"And won't commit suicide under misleading assumptions about what that'll achieve."

"Yeah, the entire system is rough on suicidal types."

"And conveniently for my social engineering purposes it's rough on governments that like to use the death penalty for everything."

"They might have outgrown that by themselves, humans did without the benefit of the relevant information."

"In Anitam a lot of it was definitely the scarcity, both directly and because prison's awfully expensive. But not all of it, some of it's ideological."

"Mm?"

"Uh, we take very seriously the idea that the costs of crime are many hundreds of times the direct cost, by virtue of the damage to the social fabric and effects on others and things like that, so everything's punitive as a result - we think it'd be - discriminatory - to punish murderers but not financiers who destroy billions in wealth through recklessness..."

"...I suppose..."

"There's something to it but - I think if Earth had started hanging bankers that would have been a good thing mostly only insofar as bankers would have gotten on board with abolishing the death penalty really fast?"

"I can get on board with the principle of treating property crime as seriously as violent crime when there's enough property involved but I wouldn't execute people for murder either, so..."

"Life in prison isn't broadly considered kinder than execution, though I don't know how many people serving a life sentence commit suicide."

"Do your prisons suck? Our prisons used to suck but they have improved."

"Anitami prisons are lovely but partially because no one's there for more than five years and you get recidivism problems if you fuck them up while they're in. There are social workers and therapists and vocational training programs and people can work in prison - that's harder for greys, but works well for everyone else - and a judge can clear visits with your kids. I think prisons that contain lots of violent criminals are under additional constraints which Anitam solves by mostly executing violent criminals."

"Even our low-security prisons for shoplifters used to suck."

"Not a good place to cut corners. From a purely financial perspective, I mean."

"And yet!"

"You don't get anywhere by arguing that our system should be more humane for moral reasons but it's very straightforward to push through any reforms that are a good idea financially or reduce the crime rate or something."

"In this I am sure Earth politicians envy you."

"...to be fair if I were an Earth politician I might also claim 'it's very straightforward to do...' any number of things that other people find not-straightforward."

"...yes, that's likely. But it does sound like these things may still be more straightforward on Amenta than they have historically been on Earth."

"I think so, yeah."

"I wonder if there is a world where you are an Earth politician."

"If there is I bet it's premodern. Mitros and Maitimo are both royalty and Anitam doesn't have royalty but we have a hereditary aristocracy - there's a trend there -"

"That's true. Although sample size is three."

"You and your alts vary more, right?"