CHAPTER 293: CHAPTER 212: IT’S SHINING GOLD_2

"That kind of vote will never pass." Harano had thought about this issue long before, and replied casually, "Right now, on major issues, a two-thirds majority is required for approval. If a policy is favorable to more than two-thirds of the people, then no matter how much the remaining one-third stir things up, it still won’t pass, and all we have to do is stand on the same side as the majority."

He paused, then immediately added, "The dissatisfied one-third won’t be dissatisfied with us; their discontent should be directed at the other two-thirds."

Ah Man had really never considered the issue from this angle before. She thought it made some sense and hesitated, saying, "Then this time..."

"This time is a special case. Right now, that group of assembly members still doesn’t know how to make demands or how to hold a vote." Harano shook his head and said, "In theory, those farmer representatives shouldn’t support Yoshiziro and his group. If Endo and the others want to be lazy and just restore the ironware prices directly, then it’s the people behind them who’ll be unhappy—their seats as assembly members will be in jeopardy."

Ah Man pondered, "So, you’re saying if people like Yoshiziro pop up in the future, this kind of thing won’t happen again? Whether they’re doomed or not, they’ll still die? What kind of bullshit parliament is this—other than shifting the target of discontent, it’s useless?"

Harano shook his head. "That’s not it. With this channel, they might still suffer some losses—after all, the general trend can’t give way for them—but they’ll very likely survive. Even if they can’t stop the policy, they can ask to exempt some loans, add new ones, demand government subsidies, or get preferential government orders.

And if I were an assembly member from another sector, just to make sure I survive the next harsh winter, I’d choose to support them. That way, they can avoid going out of business and make it through this winter."

Yeah, to mobilize the Wanjin Army for the sake of some run-of-the-mill ironware produced by twenty-odd small workshops is actually a loss—it’s not as cost-effective as just pinching your nose and giving them special subsidies to keep them afloat for a year or two. But for the sake of letting these seedlings grow, to expand the market and reduce reliance on Atsuta Port, to demonstrate the value of the assembly, and as a way to train the Navy, Harano was willing to launch this "sales expedition"—he wasn’t actually planning to go down that route, much less planning to release some monstrous creature.

Setting up an assembly (it really shouldn’t be called that, but if he uses another name and writes about it when he returns to the present, the manuscript will be up for review), is just to ensure Wanjin’s internal unity, and to let Wanjin truly become a nation.

As long as the assembly succeeds, in a sense, Wanjin will belong to everyone. If Oda Nobunaga or some other Daimyo bigwig invades, knocking him down alone is useless; the entire Wanjin will spontaneously rise up against and attack them—there might even be a grand scene of masses of civilians heading to the battlefield with weapons.

By then, Wanjin will actually have a foundation for long-term survival. It won’t be born because of him alone, nor will it perish when he is gone.

......

Of course, just a few words aren’t enough to clarify the true benefit of an "assembly"—this thing is extensive enough to sustain a whole academic field’s worth of PhDs—but Ah Man basically got the gist.

She had long thought that with Harano’s brains, he couldn’t possibly just be blundering around. Now, it proved to be the case. No matter how much this guy seemed to mess around, if you looked back later, his so-called "messing" usually had some use.

But as the "Nozawa family’s number one smart person," she didn’t want to praise Harano too much, so she sighed and said, "Alright, it looks like this assembly of yours is just barely okay. It’s just that we’ll have a bunch of people bossing us around from now on, making a racket all the time, crying and fussing—it might be kind of annoying, but... I’ll stop nagging you about it."

Harano smiled and said dismissively, "If there’s trouble, it’s Endo and the others’ trouble. If they can handle the assembly and keep most Wanjin people happy, they’re good officials and can stay in their posts. If they can’t handle the assembly and leave most Wanjin people dissatisfied, then they should step aside... Don’t worry, there’s never a shortage of smart people. Wanjin won’t be doomed just because they leave; there’s plenty who want to be officials."

This was rather blunt—he would only say it to Ah Man, and after hearing it, she didn’t care. Her only family was Harano, Ah Qing, and old Izumi Hichiji; she couldn’t care less about anyone else’s fate.

She didn’t plan to comment any further, and finally just asked, "Our family’s power won’t be affected, right? They won’t get too big, will they?"

"No, the army will always be in our hands." Although Harano called this setup an "assembly," that was out of necessity. It’s not the same as an assembly in Western politics. Even the membership quota for assembly representatives was ultimately decided by him— the assembly could vote on whether to admit a new sector or region, but whether that seat actually existed, he had the final say. Only after that could the new group negotiate how to choose ’assembly members.’

Anyway, it’s all pretty complicated—politics is the business of making simple things complicated. He was fumbling through trial and error, patching things together, trying to shape Wanjin into a new country.

But he had a big advantage: he held the Wanjin Army in his hands. Even if the Equality Order comes into effect, the whole of Wanjin still habitually pledges loyalty to him. Even if some of his policies fail, no one dares hold him accountable. He could just tear it down and try again, coming up with a new approach for another experiment.