Deep Space Wandering Fleet

Chapter 133: Chapter 134 Avalanche (Added for Alliance Hierarch Zhao Shen’s Delegate)

“… ‘Living in poverty generation after generation, who wouldn’t dream of better days? And then, out of the blue, I became a millionaire. It’s time to treat myself well,’ said Abu Rahanm with a flash of his pearly white teeth, a bright smile on his face.”

Buying high-end digital products, feasting on delicacies from the mountains and the seas, wearing mink coats—this interstellar evictee’s consumption habits were not an isolated case.

… Even before receiving the demolition compensation, Abu Rahanm had switched from his usual cigarettes to international brands. As soon as the money was in hand, he bought himself and his wife, who had just learned to drive, a magnetic levitation sedan each, costing around 300,000 yuan.

These two cars represented wealth they could never have imagined owning in the past, but now they spent most of their time just sitting in the garage. Yet if they didn’t buy them, and saw others doing so, they couldn’t quite help feeling the urge…

These people were born in poor countries, with no education, no culture, and no adequate skills to engage in the space industry. After suddenly receiving a large sum of money, they became wealthy overnight, and as a result, their ideologies suffered a tremendous blow.

With money, what to do?

Buy cars, buy houses, gamble, womanize—do the things they had always dreamt of but never dared to. Interestingly, these evictees ended up indirectly boosting Earth’s GDP, as a vast amount of capital was reinvested in the housing market, once again driving up property prices.

The traditional ways of life and values were shocked, even overturned, and numerous problems arose in the process of establishing new ways of life and values.

It proved that when virtue doesn’t match one’s position, disaster is inevitable.

Falling into the black hole of desire, it became extremely difficult to escape it once again.

In Xia Country there’s an old saying, “Those who sit idle and eat up their resources will one day run out of money no matter how much they have.”

After squandering their demolition money, time quickly passed, and in twenty years, most people were back to living in poverty. Moreover, the majority of those who didn’t understand financial management had already relocated to a distant outer planet, a place with a harsher environment and no natural resources.

They had to start working again.

It’s easy to go from frugality to luxury, but hard the other way round. How many can bear falling from heaven back into hell? The crime rate amongst the interstellar immigrants surged, and social stability was no longer what it used to be.

Over a full century, the population living in poverty was essentially driven off Earth!

Compared to the several year cycle of leadership elections, a century is quite slow. Or perhaps, even if the higher-ups became aware of this, they often didn’t care—after all, it’s not their own country, so why bother?

The criminals, expelled from the space cities, could simply be sent away. But such actions sparked protests from left-wing activists. Without the protection of space cities, how many years could they survive on a distant outer planet? For votes, or rather, to gain public support, many officials were forced to consider accepting these low-quality refugees.

At this point, Zhang Yuan’s mood slowly became heavy.

This was yet another hidden, incredibly significant historical junction.

…

What followed was another deeply anxious report—the completion of the solar system engineering project and the relocation of interstellar residents had led to a rapid widening of the Gini coefficient!

This made Zhang Yuan’s heart thump.

The Gini coefficient is an internationally recognized index that measures income inequality among the residents of a country or region.

The higher the Gini coefficient, the greater the income disparity. And the greater the income disparity, the more likely it is that unrest will occur.

After a large-scale population migration, the Earth-Moon Economic Circle undoubtedly became the most developed region in the Solar System, serving as a center of finance, talent, and high technology.

The remote Saturn’s moon Titan and Jupiter’s moon Ganymede were merely energy bases, definitely lagging behind in facilities.

Moreover, another point that had been previously neglected was gradually becoming magnified, forming a series of complex social effects.

That was… The average lifespan of the wealthy had dramatically exceeded that of the poor!

The wealthy, thanks to medical facilities and living environments, could live three to four hundred years; the poor could only live one to two hundred. What kind of disparity is this?

Death, hailed as the most just divine being in nature. Every person is treated equally in the face of death. Whether poor or rich, when it’s time to die, one has to die.

But that statement had already become past tense.

“Hello to all compatriots from Earth Era and The Golden Sun.”

“Death, in the face of ever more advanced biological technology, began to favor the rich. It’s hard to predict what will happen in the future… High-longevity classes, in terms of knowledge, wisdom, and connections, can completely dominate the low-longevity population.”

“This has caused the rate of class solidification to increase significantly…” a Foundation director wrote with growing concern in a report.

This was easy to understand. There’s a saying, “Wealth doesn’t last more than three generations, nor does poverty,” a situation that allowed for class mobility. And yet, the poor had died off after three generations, while that wealthy old man had not yet passed away, so how could there be any class mobility?!

“…the resentment at the bottom of society is slowly magnifying.”

“Discontent with the government among the lower classes is also gradually increasing.”

“What’s worse is that with the near completion of the Solar System project, our economic growth rate began to slow down.”

“Human development can’t be infinite; investment activities are no longer booming, and we don’t need such high industrial capacity… The entrepreneurial environment is not as relaxed as it used to be.”

“Making money has become more difficult.”

The increase in the lifespan of the rich wasn’t a big deal in the past, and such conflicts didn’t erupt.

The main reason was the economy.

As long as the economy could grow, it meant that class circulation was still active.

When common people also had the potential to become part of the wealthy class, they had the energy to leap upward. They would envy, struggle, and work hard for it.

Therefore, all conflicts were hastily covered up under the condition of high economic growth.

But as the Solar System project neared completion, the speed of the entire civilization’s economic growth gradually slowed down.

Human material needs are not infinite, and the civilization had already grown at a high speed for so many years; it couldn’t keep growing significantly. The planets that needed to be developed had been nearly fully developed, and further distant Pluto and Sedna, due to their extremely remote distance, held little value for development.

The easiest times to make money were always the eras of high economic growth, not when GDP seemed large, but the growth rate had already stabilized.

When the economy no longer grew, no new space emerged, and then it entered the phase of zero-sum games.

The rich had plenty of resources; the poor had few. To jump upward was no easy feat, and most people would remain in the lower class forever.

Thus, the age-old class conflicts were restaged at that moment!

There was even a third factor, a massive influx of impoverished populations to the Alien Planets, once again exacerbating the conflicts!

Because of this influx of cheap labor, jobs were becoming scarce. Even the high salaries in interstellar work were gradually being cut.

Without the high salaries, unable to afford homes on Earth, who would want to spend their lives in such a godforsaken place, enduring exploitation?

…

Through these descriptions, Zhang Yuan felt as if he saw a towering, splendid skyscraper that, upon reaching a certain height, collapsed in an instant!

Every beautiful situation fell apart like an avalanche; every inconsequential snowflake was complicit, yet there was no way to truly define the guilt of each individual snowflake.

Having read the report, Zhang Yuan tried to calm his mood.

In the dead of night, he felt immensely oppressed.

…

(PS: That’s the update for today; I still owe one more chapter, which I’ll make up tomorrow. As mentioned, comments and the entire site has been locked, which should be lifted around the 6th or 7th. I can already feel everyone’s desperation for updates!)