Don't Shake Hands with Strangers

Chapter 1.11 Don't Shake Hands with Strangers

In the process of social material operations, no production, transportation, or sales model is inherently good or evil. It is only when people at the center of resource allocation want to maintain their control over acquired resources that unfairness gradually arises.

It is the second half of the 20th century, strictly speaking, the eve of the diffusion of information technology.

As the heir of a giant company, Wei Keng possesses a visual communicator carried by a special secretary in a briefcase. If he wants to eat, he can call the kitchen to prepare it and have it delivered to him, infinitely approaching the convenient life of the 21st Century. However, ordinary middle-class families currently still use wired telephones. Although cars are common in cities and the countryside, and satellites drift in the sky, the electronic navigation system has not yet appeared.

Wei Keng knows many future social development models, all of which can be used to make money or to do something for society.

In the industrial park of Luoshui Group, which operates on a work-relief basis.

In the solar energy collection park, covering three thousand square kilometers for concentrated heat collection, rows of curved mirror facilities are arranged like a well-field system. One kilometer per square, with roads between each square. At the end of work time, people from the work buildings in the workshop areas come to the road stations to wait for the industrial park's buses to take them back to the dormitory area.

While waiting for the bus, they approach a machine with a screen and begin selecting bundles of vegetables from the vegetable cabinets via video. For these workers, work points are subsidized, making them very cheap now.

These vegetables are sold through a screen. Unlike in supermarkets where they might spend the entire morning, with elderly people peeling the outer layers of onions or pulling the stems off watermelons, leaving the leftovers for commuters after they've picked through them. Once selected via videophone, the packaged bundles are immediately boxed and delivered to the main entrance of the workers' dormitories.

The vegetable production here involves specialized steel frame plastic greenhouses. Then, people are found in the countryside and contracted to manage them. Different times of day have specific humidity and temperature controls, displayed by thermometers and hygrometers. Although not as intelligent as chip-based control, having people patrol and operate them increases employment slightly while reducing operating costs.

The superior quality fruits and vegetables are selected and sold fresh on the visual column the same day. Medium-grade produce is made into canned food, and low-grade produce is washed, crushed, and turned into bottled fruit and vegetable juice, which is sent to the happy water vending machines frequented by young people (Wei Keng: "I am a conscientious businessman, absolutely no flavoring added"). As for the dregs after juicing, they are sent to the pig farm.

Currently, the contracted growers follow standard operations under each camera for every step of the process.

As for whether this system will eventually suffer from overstaffing, well, the electronic sales system always reserves 10% of its supply from external sources—there still exists a certain degree of market competition.

E-commerce vegetable vendors. This was a concept that the entrepreneurs from Lakeside University in the 21st Century of the Main World once wanted to propose. But later, they were heavily criticized. The reason for the criticism was that people found it difficult to trust these merchants who constantly talked about "market liberalization." In this field of "high management, low technology," providing services should be handled by the government. This way, the financial operations related to people's livelihood can be supervised by the public according to law.

However, the officials in Shenzhou currently do not do this.

Since no one at the top is doing this, Wei Keng, as someone in the midstream, has to improve it.

Shenzhou's pillar of industrial economic development is mainly electricity, but the capacity of these power plants is not advanced.

With poor market efficiency, worker's remuneration can only be suppressed to one-fifteenth of that of industrial workers in the outside world. The factory motto of this power plant includes the item "The factory building is my home, love the factory as you love your home." In that case, the factory must also think like a head of household and consider how these workers can live on one-fifteenth of their remuneration.

In food consumption, the secondary food industry, intermediate transportation, storage, and scattered sales have excessively high costs and support a large number of middlemen. Therefore, the above plan is proposed.

Regarding the housing problem, workers can currently live in factory dormitories. Near the industrial park, a large vacant lot has also been planned for development to build private rooms for the workers—so, in terms of housing consumption, workers will have most of their current and future expenses reduced compared to the outside world.

For the travel problem, all regular necessary travel should be arranged collectively, such as commuting to and from work, and children going to and from school, all of which are handled by unified pick-up and drop-off by shuttle buses.

Regarding clothing and bedding, to reduce extravagant style, Wei Keng has stipulated that everyone, including himself, entering the industrial park must wear work clothes, ensuring that the wholesale clothing distributed by the factory can be habitually worn by everyone.

Consumption! Apart from what is necessary and beneficial for physical health, other expenditures should be suppressed as much as possible.

Wei Keng: "Hardship and simplicity are good things; they allow us to possess greater vitality."

