[1:25:30 AM] kinsey: Ok so basically I see the Alternian Empire, because of its massive size, to be kind of a China scaled up on the order of 1 trillion instead of one billion.
[1:26:15 AM] kinsey: A huge percentage of the population obviously goes into the military, but unlike a small city state like Sparta you need a massive infrastructure to run a galactic empire.
[1:26:58 AM] kinsey: So there are a lot of folks (a lot more than you'd suspect as a baseline!) who are taking part, basically, in bureaucracy and maintenance of the Empire.
[1:28:16 AM] kinsey: Yellowbloods now oversee much of the automated processes of the Empire, like manufacturing, construction, and farming, which are mostly performed by drones, with some rust and bronze labor in there for certain tasks that can't quite be done by robots, for whatever reason.
[1:30:38 AM] kinsey: On the scale of administration of public services, limebloods were traditionally among the most intelligent in the empire, with professions such as surgeruin and chemicallous research, though that's mostly olive to green these days.
[1:31:25 AM] kinsey: The most in the way of class mobility is by olive/greenbloods who are successful merchants.
[1:32:37 AM] kinsey: As far as the actual city councils and things on that order, the less highly scoring teals will usually get these kinds of jobs.
[1:34:18 AM] kinsey: Teals can also be bankers, which allows them to earn some kind of respect from highbloods due to the fact that they can almost reach sea-dweller rich, especially if they operate efficiently with merchants, creating a sort of patronage system where the teal will kind of be able to "own" the interests of the olive/green merchants through favourable treatment by city councils, lower tax rates, etc.
[1:35:02 AM] kinsey: Then there's the legal system, obviously also primarily between teal and cobalt, and most of the schoolfeeding.
[1:35:53 AM] kinsey: The high blues are really the only caste that is almost exclusively militarily driven.
[1:36:44 AM] kinsey: There are a few people of Vriska's caste who enter into law or into teaching or into banking, but generally it's for those at the very bottom end of the spectrum who would rather be seen as the highest of a lower echelon of society than the lowest of a higher one.
[1:38:39 AM] kinsey: Indigos are heavily invested in the Mirthful Church, but the Mirthful Church has its own role in politics, too, and one of the steps above the city/statewide offices mostly held by teals is the ecumenical position of the subjugglator, especially as it relates to the planet's District Courts.
[1:39:34 AM] kinsey: So usually, running the show on any particular planet is: the District Court of the Cruellest Bar, staffed by teals, the dispatch of the Mirthful Church, with its lower political house, and the office of the Governorate, with its upper house.
[1:40:21 AM] kinsey: Senatorturers are under the office of the Governorate and so they're all seadwellers
[1:40:43 AM] kinsey: The council of Governors, of course, reports directly to the Empress.
[1:40:52 AM] kinsey: Oh, and then there are the military dispatches.
[1:41:56 AM] kinsey: The head of the Alternian military forces is the Orphaner, an old holdover title from the one entrusted with feeding Gl'bgolyb for the Empress.
[1:42:37 AM] kinsey: The other branches are mostly high blues, and each colony will have a dispatch where the head is a cerulean or an azure.
[1:43:28 AM] kinsey: And the economic/political system, like I said, ends up being a lot like China. One-party state with ridiculous free-market capitalism abound, especially in the colonies, which are a little bit like the Space Wild West.