The Wallfacer: Everyone wants to break through my wall.

The host glanced out the car window and then smiled, “That building is the cloning center. Our New Ireland Community is one of the few economies that considers cloning technology a normal reproductive behavior, so people no longer need to rely on the opposite sex to pass on their genes.”

The host continued, “More than half a century ago, you proposed to the PDC that human cloning be classified as a normal human reproductive behavior. You foresaw early on that as technology develops, the birth rate of the human population will inevitably decline. The only solution is to liberate humanity’s mind again, that is, to regard human cloning as a normal reproductive behavior. Unfortunately, the PDC did not approve your proposal due to ethical and moral issues.”

"Today, we have put your theories into practice and achieved good results, which is another big step forward for human thought to become more open."

Ah this...

Lin Feng was about to complain, but after thinking about it carefully, he couldn't bring himself to complain, because it seemed that he really was the one who proposed the solution of using clones to solve the population birth rate problem.

After being taken to a high-end hotel, the host left.

Lin Feng then swapped mechanical doubles with the people around him.

Among the people traveling with Lin Feng was a mechanical double. After exchanging control of the mechanical double with the other person, Lin Feng 'transformed' into another person in the next moment.

"I'll leave this place to you for now. Cover for me," Lin Feng said.

The person who replaced Lin Feng nodded, "Please be careful as you are traveling alone."

Making an excuse to leave the hotel, Lin Feng accessed the Space City's network and searched for maps and the poorest areas of the Space City.

To understand the happiness level of a city and other indicators, you should not look at its most prosperous areas, but rather at its poorest areas, as these areas can most directly reflect the city's level of prosperity and the general happiness level of its residents.

As Lin Feng ventured deeper into the winding alleys, the noise became increasingly sparse and more rhythmic, still noisy but with a distinct pattern.

Lin Feng could tell that it was the sound of machinery processing in a factory.

When Lin Feng arrived at his destination, he saw a group of people lying down. They were all silent; some were sleeping, while others were wearing headphones and watching entertainment videos online.

Lin Feng's arrival was met with only a glance from these people, who then paid him no further attention.

After wandering around for a while, Lin Feng returned to the same spot. He tried to strike up a conversation with some of the people there, but no one wanted to talk to him.

Having no other choice, Lin Feng had to resort to his trump card: communication.

Lin Feng approached another person and said, "Hello, may I ask you some questions? I'm planning to write a social report and would like to consult you."

The man hadn't intended to pay any attention to Lin Feng, but after glancing at the banknotes in Lin Feng's hand, he immediately changed his mind.

The disheveled man looked Lin Feng up and down, who was dressed neatly, and replied.

"You're not from this space city, are you?"

Lin Feng laughed and said, "You figured it out. I'm from the Taylor faction. While accompanying Mr. Taylor on his visit to the New Ireland Community, I'm also taking the opportunity to conduct a simple survey of the New Ireland Community's social structure as reference material for new sociological theories."

The slovenly man raised an eyebrow. Although he found it troublesome, he agreed for the sake of the money.

"Okay, what do you want to ask?"

"Why are all those people lying there? Shouldn't they all be working at this time? I went to say hello but no one paid any attention to me. It's so lifeless."

"I noticed that they only get up when they go to eat; otherwise, they basically lie down. Don't they need to work?"

Lin Feng pointed to the people lying down and asked.

The slovenly man replied, "Work, it's just that I work one day and then rest for three days, or if I'm more frugal, I'll rest for four or five days."

"Why is this happening?" Lin Feng asked.

"Is that even a question? These people don't plan to earn any more money. They just want to earn enough to cover their basic living expenses and live a comfortable life."

The disheveled man looked at Lin Feng with a strange expression.

Lin Feng was stunned, unsure of what expression to make for a moment.

"Ah... If it were an individual who was hit hard by something and became like this, I could understand, but for a group of people to become like this, I really can't imagine what could have caused it. It can't be because they all experienced heartbreak, can it?"

Lin Feng jokingly asked a question, but the slovenly man just scoffed.

"Heartbreak? If it's just heartbreak, then that's good..."

"Tell me in detail, and I'll pay more."

