The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1015

For better or worse, Ves opened up his eyes to the dominant theory, or should he say ideology, that many human rulers and policymakers worshipped.

It sounded compelling. It looked as if it made sense. It had an enormous body of historical cases to back up its claims.

Yet... Ves felt very uneasy how it casually brushed aside the very destructive cost of adhering to the theory’s recommendations. Any leader who wanted their states to retain their strength and war readiness and avoid sliding into peaceful indolence and hedonism would likely wanted to manufacture a war of some sorts!

At this moment, Ves could not offer any strong arguments against the Societal Vitality Theory. As much as the wars, deaths and destruction enormously consumed the human race, he also had to admit that it did a decent job keeping them strong and alert. This placed the human civilization in a much better state against external enemies such as the alien races.

However, the most pernicious cost was that much of humanity began to see themselves as enemies.

Ever since humanity turned their animosity and their weapons against themselves, the killing of humans became normalized. Although the Age of Conquest saw this norm being pushed too far, even during the Age of Mechs it became completely acceptable to kill fellow humans in the pursuit of power and wealth.

The rulers didn’t care. Mainly the lower classes suffered the brunt of following this ideology. Those who ruled from the top sat in their ivory towers directing more pigs to the slaughter.

In their drive to invigorate their state and raise its vitality, they needed to keep birth rates high and give their citizens a sense of urgency in their lives. Yet to do so would also lead to overpopulation, which was an extremely expensive problem.

The galaxy was huge. It contained an uncountable amount of star systems and even more terrestrial planets in various shapes and sizes. Yet to make them suitable for human habitation took both time and investment.

All the most profitable and easiest planets already got terraformed. If states wanted to accommodate an ever-growing population, they needed to start converting less attractive planets for human habitation. As ever-poorer colonies came into being, the state bore a greater burden as it cost a lot of money to raise a colony and to grow it into a proper settlement. Sometimes, these colonies never paid back the investment put into its development as it offered very little exports to the rest of the state!

Therefore, to solve the dilemma of high birth rates but a finite limit on population, leaders needed some way to relieve the pressure.

Therefore, war served as the most convenient pressure relief valve. Lots of people got killed. Lots of property and assets got destroyed.

Yet those who survived felt a greater need to recover what they lost and rebuild what was broken. The people became more industrious. The people worked harder. The people never took their luxuries for granted.

As long as the cost of wars remained within the boundaries of what was acceptable to the rulers, such a cycle was actually productive and beneficial to the society in question.

Adopted at a wider scale among the level of the entire human civilization, it kept the human race from suffering the same flaws that made the other alien races so weak against unexpected aggression.

At least if you believed in the Societal Vitality Theory.

While Ves did not have the qualifications to question sociologists and other stuffy academics about the validity of this theory, he nonetheless felt it possessed an innate flaw. He just couldn’t quite pin it down at the moment.

Aside from that, the Societal Vitality Theory also suffered from the plutocratic consequence of high-minded policy ignoring the very human cost of their actions.

The Bright-Vesia Wars for example killed billions of people over a span of four centuries. Even more of them lost their homes, their relatives, their livelihoods and more. The Bright Republic could have allocated all of that prosperity into bettering the lives of their citizens rather than fuel a perpetually-hungry war machine.

Yet that was also what the Societal Vitality Theory aimed to fight against. It encouraged leaders to guide their state towards investing their resources into the military. Civil infrastructure and the welfare of the people played second fiddle to maintaining strength.

Ves thought of all of this as he sat silent in the dining room, his half-eaten meal forgotten. Lord Javier meanwhile took the silence as an opportunity to gobble up his own sumptuous steak.

"Hmmm! This is good!" Javier praised. "Much better than the nutrient packs you Vandals stuffed in my mouth! You should really try some!"

To someone like Lord Javier, he inherited his stance on the Societal Vitality Theory from Count Loqer, his father. In turn, Count Loqer inherited his beliefs from his own father, and so on. Even if a parent didn’t pass on those beliefs, their peers would make sure their fellow leaders were on the same page.

Ves narrowed his eyes at Lord Javier. "Why did you take the time to explain the Societal Vitality Theory to me? You’re awfully charitable for a Vesian noble."

"I’m a hostage. There’s no two ways about it." The noble shrugged. "Even I know that I have to set aside my old behavior and suck up to my captors. The worst Vesian nobles are those who are good at one thing but bad at adapting to changing circumstances. If there is anything my father has taught me, it is to be as adaptable as a chameleon and as slippery as an eel when you fall into trouble."

"That still doesn’t answer my question."