Celestial Gold (Part 2)

On the other hand, just as slaveholders in the American South trusted "white slaves" who shared their blood more than ordinary black slaves, the Celestial Dragon blood in these "Half-Dragon Humans" earned them greater trust from the Celestial Dragons. It was far easier for them than ordinary people to enter CP0 and the World Government—including the Navy, Impel Down prison, CP1 through CP9, and every other organization under the World Government.

With these "Half-Dragon Humans" occupying many important positions, the Celestial Dragons' rule over the world was further consolidated objectively.

Because their numbers were small, compared to the atrocities directly committed by individual Celestial Dragons, the crushing burden of Celestial Gold was the greatest evil of Celestial Dragon rule.

But only after learning the details of this heavy tax from Stussy did Mousse understand why so many people had been driven to ruin without any great uprising capable of overturning Celestial Dragon rule breaking out for so long. "So the amount of Celestial Gold each member nation has to pay varies so wildly. No wonder some people hate the World Government and the Celestial Dragons to the bone, while so many others are still on their side!"

At its core, Celestial Gold was simply a poll tax under another name. The amount paid was directly tied to population, but different countries used different standards, and large, powerful nations generally had extremely low coefficients.

For example, Elbaf, the world's strongest nation, only had to symbolically pay an almost negligible one Berry per person per year. Naturally, the people of such countries felt no real pressure.

As for small, weak countries, even a burden of tens of thousands of Berries per person was considered light. Wealthy nations like Flevance and Notis were charged more than one hundred thousand Berries per person. One person's payment there exceeded what all of Elbaf paid combined.

Moreover, the World Government did not directly rule every part of the world. It entrusted member-state governments with collecting Celestial Gold, and royal families, nobles, and bureaucrats at every level all took their cut. A burden that was already far from light naturally became even heavier.

This was especially true for countries without important specialty products, which could only pay in cash. On the one hand, they had to suffer another round of exploitation by merchants; on the other, it made embezzlement by officials much easier. Their burden thus grew even heavier.

If the harvest was even slightly poor, ordinary people could only starve to death or go out to sea and become pirates.

Such a system was naturally deeply unfair, yet Celestial Dragon rule remained as steady as Mount Tai. Although large, powerful nations could pay less Celestial Gold, they were obligated to contribute military strength to the World Government.

For instance, most of the giant officers in the Navy came from Elbaf. This weakened those potential threats, leaving them unable to challenge the World Government.

At the same time, the World Government could use the powerful forces contributed by those nations to suppress the people of small, weak countries who could only rebel because they could no longer survive. It was like smashing eggs with stones—nothing could withstand it.

What? What if a small, weak country had a powerful expert? Then it would not be a small, weak country anymore!

For example, after Monkey D. Garp, the Marine Hero, emerged from the Goya Kingdom, that country's Celestial Gold burden was immediately reduced drastically.

Otherwise, in the originally small and impoverished Goya Kingdom, even the nobles could forget about living well. How could they have maintained the appearance of a "model nation"?

After learning this, Mousse's evaluation of the former king of Pharaohs, who was now nowhere to be found, dropped once again.

Although the latter was not on Garp's transcendent level, being no weaker than an ordinary elite Marine Headquarters vice admiral in his early twenties was still outstanding. If he had been willing to give up his identity as king and join the Navy, he might have been able to reduce the Celestial Gold tax to a level his country could bear.

But James Glenn had wrongly chosen to withdraw from the alliance, ultimately leading to the destruction of his country and family.

"I wonder whether he couldn't bear to give up the throne, or simply didn't understand the World Government well enough. If it was the former, then I overestimated his character. If it was the latter, then I overestimated his brains." Mousse's current thoughts were rather like those of someone speaking without knowing another's hardship.

Yet thinking about it this way made Mousse much more accepting of the fact that James Glenn had fled but never come to Totto Land. He felt even more so after learning that the man had ultimately chosen to seek refuge with Whitebeard.

It had to be admitted that the World Government's approach gave it every advantage, but it also contained a difficult problem: what happened when all the leeks had been harvested to death and the source of wealth dried up?

On Earth, that would have been enough to destroy any regime. But the World Government was not a country with clearly defined territory, and the sources of Celestial Gold were not fixed either.

In this world, old countries constantly perished, while new countries were constantly born.

Just like the village where the little dog Ququ lived, its villagers had all fled there because they could no longer survive elsewhere. Without the crushing tax burden, everyone lived happy lives after successfully reclaiming the land.

But as the population grew and the economy developed, pirates would sooner or later set their sights on it. When that happened, they could only seek help from the Navy.

In other words, this self-governing village would either merge into a World Government member nation or establish its own country and apply to join. Wouldn't that create another new crop of leeks?

Such a model clearly could not bring peace to the world, but as the Five Elders had said, as long as the world maintained its "balance," Celestial Dragon rule could continue indefinitely.

"With every country in a different situation, a worldwide uprising can never erupt. No matter how severe local unrest becomes, the World Government has enough strength to suppress it. Nations in better condition may even support it more strongly out of fear of war. This system's oppression of the lower classes is simply despairing, just like how peasant uprisings almost never succeeded in feudal countries on Earth. China was the only exception in ancient times, but that was after Qin Shi Huang unified the realm and implemented the imperial, centralized system. It shows that the rarity of successful peasant uprisings in foreign ancient societies was mainly due to the system itself."

For a moment, even Mousse, who considered himself hard-hearted, could not help but sigh.

In truth, the One Piece world was even more despairing than the feudal systems of ancient Earth. At least in the latter, feudal lords would sometimes grow powerful and rebel, reshuffling the order. For a period afterward, life would generally be somewhat better than before. But in this world...

Even under a feudal system, monarchs held enormous advantages over their vassals. For the latter to grow powerful, they ultimately still had to rely on the former making foolish mistakes.

On Earth, any dynasty that endured long enough would sooner or later produce a foolish ruler, so it would inevitably perish after at most a few centuries.

But while the Celestial Dragons of this world had become utterly rotten as a whole, the one steering the ship was Im, an immortal monster. Expecting him—or more likely, her—to make a foolish mistake? It would be better to hope that a giant meteor happened to strike Holy Land Mary Geoise and wipe out every Celestial Dragon. The odds might even be better.

That was why the people of the One Piece world could only suffer through eight hundred years, waiting for the Ancient Weapons to awaken, for the chosen one to be born, and then for brute force to break the deadlock.

Before that, not even the BIG Pirates, much less the stronger Whitebeard Pirates, could possibly shake Celestial Dragon rule.