"Oh, people work together, but that is among the risks each of the individuals is taking."

"It's rational to trade, even if each individual trade has a risk of the other party reneging. Probably even if you don't have a government and law courts to enforce contracts, but, uh, you really should have those because they make literally everyone better off. I've heard about places that do have a single powerful warlord who takes what he wants and doesn't care to enforce justice among the common people, but luckily you don't have that problem." It's one thing not to deal with foreigners or to betray them, but surely everywhere has some way to make deals between locals!

"Not this decade, no, it happens occasionally. What are you imagining will happen as a result of any small number of people going 'we should really have government and law courts to enforce contracts'?"

"They would probably need to prove the concept by correctly arbitrating contracts between themselves first, and having common ventures. ...I see the bootstrapping problem. If the government isn't interested in doing it - or doesn't exist - I think powerful private economic actors can start doing it in their - zone of influence, arbitrating between the people who work with them, and then make deals with each other at a higher level. I don't know in detail how contract law should be built up over time if you're starting from nothing, I just - everyone who understands that doing it is mutually beneficial should rationally cooperate! Enough people should find it in their personal interest to cooperate to overwhelm and punish any lone defectors! The system relies on rational self-interest. And an assumption that there are many people who'd be affected, who are rich enough to trade and not so powerful they can unilaterally impose their will on others and so should agree to common rules. Even the poorest people benefit from the rule of law, but they can't carry the weight of enforcing it. ...it might be a matter of education and common belief." Tanya has never considered how you'd build a system of laws from scratch but she assumes it has to do with everyone realizing they ought to have one?

"The surfacers have a god of trade, maybe you'd get on with his guys."

"You don't need gods and churches for rational cooperation," Tanya says a little disapprovingly.

"Oh, drow ones certainly don't help at all, but maybe the trade god is legit."

There seems to be something in the human condition that makes people want there to be gods. In the absence of evidence they invent them; in the absence of miracles, they invent those too; when the purported miracles make no sense, they impute the motives they want to the divinity; even having seen that the local church is corrupt and a burden on society, they imagine better ones to be found. Somewhere out there, in the wide unknown sunlit world, surely there are better libraries and also better gods?

Tanya doesn't really understand why people cling to this concept so desperately. Belmarniss is a sheltered young woman who doesn't have Tanya's education to tell her about the tens of religions and thousands of cults throughout history which have only ever agreed on being wrong, but why must people insist on worshipping some 'higher being' before agreeing to work together on charity and other prosocial activities?

"Mm," she says noncommittally. "If a religion is what it takes for some people to promote trade, at least something useful comes out of it."

"It's not that I don't see the appeal of having things work the way you describe," Belmarniss says. "But trying to be the person to set it up would be volunteering to be the target for all the early experimental betrayals in the period when people were checking to see if those work better than playing along, you see?"

That is a very valid concern! Even if you think you can do it, how can you capture some of the gains of providing this enormous public good?

"I don't know how to set up such a system, only that it can be robust and self-sustaining once it exists. I certainly wouldn't jump into trying without a much clearer plan and allies who were on board. I apologize if my saying things ought to be otherwise is - insensitive, and perhaps offensive to you or other people who would also prefer them to be otherwise but don't know how to achieve it. I hope things are better elsewhere on the planet, and I do know it's possible for things to get better because they did over my planet's history. Hopefully there's something to be learned from that."

"You should write a book about it or something, if you don't find anyplace up to scratch up top."

"I would be very glad to do so if there were enough readers to pay for it!"

"One blank book's worth of paper to write in isn't that expensive and then the scrivener just won't make more copies if they're not moving, I assume?"

"I'd need it to bring in enough to support me while I wrote the book, and it's hard to tell in advance how many readers there will be for what is probably an unusual subject so it might be difficult to get an advance payment from a publisher. Or so I imagine, I've never written a book. I'm pretty sure it takes months to write one well, though, and this one would need a lot of research and probably local advisors or collaborators, so it might take even longer than that."

"Oh, yeah, I was imagining you'd do this in your spare time, not try to get someone to pay you for a book while you were working on it still."

"That would take even longer! It could be a very worthwhile project, but it depends on what I end up doing and how much spare time I'll have. I don't know nearly enough about the world yet to say where my biggest advantages might lie."

"Plausibly flying around killing monsters."

Are the ones who aren't probably humans and definitely persons really that much of a threat, Tanya doesn't say. "Maybe I'll help deal with those flying lizards."

"Which flying lizards?"

"The bestiary said they came in all colors and sizes and levels of threat? I'm not sure if that means the writer didn't know much about them or it's a local reference I didn't get."

She had space in the Bag for her books after all; she pulls it out. "You don't remember what they were called?"

"The word didn't translate so I forgot it..." She flips through the book. "Ah, here."

"...dragons. Why would it mean that the writer didn't know much about them that they come in lots of colors and start small and grow large?"

"...it's not because of that, it's because the entry seems to permit anything? As long as it's a flying lizard - sorry, 'dragon' - it can be any any size, any threat level, have any magic, live anywhere... I suppose if it's a large group of otherwise not very similar creatures that would explain it. But the only concrete information here is that the color indicates, uh, its magical 'breath' and corresponding magical immunity. And if the dragons really have 'any magic' and particularly shapeshifting magic, like the entry says, they ought to use that magic to change their apparent color so people don't know what to expect."

...wait. "It says they shapeshift into people? I'm sorry, I was skimming and missed that part. Why would a giant flying lizard shapeshift into a human?" Tanya has a horrible sneaking suspicion. "Are they intelligent?"

"Yes, dragons are intelligent. They can be any size because they hatch out of eggs and then grow as long as they live which is a long time and they are more dangerous when they are old and big than when they are tiny and new. It wouldn't shock me if some spoof their color but there's also, like, habitat and behavior clues, that kind of thing. They'd shapeshift into humans so they could interact with human-scale stuff, presumably?"