Munitions Empire

Chapter 1239: 1158 International Quality Management System_2

This is a law, but also a form of self-destruction. In the end, monopolies will form, and interest groups will become deeply entrenched; they will shift all risks outward while keeping enormous profits for themselves.

Greed drives them to expand markets ceaselessly, allowing unregulated transactions to destroy everything: This is their ultimate goal, even if it means total ruin.

On one hand, they promote consumerism, extracting the last residual funds from society; on the other hand, they exploit layer upon layer, cutting expenses to maximize profits.

On one hand, they force people to work relentlessly to produce more goods; on the other, they lure people into endless consumption to absorb the excess products. Throughout this process, the only thing that keeps rising infinitely is human desire, as desire has no upper limit.

Look, those urging you to lie flat may not have good intentions—they simply want you to rest and recover so you can cultivate a new round of consumption sentiment. Those pushing you to work yourself to death are not necessarily doing it for your own good; they merely want you to generate more products to increase the total wealth.

They’re all very sincere, their reasoning perfectly sound, and they have a wealth of high-level theories incomprehensible to ordinary people. Yet, in the end, whether you kill yourself earning money or burn yourself out spending it… it’s always the common people who bear the pain.

This is, in essence, a paradox: The grassroots, brutally exploited, devoured by inflated desire, sink into confusion. Desire drains their vitality and stirs up madness.

Eventually, as misery spreads and the world collapses, the bloated capital predators will retreat into the murky depths, waiting for the chaos and carnage to subside. Then, they will resurface to claim the spoils of victory: They’re hungry! Dormancy has made them thin. They need to devour more nutrients to grow fat again!

Tang Mo had no idea how to confront such forces because in his past life, he was merely the most insignificant part of these forces! Even though he had achieved considerable success, he was still a minute vassal of these forces, perpetually ensnared in their cyclical grip.

But here, he seemed to have found a means to restrain such forces: The Great Tang Group was the most effective weapon to hinder the expansion of these powers.

Holding vast capital as Emperor, he personally intervened to crush those burgeoning initial capitals attempting to expand. He consumed them, absorbed them, and then scattered tiny seeds to nurture a new crop of wealth.

This crop was not the people, not the grassroots, but all those dreaming of becoming capital—the new nobility, the wealthy, merchants… even bureaucrats.

This model relied on the cheat advantage embedded in Tang Mo’s mind, directing him toward continuous technological innovation. By leveraging this edge, he could monopolize everything, cyclically dismantling opponents who sought to challenge the Great Tang Group!

Nevertheless, this path would be anything but smooth. Tang Mo’s cheat-like strategy would inevitably collapse entirely with his death.

His sons would not be able to execute such operations; his grandsons were doomed to face backlash. Amid fierce upheaval, even the Empire could face destruction!

A more severe issue was that Tang Mo’s tactic of using imperial capital to counter civilian capital—destroying capital through greater capital—would breed corruption.

It’s analogous to state-owned assets: Tang Mo’s manipulation of the Great Tang Group within the Great Tang Empire was essentially that of an imperial merchant, a colossal “state-owned enterprise.”

One might even argue that the Great Tang Empire constructed by Tang Mo resembled a “corporate-disguised empire.” Since the Emperor himself was capital incarnate, then the will of the state was synonymous with the will of capital!

However, their colossal scale was both their competitive strength and their competitive weakness: A vast scale inevitably breeds corruption; sloth and mediocrity are unavoidable pitfalls in development.

Tang Mo could harness technological advancements to continually introduce fresh blood. Lazy workers would be replaced by newly trained technical workers, lazy technical workers would be replaced by newly trained automated mechanical workers…

But such occurrences would persist indefinitely, time and again. Tang Mo could drag the gradually decaying Great Tang Group onward, but no one else had such capability.

Even giants like Toyota and Honda would falter due to laziness in the realm of new energy vehicles. Even elites like Lockheed Martin and Boeing would lose their sharp edge due to complacency. But not the Great Tang Group—not with Tang Mo at its helm.

Even if he stopped now—waited ten years, twenty years—no competitor to the Great Tang Empire would emerge in this world.

The Great Tang Group, like the Shireck Consortium, would dominate in the decades, even centuries, to come. Yet, the Great Tang Group would inevitably decline after Tang Mo’s departure, dismantled and divided among his descendants in the end.

But he couldn’t prevent any of this from happening: At present, he still relied on the Great Tang Group to collide with capital and obliterate the nobility, landlords, and gentry of the old world. He lacked the resolve and perseverance to anticipate and address the Great Tang Group’s unwieldy tail, nor did he have the leisure to ponder whether his descendants could tame this monster.

Just like the Tang Dynasty of Earth’s civilization: When Military Governors defended the borders in bloody wars to grant peace to the Central Plains dynasty, which Emperor would concern himself with the troubling matter of curbing their power? Similarly, in the Song Dynasty, to avoid the tragedy of the Tang, when Zhao rulers favored civil over military affairs, which of them worried about the endgame at Ya Mountain?

Humans are ultimately humans, not gods. Tang Mo was no exception. He could advance this world from a semi-feudal, semi-slavery system to a feudal system, or to a semi-feudal, semi-capitalist state—that was already his limit.

As for whether this system was optimal, or whether it could secure the Tang Family’s legacy for thousands of generations… truth be told, he hadn’t thought that far ahead.

He had yet to conquer all and unify the land, had yet to let the iron cavalry of the Great Tang sweep across every inch of territory—how could he have the mind to sit on his throne and ponder other matters?

Those who believe that a good system and solid principles are must-haves, who think conquering and unifying the world would be easier with them—such thoughts are far too naïve.

The reality is: As long as the system you bring forth during the fight for dominance is better than the current one, with superior advantages, that’s good enough. As for whether it’s perfect… you’re overthinking it.

From a certain perspective, this world is a competition of mediocrity: As long as your opponent is more rotten, you can win the race. Sometimes, the battle is not about who is stronger, but who decays more slowly.