The Wickedly Brilliant Policy
"You earn exactly as much as you work!"
"So the problem is more serious than I thought?"
"Yes..."
Daehan's water was running dry. The vast stretches of uncleared land across the empire were packed wall to wall with grass and trees — and where grass and trees thrived, floods simply didn't happen. The rivers sat so low to begin with that even heavy rain couldn't make them overflow, because the vegetation drank up staggering quantities of water and evaporated the rest straight into the sky.
"Then the upper reaches past Seonju and Moda must be hit hardest, huh?"
The plains had plenty of cleared land and far more grass than trees, so the difference there would be dramatic...
"Yes. Overall, water levels have fallen by about half."
Half? That didn't sound catastrophic.
"So they haven't dried up completely. Then what's the actual problem?"
"The water is too shallow for river transport to operate."
Ah! Water transport — that was the issue. And cutting down trees with gusto wouldn't fix it, either.
"So what should we do?"
"We're considering merging the smaller rivers one by one."
"That sounds difficult?"
Wasn't that dangerous? Merging rivers artificially?
"To start, we plan to excavate large reservoirs, channel the rivers into them one at a time, and release the water from there."
"You do know that if we botch this, it's a disaster, right?"
The entire shape of the river systems could change... and that was beyond even my ability to foresee, which made it nerve-wracking.
"We understand the risks. That is precisely why we intend to carry out a land reform spanning the whole nation."
"Huh?"
What did that have to do with land reform? All the land was state-owned anyway.
"We will carry out massive reservoir and canal construction projects across the entire territory, and reorganize the paddies and fields accordingly."
"Wait — isn't this project way too big? We're still in the middle of the railway construction, aren't we?"
There was no way the workforce could stretch that far. And now they were snatching up the kids for administrative work on top of it.
"Hehehe..."
"What? Why that laugh again?"
Seriously, now. It ran in the family! He was getting creepier by the generation.
"As it happens, we have a surplus of administrative personnel."
Figured. The families were already being run into the ground as it was — call it sixty years to a life, and of that, five years got requisitioned for labor?
"If we promise a few extra days credited toward their service term, won't they come running with their eyes rolled back?"
"Oh?"
Truly not a family to underestimate. In that case, maybe I'd add one more thing.
"Let's put a performance-based system on top of that."
"A performance system?"
"Yeah. You calculate how long a project should take. Say the job is supposed to take a hundred days. You hand the crew the task — however long they end up dragging it out, we only credit them a hundred days."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
Oh dear. Was his brain not turning over? Maybe he simply had no experience with systems like this. This worked anywhere!
"Heh heh. Come on, think! Finish a hundred-day project in fifty days! Then you've got room to knock out another hundred-day job, don't you? Work a hundred days, get two hundred credited!"
Granted, it meant working yourself twice as hard, so it felt a bit like monkey business with the dates — but so what? You had to find a use for the strong-bodied ones somewhere!
"Gasp!"
See? Impressive, right?
"What a truly diabolical policy!"
Why was this "diabolical" too? You just earned more by working harder, didn't you?
"Huh?"
"Hehe. No loss for us whatsoever, and yet we squeeze every last drop out of them!"
Did he have a point? No loss on our side? So it was monkey business after all?
"In that case, set penalties so nobody can slack on the workmanship."
"Oh! They'd have to do repair work on top, then?"
Right? Just drag back whoever did the shoddy job and make them redo it.
"As expected! Haneul-nim, you're brilliant!"
Honestly, though! Between the mandatory administration system and now this, it felt like I kept churning out wicked inventions.
"Uh... right! Brilliant! Go put it into practice, quick!"
"Yes!"
The policy we had just enacted spread in ways no one had anticipated. We threw battalion after battalion of administrative soldiers at calculating project timelines, and since checking on every worker individually was impossible, we handed out certificates — tokens of labor served.
"So the wealthy households are just collecting those tokens and buying themselves complete exemptions?"
"Yes..."
No exemptions allowed. Unlike before, this could read as outright class separation.
"Let's cap the exemption period at half the total service term. That much should be fair enough."
"Hm? Yes. We should still have plenty of workers."
I was worried about pushback...
"People will hate this, won't they?"
"At worst, only the rich will."
They already paid hefty taxes as it was...
Still! The bourgeoisie deserved a little discrimination of their own.
Since every plot of land belonged to the state, the state collected land rent; merchants paid vessel rent and road tolls, all on a progressive scale. The big earners were paying the most — and yet the rich still existed somehow. No chaebol-grade tycoons, mind you, but rich all the same.
If you wanted to pile up more than a certain amount, you simply had to go live abroad. Whatever fortunes people squirreled away overseas — well, presumably that was their business.
"That's right! Rich people are fair game — fleece away!"
"Exactly!"
Why was he so delighted? Hold on — did the kids stationed abroad go around robbing only the wealthy and the nobility for this very reason?
"And! Anyone with complaints gets dragged to the Temple!"
"Not prison?"
"Nowhere on earth is scarier than the Temple."
Wasn't the Temple supposed to be a place where you worshipped the divine? How had it become somewhere people were actively terrified of?
"What do they do there?"
"They defied the words of Haneul-nim, so they must be made to chew them all over again!"
How did disliking a policy turn into defying my words? People were allowed to dislike a policy!
"A single week in the prayer room under a priest's watch, and they emerge a brand-new person, reborn!"
Hey. Have you been there yourself? Why are your eyes going all creepy!
I was afraid to ask, but...
"What exactly happens in there?"
"They stay with the priest and are reborn. Hehehe."
Apparently it involved some terrifying rite of penance that carved away flesh and blood...
