Volume 2 Chapter 141 - Why is it this poor? (1/2)
As the horse carriage kept moving forward, Xu Yi found more and more. The Stantine Duchy was very rich in terms of natural resources.
Not only were there various kinds of fruit trees that bloomed around them like they were worthless, Xu Yi looked into the distance to find large cacao trees and coffee trees. But more importantly, there were even rubber trees blotting out the sky!
Seeing this scene, Xu Yi didn’t even have time to be surprised at the various kinds of tropical plants that grew in the Stantine Duchy just like one earth, he was just completely shocked.
With such rich natural resources, why was the Stantine Duchy this poor?
Before coming to the Stantine Duchy, whether it was from the books of the continents, or from people who had described the Stantine Duchy, or even if the descriptions of Anklo who came from the Stantine Duchy, they all gave the same information. The Stantine Duchy was a very weak country that was very poor.
Before coming to the Stantine Duchy, Xu Yi was already prepared to see a country that was wrecked by hurricanes and tsunamis all year round.
But he never would have thought that the Stantine Duchy’s land was not only not barren, it was even more bountiful than he thought.
With these rich natural resources, it was like a precious gift to them from the heavens!
If this was placed on earth, this country might not be rich, but they would be described as broke.
But on the way here, Xu Yi saw the scattered Stantine Duchy citizens through the window of his carriage. Based on the tattered clothes they wore and the wrecked log cabins they lived in, their lives were indeed quite bad.
This really was something that Xu Yi couldn’t understand.
With this kind of natural resources, even though there was a limit to the Sines Continent’s transportation network and they couldn’t deliver these resources out to make money, the citizens shouldn’t be in such a destitute condition, right?
With these doubts, Xu Yi began to shift his attention from the rich plants outside to the people of the Stantine Duchy.
When the carriage finally came to a place that was like a town, Xu Yi jumped out and looked over the scene in front of him, as he finally understood.
Although the Stantine Duchy citizens had rich natural resources, perhaps it was because they had rich natural resources that they became this poor.
This reason sounded very strange, but it was a very suitable analysis.
When he was still back on earth, Xu Yi had gone to many tropical and subtropical countries when he went on inspections. For example, he had gone to the southern China peninsula and the Indian peninsula many times before.
In those countries, Xu Yi had found a similarity which was that those people were very lazy.
For the same construction project, perhaps it would only take a company in China two to three months to complete, but in those countries, not mentioning the low efficiency of the governments, just with the laziness of the workers themselves, it was enough to stall the project for half a year without finishing it.
Because of this problem, there were many managers who had secretly complained to Xu Yi.
Clearly they only had to learn how to use a few machines and they would just work by sitting inside and controlling those machines, but those workers refused to learn how to do the most basic work.
And if you made them do physical labour, they would slack off.
Because the efficiency of those workers were very low and delayed the progress of the project, there were many companies who had directly spent a large amount to recruit large numbers of workers from China.
Even if their contracts with the local government meant that they had to recruit a certain amount of local workers, those companies would rather spend more money and just pay those workers for nothing, not relying on their efficiency at all.
Xu Yi thought of the complaints of those managers and the local conditions of those countries, comparing them to the scene in front of him before making this judgement.
The Stantine Duchy was this poor, but ignoring all other reasons, the most important reason was that the people were too lazy.
Looking in from the entrance of this town, although there were quite a few people, whether they were strolling on the streets, sitting in a corner, or sunbathing on the ground, each person gave off a lazy feeling.
It was like as long as there was nothing important to do, they definitely would not waste any energy doing anything.
Although there were a few stalls in the streets, most of the time they had no customers. The bosses of those stalls didn’t seem to care and didn’t waste energy calling out. They even went as far as covering their eyes and going to sleep!
Xu Yi thought about it and found that he could understand the thoughts of these normal people.
Perhaps on earth where one could say that all things are equal, normal people had hopes of climbing up the ladder.
But the society of the Sines Continent was very backwards with a deep rooted social class concept, so normal people would never think of going against nobles.