Chapter 3623

The harm of monopoly naturally goes without saying. Even without considering ordinary people, just for Lex, this model wasn't what he wanted.

As everyone knows, the larger the stall you spread, the more people get involved. Everyone has their own ideas and wants to fight for benefits for themselves and their interest groups.

For example, Metropolis's industries were already saturated. Lex wanted to expand production to other cities on the East Coast, but other cities also had their own interest groups; if your Luthor Group wanted to come, you naturally had to give us benefits.

This group of people didn't just want money. They also wanted a piece of the pie from the Luthor Group's expansion. Then naturally, they wanted management power, naturally wanted to nominate their own people among the shareholders, and for them to move up, someone had to move down. But no one was willing to move down.

Holding so many means of production but unable to invest in production and unable to make money, the shareholders weren't happy either. So many times, they would often agree to the unreasonable demands of regional interest groups just to be able to invest in production as soon as possible.

But once local interest groups grew big among the shareholders, they would naturally threaten the interests of the helmsman, Lex Luthor. If people just didn't listen to you, what could you do? Could you really dismantle factories in other places?

Even more terrible was that once the vassal kings grew big, not only could the fiefdom not be managed, but the Son of Heaven could also be threatened. Once the shareholders united to short Lex, he would probably only be able to step down and roll away. It wasn't impossible for the Luthor Group to change hands like this.

So although the state of the Luthor Group was much better than the Wei En Group, it was also in a state of being too big to fail. Lex also urgently needed power to intervene and break the situation.

But after all, he wasn't as anxious as Bruce, so he could wait—wait for the Wei En Group to be unable to hold on and be about to collapse; Bruce would naturally find a way. This time, he had waited for it.

However, Lex wasn't a lamp that saved oil. He was a human supremacist; he believed that although Brainiac's management and rule were good for most people, once he had a problem, it would be a devastating disaster.

To ensure safety, during these three years, he didn't stay on Earth and reset constantly, but stayed in the Battleworld, just to crack Brainiac's underlying protocol.

The underlying protocol for Brainiac actually wasn't anything very fatal. This thing couldn't destroy him, nor could it affect him through remote operation. It was just that as long as the underlying protocol wasn't removed, his behavior would be subject to certain restrictions.

But then again, Brainiac wasn't made by humans, and his underlying protocol wasn't written by humans either. So the restrictions in his underlying protocol were actually just obeying the original Kryptonian Council. And Krypton was destroyed, so this underlying protocol had no meaning.

Brainiac couldn't invade the council area of Krypton. Humans could go there to take refuge in times of need. But Lex clearly wanted more than this. He wanted to rewrite Brainiac's underlying protocol by cracking the underlying protocol.

This wasn't easy. Because rather than saying Brainiac was made by Kryptonians, it was better to say he was actually a miracle born from various accidents that far exceeded the level of artificial intelligence in the current universe. If Kryptonians were resurrected now, they definitely couldn't build a second one.

In short, for the Wei En Group and the Luthor Group, Brainiac came at quite the right time. The leaders of the two groups didn't feel it was unacceptable because their assets were confiscated.

This was actually because these two people, Bruce Wei En and Lex Luthor, weren't pigs on the wind. They really had some skills.

Those billionaires who jumped off buildings overnight because Brainiac arrived and abolished private ownership were mostly those who took advantage of the era. Either they were engaged in finance or they started by taking side paths.

Leaving aside the era background, they had no personal ability. Their success didn't come from their efforts and almost didn't shift with personal will. If you really talked about their actual level, they were barely qualified to be ordinary managers.

After abolishing private ownership, everyone could only guarantee their lives based on their personal labor ability. They had no ability, so their living standards naturally fell from heaven to hell.

And those who chose to accept reality were mostly like Bruce or Lex, at least relatively excellent in one aspect. Either they had the experience of starting from scratch to build a factory, or they understood technology, or at least they understood a bit of public opinion propaganda, and wouldn't switch to manual labor overnight. Their living standards were also guaranteed—living miserably is better than dying.

Lex and Bruce were also like this. Leaving aside the identity of the helmsmen of the two major groups, they were also top scientists. As long as they entered the laboratory, Brainiac would have to offer them up. They weren't extravagant and wasteful in their daily lives; for them personally, their living standards hadn't declined.

Plus, they weren't the kind of evil capitalists themselves, understanding that the masses were the main body of humanity, and their sense of responsibility for the future of humanity was greater than their desire to possess personal assets. So they didn't have any opinions.

Pamela also ordered a few dishes, eating them quite ravenously; it seemed she hadn't eaten well for the past few days while cleaning up in the laboratory. She was at least considered a scientist, had quite a few salary points, and added several dishes. Schiller and Billy also benefited.

"How is Wei En Manor?" Schiller asked while eating.

"They only kept the main hall of the manor plus the garden and fenced off this part. The rest were all divided up."

