From the Bookshelf of Beyond Reality…

"...why not take out all oligarchs and clans, and distribute their wealth to every person?"
"Because it wouldn't be to every person, not without a larger restructuring of social systems. It is for the people who take charge after us to see that through. If we rushed wealth redistribution, all it would cause is chaos. Mass deaths, ruined generations, and the eventual restoration of the same systems and inequalities with a few new faces, as has happened with every major wealth-hack."
"We could work out better instructions [for the jinn], instead of just not trying the idea."
"No, because the underlying principles are flawed. We've been through this before, Alina, but it's worth saying again--the imposition of large social adjustments, just like shiny new tech, doesn't work beyond theory, and reeks of imperialism and megalomania. The only way to progress is consensus, local solutions, and continuous microtesting and adjustment from the ground up and not the sky down."
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"You talk a lot about systemic problems, but when it comes down to it, your microtested local solutions are basically small actions in self interest," Lina said. "I want to do more while we have power in our hands."
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"All right, then. I like that you have grand visions, we can't function without dreaming of a better world. But these visions, even if they start wholly benevolent, lead to dictatorships. Progress that is inclusive is slow, boring, and difficult to hold together. We need community-based approaches to specific problems, carefully tested...don't underestimate the strength of community, and remember, we are from Shantiport. Before the Tigers, or the other clans, or the eras before, the algorithms, the megacorps, the nations, the empires, all the way back to the first city-states--no ruler has looked after our people, they have had to look out for one another. It is why Shantiport continues to exist, against all logic, and that's the spirit that we have to find a way to channel. No system works, no authority is benevolent, no promise is kept. When the megastorms and floods come, when the genocides come, and the famines and diseases, the rest of the world will not even bother to look, let alone help. If they know about us it is as a symbol of poverty, or decay, or despair. But despite all this, sometimes clusters of people emerge, however flawed, who build institutions and culturewaves larger than themselves. And somehow the city survives."
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"I'm sorry, but I have more. I think you're being too optimistic. The progress that your clusters of amazing people build over generations gets destroyed in a few years by the next set of conquerors and colonists, foreign or local. And the long-term problems never go away. Which is why I want to use the jinn to address those. You want to use him for small bursts of advantage, not disturbing the overall equilibrium, or drawing too much attention. But this little effect after so much research, on a limited number of wishes?...I believe very strongly that we should use the jinn to solve the problems we are unable to solve ourselves, systemic problems, multigenerational problems, worldwide problems that somehow humans have been unable to solve for millennia. It's space admin tech with godlike powers. With your small-steps method, there will always be some crisis that will prevent us from handling our bigger goals. And eventually we'll run out of chances."
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"The jinn is just technology, and technology can't fix problems for us--we need people to do that...If a group of smugglers in a poor city were able to bring the jinn in, do you not think the powers that actually rule the world could in response bring in or build much worse?...the jinn is an outsider, and self-reliance is paramount...For the society we want to build, self-governance, optimal representation and participation, nonviolence, sustainability, and operational expertise are nonnegotiable. Tech cannot give us that, no foreign intelligence can. It can promise us all these things, but those promises are always lies, and humanity's surrender of its own agency to algorithms and oligarch-owned tech has brought us to the brink of absolute ruin..."