In the latter half of 1968, despite significant internal management changes within the industrial parks planned for the west, from an external perspective, these industrial parks still retained the nature of welfare institutions. They were self-sufficient internally and very introverted, much like Wei Keng's personality.

In this world, no matter what ideology it is, it needs to be "exported" to be widely known.

But what are Wei Keng's industrial parks exporting? The industrial parks, with hundreds of thousands of people, only provide an additional ten percent of electricity to the Luoshui Industry in terms of external production capacity.

From the market's perspective, these hundreds of thousands of people are almost entirely self-sufficient internally, with external purchasing power being almost zero. This is less productive than the GDP generated by dozens of high-level executives in cities clinking glasses at high-class banquets.

As for the re-employed workers within these industrial parks, they engage in collective labor daily, then happily enjoy low-priced goods and almost zero-cost ball games and game competitions. They then happily shout about hope and the future. To the outside world, this looks like the pyramid scheme members in the Main World's 21st Century, who eat coarse food daily and hypnotize themselves into believing they will succeed. They are trapped in a small circle, foolishly engaging in self-hypnosis.

Unlike pyramid schemes that try to succeed through involution, Wei Keng, the leader, is genuinely thinking about the future.

Within the massive industrial parks, many schools have already been established, and in the future, they will focus on the IT industry.

This can be referenced from the route taken by Indians in the Main World. According to the history of the Main World, early Indian civil service examinations were subject to policy fluctuations, leading a large number of wealthy children to study abroad in the United States. At that time, the United States was undergoing industrial transformation. These Indian students saw the rise of Silicon Valley and, upon returning home, led the rise of India's IT industry.

From an objective standpoint, India's IT industry has reference value, and the IT industry should not be classified as part of the tertiary industry but as a type of industrial project within the secondary industry!

India's failure to take off later was due to congenital deficiency, not a problem with the IT industry alone.

For a country with a scale of hundreds of millions, the development of any industry must consider upstream and downstream issues! If an industry has geographical or transportation-related physical isolation from its upstream suppliers, and there isn't a backup system within the homeland or within a controllable, influenceable range nearby, then there is risk.

Take the textile industry, for example. It's a genuine industry! During the period when the Soviet Union disintegrated in the Main World, the textile industry in Shanghai faced a large-scale unemployment wave when the West, promoting freedom, cut off cotton supplies. The textile industry was in widespread misery. This was far worse than the suppression faced by India's IT industry. However, it must be said that precisely because single entity industries face greater hardship when encountering external restrictions, the Indian "gentlemen" had even less courage to develop various physical industries.

Luoshui Group's current investment in the IT industry does not have this problem. Shenzhou's electronic hardware industry chain is distributed across various regions of Shenzhou, so there is no physical severance! Furthermore, they are tied together financially. If you dare to cut off supply, I will use seed funding to purchase inventory equipment and poach talent from your factory. There's no Pacific Ocean separating us. With the flow of personnel and equipment, can you still use government power to intercept? Luoshui Group supplies fighter jets. Even if Shenzhou experiences regional division, Luoshui Group's fist can ensure that no one dares to cause trouble.

The principle is: if the homeland doesn't have cotton, the textile factory has to act like a grandson to the outside world. If the homeland has "leeks" who consume mobile software, then the local "makers" of software are the masters!

In the southeast, several major academies are instigating a petition wave. This activity, initiated by scholars and aimed at reaching the imperial court, has always been a reserved activity for the "pure stream" faction.

Scholars from several Dao Prefectures in the southeast gathered in droves on the streets of the prefectural yamen. Led by local influential academic warlords, they pleaded for the people.

The reason is the recent incidents in Jiangnan where several Russian merchants were beaten to death by the local populace. The perpetrators have been arrested and, according to the normal process, should be sentenced. However, some things are unclear. For example, these Russian merchants were suspected of being Soviet intelligence personnel, gathering intelligence on the Southern Fleet's secrets, and were discovered and beaten to death by righteous people.

Scholars and scholars of the academies are university students.

The former lean towards liberal arts and serve in various government offices. The latter are in physics, equivalent to science in the Main World, and are absorbed by various technical departments. Due to social reasons, both types of scholars in Shenzhou are currently experiencing oversupply in employment. However, relatively speaking, the employment situation for physics scholars is better. Various industrial monopoly groups are eyeing them, and even if it's just to prevent talent from being used by others, they want to recruit physics talents.

