Grrl Power #840 – Loopholio
I think Maxima ordered Steak Oscar, except instead of Bearnaise sauce, it came with a fancy Hollandaise sauce, and also a side of scallops. Because you know what goes well with Hollandaise sauce? Literally almost anything. It's just a fuckton of butter with egg yolk and a drizzle of lemon. I'll eat god damned toast slathered in Hollandaise sauce. Fortunately, I only make Hollandaise sauce 2 or 3 times a year, because it's just a fuckton of butter, and I want to live past 55.
One of the reason Deus's Galytn experiment is working as well as it is, is because, to the best of my knowledge, no impoverished, out of the way country like them has ever had a crazy billionaire come in and just start throwing a ton of money at a bunch of core problems, and do it responsibly. Sure, there have been plenty of government changeups in various third world countries, and every once in a while the new dictator will actually go full ham on infrastructure or something, but... as often as not, they're involved in industrial grade drug trade to fund it, or are genociding some religious minority on the side, so whatever good they're doing gets overshadowed by the other stuff.
Deus legitimately has no other agenda than improving the country... yes, so he can sort of become the Weyland Yutani of Galytn. I don't mean that in the sense that he's repeatedly fucking himself with ill advised bio-weapon experiments, I mean it like he is THE employer in the country. He understands that a comfortable and well educated middle class is one of the best engines for economic growth. A great deal of that economic growth goes back into his coffers, yes, but he's continuing to improve the country to continue to improve his return. But then he goes and says something like on this page, about annexing nearby cities in order to improve the lives of the citizens there. It's suspiciously like he actually cares about the quality of life of people under his rule." Which in itself seems suspicious.
A billion dollars in America will buy you a bit of highway and a decent sized mixmaster. Imagine how much roadwork you cold get done in BFE with that kind of cash. Deus is a big believer in public transit though. He's built some roads but also a lot of railway. He thinks that the infrastructure cost of maintaining a few hundred million miles of roads and highways can eventually become prohibitive, not to mention the burden of putting the cost of car ownership on up and coming but still poor citizens. Plus... if you sell someone a car, you make X dollars from them, and a well maintained car can be run for a decade or two. If you sell someone a bus or rail pass every week for the rest of their lives, it provides a steady and predictable source of revenue.
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