Chapter 337: Imbalanced Demands

A few more teams came back after their daily missions as Kalli and Sanchez chatted about their plans for the city, and Kalli quickly learned that the sentiment among the new system users was very nearly universal.

Those who were willing to give a large portion of their income to their family members who had not advanced were feeling used, and those who had refused had mostly been disowned by their families, using the ones who did give in as an excuse and calling them selfish.

It was becoming a public health issue, in the mental health way.

Because of that, the general agreement was that they needed to do something about it, and the logical place to start was to find a way to get System Points to those who could not earn them themselves.

Even if they weren’t real points, an equivalent system where they could operate with the Points as if they were cash, would do well enough.

They just had to get Kalli on board, because most of the things people were demanding, that they couldn’t get on the ration cards, were items from the System Store. All the other essentials and most of the daily luxuries were available for purchase within the city.

"I swear it’s all just envy, but how do you tell a quarter million people to just get good?" Kalli complained.

Yara snorted with laughter, and Sanchez looked away, pretending that he wasn’t laughing at her earnest tone.

"I’m fairly certain that the phrasing matters. Instead of telling them they suck at life, perhaps suggest that they have simply missed an opportunity to advance their situation, and that they only need to look for the next one to get back on their feet?

That’s what my people always told debtors who we thought might still pay," Vinnie offered.

One of the newer members who had just walked in stared at them like they were all insane.

"What are we even talking about here? Who owes the Coordinator money?"

Vinnie laughed and pulled her forward. "Tell the coordinator how annoying it is to have your family mooching off you when they could have just worked harder to reach level zero themselves."

The young woman laughed. "I’m an orphan, actually. And was before all this. But I understand what you’re all talking about now. My boyfriend’s mom is always coming by with a list of demands that need to be purchased with points.

I think that the problem is that they see everyone earning, and they feel like they don’t need to live within their means anymore.

Like how my countrymen would insist that everyone who went to work overseas was actually making it rich. Only, we all secretly knew that they were actually busting their ass sixty hours a week just to send back what they did."

Kalli nodded. "Exactly. So, how do we fix it?"

The girl shrugged, "Who knows? Envy doesn’t just disappear because you tell it to, and giving them more only makes them think that they deserve even more than what they were getting before, as now there’s a subsidy, so everyone they leech off should have more disposable income."

"Well, that’s not helpful. I suppose the real answer is just to tell everyone to grow some balls and tell their relatives to handle their own finances. I know that some of the newly awakened are young enough that they’re still living at home, but most of the others are full on adults."

Yara giggled. "And what about us ladies?"

Kalli winked at her and cupped her own chest. "My balls are so large I had to move them to my chest. I don’t think that we’re lacking. If your Reggie had half the balls I do, he would walk bowlegged."

The crowd burst into laughter, while Reggie gave Kalli a betrayed look.

He had just walked into the room, how was he catching strays already?

"Alright, we will hold the status quo, and it will be up to everyone else to keep the new members motivated and working hard. If it really gets out of hand, we can set up an arbitration council.

We used to have one for workplace issues, and they were quite effective," Kalli noted.

Of course, everyone took that the wrong way.

Most of them assumed that she was from a mafia family, when she was actually talking about her old workplace. Though, there was significant overlap between the two.

And a certain chance that people would simply vanish after being sent to the arbitration council.

Now that she thought about it, Kalli realized that she likely wasn’t the best person to be deciding anything relating to the humanitarian treatment of citizens. If anything, she was probably the one leading the city of Marimgar toward a future filled with shady companies and corruption.

And that was what everyone thought that she meant when she said an "arbitration council". Not a corporate human resources council, but a shadow court that enforced order by the most efficient means possible.

For most, their minds had been stuck on survival for so long that it was as far as they were thinking.

The thoughts of soft and civilized treatment, or of the overly lenient courts in their home nations that only encouraged bad behaviour to continue, were far from their minds, and in the military sense, arbitration almost always meant either discharge or corporal punishment.

Since you couldn’t very well eject people from the last city on the planet, what did that leave them?

Nothing gentle.

There was only one thing that was absolutely off the table in their minds, and that was messing with the ration cards as punishment. Even if they were trading them or stealing others, theirs would not be altered.

It would set a precedent that starvation was an option, and that would only make things worse on a citywide scale.

The young woman who Vinnie had pulled forward raised her hand and began to speak, "Perhaps it’s time that we had a dedicated police force? That might make things look more official. Especially for the ones who are being pressured by family to turn over credits. Going to the police to sort things out is a great threat when people go too far, and it causes so much drama in a family that the risk of public shame usually keeps them in line."

Right, they could make a legitimate police force.

That had totally escaped the heroes from Marimgar Academy. Their families either never called them or were so powerful they simply bought them when there was an issue.