"I think you underestimate yourself. Lots of unjust systems stand because no one involves thinks there's anything to be done about them."

"Alright, fair point. It probably isn't true that there's nothing I could do about it, but it wouldn't be my first priority. To the extent that I support social causes where I'm from, I'm most invested in synthetic blood development, because if we can mechanically create blood that's just as good and cheaper than the natural stuff, we can stop farming billions of animals. We're already on that path, since not-too-great and pretty-expensive blood substitutes already exist, but we need to go a bit further. The potential gains from this are far greater than any possible benefit of deconverting foreign Zifartas and, even if I can do some things, I certainly can't do all things. Prioritisation is important. What's the most important problem in your world?"

"Death, slavery, colonization - they're sort of related, I really can work on all of them."

"Oh? How are you doing that?"

"I am not sure I trust you enough to answer that, I'm sorry. I could get in a lot of trouble."

"Is there any aspect of your strategy that can be discussed without incriminating you? It seems likely that I can do things you cannot, and those sound like problems I would like solved as well."

"The government funds and encourages all of those projects. They think colonization is good and slavery is sometimes necessary. The problem is that you can't influence the government by talking to them and persuading them, they don't listen to people like us. What you can do is make it go disastrously badly whenever they try. If someone were to do that, then the colonization would stop."

"What do you mean they don't listen to 'people like us'? How are your leaders elected? Wait, are they elected?"

"Our leaders are those among our people who claim descent from Elves. What is 'elected'? By the gods? They claim to be."

"Where I'm from, we only talk about election with regard to leaders being chosen by the people they lead. If you govern an area, it's because the people who live there decided they wanted you to make their rules and administer their affairs. Most parts of my world used to have people who ruled because they descended from certain people, but that is becoming rarer with time. In my history, rule by election seems to replace rule by descent as countries become richer, more educated, more densely populated, and have large militaries composed of common citizens. Admittedly, those four things tend to be related, so it's hard to say what causes what."

"We are rich, educated, and densely populated, but people are still happy to have the Elf-descended rule us because their lives are longer and people say they are smarter and more capable and more in touch with the gods." 

"Are they 'happy to' in that they endorse this leadership and would independently choose them as leaders, or in that they put up with it and don't complain very much? And how rich are you? Are most of your physical goods made by machines or craftsmen? Who fights in your armies, if you have armies?"

She is sceptical that any rich nation would willingly drink 'coffee'.

"Put up with it. Mostly. There are some true believers. We make more goods by craftsmen than machine, though that is changing, and more than either with slaves. The underclasses serve in the armies in exchange for social mobility, usually. You think getting richer will make things better? Slavery makes them rich, but it does not make them more inclined to end it!"

"It's possible that the trend doesn't generalise to this world, if plant-eaters are sufficiently different, but in my world, slaves are less competent and motivated at skilled labour than paid workers." She says, bouncing on the balls of her feet as she goes into full-on history-lecture-mode. "Because of this, industrial work ended up dominated by wage labour. Meanwhile, mechanisation also increased the productivity of a given farmer, which increased the amount of food, which increased population density. Increased population density increased the supply of workers to per unit of arable land, until the cost of employing one person who worked voluntarily dropped below the price of entrapping someone and establishing security to prevent their escape. The cost of holding someone against their will is reasonably fixed, but wages decline as labour becomes more plentiful.  Thus, we had a general trend of more hired factory workers and free farmers, relative to slaves. Additionally, we fought a bunch of wars that required arming our entire populations, and it's extremely hard to keep people enslaved once you've handed them guns. People with guns are also inclined to want a say in the government, since they're harder to oppress. As such, the countries with the most conscription were the quickest to end up with elected leaders."

"So we should start a war," she says. "That's a good idea."

"Um, not exactly. Wars also kill a bunch of people. Killing people is bad." She paused thoughtfully. "On the other hand, if you do want to start a war, you could convince the colonies to rebel and arm their slaves. That worked a few times in my world. Depends on how likely they are to succeed and how many people would get killed in a war. If the motherland is likely to give up quickly, and the ex-slaves manage to keep their guns, that could actually be a great humanitrian opportunity..."

"That's..pretty much what I'm trying to do. Do you know things about how to make it succeed quickly?"

"Hmm. That's a lot easier if the motherland is a democracy. Then you can run a media campaign about the war being too expensive and unjust and not worth anyone's time, until the government has to stop, out of fear that they'll be replaced the next time leaders are being elected. Can you print newspapers with images? Images of children in the colonies being murdered has always worked really really well, back home. Even if you can't get people to elect new leaders, organising strikes in the motherland - especially in industries necessary for war - can be catastrophic to the military effort. Convincing foreign countries hostile to the motherland that having her lose her colonies would weaken her, and getting them to join in the fight to support that, has also been successful. In general, things are easier if the colonies are separated from the homeland by a body of water, but are physically contiguous with each other. Then promoting piracy in the seas, by providing pirates with safe harbour in the colonies, harms the motherland's forces more than the rebels. Whoever needs a navy more is at a disadvantage. Also makes trade hard, though. Note that these are just the 'dirty tricks' side of the war. When it comes to the actual fighting, I see no reason why I'd know more about it than your people. My interest is history, not tactics."

"I take back everything I ever said about you, that was eminently sensible and half things we are trying to figure out how to do and half really good ideas and almost no one here will even talk about these things, and if they do they insist that it's Wrong - strikes we've done. Newspapers we've done but they have to be underground, they're illegal. Piracy is a brilliant idea, we've tried sabotaging ships..."

"Thank you! Also, hold on, is it illegal to talk about sabotaging your government? In my country, anarchists yell about revolution in public, and most people just ignore them. Your government sounds a lot more like the neighbouring countries where Zifartas are oppressed than like my homeland. Do you also have secret police officers who monitor your communication?"

"How would they? If they found a letter it'd be bad but it's not as if we use a letter service for this kind of thing. It's not illegal, where you're from, to plan starting a war against your own country? I'd be executed."

"You can talk as much as you want. In my culture, it's pretty much expected that young people will go through a period in their lives when they want to destroy the government and start a war. The rest of us have songs making fun of them, to be honest. Then they grow older and become more moderate. It's a life-cycle, and no one these days seriously expects it to end in a civil war. If we executed everyone who said 'fuck the police', we'd run out of 20 year old men within a month. It's people who actually start bombing and shooting who get arrested."

"Hmm. Here it's very rare so the people who say it are generally serious. Were you serious, when you made those suggestions?"

"Depends on what you mean by 'serious'. I am honest when I say that those are things that worked on my world for achieving your stated goals. However, I'd give an honest assessment regardless of what your goals were. I'm a teacher's apprentice - if I'm asked about the facts, I give them. Do with them what you may. If you want me to personally support your cause, I'll have to be convinced that it's just. Show me the books about the situation in this world. If it's as bad as you say, then I'll help for as long as I'm here."

"The books are written by people with something to gain from the system. If you really want to see it, you have to go to the colonies."