As he spoke, Lin Feng took out another banknote. The slovenly man silently accepted the banknote and began to tell his story slowly.

Chapter 165 Let the Rich Have More Children

"Actually, this phenomenon has been happening for a long time, about twenty years ago."

"At that time, housing prices were rising higher and higher. Not to mention buying a house, even the cost of renting a house was constantly increasing. People could only work overtime to alleviate their housing problems in the future."

"However, this leads to an overabundance of labor. If the market demand is only one hundred, even if you use labor to produce a supply of one thousand, you will only get one hundred in return."

"Further improvements are useless because the market is already saturated, and the extra 900 units of supply are unlikely to translate into real value."

"Therefore, bosses will start to reduce their production costs by laying off employees, because production simply does not require so much labor. One person can do the work of two people, so why hire two people? Even if two people work very hard and do the work of four people, the excess supply will only lead to market saturation, and the excess supply cannot be converted into real value."

"At that time, many people could not find jobs. Those who were employed had increased workloads and working hours, often working overtime, but their salaries were only slightly higher than when they did not work overtime. Many people died suddenly from overtime."

"This is a change in the entire market, and it's simply unstoppable."

As Lin Feng listened, he found it increasingly strange.

"Doesn't the government engage in macroeconomic regulation?"

The slovenly man sneered, “Regulation? No, they’re encouraging workers to work overtime. When people at the bottom earn money, their first thought is to save it. So the money ends up sitting idle in the bank instead of being used for development.”

“But after the boss makes money, although he will save some of it, as an independent individual, the amount he saves is not much on a macro scale. If he saves 10 million in his account, it is at most equivalent to 100,000 saved by a million people.”

"High income means high consumption and high taxes, which means there will be more hot money circulating in the market. At the same time, this money can quickly return to the government, resulting in very good government fiscal data and less likelihood of a fiscal crisis."

Listening to the disheveled man's explanation, Lin Feng nodded in understanding, but he couldn't figure out how these things were related to the people lying next to him.

"The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, but what does that have to do with these people who are lying down?" Lin Feng asked.

"Of course it's related. Think about it, you work hard and overtime every day, face fierce industry competition, live in fear of being fired by your boss, and in the end, the salary you earn is gone after paying rent and raising your child. You might even have to go into debt to achieve a seemingly normal standard of living. What would you do?" the slovenly man asked Lin Feng.

The slovenly man continued, "Workers work hard so that their children can have a better life. In this kind of environment, even if they have children, are they capable of providing a better life for them? Obviously not. That's why many people don't want to have children."

"Without children and families, there is no direction to strive for. Some people end up in the kind of 'lying flat' state you see now, working one day and resting for three days, just getting by. This approach has effectively alleviated some of the competitive pressure in the industry and is also conducive to stability. At least there aren't so many unemployed people causing headaches for the government, so they adopt a laissez-faire attitude."

Excessive social pressure has caused some people to lose confidence in starting a family. Without children, they have no purpose, and those who are lost begin to indulge in a life of pleasure and drift along aimlessly.

However, this would lead to a severe low birth rate, and the government should intervene.

"Won't society face problems if so many people don't have children? How can this be resolved?"

Lin Feng asked, and the slovenly man's next answer somewhat shattered Lin Feng's worldview.

"Let the rich have children. They have money and a greater foundation to raise children. They occupy more social resources and have the responsibility and obligation to reproduce more people."

“When liquidating the assets of the rich, one million is the threshold. For every additional million, the rich must have one more child. Those with assets of ten million must have ten children, those with assets of over one hundred million must have one hundred, those with assets of over one billion must have one thousand, those with assets of over ten billion must have ten thousand, and those with assets of one hundred billion must have one hundred thousand.”

"Many problems such as consumption, low birth rate, education costs, and social mobility have been solved, and the flow of hot money in the market has even been accelerated."

Lin Feng was speechless, and asked with a slight twitch at the corner of his eye.

"Ah, so the rich are just ordinary people, right? I won't even talk about rich women, but even if a rich man finds tens of thousands of women, he probably can't give birth to tens of thousands of babies, let alone hundreds of thousands."

