Chapter 566 Two Compilers

Chapter 566 Two Compilers

Aron had decided to handle the solar resources like that because he believed that only the empire would have the capability to swallow such gains without harming itself. Any private sector enterprise given the vast mineral rights to the entire solar system would cut corners to increase profits, which wouldn’t be beneficial to the fledgling economy in the least. He had learned of the dangers of monopolies from history, with shining examples like the Rockefeller family highlighting the path that he should definitely not take.

In fact, he had even gone so far as to take a page from communism, insofar as everything not specifically recognized as private property—like privately owned land on Earth—had been designated as property of the empire. So while asteroid miners may own their own mining ships, they had to request mineral rights from the empire. Prospecting could be done within limits, but in order to exploit their finds, they would require a permit from the imperial resources agency.

The IRA was the ruling body that had been created to ensure that any resource exploitation was done with safety and sustainability in mind. They had a responsibility to ensure that nothing entered the Earth that could potentially harm either the people or the planet itself. After all, humanity, when left unchecked, didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to things like environmental conservation.

The empire municipalizing all solar system resources had a second, and more obvious, benefit. It allowed the tracking and inventory of the exact amount of resources they had on hand, as well as preventing tax dodging by underreporting a mining company’s gains.

And despite the minority of people who tried to drum up anti-monopolistic sentiments, the government holding a monopoly on the solar system was still a net positive for all. Despite the people who didn’t know any better, not having bothered to take advantage of the educational resources provided to them for free by the empire, the benefit could be seen everywhere.

For example, the government, being by its very nature a not-for-profit enterprise, could sell those raw materials to the companies in the industrial sector for an extremely low price. Thus, the final products would also remain within a reasonable price range for consumers. And with companies like GAIA Tech, HHI, and others, Aron could fairly compete with the other companies springing up in the industrial and manufacturing industry, ensuring that all prices were kept low and “fat cat” capitalists couldn’t use the cheap raw materials to pocket an extreme profit by hiking up product prices to a ridiculous degree.

{I do have to say, though, that you’re quite good at coding. You didn’t even have to stop and think at all—it’s almost like you were the creator of the coding language. And the code you wrote helped me quite a bit, too... human ingenuity really is interesting,} she praised as she internalized the code Aron had written and began compiling it through her own compiler. It was hard to believe Aron had written it in the span of half a day.

“It’s how the system works. Anything I buy from it is assimilated into me, giving me an instant mastery of whatever knowledge I’ve bought. The good and bad of it is that I’m getting the distilled wisdom of the pioneer of the knowledge. It’s good because it saves me centuries, or in some cases, millennia, of my own research, but it’s also bad in that I’m only getting the perfected form of it. So I can’t look back on past mistakes to help me progress further.

“Look at the printers, for example. It took dozens of researchers in Lab City hundreds of years just to miniaturize it, and it wasn’t until I purchased the nanotechnology knowledge that we were able to take atomic printers down to the size of a suitcase. Up until then, the smallest we could make them was still the size of a luxury SUV,” Aron complained, though Nova knew it was just his way of humblebragging.

Thus, he was surprised when he was met with nothing but silence. He tilted his head and looked at Nova. “What’s the problem? You just went silent on me,” he asked.

{My own initial check is complete. The compiler is still working and will be done soon, but even with the raw code right in front of me, I can’t get the full picture of just what this code is meant to do. But what I’ve gleaned so far is... unbelievable, at best. I’m pretty sure this isn’t even the complete code,} she said.

“What makes you say that?” Aron asked with a smug smile on his face.

{I’m not entirely sure. There are obvious loopholes and hooks for new code to be injected, but that’s standard for any code that you’ll want to update in the future to add features to. But what really made me think that is that this code doesn’t seem to do anything. And I don’t believe you would spend so long manually coding a program that doesn’t work, so there has to be more to it.

{If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that this is only a third of the total code you’ll need to successfully run this program. It almost seems... dormant, like when it’s completed, it’ll be a living program of sorts.}