign speech does make you sound like an alien."

"I hear that the purples of Anitam work hard and want jobs! And cheaper child credits! I value purples tremendously! For example, I have one! A housekeeper. I value him tremendously. If you vote for me you will have cheap child credits and jobs. All the castes are equal and equally important to me."

"Aaaaaaaah," says Isama in mock horror, "stop, I'll break out in a rash."

"If blues know why everyone hates your speeches why do you still give them like that."

"Uh, partially that actual populism is very deeply frowned upon - I mean, catering to the masses regardless of the economic sense or wisdom of your proposals, or playing to paranoia and nationalism any harder than the accepted amount - and if you want the respect of your peers you avoid the appearance of that. Partially that speaking for television is a different skillset than speaking in most other contexts. Partially that most people actually aren't very good liars and they don't actually value all the castes equally so they're lying and everyone knows it and yet no one'd ever come out and say 'I think I am superior to you. I think that because literally everything runs on that premise. And yet in the spirit of modernity we've introduced this thing where you get a medium-sized amount of sway in whether I get power, which does very little to make me genuinely accountable to you but does motivate me to say things I think you'd want to be true.'"

"I don't see how that adds up and makes the speeches - that," says Peka.

"The speeches usually aren't really that. They're just kind of dry and insincere and unintentionally insulting - like, no blues can say 'I asked my purple sister-in-law what kind of tax plan would help her create jobs. She said it should be short, it should be easy, it should make sense, and it should be automatic. So that's my tax plan. I went to Elesath and asked them what kept them up at night counting ni. They want to start a family young for help on the farm, but it's too expensive. So I will make the credit for your first child half the cost.' And that's not a brilliant speech in itself but if you haven't asked and you haven't figured out how to get it done then you don't have anything that could even become a brilliant speech. So you end up telling people why the policies you developed without asking them are good for them, and that's never going to be popular."

"Ah, I'm part of your sinister plan," says Isama.

"Why don't they ask?" asks Peka.

"I have talked to or mean to talk to every major employer who'll find time for a meeting, but for the approach to taxes I am much indebted to you," he says to Isama. "I think it's vocabulary gaps, mostly? We're used to hearing policy arguments made in specific terms which no one bothers teaching purples - and people do start by asking the people they know, but a random gardener isn't going to be particularly equipped to talk about employment policy, which just furthers the impression that purples work and it's an injustice to everyone including them to try to get their insight on governing - you wouldn't ask a blue how to build a tunnel -"

"Hey Aitim how should I build a tunnel," says Isama.

"...workplace safety laws were recently revised to require more training for people handling explosives? So train some people to handle explosives. Then I suppose one has them explode things."

She laughs.

"In a system without castes you'd still have expertise, just not the rigid expectation that half the population has no insight into how the government is working for them."

"Oh, I think it's a real shortcoming of the present system. Hard to overcome, though, because we are not a wealthy enough society to have purple schools that teach green stuff and it'd distract from teaching them things they are definitely going to need."

"You could let people who aren't green sit in on university classes. Though I don't think that'd change much in the specific case, it's not as if Isama and people with important work to do would have the time -"