As for scholars? The path to an official career is very narrow! Only by becoming a Juren can one engage in politics, and only by becoming a Jinshi can one be considered a great power. At the scholar level, there is involution. Dissatisfaction among intellectuals creates considerable noise.

A massive number of joint letters, like snowflakes, were submitted to various Dao Prefectures and then transferred by the local administration to the Central Cabinet.

Facing the sincere hearts of these students, the land security agreement currently being conducted between the Central Cabinet and Soviet Russia was also affected. The summit held by both sides in Lüshun concluded due to disagreement.

In the capital region, in the study of a Cabinet elder, there were items on the table: a Jiangxi Duan inkstone, a brush made of Australian quoll fur, and Jun porcelain from the Song Dynasty official kiln, along with many other stationery items.

The memorials from the southeast, filled with public outrage, were piled on the floor. As the elder stepped on them, the joint signatures unrolled, creating a satisfying crunch underfoot.

He finished reading the case file in his hand and asked the director of the Imperial City Department beside him, "Haven't found the key witness yet?"

The director of the Imperial City Department replied, "No, the key personnel in this case disappeared as soon as they entered the alley."

He opened a photograph taken by the Imperial City Department a few hundred meters away from the crime scene in the Southern City. This photo was taken by the Imperial City Department, which was responsible for intelligence work. They had been monitoring suspicious individuals from Soviet Russia since their arrival.

The elder didn't look at the photo and questioned directly, "They just disappeared right under your noses?"

The director of the Imperial City Department said, "This subordinate has failed in his duty."

The elder retorted, "Of course you failed. Several living people, neither seen alive nor found dead. I seriously doubt the necessity of the funds allocated to you every year."

After a thorough reprimand, the director of the Imperial City Department said, "Elder, this matter is indeed strange. We didn't find any people at the scene, but we did discover some peculiar ashes."

The elder paused, "Ashes!"

The director presented photos of the dust found in the alley, along with the analysis results, which contained elements like iron, phosphorus, and copper.

The elder frowned and asked, "What do you think?"

The director of the Imperial City Department replied, "Sir, there are currently several types of weapons that can turn people into ashes."

The elder asked, "Are you referring to the Tesla Electric Gun?"

The director of the Imperial City Department responded, "I am aware, sir. However, the current power of Soviet Russia's Tesla Electric Guns can only char 10% of a person's body, not completely destroy the remains. But according to my intelligence, people in Europa are researching Spectrum Weapons, which have greater power."

The elder narrowed his eyes and said, "Alright, you may go."

In a private moment, he opened a memorial detailing a trade project from Europe requiring rare earth imports from Shenzhou for spectrum components.

With a click, the elder closed the document.

At the Northwest Industrial Park, Wei Keng was in a cockpit, attending a software class in the Grand Classroom remotely via VR Glasses with high school students who had just passed their math and logic exams. It was currently the break between classes. During his free time, he read the news and saw reports of civil unrest in the southeast region.

Wei Keng opened the forum, which was still purely text-based, and scrolled through the comments, shaking his head. The information age had just begun, and those who could access the internet were mostly highly educated. However, when it came to international politics, the forum was filled with "aloofness?" and "resentment!"

Wei Keng, with a gossipy tone, commented, "These young people nowadays blindly praise Shenzhou's technology as the best in the world, without knowing their own capabilities. High-tech operations require fewer people, so fewer die in war? Do the opponents also use high-tech with fewer people involved? War is a collective responsibility, but individuals are often helpless. It's better to honestly participate in social work and realize your value, instead of constantly talking about fighting. Besides being cannon fodder and selling yourselves out, it brings no long-term benefit to the country."

Subsequently, there were many replies. Most of these replies were sarcastic, a few were abusive, and finally, Wei Keng was labeled a traitor.

He closed the forum and logged off.

Wei Keng muttered, "I knew this would happen, which is why I posted anonymously."

However, at this moment, a node in Wei Keng's consciousness flickered.

Wei Keng: "The Meson-Macro Particle count has increased. Is it because my personal Qi cultivation has succeeded, or...?"

Wei Keng's communication interface opened. It was Ke Feijia: "Attention, just now, the Meson-Macro Particle activity increased. Yours did too, right?"

Wei Keng nodded and sent the data from his node.

Ke Feijia compared his data: "That's right. Our nodes fluctuated the same way. Excluding personal factors, it should be a Spacetime Disturbance that just occurred."

Wei Keng: "Someone time-traveled on this timeline?"

Ke Feijia: "And altered certain people in spacetime. When you're doing what you're doing, be careful. Don't interact with any strangers, not even a handshake."