I didn't want to know anymore. I really didn't.
Still, there were upsides too, weren't there? These people were, when you got right down to it, construction professionals. Skilled specialists, no less!
"I hear they've gone and formed a proper guild of their own?"
"Yes. It's taking shape mostly around people experienced in city wall and canal work."
"Why not develop them into true specialists?"
We couldn't keep rounding up day laborers for the state until the end of time, could we?
"Develop them into...?"
"It's called a company. Think it through — all we do is post an announcement with a project deadline, and those companies volunteer themselves: we'll take this one!"
No need for a bidding system yet, probably. In exchange, they'd have to pay hardship allowances for remote, rough sites.
"Oh? Then... there's less for us to manage?"
Exactly! Fewer administrative officials needed, too! All we did was quality checks — this passes, this fails!
"The companies recruit their own workers and handle the wages themselves?"
"What do you think?"
"Then we'd only need to send out inspectors!"
Hm. Which opened the door to look-the-other-way corruption...
"We'll need someone watching the inspectors too, won't we?"
"Huh? Looking the other way, you mean?"
"Yeah. If it blows up later, it's a real mess."
"Anyone caught gets sentenced to lifetime administrative service. The families will keep their own people firmly in line."
Whoa. Harsh. Lifetime service? And family discipline on top — so there'd be guys showing up to work with black eyes from now on.
"But if the term is lifetime or long-term, won't they just coast instead?"
"Ahaha. We tell them the sentence gets shortened for good performance!"
Ah. Like model prisoners. So he hadn't been idly raised either.
"The projects will need enormous quantities of materials, though. Can they actually manage?"
People still couldn't produce ash concrete from raw ingredients on their own, after all.
"We moved the rail lines up in priority and laid track out to Bongpyeong as well."
"Huh? Why there? Oh! To haul dirt?"
At this rate the Yellow Sea would need a brand-new name — the water might actually run clear for once.
"More importantly, who's living out there digging up all that earth? That land changes owners practically by the day."
"The local natives haul it off on their own initiative."
"And the state doesn't care?"
"No. The country up there changes hands so often it's a complete shambles."
Fair enough. The central and northern reaches of that region truly were a disaster — owners and entire nations flipping overnight. Even unified and quiet, it was a cursed inconvenience of a place.
"Truly an incomprehensible country, isn't it?"
"I'll never understand how that people can fight over speaking different tongues and having different skin colors."
Skip the wars, and we weren't so different ourselves.
"How is that any different from our kids going out and pilfering?"
"Less theft than... just kind of taking things?"
"That's exactly the problem! They take without asking!"
Was I wrong, though? They did ask — the trouble was nobody could understand each other.
Even with translation, I doubted it would have gone any differently. 'Trade me something for this!' — or worse, 'Nothing to trade? Then hand over everything you've got!'
We went on a site inspection, too, as it happened. This performance system really did work. With professionals on the job, everything ran three times faster.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
"Hurry it up! Move, move, move!"
"Coming! Coming through!"
Only now did I notice they were using formwork on the construction. In the old days they'd molded the mixture into bricks and stacked them, hadn't they?
"Faster! It's already surging up to this line!"
"Aaargh!"
Ash concrete had to be mixed before it went in, after all.
Back there, crews were blending it with relish and hauling it forward, pouring nonstop before it could set. And here at the front, the formwork had already been pushed clear to its very bottom.
"Aaargh! It's already up to here!"
"More hands on the digging over here!"
"It's going to overflow!"
Merciless bunch. One crew to dig the earth, one for the formwork, and another back there working the ash.
"Wahaha! Their backsides are on fire! Keep pouring!"
"Hee hee. Let's go!"
"Sweep it all in!"
The men at the very back ground the ash in harder and harder. This place was a battlefield in its own right.
"Hey! You bastards! Are we the only ones working here?!"
"Oh dear, my slowpoke lords — do hurry along, won't you~"
"You done talking?!"
"What'll you do about it?! Hurry up and dig, and slap on that formwork!"
The atmosphere was turning uglier by the second.
"Hey! Let's dunk that bastard in first!"
"Yeah! Then he can't push any more at us!"
"Kill him!"
"Waaargh!"
Thwack! Crack! Crash!
A brawl erupted in the blink of an eye. Man, watching a fight was fun. Now, when could I get my hands on some popcorn...
Come to think of it, wasn't corn an American crop? We'd sourced nearly everything the world had to offer except the goods of the Americas, hadn't we?
First thing to look for when we pushed south, then.
"Aaack! Hey! Biting is cheating!"
"Mmmph!"
Wow. More impressive than the biting itself was that no flesh was actually coming off.
Peep! Peep! Peep!
"Everyone! What do you think you're doing?!"
Huh? The supervisor was a woman? Well, it wasn't heavy labor, so no problem there, presumably.
"Gah! A witch!"
"Excuse me?!"
"N-nothing, ma'am!"
Bruised and bleeding from nose and lip, the men scrambled back to their posts, unable to muster a single word of protest.
Peep! Peep!
"One more outburst and it's a fine."
"Gah!"
"A-anything but that!"
Hm? She docked wages without an ounce of mercy? Girls really were better at this sort of thing. And that sharp, pointed face of hers — scary even before she opened her mouth.
Thud, clap. Thud, clap.
"Alright~ let's work with joy in our hearts!"
"Ahahaha. Sorry about earlier!"
"Just take it a little slower, would you~"
The men, putting on an act. With those black eyes and bloody noses, nobody was buying it.
Even so, the crew at the back kept pouring the ash while the ones up front kept pushing the formwork onward and upward. Maybe this was exactly how our legendary hurry, hurry culture got its start.