Then there's some dialogue in the story. Tom & Pete tell Raphael he should serve the king, since he's got lotsa smarts. But Raphael said he wouldn't fit in with the other councilors of the king, who would accept no opinion but their own.
Raphael goes into a story about how he once dined with Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop o' Canterbury, and began debating with a lawyer the uselessness of criminal capital punishment because the cause of stealing was people losing jobs due to the nobility messing up society and having to either beg or steal for food, and that society must be reformed so that people would have no reason to steal and as an alternative to capital punishment (a poor deterrent) he suggested that the criminal be made to give back whatever was taken, then become a slave, doing hard labor but still living fairly well although with restrictions like wearing special colored clothes, carrying an ID badge, can't accept money, etc., and they can be released for good conduct.
The people present didn't buy the idea till the Cardinal suggested it couldn't hurt to try it.
Then Raphael goes into a nice anecdote about some joker who really infuriates this one monk present., none of which has any relevance to anything but he tells it just the same.
Finally Tom says, "Well, if only philosophers would condescend to the level of the king and his people to give advice."
Raphael says Hey, we tell people all the time, such as in their writing, but nobody listens. He says "Look, if I were to tell the king to turn his entire policy around, to stop fighting wars to acquire more land, and instead focus on bettering the kingdom he already has, I would be laughed at or kicked out."
So Tom says "well, you can't give up if society doesn't accept your radical changes, you need to do it more slowly, gradually, less directly.
Raphael - "Nope, won't work. You're more likely to be corrupted by others than they are to be changed for the better by you." Then he starts saying how you can't change society for the better till you eliminate the idea of private property, since . . . greed is the root of all evil, and if a society's got private property, there's gonna be greed, and the rich minority will get richer and the poor majority poorer.
Tom: "I don't think it'll work. Under communism people have no motivation, and are not gonna do their work."
Raphael: "Oh yeah? Well look at the New World, look at the Utopia."
Tom: Well, you've gotta tell us all about this Utopia you keep mentioning.