"That area isn't small either, right?"

"They have many people living there: Jason, Tim, Dick, and Raven, Selina and Aisha, plus Bruce and Alfred, a total of eight people. If Bruce and Selina have children in the future, the area might not be enough."

"That's true," Schiller thought for a moment and said, "You reminded me. Selina still has two psychological treatments left to do. She paid for them. I'll call her later to ask if she has any arrangements tomorrow."

"Christmas is coming soon, and the people from the Justice League are also returning one after another. They weren't on Earth, and many things weren't packed up, so they must be busy for a while. I might be grabbed to help by then."

"You really should help them. I don't even dare to imagine how many things there are to pack up at the Kent farm."

"Didn't you know? Reform in the countryside is different from the city. Especially those large farms in the central states, the model basically hasn't changed much. So Clark is actually the most relaxed among them because he can go home for the holidays."

Schiller thought about it and felt it was the same. The degree of mechanization of American agriculture was very high. Although a few helpers were needed during the busy farming season, there was no need at all to get too many people to farm. Most Americans didn't think the countryside was good, had no rural feelings at all, and wouldn't think about returning to the countryside to farm.

In this situation, the production model of large farms was the best, that is, a small group of people acted as farm owners, controlling machines to farm. Naturally, there was no need to fight landlords and divide land; at most, it was adjusting the types of planting according to the materials needed, rather than being dominated by the free market.

In fact, the planned control economic model was beneficial to American large farm owners. Because the things with the highest expenditure in the farm no longer needed to be borne by themselves. They didn't need to bear the risks brought by natural changes in weather: whatever you give me, I will plant, and whatever you let me raise, I will raise. Anyway, you have to manage my food. Compared to workers in towns, they were more like ruthless laborers.

In the past, American farm owners were actually not as wealthy and comfortable as many people imagined. First of all, the price of American agricultural machinery was very high; it was normal for an ordinary tractor to be 70,000 or 80,000 US dollars. If you added a series of harvesting and farming accessories, it would be at least 100,000.

And this thing was also very expensive to repair. A trip not only required labor costs and repair fees, but broken parts had to be bought by oneself, some had to be bought from other states, and shipping fees had to be added. One breakdown meant 10,000 dollars spent.

This led to their pressure also being very high. If you didn't plant those high-economic-value crops, you couldn't even recover the costs. If there was another natural disaster, it would be a year of working in vain.

Even more fatal was that the agricultural laws of each state were different. The tax and welfare subsidies for agriculture were also different, which all required professionals to handle, which was another large expense.

Many farm owners, in order to save this money, would let their children study similar majors, but only comprehensive private universities taught this major. To study at a private university, you had to pay at least 100,000 in tuition. Even if it became a student loan to be repaid slowly, it would be a lifetime of repayment.

In general, American farm owners were not poor, but what was valuable were their assets. If you talked about the liquid funds in their hands, they might not have as much as a white-collar worker working in the city. The labor intensity and pressure were also much greater than those in the city. Although they had land, production tools, and would hire people, they were far from being called capitalists.

After Brainiac arrived, the most critical reform was aimed at agricultural production tools. He wouldn't consider problems like the price of agricultural machinery and would distribute them directly according to demand.

He would calculate all the things needed for the highest production efficiency of a certain farm or a certain piece of land, and then send the things directly over; you just follow the instructions. As long as there were no major problems in execution and no very large changes in weather, the output would definitely be stable.

This could be said to help farm owners avoid all pressure and risks. If any problem occurred, it was also because Brainiac's plan wasn't good or luck wasn't good, and it couldn't be blamed on them. They didn't need to be responsible for this either.

Moreover, the allocation of survival resources also had a share for them, but it wasn't like cooking directly in the city, but distributing grain, vegetables, meat, and the like according to the number of people, and doing it yourself.

In short, Brainiac became the biggest farm owner on Earth, and the original farm owners all became his employees, only needing to punch in to work on time every day, without having to be responsible for their own profits and losses.

Plus measures like free education, various labor benefits, and living space control were all real benefits to rural people, which instead made farm owners the group that supported Brainiac the most—what is called "Make America Great Again"?

And speaking of agriculture, one had to mention Mexico.

In fact, before Brainiac arrived, the international mainstream view was: although the Mexican Revolution had achieved phased results, with the disintegration of the Revolutionary Army in Guadalajara, the revolution had basically been declared a failure.

Despite this, all countries also acknowledged the important role of this revolution in the historical significance of Mexico and the international communist movement. Even just for the survival status of the Mexican people, there had been some changes.

If one wanted to talk about failure, in fact, Oliver's personal limitations or the limitations of the Mexican Revolutionary Army weren't the key. The key was that the degree of Mexico's industrialization and modernization was really too low, and the fact that the revolutionary conditions weren't mature at all was the main reason for the failure.

(End of this chapter)