Yes, Madam Prime Minister

“Yes, we have them all,” Yvette replied, “and some special colors as well.”

"Oh?" Agustina asked curiously.

“Let’s not even talk about black and white meat. Gray, brown, and red—have you ever seen purple?” Yvette said. “But Didi probably wouldn’t wear it.”

“Indeed, only those nobles in the capital who like to decorate themselves like colorful chickens would like such flashy things,” Agutina said.

In her memory, the group leader usually wore black or flesh-colored clothes, and occasionally wore a gorgeous long dress with white stockings on certain occasions.

Dinia was getting impatient and slammed her cup down. "Have you finished talking nonsense?"

Chapter 149 Principles, Misconceptions, Production and Life

The next morning, Ronan opened his eyes and sat up, looking at a pair of black stockings with dry, hard clumps hanging off the edge of the bed, a pair of tattered and torn black pantyhose, a pair of white pantyhose with holes in the crotch, and a pair of white stockings with dry, hard toes. The madness of the previous night began to replay in his mind.

After the first time, he sprayed it onto the black stockings. The second time, they started by stacking on top of each other, taking turns thrusting. They changed positions several times, and finally, he made Elena swallow it. The third time, they lay side by side with their legs raised, thrusting left and right a few times. Finally, he coaxed and tricked Alice into sucking it. Seeing her conflicted expression and inexperienced movements, Ronan couldn't hold back. She choked and spat out, coughing for a long time. The fourth time, only Elena could still move. This round was the most violent. The black stockings were torn. Finally, Ronan grabbed Alice's small feet, tore the white stockings, and rubbed them directly between her soles and the stockings, spraying it all into the stockings.

The two woke up at noon. After lunch, Ronan began to give them their business.

Elena's mission was already explained yesterday afternoon, so there's no need to repeat it.

"Mainly Alice's side," Ronan said. "Have a few more people in the inspection team keep an eye on the heads of the various collective farms."

"Are you worried they won't handle it well?" Alice asked.

“There are so many young people, and this is the first time we’ve had a collective farm. Mistakes are almost inevitable, and that’s not your business,” Ronan said. “You need to keep an eye on them. It’s fine if they use their positions to seek personal gain, but if they embezzle public funds or disrupt the operation of the collective farm, investigate them secretly. If they’re colluding with landlords to secretly control the collective farm, don’t arrest them, just have someone kill them.”

Abuse of power for personal gain can be tolerated; corruption will be dealt with internally; collusion with landlords will be punished without exception.

These are the principles that Ronan set for the collective farm project.

“The civil servants who go to the collective farms are all old immigrants, while the landlords are all new immigrants. They shouldn’t be colluding, right? Even if they were, they wouldn’t dare to openly sabotage things.”

Alice asked in a low voice.

New immigrants have been oppressing old immigrants for decades.

“Hatred is nothing in the face of interests, and besides, the old immigrants who can pass the civil service exam are not the kind who are directly oppressed.” Ronan said, his tone becoming a little heavier. “As for collusion, that’s too simple. The best way to undermine a policy is not to do evil, but to implement it 200%.”

"Keep a close eye on those people. If anything goes wrong, you'll only be dismissed."

“Yes,” Alice replied.

Ronan stopped wasting words; some things only need to be said once.

Alice is capable, but she has a poor eye for people and sometimes doesn't think about the worst in people.

In summary, Alice is not well-suited for her current position, but loyalty is the most important criterion for this supervisory role.

Ronan has finished giving his instructions.

Meanwhile, Carl arrived at the collective farm.

He was quite surprised to see a group of farmers queuing for lunch. Queuing wasn't unusual; many workshops had queues for meals. What surprised him was that the farmers were eating lunch.

Carl knew that it was not the season for planting or harvesting wheat, not the busy time for farming. When it was not the busy time for farming, farmers would usually eat a little in the morning and a little more in the evening, and the day would be over.

Karl was proud to know this, because many nobles didn't even know what wheat looked like, let alone the planting and harvesting seasons.

