This was indeed quite meaningful, at least to pirates.
When some people thought of pirates, their first impression was of powerful figures at sea, roaming the oceans, plundering wealthy merchants, settling grudges with gusto, drinking great gulps of liquor and eating meat by the bowlful.
But those were only the strong among pirates. Even those powerful pirates lived from one day to the next and could be killed at any time, let alone the weak among them.
In truth, weak, low-ranking pirates were not all that different from ordinary people at the bottom of society. This was a conflict of class, not profession. These pirates had originally been born poor. Other than taking a chance at sea, they basically had no way to turn their lives around—unless they truly ate a Devil Fruit or were forced to join a large pirate crew. Otherwise, their chances of changing their fortunes were no different from their chances of crossing class barriers: practically nonexistent.
No matter the world, the survival of the lower classes received scant attention, if any at all.
In the United States, such people were the elephant in the room. Homeless people filled the core districts of every city. They existed there, lived there, and drove white-collar workers out to the suburbs, yet no one cared enough to spare them a glance or even speak a word to them. People even believed those homeless people existed only because they lacked ambition, drank and took drugs excessively, and had willingly fallen into depravity.
They never considered that under the United States' Credit System, once someone's credit collapsed, no amount of struggling could ever let them rise again.
Although New Oriental was far better than the United States, it was far from perfect. Because of its population and economic scale, distributors could