Chapter 580: Day 5,056 – Crime And Charades

Chapter 580: Day 5,056 – Crime And Charades

“Increasing taxes so far in the future is not feasible. You are asking the cities to help foot the bill for the portal building, while only The Abyss will benefit,” one of my governors said. They had been arguing for quite a while about the rapid changes that were taking place.The roots of this story extend from novell bìn origin.

Everyone liked the idea of an expansion, but no one wanted to be on the hook for the cost. While I wasn’t required to be here at this emergency meeting, it was highly encouraged by Clarissa that I attend. It was less about them not getting their way, but vent frustrations and having an outlet.

That was why I was listening to this discussion go back and forth, trying not to feel bored in the meeting room, while thinking how my time could be better spent grinding. Still, the changes were contentious enough that Clarissa had asked me to show my face to make it clear she had my support with the changes in how the tax would be divided up.

Half of the city and half of national tax revenue would go to pay for the portal buildings and our push into new territory. That would be 5% from each area of government, totaling 60 million points a day. That wasn’t even counting the additional Clarissa had to invest or the concessions, The Abyss had to give to have the portal building built in their city.

One of those concessions was that the travel had to be subsidized by the city at cost, with a separate budget. Since they would be getting a lot of traffic, subsidizing any imposed costs would be a huge part of the city expenses at the start. Specifically for the airship travel and for the portal travel if there was a cost later on after the initial building was constructed.

I could see several of the governors giving me the occasional glance. I was curious if they would propose I give up a portion of my tax revenue as well. No one had proposed such a thing yet. If they did, I planned to agree, but then bill them for my services of dealing with the population issue. I wasn’t going to ask for more, but I wasn’t going to get my wealth taken from me. I would be investing my time into upgrading the cities as well for free.

“The tax level is already crippling since we are looking to invest into upgrading our teams. In addition, this new tax free Western area, will take the best and the brightest from us, creating more revenue pressure,” the governor continued saying.

That was a valid concern, but I would rather have a drain on trouble makers and complainers than excess population that would create trouble. While reported crime was incredibly rare along with high level teams going missing, there was a lot of low level crime.

This included fights outside the city, robberies, thefts, murders, and a couple of protection rackets had tried to spring up. Clarissa’s auditors had been keeping track of the crime levels in various cities, and ensuring they were recorded in a standardized manner. Low level crime was ticking up. While it was incredibly low compared to major cities on Earth, it was growing.

The lack of resources and grinding spots was creating more and more pressure. Eventually that would cause things to boil over. I had paid quite a bit attention to two metrics that showed the poverty level and general desperation of the population. The first metric was the number of slavery cases. They were rare, but some people tried to force others into indentured servitude.

“Regardless, that is how we will do things. Does anyone have any objections?” I asked. No one spoke up. I had to give it to Clarissa. She was incredibly clever. After talking things over with her, this was all a show set up by her.

Having the governors handle the ticket distribution, would allow them to calm things down in their cities if there were people they wanted to leave, but couldn’t kill. This would be the short-term fix. Long term it had a good chance to some of these troublemakers returning and creating issues. But that was unlikely, since most of them would die.

Letting the governors feel like they had more control, would make them feel I was listening to their concerns. Clarissa had informed me that there was too much support in my corner. If I didn’t throw them a bone publicly, then that would lead to unrest. It made sense in a roundabout way, and it made look better, so I had agreed to the charade.

This was the kind of subtle maneuvering and politicking that I needed Clarissa for. If I had done things my way, I would have put togeather a plan, ask how they could make it better, but tell them to suck it up and get it done. Less carrot and a lot more stick, since I didn’t have patience for any of this.

There was a unanimous vote approving of the changes I suggested and implementing the new tax distribution policy. Once the vote was done and the council meeting finished, I immediately left. Clarissa could shake hands and manage egos, but I did my part in making sure the governors felt heard and listened to. Even though they were just managers under Clarissa’s corporate aegis.

I really disliked problems I couldn’t fight to death. It was much simpler. I would take 10 monsters any day over trying to wrangle people with politics. I also wanted to be better than the Divine Empress. While it was almost impossible to be worse, I didn’t want to murder my way through people. Then I would get yes-men and not capable individuals.

That was what made the city system work, each governor was trying to differentiate their cities in a variety of ways. It was a struggle, with how limited the options were, but the economy was taking shape. Even after ten years, it was still a massive struggle, since the vast majority of all wealth depended on grinding and getting points from monsters. Food production was a big aspect of this. Everyone was trying to recreate their local food products from back on Earth and export them.

Apparently, there was organized crime in regards to the food industry. While the market was open inside my Empire and there were no trade restrictions, that didn’t mean people wouldn’t try and intercept shipments, sabotage other individuals’ places of production. It hadn’t gotten out of hand, but such things were occurring.

All problems that couldn’t be punched. Actual societal problems and people misbehaving. And while there were executions, as I had found out early on in this place, life was cheap. It was easy to hire new people as disposable assets. The only thing keeping a lid on the chaos that had fermented was me.

That was apparently a big reason, why no one messed with the Imperial Soldiers or messed with anything in Purgatory. While a lot of credit went to how well patrolled the city was, the other factor was that people did not want to poke the sleeping dragon and get its attention, me. While I would have liked to have an ordered and controlled nation with no crime, it just wasn’t possible with the diversity and prejudices people brought from Earth, combined with desperation to make money.

It was also a symptom of population crisis that was slowly taking root. While Clarissa had not announced it, there would be a massive crackdown on crime once the new taxes took effect in 450 days. The number of guards and soldiers would be increased along with a new punishment, exile. Instead of death or fees, we could just exile people into the wilderness. It would be a lot more palatable to do such a thing in large numbers. There would need to be some checks, but we could deport people we didn’t want, but hadn’t risen up to the level of being executed.