by Alicorn » Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:39 pm
The problem with implementing old-people-moving-into-young-ones-in-a-cycle is this:
Suppose Alabaster and Bird and Candle are three people of various ages. Alabaster grows to be old in a dreamward, to start us off uncomplicatedly. Then, when Bird is a teenager, Alabaster moves in with her. So far, so good; Bird gets a responsible older cohabitor and Alabaster gets another lifetime. But when Bird's body is old again, now you have two people to move. If you're being fair, you can have Bird awake and Alabaster asleep, and put Bird into the teenage Candle's body. But then Alabaster will almost certainly die - and die right then at the hand of the troporter, not of old age. She will be asleep and not automatically wake up, probably ever; being old doesn't help. This would be a better system in a lot of ways and I'm sure it's been tried, but once they know how soul-moving works, implementing it consistently requires having troporters who are willing to euthanize old people, probably including old people who aren't in particularly imminent danger of death otherwise (you don't want to wait until Alabaster and Bird have a heart attack and be unable to get Bird out and safely in with Candle before they die). Alabaster also has a lot of incentive to try to impersonate Bird.
This may still happen in some cases - a sufficiently rich and famous and beloved Alabaster can hitch a ride in Bird and then abandon Bird to move in with Candle if she can convince the right people. But it's not customary.