Curious Karl watched from a distance, but before long, a person in charge of maintaining order walked towards him and asked, "Sir, do you have any instructions?"

Although he didn't know Karl, this person could tell at a glance that Karl was a nobleman.

"Nothing, I'm just looking around," Carl replied casually.

“Okay, please follow me.” Karl’s “just looking around” was interpreted as “inspection”.

The person in charge of maintaining order led Carl to the open-air canteen.

Carl glanced at the food and discovered another surprise: there was wasabi mayonnaise.

"Wasabi mayonnaise?" Carl asked.

"Yes, but we produce very little mustard here, so this is specially supplied to the production team that had the highest labor score last week," the person in charge replied with a fawning expression.

“What is a production team?” Karl asked.

The person in charge was in a bind. Did the leader not know about the production team? But then he realized that the leader wasn't unaware of it; he was testing him.

“A production team is a group of people drawn from different areas. Among them are people who do different jobs, and those who do the same job are in the same work group. After the work group completes its work, it divides the score equally according to its performance.”

The person in charge replied that he was not a civil servant and could only barely read a few words. At first, he was confused by this system, but after a while, he roughly understood it.

"As for why we do this, I'm not entirely sure either," the person in charge replied. He was merely an executor under an executor.

The source of all this is, of course, Ronan.

There are many kinds of work in a collective farm. If there are only production teams, one of which specializes in engineering and the other in farming, the farmers and the engineers will not have the same total score. If the total score is different, it will be unfair, and people will oppose collective labor.

Therefore, a production team consists of people doing various jobs, such as farming and manual labor. They do not work together, but rather with their team members. However, when it comes to receiving materials based on work points, they calculate together with their team members.

In this way, Ronan broke up the original village community structure on the one hand, and on the other hand, forced these people to integrate into the collective and work hard.

Because if you get fewer work points when you come back, the people in your production team can only blame you. They can't find anyone else to blame, since the people in your work group are in other production teams. So you have to be serious when you work and force yourself to work hard with the people in your group, otherwise you will face the blame from the same team.

To avoid a situation of "eating from the same pot" (a system where everyone works together without sharing resources), Ronan made a sweeping decision to forcibly separate production from living arrangements: you work with your team members and live with them.

If work groups compete with each other, and production teams compete with each other, and everyone gets involved, wouldn't life get better?

"And another thing, isn't it the busy farming season now? Why are we eating at this time?" Karl asked the question that had initially piqued his curiosity.

"Because we need to grow kiwis. Although kiwis don't require much care, are valuable, and don't have many requirements for the soil, so they can be grown on hillsides, it is quite labor-intensive. Since it is labor-intensive, of course we need to eat our fill."

The person in charge explained.

Carl finally understood. "By the way, may I try some of this mayonnaise?"

"Of course," the person in charge replied, quickly preparing a clean plate, slicing some cucumber, and drizzling it with mayonnaise.

Chapter 150: Different Yet Same, Taking Too Big a Step Can Lead to Trouble

Carl tasted it and could only say it was edible. But then he thought that what was edible to him must have been an unparalleled delicacy for the farmer.

Soon, the real leader of the Beta Collective Farm arrived. He was Rogers, a minor civil servant under the Agricultural Bureau of the New Sea City Hall. Of course, to the temporary workers and farmers here, he was already a very important official, equivalent to a landlord of a small estate in the past.

Rogers introduced himself and then inquired about Carl's identity. He could tell that Carl was a nobleman, and a nobleman of extraordinary birth. But it was precisely because Carl was an extraordinary nobleman that his eyes held a hint of suspicion. This was because Newsea City, or rather the original seven special cities, did not have any respectable nobles. The few larger nobles with higher titles had either been wiped out ten years ago, or were like Ronan, who had rebelled and voluntarily applied to have their noble status revoked.

Carl hesitated. If he really revealed his identity, the other party probably wouldn't know, and he didn't want to reveal his identity.

