"...I might have been less evenhanded about it. Could have ended a whole lot of scarcity with only the daeva I and perhaps a handful of other people summoned, tried to use the leverage. It also would have made a difference if daeva didn't tend to be pretty chill - your average naturally occurring daeva is just so psychologically undamaged, they're sweeties -"

"And accordingly not swayable to atrocities - and you didn't know the summoners-become-daeva thing..."

"I did not."

"I like that you gave it to everybody, it'd be impossible in my world but also - not the sort of thing one would think of even if it weren't impossible, the instinct is to control something like that..."

"Why's that?"

"Habit of thinking in zero-sum terms, very limited conception of the degree to which most people can be trusted with any meaningful power..."

"Purples can barely vote, let alone bargain with supernatural entities?"

"Yes, exactly - people sincerely think that if you stranded a bunch of purples somewhere they'd be stuck subsistence farming. There are intelligence differences on average but the implications are overstated."

"...subsistence farming? What are the non-purple inputs to farming?"

"There aren't any. ...okay, that's not fair, I think someone programs the tractors and someone genetically engineers the crops."

"You basically only need one person who can program tractors, software being software. And you can probably make do with old software and genetic engineering for a long time as long as they can get around anything proprietary."

"Are you suggesting that purples would do just fine without the rest of us? But then, what are all our special privileges for?"

"I mean, I imagine they'd suffer from the lack of doctors, or something, but subsistence farming implies pretty low output from the farming or at least serious logistical problems with getting it hither and yon."

"Anybody'd have a hard time if all the infrastructure suddenly vanished but barring that, no, they'd be fine."

"And then aliens would land and find purple-haired aliens and never wonder if you used to come in other colors."

"They would need a solution for the garbage."

"In my background reading I found the assertion that reds only handle garbage for convenience, since of course up until the moment someone throws something away it is not garbage and it would be relatively easy to arrange an automated solution to that compared to bodies and," gasp, "plumbing."

"Plumbing is hard to automate! Even now that we're full-bore on the research and can aggressively cheat with other species' tech we don't have something fully functional."

"And having clean people do it and wash their hands after? Unthinkable."

"Orvara's doing that, purple rotas and then decontamination, but decontamination is long and unpleasant."

"And that's not negotiable at all."

"Maybe once there aren't reds people'll feel more relaxed about it, but right now - it's not just not negotiable, people wouldn't want it shorter, it takes a long time to feel clean again."

"So angels couldn't cut it down because it wouldn't feel done?"

"Might suffice for some people. Wouldn't suffice for all of them."

"Angels for a good-enough first pass, additional showering optional?"