"Arrange for them to send you the greens?"

"They will reach a consensus in this meeting?"

"No, not at all, but stuff like how many and where can be settled now."

"I see."

"Need anything else?"

"I don't think so, but I should be the one asking."

"I think you have good judgment, but the described standards rest very hard on your judgment."

"Yes, but I was acting... harsher than I really am. I will most likely follow whatever you all end up deciding but I do want to at least make it clear that cooperation is very desirable."

"We'll probably mostly manage but there are a lot of countries." He shakes his head. "There'd have been some advantage to saying you were Anitam's and doing what we wanted, because everyone knows how we negotiate and what to expect and who they're dealing with, but I thought it'd be rather impossible to sell you on that."

"Not impossible but—it seems unprincipled, and it is not at all obvious to us that sacrificing this principle and the political neutrality is balanced out by that advantage."

"'Everyone gets a planet' makes sense to me as a principle. Neutrality separate from that, less so."

"The sort of context we would need to make appropriate judgments of favour between this world's various polities would require much deeper understanding of the political landscape than we can reasonably obtain in reasonably short times, being outsiders. Neutrality may not be locally optimal, but it's robust."

"I suppose. It seems easier to go from one's best judgment to a better version of the same than from not favoring anybody to favoring the deserving, though."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

"Are you planning to be neutral forever? Or once you have information appropriate to making judgments are you going to use it?"

"For sufficiently good definitions of 'appropriate' we might do that, yes."

"I expect you'll meet lots of resistance when you do that, but perhaps we can plan how to minimize it."

"In an ideal world I wouldn't need to abandon neutrality because you would all in fact notice that it's in your interest to cooperate."

"It is not in everyone's individual interest to cooperate."

"Not even when the person overseeing the efforts is specifically going for it?"

" - I mean, people who are sufficiently stupid will get shot for it, so in that sense?"

"...is death strictly necessary? I understand prison costs are a big problem but they soon won't be."

"Blues it's not about prison costs anyway, we have to pay those ourselves."

"What sorts of stupidity do you see them doing that could get them shot?"

"There is likely to be a lot of internal maneuvering over planet access and polar access and rainforest access. If someone does something you don't like that's the most straightforward way for their country to assure you they're taking your terms seriously."