Chapter 1029 - Sticking To Ones Principles (1/2)

”Enriching or aimless?” Ren Xiaosu frowned and said, ”We're facing a food shortage crisis, so there's no time to think about all that.”

Wang Yuexi said, ”That was why I stopped Ms. Zhou. It's not because I want to throw away the potatoes, but because I hope Future Commander will give the order to sell them at parity prices to stabilize the market and not give them out to the stronghold residents for free. Not everyone is that ambitious. When they realize they can survive without putting in any hard work, many people will become utterly complacent.”

Ren Xiaosu thought for a moment and said, ”If it were me, I would go and do something more meaningful if I didn't have to worry about having enough to eat and wear.”

”Future Commander, that's you, but there will always be a portion of people in society who are prone to laziness.” Wang Yuexi said in seriousness, ”Why are there able beggars in the stronghold? In this era of hardship, why do some young people still laze around at home while their parents work to support them? There aren't many people who are truly motivated and have a sense of self-control. The people who play mahjong all night long will only leave the table if they still need to work to survive. If they can continue sitting at the mahjong table without doing anything else, they might as well be useless. Of course there's nothing wrong with always playing, but what if it's playing for a month or two, or what about a year or two?”

Wang Yuexi continued, ”Perhaps I can joke that as long as you don't need me to work, I can carry on playing as happily as I like. But is that really the case? It's not! Future Commander, I just hope these potatoes can be sold at a stable parity price. I'm not trying to devalue Ms. Zhou's efforts. Besides, it's only right to set a threshold when providing relief in times of crisis.”

Ren Xiaosu nodded. ”Mhm, we'll do as you say then.”

There was no need to discuss whether Wang Yuexi's thinking was correct or not, nor the long-term and short-term considerations. For Wang Yuexi to step forward and block Zhou Yingxue, the black market's mafia boss and the future commander's trusted aide, it showed that he was a person with principles and courage.

Moreover, the other party was not extreme with his ideology either. He had only requested to sell the potatoes at parity price, so Ren Xiaosu had no reason to reject him.

He also agreed with what Wang Yuexi had said about setting a threshold when offering relief. He had read a book that said that a long time ago, there were cases of sand being added into sacks of rice used to relieve disaster victims. Was this done on purpose to annoy the victims? No. The truly starving victims would not care if there was sand in the rice. Instead, it would avert those who were not truly hungry from taking advantage of the victims if they saw there was sand mixed in.

Recently, Ren Xiaosu also found out about an interesting anecdote regarding Wang Yuexi.

Currently, there were a lot of immigrants in Stronghold 144, including some refugees and poor people from the Central Plains. As a result, a lot of them did not have the money to buy or rent a place, so they ended up sleeping on the streets.

Then the Policy Research Office led by Wang Yuexi drafted a relief program to build some cheap houses to rent out to these immigrants.

But when Wang Yuexi was carrying out this project, he specifically requested that there be no dedicated bathrooms in the rental houses. It had to be a shared bathroom serving more than a dozen households, and even the toilet had to be the squat type.

At the beginning, many people in the stronghold criticized Wang Yuexi, saying he was a really terrible person and that what he did was totally inhumane.

Later on, everyone realized that those who criticized Wang Yuexi were all people who wanted to abuse the rental housing program. Although they did not necessarily need the cheap houses, they wanted to move in and take advantage of the stronghold's financial support.

At a time like this, the benefits of having a shared bathroom and not a dedicated one would emerge. That was because it was good enough for those who had been forced to sleep in the streets to have a place to stay, so why would they care whether the bathroom was shared or dedicated?

To be honest, Wang Yuexi really had his own way of governance.