Anyone who took the trouble to learn about Votradnoi that winter would have been astonished to discover that fewer than a hundred people had frozen to death there, while only fifty-odd had starved.
And all of that was thanks to Chris.
Deaths from the cold were unavoidable. Although Chris had purchased large quantities of winter clothing and done everything he could to distribute it, some people were simply too frail or happened to fall ill, dying before the clothes could reach them.
As for those who starved... there was even less Chris could do. He had already done his best. Reality was not a game; a click of the mouse would not send the grain piled in warehouses flying into everyone's hands.
No matter how good an organization you envisioned or how comprehensive the social welfare regulations you drafted, people still had to carry them out. And the Baojia System Chris had hastily put together was far from perfect.
Neighborhood chiefs like Old Jack, who had little education but conscientiously fulfilled their duties, were a minority in Votradnoi. By any formal assessment, he would have barely passed, yet compared with the other neighborhood chiefs, he was outstanding.
Corruption was everywhere. Some neighborhood chiefs were even doing the work of gangsters without realizing they were committing crimes... that was what happened with people who lacked education, knowledge, and even common sense.
Chris had no solution for such self-righteous illiterate morons. All he could do was send people to arrest those idiots and throw them in prison, where they would await trial in spring-or simply freeze to death in their cells and be done with it.
People starved in Votradnoi precisely because idiots like those shirked their duties and lined their own pockets.
To minimize deaths from cold and hunger, Chris had