Gotham's Longzhong Plan (Part 3)

Developing tourism in Gotham?

If someone had said this to Bruce before, he would have suggested that person go to Arkham Asylum to have their brain checked.

Who would be so foolish as to come to Gotham for tourism?

If someone does come, they can just buy a one-way ticket, since they won't need to return.

But to Bruce's surprise, his friends didn't seem surprised at all, and many even supported him.

"Actually, Gotham's natural conditions are pretty good, right? Our latitude isn't high, it's not cold, it has a subtropical monsoon climate, there are no natural disasters like tornadoes, and we have a golden beach, the quality of which is among the best on the entire East Coast..."

"Of course, of course, I know the gambling industry isn't much better. Gamblers aren't any more noble than drug addicts, but it's still much better than drug trafficking, arms dealing, and smuggling dangerous goods, right?"

Harvey took a sip of his drink, patted Bruce on the shoulder, and said, "You haven't even graduated from college yet, so you might think the world is black and white. If Gotham is to become a better place, it has to become a better place all at once..."

"But in reality, it's unlikely. In fact, it seems impossible for Gotham to get any better. It will either get worse or worse."

"However, the numerous jobs that casinos can provide can reduce unemployment. As more legitimate jobs become available, the likelihood of gang violence will decrease, and the situation will become more stable."

"This would be a good thing for any city, although I don't think Gotham is likely to become a normal city like Imperial City, but it would certainly be much better than it is now..."

"But..."

Bruce is currently in a state where he understands the principles. He is a genius and can certainly see the benefits brought about by this industrial transformation and upgrading, and even the Wayne Family will benefit from it.

However, he now finds it utterly absurd.

Bruce's attitude toward Gotham was actually quite negative. He knew better than anyone how bad the city was, and he never expected it to develop in any positive direction.

But now it seems that Gotham is not moving in a good direction, but rather on a bad path, taking a different bad path. It's like going from a dead end to a dead end. After a series of manipulations, the black has become a colorful black, transforming from the original city of sin into a gaudy city of sin.

The connection between Gotham and Chicago alone has already brought about some changes to the city.

As is well known, smuggled goods need to be stored in warehouses during transit. The cooperation with Chicago has greatly expanded the routes for smuggled goods, increased the quantity of smuggled goods, and thus required more warehouses for storage.

To build a warehouse, you need land. Everyone wants a bigger slice of the pie, so the Twelve Families started a frenzied land grab, driving up the price of land in the suburbs of Gotham to double.

Moreover, you can't just buy the land; warehouses don't just appear out of thin air.

To build a warehouse, you need designers to draw up plans, construction teams to build the structures, and inspectors to inspect the goods. To move the goods into the warehouse, you need people to move them and transport them. All of this adds at least several thousand jobs out of thin air.

Moreover, some dangerous smuggled chemicals require special warehouses for storage, such as low-temperature warehouses.

Victor never imagined he would receive 89 job offers in a single week, each one offering a dazzlingly high salary—enough to keep his wife frozen indefinitely.

When he had worked himself to exhaustion after several nights of staying up late to earn extra money, and finally had to call his classmates to come to Gotham to make big money, he wondered if he had gone crazy.

The sudden expansion of smuggling channels is like a huge cake, and the cake-sharing model is first come, first served. If you want to grab the biggest slice of the cake quickly, you have to build a series of supporting facilities earlier than others. After seeing this, gang leaders started to rush to build supporting facilities before other industries even began to cooperate.

Gotham's docks, which hadn't been renovated for decades, have begun bustling construction again. To accommodate larger ships, they have to start considering raising funds to build a deep-water dock, and to make the dock's transshipment faster, land reclamation projects have also been put on the agenda.

Moreover, you need airplanes to trade with suppliers all over the world. The mayor's office had just started to show some interest when almost all the major gangs got involved, saying that everyone has a responsibility to build Gotham and that the airport project should be handed over to them.

Moreover, they soon discovered that air transport also had great potential compared to shipping. While cargo ships were certainly better for transporting bulk commodities, air transport was faster and safer for some more delicate small equipment and instruments.

To transport goods by air, you need larger airports, more warehouses, and a faster internal logistics system, which in turn requires more land, more warehouse builders, and more professional managers and skilled workers.

Gotham's local workforce is limited, and most of them are already members of various gangs. Gotham is now gradually shifting towards a system where jobs are filled by people waiting for them.

