"No, everyone just... always minds."

"Huh."

One of the Dwarves asks if Amentans who are not raised to mind mind.

"I don't think anyone's tried that. I mean, reds, but we are reds."

Elves could just swear not to mind.

Reds don't know what they're talking about.

Elves explain chips and oaths.

That seems, uh, weird and not really addressing the underlying objection even if it would prevent the thing they're specifically worried about.

They're not really sure what to do about the underlying objection since it seems to amount to 'you are probably terrible'.

"In our experience everyone is," one of the reds says, "we can't just - go tell everyone that you're not for no reason -"

Amentans are all terrible. Some members of the party think this is because they have not invented the concept of individual rights and some think it is because castes discourage the instinctive 'this person might be family' reaction that underlies some forms of altruism and some think it is because their markets are not properly free and they all agree it can't help that their states are so authoritarian.

"...what do the markets have to do with it?" asks a bewildered red.

Dwarves believe that people are more virtuous when their incentives are such that creating value makes their lives better and they have no straightforward avenues to impose their will on others. Dwarves believe good markets create those conditions.

Beating people with sticks is pretty straightforward and markets don't seem to have any direct effect on that.

If they did that in a Dwarf society they would have to pay outrageous sums in recompense.

But the people who do that in Amenta are the cops.

Oh, Dwarves don't have cops, that's a terrible way to prevent and punish violence, they have violence insurance companies.

What's that?

Elves sigh and assure them that no one really understands it. Dwarves try to explain it. Imagine if there were two governments of Calado and instead of fighting they both agreed that taxpayers could all decide who to pay their taxes to, and then get service from that one. And they had rules for efficiently settling disputes among each other, because they have tens or hundreds of millions of citizens each and no individual dispute is worth burning mutual trust and ability to cooperate. Then maybe some things about Calado would be better, because if people didn't like something one government did they could just switch.

Instead the Noldor just sent all the blues to Valinor.

Yeah, Dwarves don't think highly of Elf problem-solving. But if the Noldor had kept the blues the blues probably would not have come up with arrangements for cooperative shared rule, would they have?

No, because the blues wanted to just have Calado all to themselves.

Right. The agreements between governments on how to cooperate and be mutually trustworthy are really hard to get right but Dwarves have really excellent ones. And instead of two there are fourteen. So everyone pays 'taxes' - Dwarves consider it a voluntary subscription - to the government - Dwarves call them insurance companies - that suits them, and their government will protect them and investigate crimes against them and recover damages for them.

That's weird.

Anyway why do they want reds here. They could take clean immigrants, as many as they wanted, without all these problems.

Uh, because the Noldor said people might kill the reds.

Yyyyyes? Why do they care?