After thinking for a moment, Carl said, "My name is Carl, and I'm a friend of Ronan's."

Upon hearing this, Rogers' voice trembled. "So it's you. What can I do for you?"

There's no way around it; Ronan's name has too much of a deterrent effect on the civil servants of Xinhai City. After these past few months of chaotic events, anyone with common sense has figured it out. They know that Ronan is a cunning and ruthless person. If you try to outmaneuver him, you can't win. If you try to outsmart him, he'll just chop you up.

“I was just browsing,” Carl replied.

"What would you like to see?" Rogers asked obsequiously.

Carl was getting annoyed; he really had only come to take a casual look around. "You don't need to follow me."

"Okay, I'll roll right away." With that, Rogers rolled, and really rolled. He tripped and fell, rolling once on the ground.

Carl was caught in a dilemma, unsure whether to laugh or not. He had just thought this place was quite different from other places, but now he realized that in some ways they were not so different, such as the officials, who were all the same.

For the next few days, Carl stayed at Beta Farm, because he learned that the other farms were the same, so he settled down and carefully observed the farm.

At first he just watched, but later Carl started taking notes with paper and pen.

The more he recorded, the more excited he became, almost forgetting his original purpose for coming here; Dinya's image no longer appeared in his mind.

They worked together with people they didn't know before, and after the work, they returned to the production team's house and lived with the team members.

Everyone was full of energy, and it was hard to associate them with those dirty, ignorant, lazy, yet cunning farmers.

For example, in a small water conservancy irrigation project, there is a group that digs the soil, another group that builds the bricks, and different groups that do different tasks. They are not familiar with each other, but they can work together well and actively with just two or three people directing them. There is no need to whip them.

After it was all done, everyone went back to their own homes and went about their lives. People in one production team could take a bath every few days, and the different production teams took turns doing it.

Taking a bath is too much of a luxury for ordinary farmers, but a large public bathhouse can spread the cost and make bathing no longer a luxury.

This little thing alone was enough to greatly shock Karl.

Although he was born into a noble family, he was actually a progressive person who was ideologically close to the "retro" faction. The reason he was only close was that many retrogressives only talked about the church and the nobles' old and stinking scandals every day. They would openly oppose the church and constantly talk about overthrowing the nobles. The more radical ones would shout for the complete confiscation and liquidation of the church's land and property, the downgrading of noble titles, and that each son should get a share.

And to conclude, this will make the country strong and the people happy.

Bullshit, Carl thought that simply overthrowing the old order would only plunge the country into turmoil, and with a power vacuum, the next step would most likely be for a dictator and his henchmen to come to power.

Ironically, Karl also believed that the current church and nobility were terrible, and if things weren't changed, the country might really collapse during the next war. But he had no idea how to change them.

However, it was in this place called the Collective Farm that Carl found some inspiration.

It could even be described as a glimmer of hope.

In fact, at the same time, there was someone even more excited than him: Adrian, the current director of the New Sea City Agriculture Bureau. This former young military officer, a supporter of the second princess, and a proponent of the retro movement, looked at the thriving collective farm and seemed to see a bright future ahead.

In that bright future, everything will belong to His Majesty the Emperor. The Church and the nobility will completely lose their control over the grassroots. Cities will develop commerce and factories, and the nobles will make some money from it. The Church will be responsible for mediating civil disputes, and the countryside will be like the collective farms we see today.

These collective laborers, with their disciplined farmers, would all be excellent soldiers if they were well-fed. With such good soldiers, there would be no need for the minor nobles who bore military obligations.

Several times, Adrian suggested to Ronan that they should simply stop dividing the collective farms into so many and merge them into a few, so that human and material resources could be more concentrated and efficient.

He was eager to achieve results and showcase them to others.

Unfortunately, Ronan disagreed, saying that taking too big a step could lead to trouble.

Not only that, but they also made a lot of excuses such as: Xinhai City is handling this as a special case; the Kingdom of Fas has its own national conditions; a small local achievement cannot explain the overall situation; the ancestral laws cannot be changed; and the laws of our great France are the best laws.

