As I was walking down the street, one of the rasping noises ceased. Several dwarves who had been doing a little woodwork at the side of the road stopped, took off their hats, and bowed deeply to me. I knew one of them. That slightly chubby, cheerful dwarf with a bushy beard was…
“Thanks for your work, Thori.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! Welcome, Paladin. All by your lonesome?”
“Ahaha. It’s nothing that calls for an attendant. Is Agnarr around?”
“If it’s Agnarr you want, he’s at home, I believe! Hodh, go run and let him know the Paladin’s coming!”
“Ai,” a younger dwarf said, nodding. He set down his tools.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that…”
“Nonsense! Agnarr wouldn’t feel right about us just sitting back and not giving our liege lord a proper welcome when he visits!”
“Ai!” The younger dwarf called Hodh nodded and dashed off before I could stop him.
Now that a messenger had been sent out to inform Agnarr about my visit, it would both be rude and a nuisance to him if I made my way over there too soon.
After all, the point of sending a messenger to someone was to give them time to prepare. And since I wasn’t here often, I decided to spend a little time talking with Thori before going.
Many of the dwarves were people of relatively few words, but Thori was a talker, and laughed as if he was completely happy to have been born that way. I, too, found him approachable and easy to talk to.
“How has life been treating you recently?” I asked.
“Hahaha! It’s like night and day! I can make what I want, sell what I want!
No need to worry about where tomorrow’s meal’s coming from! It’s a real blessing.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Has there been any trouble in the area, or anyone in poverty?”
“Hmm, well…”
Thori came up with a few examples: complaints about the noise from the smithy, trouble that was being caused by lifestyle differences between dwarves and men, and several bread-and-butter matters. I took out a copper writing implement that was a combination of a pen and an inkwell, and noted everything he said on the back of a miswritten document. Paper was too valuable to waste, so I kept a bundle of them on me for memo use.
“Oh? That portable pen is well made.”
“I had Agnarr make it for me some time ago.”
“That explains it. Agnarr’s work is good.”
A portable writing implement was quite a difficult thing to make, but he had made it straight away for me when I asked. There really were a lot of talented craftsmen among the dwarves.
“And… there have been a lot of people moving into this city recently, both humans and dwarves. We can’t complain, I mean, that’s what we did too. But that doesn’t mean we can always find jobs for them…”
“You do have a point.”
“But it’s not healthy for fit young people to be idling around all day not working.”
“Yes, it could even have an effect on crime.” I nodded.
It was good that more people were coming to this area as word of its development got around, but it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be easy to find jobs for all of them. There were a variety that had been created: the loading and unloading of cargo at the river port, the civil engineering and construction needed to turn the ruins back into a city, commerce and industry jobs, the timber trade, and even service jobs at eateries and taverns. However, that still didn’t make it easy to continually create enough employment to support dozens of new people.
Having a job is important. The feeling of contributing to society brings self-esteem to us humans, and if the job is lost, the self-esteem goes with it. At the same time, losing your job means losing your income. Everyone gets panicky and concerned when they’re financially insecure and have no idea what tomorrow will bring. People with low self-esteem who are full of anxiety and feeling pressured often only need one little push to turn to crime. They kind of get into a state where excuses for crime seem reasonable.
For instance:
“I’ve been backed into this terrible situation, so what do you expect?”
“I have no choice; I’m doing it to survive.”
“There’s no way I’m going to live much longer anyway, so I’ll just let loose and do whatever I want.”
“There’s nothing else I can do. I have no future anymore anyway. I’m not the only one to blame for this; society and everyone else who pushed me this far are just as much at fault. And even if I steal a little from this guy, it’s not like it’s going to kill him. Come on, be brave! Do it now!”
…And so on.
You might wonder how I could imagine something like that. The answer is that the terrible state I got myself into in my previous world hadn’t counted for nothing. I could roughly predict the thoughts of people on the precipice and those who weren’t far off.
Anyway, an increase in people like that meant more crime. Of course, there would certainly be people who would admirably endure their situation and not resort to crime, but there would also be perfectly ordinary people who couldn’t endure and would resort to such things. Since both groups existed in a certain proportion, an increase in the crime rate was going to be unavoidable the moment you upped the number of jobless, anxious people. And if you couldn’t avoid an increase in crime, public order would deteriorate, more resources would have to be spent on cracking down, and that would start a vicious circle. The problem had to be severed at the root.
People moving here was inevitable, so maybe the solution called for here was to somehow create jobs to keep the economy moving?
If problems like this were allowed to fester, the situations that could grow out of them were really bad. As the number of people coming here increased, people would start fighting over the simple labor jobs that didn’t require any particular skills. Public order would deteriorate. A conflict would flare up between the original residents and the migrants. Trouble would start.
It would develop in that manner from what was at first an economic battle into discriminatory feelings against a specific group. And once the economy and discriminatory views started to become entangled, it would cause serious problems that would easily last for several centuries.
This situation was a ticking time bomb, and if we couldn’t dismantle it here and now, the explosion in later generations was going to be horrific.
Even in my memories of my past life, the acceptance or restriction of immigration and refugees had been an incredibly large social issue. Now that I’d been put in the position of solving it myself, I understood well how difficult doing so actually was. The economy had to be grown by making sure money was changing hands and there were enough jobs to go around, and unless the issue was taken care of fully, it could snowball into something serious. It really was as Gus said: it was extremely important for money to circulate and keep on circulating. My head was starting to hurt thinking about it.
“Paladin, sir?” Thori said in a concerned voice, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Oh… Sorry. I’ll think up some kind of plan when I get back.”
I figured the first step would have to be talking with Tonio to get some kind of public infrastructure project started up, maybe port maintenance or irrigation projects or something, and take on a larger workforce. I also thought I’d better pick the brains of those who knew more about these things. Putting in honest legwork and gathering a consensus of opinions was fundamental to big projects like this. After all, I didn’t want to cause any riots, and that meant I needed to stimulate the economy before that had a chance to happen. It was also going to be important to reduce cultural friction.