Gu Hang was responsible for the tax revenue of fifty million people on the planet, netting five million Tax Currency annually.
If not for the cheating capability in military training provided by the system, and the additional help of the operational Star Realm Army Corps, his days would have been incredibly tough.
An annual output of twelve million Tax Currency, if five million had to be paid in taxes, would leave his subjects in a state not much better than destitution.
Of course, there were some other objective factors involved.
He only had fourteen million people under him, and the planet was not yet unified; there were a large number of human resources not yet under his control.
But at the same time, there was another problem: the disparity in development levels across different regions of the Alliance was too great.
In Weixing City’s heavy industry zone, the per capita annual output could reach 1.6 Tax Currency; for Revival City, it was only 1.02.
These two were still in the positive, reaching the quota set during the establishment of the Imperial Tax standard, which considered the total annual production per person as one Tax Currency.
But other areas could not even reach one.
All regions of the Alliance still had significant room to improve production efficiency.
If you want to be prosperous, build roads first.
An extensive electrical grid could transmit the power from the nuclear reactors constructed outside Revival City without loss and at a high load to every piece of land in the Alliance;
Extensive road and railway networks would greatly enhance the efficiency of material transport.
The saying that roads are the arteries of industry is no idle talk.
It’s necessary to connect all areas so that Weixing City’s advanced industrial system can better promote the development of all other towns; at the same time, more developed roads, railways, and energy transmission lines will in turn feed back into Weixing City, the industrial hub, for its further improvement.
This was what the Alliance Development Department had planned to do next.
And the two new technologies just obtained, without a doubt, could accelerate this process greatly.
Gu Hang was looking forward to a further increase in the output of Weixing City’s industrial core and also to the development of other regions of the Alliance, hoping they could benefit significantly from the abundance of logistics and energy.
…
After an average haul in the first three draws, Gu Hang’s luck took a turn for the better.
In the next seven draws, he hit two elite-level, two advanced-level, and three basic-level technologies.
The three basic levels were Construction Engineering Machinery, Agricultural Machinery Technology, and Servant Mech Transformation Technology.
There’s no need to elaborate on Construction Engineering Machinery; it’s a significant boon.
All around the Alliance, there was a need for development, even in Weixing City, which already resembled an industrial center, where new house construction was in constant demand.
The building of housing districts to accommodate a significant population increase, factory buildings, and various types of public facility construction…
The Alliance’s construction teams were among the busiest groups. In fact, they didn’t have much time to build residential areas, spending most of their efforts on constructing factory buildings.
Weixing City now had a population of 1.6 million, but most of them didn’t even have a simple shack to live in; slums built with scraps of waste materials were scattered around the outskirts of the city.
This was clearly unacceptable.
These people, just escaped from peril and from various places, may now have a stable job, steady food supply, and even some extra allowances to purchase some consumer goods that they could not have imagined or seen before.
However, as time goes by, people’s demands for a better life will only increase.
An improvement in living conditions is an essential step.
In fact, in Weixing City, there were many housing plans already. At present, the entire city was planned according to the specifications of a five-million-strong industrial population for various functional zones.
It was just that there had never been enough construction teams to build them.
Now, with a series of Construction Engineering Machinery, the efficiency of each construction team should be greatly improved, and this issue should be resolved.
“`
[Agricultural Machinery Technology] also arrived at just the right time.
Tractors and accompanying equipment for cultivating, sowing, weeding, fertilizing, harvesters, balers… This series of agricultural production machinery was timely.
The Beiqing Valley Province will have a great need for these agricultural machines.
Their arrival will directly transform the many years of manual and animal-driven farming in the Beiqing Valley Province into mechanized agricultural production.
Theoretically, the maximum per capita land area in the Beiqing Valley Province reaches 500 acres; it is estimated that about one-fifth of that is cultivable land.
In the past, this was just a theoretical value, as vast amounts of land were jungles that couldn’t be utilized; the constant threats from raiders and Aberrant Beasts meant small farms couldn’t survive; the exploitation by plantation owners tied the population to a limited amount of land…
But now, these circumstances have changed. A large amount of jungle has been cleared, and the uncleared areas are waiting to be cleared; the threat from raiders and Aberrant Beasts has essentially been eliminated; the plantation owners have been wiped out as a class, replaced by local officials of the Alliance who draw from the Alliance’s finances rather than the surplus value of the land.
Although there might still be corruption, and a lot of land may still not be utilized… Overall, it is very possible to develop more farms and farmland.
Eight million people, in relation to three million square kilometers of fertile land, that’s sparsely populated. It’s definitely impossible to cover with manual farming.
This has to be shifted to mechanized, large-scale farming.
Once agricultural production is fully mechanized, given Green Valley Region’s natural conditions, the pastoral lifestyle for every person there would no longer be a dream.
It might even be possible within the next two years.
A family of four to five people, with two or three laborers, could lease a thousand acres of land, become full-time farmers engaged in fully mechanized production and plant the high-yield seeds previously imported from the cousin’s merchant ship.
The annual grain output of the land could probably reach 50 Tax Currency; even if the Empire were to be a bit greedy, and there was a big difference between market selling price and purchase price, that would still be at least equivalent to 20-30 Tax Currency.
If currently in the Beiqing Valley Province, there’s an assessed 1.2 billion acres of cultivatable land, and if all of it could be put to use, that’s an annual output value of sixty to thirty million Tax Currency!
Just this food production alone would not only be able to feed everyone on Rage Owl Star, but there would also be enough surplus to pay the entire planet’s Imperial Tax. Moreover, after paying the tax, there could still be a large surplus to store, to give to the Empire in exchange for Tax Currency, to engage in interstellar trade.
Food, in the whole Star Sea, is a bona fide currency.
Actually, Gu Hang had been considering this for a while. Even if he hadn’t won the Agricultural Machinery Technology in the lottery, he would have had the two technical officers under him, namely Wu Jiarong and Hu Ke, fully tackle the relevant technology.
This was a true path to prosperity!
And now, having won it directly from the lottery was certainly the best outcome.
It saves Gu Hang from waiting for them to develop it.
He could use it right away.
As for the final [Servant Mech Transformation Technology]…
Gu Hang didn’t really care for it.
It’s not that it’s useless; back when he started, he used servo-soldiers as well. Although they lacked intelligence and didn’t think proactively, they counted as qualified soldiers, servants, laborers.
But Gu Hang was not too keen on it.
The Mechanical Cult Guild liked using servant mechs, but Gu Hang really did not.
This technology needed only slight development; in the future, it may, like the [Servo-Skull] manufacturing technology, be reserved as punishment for criminals.
Condemned prisoners would be put to good use.
For ordinary people, Gu Hang would not allow the occurrence seen on some planets, where living beings can be bought and sold, and innocent people could be turned into servo-skulls or servant mechs.
In his view, a living, normal human being can create more value than a servant mech.
As for servo-skulls, those biological computers, wetware, indeed have high value but are relatively less versatile in their applications. Donations from death row inmates, terminal patients, and the elderly whose life is nearing its end would suffice.
…
Apart from these three fundamental technologies, Gu Hang also won two elite-level ones: [Transition Identification System] and [Starport Blueprint]; and two advanced-level ones: [Reflector Orbital Air Defense System] and [Chainsaw Sword Technology].
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