Adrian finally understood that Ronan was only interested in power and had no patriotism at all. But he couldn't understand why such an unpatriotic person could easily come up with, and even execute, methods that patriots like them could never even imagine.

Why? Why?

Sometimes he really wished he could dig out all the ideas in Ronan's head and put them into his own.

On the other hand, Carl didn't have that idea, but he really wanted to have a good talk with Ronan.

While these two were preoccupied with the collective farm, Ronan paid no attention to it. To him, the collective farm was nothing more than a tool for consolidating power, a political achievement for increasing tax revenue, and a base for providing raw materials for products. So as long as it could continue to operate, that was enough.

He was currently in the city hall lounge, eating snacks while looking at the progress reports on various projects at the magic school. The reports were so crudely written that civil engineers would weep and cost engineers would vomit blood on the spot, but it was better than nothing.

It's 3:30 PM, time to leave work.

The fact that people can leave work so early is because it is still the early days of agricultural capitalism. Although the government is not as idle as it was in feudal times, it does not have much daily work. In addition, transportation is not good these days, and most officials take at least an hour to get home by horse-drawn carriage.

Ronan had just left City Hall when he unexpectedly ran into Carl.

Chapter 151 "Diligence", Factions, Sparks of Hope

In the carriage, after a few greetings, Ronan casually asked about Carl's situation these past few days. Carl sighed before revealing that he had been at the collective farm for the past few days.

"Oh, interesting," Ronan replied half-heartedly.

“Aren’t you curious about what happened?” Carl asked.

“Not curious,” Ronan replied.

“To be honest, I was amazed,” Carl said. “I’m not like those people who live on plantations but have never seen a farmer, but I’ve never seen farmers like those on a collective farm. How should I put it, they are incredibly hardworking.”

In Carl's view, this was the biggest difference between farmers on collective farms and farmers elsewhere.

"Oh." Ronan remained nonchalant, but to play along with his friend Carl, he added, "Who do you think is the most hardworking person?"

Ronan knew very well that the diligence Karl spoke of was the "diligence" defined by aristocratic young masters like himself, not the diligence of working people.

“Craftsmen,” Karl replied, “especially factory workers.”

“I think it’s small vendors who don’t own their means of production and whose income is limited. They can never be truly ‘hardworking,’ at least not in the way you think of them,” Ronan gave his answer. “Small vendors don’t have much capital, but they can’t be said to have none. Most of their shops are rented, which puts pressure on them. But as long as they work hard enough, their lives will always see a visible improvement.”

"Now the farmland belongs to their collective, so they have a little capital, just like small vendors. Farm tools, seeds, and other materials are all rented or bought with loans. They are under a lot of pressure, just like small vendors. They can't afford not to work hard. And when they work hard, their lives improve objectively. So they are very hardworking. It's that simple. There's nothing more to say."

Of course, it wasn't that simple. Ronan's words were just a casual remark, a way of expressing his intention not to delve deeper into the conversation.

How could a collective farm be so simple? Just the issue of arranging enough farm work is something that most people can't solve. If there isn't enough work for the farmers, what's the point of a collective farm?

For example, if some countries at certain times also implement collectivism in some mountain villages in a one-size-fits-all manner, the result will only be a joke. And because of the previous jokes, the collectivism in some good places was also abolished, which is a joke within a joke.

Those who say collectivism is about eating from the same pot are bad, and those who think collectivism is suitable for every place are stupid.

However, this statement is also a joke, because it is based on the premise of setting aside other factors, especially political factors, but all problems are inseparable from political factors.

"I think I understand now."

Carl said.

That's what they say, but Carl still felt that there were many profound things hidden in the small collective farm, but Ronan didn't seem to want to tell him.

Since Ronan didn't want to tell him, Karl also abandoned the idea of ​​asking further questions. It was not the behavior of a noble gentleman to pester his friend about something he didn't want to talk about.