Chapter 544: One Smart Move.
Located at the junction of the East Sea and Mirror Sea, Dead Man Bay is a gloomy island shrouded in perpetual moisture, and it is under the actual control of Ox.
While accounting for the company, the business is still directly managed by the company and must be reconciled with Heaven Port, though Ox is the temporary manager.
What Ox didn’t tell Liszt is that the Mirror Sea side actually has a priority option, which is to rebuild the former Doringger opium network. This is the most profitable and has the lowest cost. If Liszt can handle this, future cooperation will progress more smoothly.
The conservatives still refuse to sell the main products of Mirror Sea inland. The reason is simple: just like the herders on the prairie, when meat demand increases, the herd size must expand for profit, eventually causing the entire prairie to be plowed over, the ecology destroyed, and desertification begins. The herd then dramatically reduces in size, which is one of the reasons the Star Seas Navy ended up in this miserable condition.
Moreover, compared to the political ecology of Mirror Sea, Old Aran can be said to be a more progressive regime. Once the inland lords become dependent on any special product and require a large supply, it is bound to cause a resource war.
Already suffering from severe distribution inequality and rampant internal chaos, the Merfolk of Mirror Sea are extremely frustrated and have no outlet for their anger. Adding another comprador corruption would completely ruin everything.
The Star Seas Navy being in such a miserable state, with the world’s largest gold and copper mine insufficient to satisfy the officials, is a primary reason.
Once the commodity supply line is opened, it wouldn’t solve the current problems of Mirror Sea but rather exacerbate them.
So, it’s not that the people of Mirror Sea are foolish for not making money; it’s just that taking big steps can easily trip them up.
Of course, there are indeed Merfolk doing business inland, but they are rare. If seen, it is certainly organized crime, as this constitutes smuggling in Mirror Sea.
These individuals must be backed by someone high above, specifically the Sky Space Association, the most radical of the radicals within the Mirror Sea Alliance.