Chapter 893: Population Factors, Scamming for Funding

Even if the threshold to become a Mage is very low, those with the potential for further advanced study are, after all, a minority; this is much like Xia Duo's hometown.

It looks like university students are everywhere, their numbers so flooded that nobody wants them anywhere, but once you check, you find the undergraduate rate is actually only 4%!

And in this world, it is hard to say if Spellcasters make up even 4% of the population, let alone Arcanists.

According to Xia Duo's personal experience and the observations of the many Apprentices and Mages at the Tower of Time, one can actually view anyone before becoming an Arcanist as a Middle School student.

Only by becoming an Arcanist is one equivalent to having entered university, and this process requires many years of study and advanced training.

Even for Xia Duo, with all sorts of conveniences and the advanced learning methods brought from Earth, it still took at least seven years to become an Arcanist (counting the time in the Projection Plane).

Therefore, as for the actual proportion of Arcanists, let alone reaching four percent of the population, even if it were only one percent, Xia Duo would be smiling.

If it were one percent, that would mean that even with the current population, Daxia Territory plus Savile Territory could produce over 600 Arcanists.

What kind of concept is this? Perhaps the total number of all Arcanists in Netheril today doesn't even add up to that much!

Moreover, modern education on Earth has the prerequisite of huge investment, but here, in the current Savile Territory and Daxia Territory, it is simply impossible to have all the subjects stop production to study all at once, and to continue this training for many years.

Wanting leapfrog development is simply not feasible.

Of course, to the Netherese, these concepts and actions of Xia Duo's might already be considered definitive leapfrog development.

But in his own view, this is merely steady, step-by-step progress guided by advanced theory, and is far from being called leapfrog.

Since one cannot leap, one has no choice but to look for opportunities in the population; and from a long-term perspective, population is also an invisible condition that any civilization with limited individual Wisdom cannot ultimately bypass.

This is just like the core industrial population on Earth; before Xia Duo transmigrated, maintaining a complete and relatively perfect industrial system required tens of millions of core industrial workers.

And that is just the industrial population; if you count other industries, the number is even higher.

Basically, countries with a total population of less than 50 million don't even have a perfect modern industrial foundation, let alone development; they can only pin their hopes on some niche technologies, attempting to occupy a place in the future.

But clearly, they cannot be the protagonists of the future.

Because what they can develop, populous nations can also develop, and even if they are slightly behind, they can catch up very quickly.

Xia Duo has even heard of a theory that says if one wants to trigger the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the required core industrial population will be counted in the hundreds of millions.

At the same time, as disciplines become more and more subdivided in the future, the demand for scientific research personnel will also increase.

The game regarding the future has always been played by big countries, while small countries just cheer; here, "big" and "small" in modern Earth society can basically also refer to population size.

And in this real world of Magic, perhaps the essence of the world is different from the Universe where Earth is located, but the laws of development can also be borrowed from one another.

Perhaps the gods of this world possess infinite Wisdom, but on the road to becoming a god, individual Wisdom is always not as strong as the collective.

Furthermore, Xia Duo simply does not believe that gods possess infinite Wisdom; if they did, that would be omniscience, and omniscience can deduce omnipotence.

But clearly, the gods are not omniscient and omnipotent.

As long as there is a limit, it must be 1+1=2; listening to all sides leads to clarity, while listening to one side leads to darkness. The ancients of Earth had such Wisdom, so how could Xia Duo be so arrogant as to think that the Wisdom of one person, including himself, is enough to surpass the collective of many others!

Sometimes it is fine to joke around, but when thinking seriously about future development plans in the solitude of one's heart, to still think that way would be foolish.

……

Walking to the entrance of the Material Department, Xia Duo had already determined in his mind the basic policy for comprehensively introducing a new population; of course, the specific implementation steps would need to be considered in the long term.

Not only does he need to listen to the suggestions of experienced people from various fields, but he also needs to discuss it with Niya; it is not something he can just decide on a whim here.

Entering the Material Department, Saixili quickly came up to greet him, appearing to have been waiting here for a long time, "My Lord, there is something I feel is very necessary to mention."

"Hmm?"

Xia Duo scrutinized Saixili slightly, but the other party's formulaic expression made it hard for him to capture any information, so he bypassed her, came to a chair inside, sat down, and said:

"What is it? I happen to have something to find you about as well; you speak first!"

"Wait a moment."

Saixili turned around, rummaged through a stack of loose Parchment Documents on the desk, brought them to Xia Duo, and then said:

"It is like this: in the month you were away, the Tilake Research Lab applied for a large amount of materials. Of course, I know those were mainly for manufacturing Communication Magic Tools, and they have already been approved, but if this continues long-term, the Tower of Time will once again face a situation of material scarcity!

"Additionally, after the implementation of the 'Tower of Time Research Lab Management Regulations', those Intermediate Mages found it difficult to cut corners on outsourced tasks, so they all began to imitate Tilake, starting new research topics to apply for materials from me, but the vast majority of the materials were wasted or became their private property."

Speaking to the end, the formulaic expression was finally gone from Saixili's face, replaced by some anger; she seemed very dissatisfied with the actions of those Intermediate Mages.

While listening, Xia Duo flipped through the Documents on the table; they were all application records, and the most numerous were, of course, from the Tilake Research Lab.

Although Communication Magic Tools can now be mass-produced and have been handed over to the Magic Technician Office for production, the Magic Technician Office is equivalent to an outsourced factory and requires orders from various Research Labs.

Communication Magic Tools are considered products of the Tilake Research Lab; of course, when calculating the split, the Tower of Time takes the lion's share, as both the Spell and the funding were provided by the Tower of Time.

But nominally, the materials for the Communication Magic Tools at the Magic Technician Office still need to be applied for by the Tilake Research Lab, which is considered a normal process.

After all, proceduralization, standardization, and institutionalization, making duties and powers clear, have always been a keynote Xia Duo has deliberately emphasized during the process of the Tower of Time's transformation.

Only in this way is it more conducive to the Tower of Time's transformation into a highly ordered modern organization.

……

The material applications from the Tilake Research Lab, besides those used for producing Communication Magic Tools, also included materials to maintain the normal operation of the Research Lab.

Xia Duo recalled the application quantities and found that there was not much change from the numbers they had applied for previously; it seems the Tilake Research Lab has always been in a stable state.

And tucked under the Documents applied for by the Tilake Research Lab was an application Document from the Leonard Research Lab that Saixili had not mentioned just now.