an unusual job interview

[calledtoventure]

Branch, on the forum:

I can recommend other sources of information as well, but I would prefer to do so privately.

Ahrotahn replies by PM.

More sources of information are welcome, including your own opinions, even if you don't feel uniquely qualified. (Maybe especially if you don't feel qualified; experts are sometimes tempted to be too clever.)

Comments

[calledtoventure]

Thank you very much. You've given me a lot to take in; I'll have to take some time with this before I'll be able to respond properly.

[greatcomposure]

Of course. Take all the time you need.

[calledtoventure]

There are several things that are moderately worrying to me, and a few that seem extremely promising.

The Cetagandan Empire's invasion sounds like the sort of thing I'm hoping to avoid, so experience successfully dealing with that issue could be very helpful.

The military-expansionists having been brought in line like that sounds promising for the likely treatment of us.

The Barrayaran Empire seems to have ongoing troubles of its own, which may suggest it's not the best choice for a stabilizing influence. On the other hand, it may be that everyone has troubles.

The channels for dissenting opinions may work well currently, but there doesn't seem to be a fallback plan if that fails. In the USA, political leaders must regularly run for re-election by vote of the general population, so sufficiently unpopular decisions will tend to lead to their being replaced. This is a flawed system in multiple ways, but it is generally considered to do less badly than the known alternatives. Beta Colony sounds closer to what I'm used to. (The idea of an immortal Emperor is a little worrying as well, for similar reasons. He may be excellent now, but... people can change, and he'll have a lot of time to change in.)

What exactly happens to the poor in the course of dealing with the poverty issue?

If lack of internet access is considered a shocking violation of basic rights, that suggests that Barrayaran-Imperial (is that the right adjective form?) intervention in D'ni Surface politics could result in enormous improvement.

Ahrotahn sits back in her chair, thinking.

There are somewhere in the vicinity of a billion people on the Surface who lack access to food, water, basic medical care, basic education, or other basic needs and basic human rights. She is tempted to ask Branch if the Barrayaran Empire would please conquer D'ni.

But she's an amateur, meddling in things so much larger than she's equipped to handle. She can't possibly ethically justify trying to play with fire like that.

But isn't that what she's already doing? How did she get into this mess in the first place?

Breathe. In, out. Breathe.

She got into this because there's a looming risk. She wants to reduce the risk. She wants to make things safe.

Inviting another empire would not make things safe.

She needs a systemic solution, a technological solution. She can't trust politics to keep her safe. To keep everyone safe.

She needs to make them actually safe, even from empires.

She revises her last paragraph to be less suggestive.

If lack of internet access is considered a shocking violation of basic rights, then the policies on other rights seem likely to be acceptable.

I'm not sure what the galactic standards are regarding what sorts of punishments are considered barbaric. Could you give some specific examples of things that are and are not done?

An ability to comprehensively defend against nuclear weapons sounds extremely promising.

---

Overall, I get the impression that inviting the Barrayaran Empire to intervene in D'ni would be a high-variance proposition: potentially very helpful, but also potentially risky. My first priority is to be safe, to avoid catastrophe.

I don't know if that's possible.

It may well be that joining the Barrayaran Empire would be the best available option for the safety of the Cavern. But it's not immediately obviously an unqualifiedly good option.

It might be worth looking into technological, rather than political, options. Would there be any obvious downsides to just introducing anti-atomic defenses to D'ni? Does the technology require post-21st-century infrastructure to operate and maintain, or are more advanced weapons potentially derivable from it?

[greatcomposure]

Conventional anti-atomic defenses in Nexus involve a lot of military and technological infrastructure that I'm sure you don't have and might not want; my confident predictions about anti-atomics are based in the combination of technology and magic, which is if anything even trickier to mass-produce in a sustainable way, but has the advantage of not being easy to derive advanced weapons from.

If you would like the Cavern defended against nuclear weapons, separately from considerations about whether or not to join the Imperium, then I will briefly take off my 'friend of the Barrayaran Emperor' hat and put on my 'World-Tree Coalition field agent' hat and say that I would be happy to help, with the understanding that whatever solution I implement probably won't be the sort of thing that can be picked up and moved around and conveniently duplicated. Magic sometimes has that problem.

In my experience of having lived on Beta Colony for a little more than thirty years and Barrayar for a little less than thirty more, each system of governance has both advantages and disadvantages over the other. But I would never have offered to extend you the protection of Beta Colony even if I knew its President as well as I know the Emperor. If you became a Betan subsidiary, at some point someone in the ever-shifting political roster would be overcome with the temptation to interfere, and the Cavern would find itself being brought up to Betan standards in all particulars whether it liked them or not. Under the Barrayaran system, I trust that if a hands-off approach is established at the start it will be maintained until fairly renegotiated.

Dealing with the poverty issue generally entails widening access to education, medical care, and survival necessities, after which the people who formerly did not have those things find their lives much improved.

I should emphasize that lack of net access is considered a shocking violation of basic rights on Beta Colony. Conversely, on Barrayar reproductive freedom is an unquestioned right, and on Beta Colony any resident with a functioning uterus is required by law to turn it off until they qualify for a parenting license. It's all in what you're used to. But Barrayar is getting closer and closer to the point of universal access to education.

A quick comparison of criminal justice systems: On Beta Colony, criminals can be fined, have assets confiscated, or be sent to therapy, and may be temporarily confined while deliberations are ongoing. On Barrayar, they can be fined, imprisoned, have assets confiscated, or be killed by a number of different strangely specific methods, and I'm sure there are more possibilities I'm leaving out through lack of familiarity. But, having been briefly subject to nonconsensual Betan therapy, I'm not fully convinced that the Barrayaran setup is unambiguously worse.

You're right that I can offer very few unqualified guarantees here. I certainly support you in exploring all your options before you commit to anything. In my experience, though, it is usually possible to avoid catastrophe but sometimes impossible to avoid all risk of it. Whether the risks of Imperial protection look better or worse than your next option is not in my hands; all I can do is try to ensure that your understanding of this option is as accurate as possible.