Redesigning the Outdated Social System Once More

[Core Room]

"Given that society itself runs on this sort of system, and given that this dungeon is developing farmland on a grand scale and gathering settlers, the pioneers naturally assume they'll be granted fields of their own."

"So if, for the sake of the future, we were to attempt something like a large-scale, state-run collective farm…"

"There would be a one-hundred-percent chance of an uprising."

"One hundred…"

"What's more, an uprising against an existing governing body such as a Daikan is basically a collective demonstration. They don't carry weapons; they brandish farm tools. But in this dungeon's case, there's a danger the uprising would come to take our heads. For all the talk of separating soldier from farmer and confiscating swords, the farming villages are awash in weapons, and this dungeon, too, has had a great many weapons brought into it, from swords and spears to bows and firearms. If they had no owner, the dungeon's functions could seize them, but…"

What is forbidden in this world is publicly bearing a surname, and carrying weapons about. Incidentally, in an otherworld where the Second World War never happened, firearms had been all but eradicated, yet swords were everywhere.

"It's the same as an adventurer bringing weapons in to clear a dungeon, then. Even if we barricaded ourselves in the Core Room, the dungeon can't be maintained if the residents up and flee."

The fault for making it that kind of dungeon lay with the Master and Marie, of course.

"And since land policy is directly bound up with the family system, with smallholder management and monogamous small families (not the nuclear family, but the stem family) as the foundation, I've concluded it would be reckless to seize on this being a brand-new society and introduce some revolutionary family system, or to abolish the 'family' altogether."

Had this been the development of the American West, the foundation would have been smallholder management and the monogamous nuclear family.

"In the end, so long as the residents are people from this vicinity, the institutions will be dragged along by this vicinity, too. Is that it."

"Just so. Which is why, even if we cast about for some superior institution, we won't arrive at a good result. Better to take a clean-cut approach, like following America's Homestead Act: live here five years and ownership of the land is recognized. Something like that."

"That's a pretty big plot of land, isn't it."

"One parcel is 160 acres, 65 hectares. But with labor-intensive rice cultivation, 65 hectares would require not just horses but a tractor, so however much we make the paddies into dungeon structures, the scale we can reach is constrained."

"So one or two hectares of farmland is about the most we can manage. And there's no prospect of a tractor."

"If we make the paddies themselves dungeon structures, the upkeep is greatly reduced, so we could go a bit larger. Even so, it would be convenient if there happened to be a farm-machinery factory dungeon, but I wouldn't count on it. And with a factory that isn't a dungeon, we run into the problem of not being able to obtain parts. To build them ourselves, we have no industrial base at all right now, so it would probably take years on the order of decades and factory workers on the order of a hundred thousand."

"Supposing the factory workers number a million, what's the total population?"

"For an industrial nation with thirty percent in manufacturing and a labor-force participation rate of fifty percent, the population would be 6.7 million. At 6.7 million koku, even on inferior fields yielding one koku per tan, that's 6.7 million tan, or 670,000 chō, which fits within a million chōbu."

"Marie-san, I'm starting to feel like this might actually work. But for the time being, it's surest to just hand out one or two chō apiece in a way everyone can understand. That way the settlers won't go talking about uprisings."

"Since this is a dungeon-city, it can be maintained even with the annual rice tax set on the low side. We won't be running a misgovernment, and so long as the tax is low, people don't tend to complain much."

In the Edo period, where decent governance was in place, the tax rate was nominally four to six tenths, with the second-crop wheat, vegetables, and the like left untaxed. Incidentally, in trade-, industry-, and cash-crop-centered regions like Wajima or Kishiwada, the nominal tax rate was set at nine to the lord, one to the people, so the commoners bought rice to pay their tax in kind.

"A knight order needs retainers, too, and granting fiefs is the easier path, but for ordinary samurai paid in stipend rice, including payments to merchants and the like, what sort of tax rate would we need?"

"At first the fields will likely yield only about one koku per tan, the rate of an inferior field, so when all's said and done it'll come to four to the lord, six to the people. But that lacks any drawing power. We'll have to think of some income source besides the tax, such as fuel books or beer."

"Calculating and apportioning the tax sounds like a hassle. Residential plots, for instance, don't actually yield any harvest."

"Oh, we don't need any of that. If we calculate the tax per village and toss the whole job to them, the village gathers up its tax and pays it on its own. Village officials are decided by the farmers' ballots, that is, by election, so we don't even need to appoint them. Put the other way, if the government sticks its nose in there…"

"An uprising, you mean."

This is exactly what the uprisings against the Land Tax Reform were.

"Leave it be and they'll govern themselves of their own accord, so in that sense it's easy. We will need to mediate, though, if villages get into a quarrel with one another."