Sigh. "Wish terraforming planets was easier. Endorë might be the way to go."

"What would we do there?"

"Uh, whatever you wanted? They're not quite as post-scarcity as Valinor but they're certainly not set up such that most people have to work full-time to make ends meet."

"How do you even do that?" she wonders.

" - uh, inconveniently automation is a big part of it. Societal focus on durable goods, selling things that'll last a hundred years. People are mostly older, since we live forever, and they know how to do everything themselves by hand if they need to, so you don't have problems like - wanting something and having no way to get it. If you really want it you still know how to go make it. Government tends to direct research towards making sure the marginal cost of necessities is basically nothing, and then everyone varies in how they ensure the actual cost is basically nothing but everyone manages it."

"...I don't know what that last part means."

" - take, like, electricity. Building a power plant is expensive but then if you built it well, the cost per unit of electricity produced is very low. So low, in fact, that coffee shops and airports and train stations just have outlets, because electricity is so cheap it's worth giving it away just to make your place more appealing and convenient."

"I think we have that, for electricity. Or, well, clean castes have it and nobody actually bothers caring when we splice wherever it's convenient."

"Yeah. So - you get to the point where you have that for food and water and clothing."

"I think clean castes have it with water too. And like, classy places you get kicked out of if you don't look rich have food free maybe? I don't really see how clothing works that way."

"It depends where, but say in an orc or Dwarf city - companies can order six hundred comfortable company sportware jackets for the equivalent of a hundred ahk so they do that because it'll improve morale, at job fairs everybody is handing out apparel in company colors so you'll remember them and maybe apply to work there, kids sell lemonade on the street corner to earn enough money to all get matching dresses they saw online and that is enough money for it, when you buy something nice it's just as cheap to get ten so you save a few in case the first one tears and give some to friends who you expect would like it.

- Elves don't quite have that with clothing, because Elves are pickier and wouldn't wear company-sponsored things and often won't even wear mass-manufactured ones, but every Elf society has a basic income by now - money they give everybody every month with no conditions."

"Where does it come from?"

"Taxes, some places - for the Noldor around half the country is my family's personal property and we pay it out of the rental income as well - some places built up a enormous portfolio earmarked for it in the first place and pay it out of the returns - the Vanyar like to abstract away their financial system as much as possible and have some complicated way of doing that -"

"...but taxes on what if everybody's just getting money for free?"

" - most people still work. Just, work they like rather than work they have no choice about."

"Who does the stuff no one wants to do?"

"Sometimes it ends up paying really well, sometimes we automate it or figure out how to make it less unpleasant."

"But what does it matter if things pay well when everybody's got plenty?"

"Oh, there are still lots of things you might want money to buy, like lightleaper trips or concert tickets or a really nice apartment in the middle of Tirion or original artwork or personal lessons in a field. No one works because otherwise their family will be homeless, no one works because otherwise their family will be hungry, but all the other things one might want in the world -"

"But they can take breaks whenever they want and don't have to find babysitters and stuff -"

"Elves mostly don't work at all while they have young kids. If you love your work and doing it makes you more your best self as a parent that's one thing, but to make money, no."

She pets her baby. "Paying this babysitter for when I got arrested was awful, wiped out about a week of earnings. - it could have been worse, if she were old enough to leave home alone for even a moment and I'd gotten arrested during that moment - or if I didn't have the week of earnings, to pay the sitter -"

"I think there's supposed to be a compensation program for arrests in particular."

"But if somebody leaves their one year old home while they run to the store and get nabbed they might not be able to arrange anything to compensate."

"Can't call from prison? Or is it that no one'd help if you did, if you didn't have the money?"