But the people suffered greatly. The same E5 level farmers could end up doing twice the amount of work.
The eight-hour workday was still in place, and according to the most preposterous production plans, Gu Hang could tell at a glance that the farmers under that guy’s control would all be worked to death without being able to complete his agenda.
Is this corruption?
Objectively speaking, the increased production advanced the province’s agricultural development plans, but one must understand that most of the laborers in Beiqing Valley Province were proletarians, not proprietors. The land wasn’t theirs; it belonged to the Alliance. They were agricultural workers, not farmers.
Agricultural workers are a kind of worker who essentially go to a job; their rank benefits and allowances can be considered a salary, and they live on wages.
Farmers own their land and work in agriculture, their livelihood depends on the land’s yield, how much they produce, the taxes and rent they pay, and the rest is theirs.
Major increases in agricultural worker productivity, of course, are good. After all, the extra produce, not a bit of which goes to the laborers, all belong to the Alliance Government.
But Gu Hang… didn’t need to go to such extremes.
If someone wanted to work twelve or sixteen hours a day when eight hours were clearly enough to meet the basic requirements, that’s their choice, and the government could offer faster promotions to reward such behavior.
But this is not something that should be forcefully required by administrative power.
Yet, when it came to specific matters, Gu Hang found himself in a dilemma.
The guy who falsely reported production plans and pushed his workers to exhaustion, that one needed to be dealt with;
But what about those who really did raise the production plan targets, who motivated the workers with slogans like “higher yields, faster promotions, more benefits, a better life,” and encouraged everyone to work hard?
And those who researched practical agricultural machinery technologies, imparted agricultural production experience, and raised production quota targets?
There were too many scenarios.
If everyone was punished indiscriminately, all their enthusiasm would be squashed.
Handling vast lands and populations with a one-size-fits-all approach is an extremely difficult task.
Appropriate plans must be considered; the lessons from this experience must be summarized.
As for the specific anti-corruption work in Beiqing Valley Province, Gu Hang actually didn’t intervene much.
He believed that the Demon Hunter, the Disciplinary Council, and the provincial government, working in concert, would give him a satisfactory response.
Currently, the governmental institutions of Beiqing Valley Province had already launched a sweeping campaign against corruption.
When the time came, those who legitimately committed offenses would be sentenced as they deserved.
Those who were sentenced to death could serve their time at the Skull Workshop, which was short on materials.
Those not sentenced to death would be stripped of their positions, demoted and sentenced to labor for a set period. There were specialized labor camp prisons where they would serve their sentences with the lowest E2 entitlements.
Even to avoid issues with local imprisonment, many people would be sentenced to labor in the mines of Weixing City, the waste recycling facilities of the Eastern Provinces, or places like Ruin Mine.
And Gu Hang looked forward more to Jason Morgan giving him a more rational, more systematic plan, to address corruption, to address disguised corruption, to address the behavior of increasing work pressure at the expense of agricultural workers’ lives for the sake of promotion…
These issues that had come to light were Morgan’s test, deciding how Gu Hang would treat him personally.
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As there are quite a few new readers, I still need to talk about the updates.
I upload 4000 words every day, combining to two chapters, which are posted around noon; it’s the normal full-time amount, and occasionally there are chapters that go up to 6000 or more.
It’s not much, just a regular update.
Then, some readers commented on water in the last two chapters… I felt quite discouraged…
I thought long about the structure of these two chapters, with the first half discussing the discharge policy, and the social situation in Beiqing Valley, and the second half introducing corruption and the corresponding policies of the Alliance. (I trust everyone could tell, right? If you couldn’t, then I’m just not skilled enough…)
Fearing that the perspective would dwell too long, I even condensed Cohen Puliya’s tragic content into about a chapter and a half.
This is about farming, which must be written. Constantly with technology, arming, fighting, and technology… the cycle is very uninteresting.
Of course, I could use other methods. For example, I could delete the specifics of the story, and from the governor’s perspective, just write about agricultural production value, agricultural distribution, corruption in the Alliance, and then how it is handled… This would be very quick, and it would be explained right away.
But then, there’s no sense of reality, no characters, no flesh and blood.
If you really don’t like the focus on characters… then I still have to write. What else is there to write in a novel if not about characters?
It is only to say my abilities are limited, but I will continue to improve in the future, not to let you down!