Unlike men, women cannot produce hundreds of billions of eggs at once; a woman can only produce four to five hundred eggs in her lifetime.

For men, especially billionaires with assets in the hundreds of billions, it would be like grinding an iron rod into a needle!

Seeing Lin Feng's surprised expression, the slovenly man shrugged and answered Lin Feng's question.

"Cloning can solve this problem; machines are much more efficient at creating humans than humans are."

"Using cloning to solve the reproduction problem? But I haven't seen anyone with the same face, and there are genetic issues..."

Lin Feng carefully recalled the people he had seen after arriving in the space city and was certain that no two faces were the same.

Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that some people have undergone cosmetic surgery.

Cosmetic surgery cannot solve genetic problems. If so many people's genes come from the same person, then big problems are bound to occur.

"Cloning is not just about copying genes. Humans conceived through non-natural means are all considered cloned humans. Humans only need to provide sperm and egg cells, and then they can reproduce naturally in machines."

"Your Taylor lineage doesn't have clones?"

The disheveled man looked at Lin Feng with a strange expression.

Lin Feng gave an awkward smile. He had only recently awakened from hibernation; how could he possibly know so much?

"The Taylor system doesn't have such a policy, and clones haven't been abused like this yet," Lin Feng replied dismissively.

The slovenly man didn't think much of it, after all, there weren't many space cities that had transformed clones into naturally reproducing ones, and none of the space cities belonging to the Taylor system had any.

This cloning technology is still in the laboratory.

Lin Feng hesitated for a moment and asked, "The method you mentioned also requires a large number of people to provide genes, otherwise it is still easy to have a large number of genetic problems due to inbreeding. And what about wealthy women? Egg cells are not as numerous as sperm cells."

The slovenly man replied, "Wealthy women can clone their own egg cells through gene cloning. As for the genetic issues you mentioned, the wealthy class regularly buys sperm or egg cells from these people lying down you see to ensure that their offspring will not have genetic problems."

Then, the slovenly man pointed to some of the younger people among the group lying on the ground.

"The people you see now, the younger ones, are all children of the rich. After some rich people die, their assets are divided equally among their children. Then, in fierce competition, wealth is re-concentrated, and the losers fall from the rich class and join the ranks of the lying down."

Lin Feng wondered, "It's one thing for poor people to be poor, but why don't the children of rich people, who have received a good education, work hard to return to the wealthy class?"

"Because they know better than anyone that accumulating wealth through hard work is just a dream, and the only way to achieve upward mobility between the rich and the poor is by exploiting the value of others."

"The banks won't lend money? These people are, after all, the children of the rich," Lin Feng asked.

The slovenly man replied, “In the beginning, the banks did lend to them because of their parents’ status, but only a very small number of them were able to return to their original social class through the loans. Most of them wanted to take a gamble and ended up with tens of millions of dollars in debt after another failure. Then they committed suicide in despair, and the debt became a bad debt. As a result, the banks’ willingness to lend decreased sharply within a few years.”

After thinking for a moment, Lin Feng asked another question that he was concerned about.

"What's the situation like with the people on the other side of the asteroid belt, outside the space city? Do you know?"

The slovenly man shrugged. "What else could it be? Some of the people who have given up want to live the life they truly want, to completely escape the hustle and bustle, so they leave the space city and go to the asteroid belt to live a self-sufficient life."

"Everything is relative. The premise of your love for others is that others love you in return. If the world abandons them, then it is only natural that they choose to abandon the world in the end."

Chapter 166 Giving Life to the Years

While Lin Feng was talking to the slovenly man, a noisy commotion reached him.

There, a young man was cursing and swearing at those who had lay down.

The young people, dressed neatly, stood in stark contrast to the disheveled and decadent people lying down.

"How long are you bunch of good-for-nothings going to lie around like this? You're not making any money lying around. Are you throwing a tantrum like children? You're all adults, can't you be a little more mature?"

“Life still needs to move forward. If you lie down now, what will you do in the future? Even if you don’t have children or buy a house, how will you live when you’re in your seventies or eighties? Aren’t you going to prepare for the expenses of nursing homes and hospitals in advance?”