At this point, people realized that the reason there were many positions but not enough people was not because Gotham had few people, but because they were not professional enough.

Even a porter needs to learn some strength techniques, otherwise they'll be exhausted after a morning's work, and there won't be anyone available in the afternoon.

Because Gotham lacks basic educational facilities, most people are street urchins before adulthood, meaning they are good for nothing and can't learn anything.

The gang leader realized that the current group of people was probably beyond saving, so he decided to start with the next generation. He needed truck drivers, so he would find a way to open a driver's school. He needed air traffic controllers, so he would find a way to open an air technology training school. Even the docks needed dockworkers, so he could teach them a couple of classes and send them straight to work.

All minors aged 14 to under 18, stop wandering around the streets every day and go to class. Don't you know we're short-staffed right now?

You know what, in a godforsaken place like Gotham, using gangster methods to spread education is very effective, because in a family of three, at least one member will be a gangster, and most of the time, both will be.

Your boss is telling you that there are plenty of jobs waiting for people to do and earn money, while your kid is still wandering the streets every day, causing trouble everywhere. Most gangster parents would choose to bring their kids back, beat them up, and then send them to learn some skills. Even if they don't learn anything, it's better than them causing trouble outside.

Of course, the current school model is basically just finding an open space, finding someone who knows how to speak, and having them demonstrate and explain. How much one can understand depends entirely on their comprehension, and how to apply it also relies mainly on practical experience. It can't even be considered a prototype of a school. It can only be said that it has just broken away from the medieval oral transmission education model. But having it is better than having it.

The more far-sighted members of the Twelve Families have begun to think about what would happen if they could establish schools exclusively for their own families, train a group of professionals exclusively for their families, and serve only their families. Wouldn't that put them a whole generation ahead of the other families?

If they can hire better teachers with higher salaries and train stronger professional managers, their industry will be stronger than others, and they will be able to get a bigger slice of the pie when it comes to dividing the pie.

This idea was not immediately put into practice because Gotham's culture of relying on nature had persisted for decades. Gotham had no habit of educating or being educated, and their investment in education was almost zero. They did not dare to take the risk for the time being.

However, as this industry model gradually develops, they will find that the root of everything lies in education. They will realize that the large amount of money they spend on hiring technicians from other places could be used to train local residents and their own loyalists, and the rewards would not only be professional technicians, but also a lot of reputational benefits.

The previous generation of strong figures, including Falcone, have already seen the future in this model. The 21st century will be a century of talent cultivation. All competition, in the end, will be about who can cultivate more and stronger talents.

Once this relatively advanced model was introduced, those clever people whose vision was limited by the times quickly completed everything that followed. So it was not surprising that the Old Godfather Falcone the first to take the lead in wanting to open a family school.

Of course, this school is not for ordinary people, but for the descendants of the Falcone family. They will study a large number of elite courses here to better manage the Falcone family's resources in the future.

The members of the Falcone family all wanted their children to attend this school, because once they entered the school, it meant they were in the sight of the godfather. If they could achieve excellent results, they would likely be assigned to a better position and rise higher and further in life.

The Godfather's little tricks obviously couldn't be hidden from the other families. Although the school currently only has seven students and the teaching location is just a reception room in the Falcone Estate, the other twelve families have learned nothing else over the years but copy.

This "Gotham Strategy," proposed by Schiller, improved by Falcone, and implemented by all the Gotham Gotham's Longzhong Plan, astonished everyone with its remarkable results in the early stages of its implementation.

People resist reform not because they resist the benefits that reform can bring, but because they resist overly radical changes in the distribution of benefits and lifestyles.

When a reform doesn't actually change people's lifestyles—gangs remain gangs, no one wants to eliminate them, the Twelve Families remain the Twelve Families, no one wants to destroy them—but instead everyone unites to exchange a small investment for the right to a larger share of the pie, then everyone will feel that the reform is just a means to seize more benefits.

Those who benefit from this will be compelled to continue, using their existing profits to invest even more in this reform in the hope of gaining an even larger share.

More importantly, the first step taken by Gotham's Longzhong Plan proved one thing to everyone in Gotham —gold can be found even in muddy swamps, and the key to finding gold in the dung is not the dung itself, but the real gold.

They may be rotten, but making money isn't shameful.

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