wasteland ranch

Chapter 464 Protection Fee

Lin Guiyao once used G coins as gold in exchange for supplies. The price was pretty good. One G coin could be exchanged for a large box of food, but then he realized something was wrong.

The so-called golden antiques in troubled times refer to the importance of gold in troubled times, but this is the end of the world, not the troubled times!

Don't look at the fact that there are super cities like metropolises in this world that maintain a fragile order, but this order is only barely stable in one city and one place.

In the wild, it is still the savage world that is disordered and ruthless.

Anyone can ruthlessly plunder and kill those who are weaker than him. Even the Supreme Cult, which is committed to ensuring the existence of human beings and restoring human order, cannot solve this primitive law of the forest, let alone the interaction between forces. Criticized.

For a little water and food, human beings can kill their compatriots, and some people even become predators for fun, looting everywhere like locusts.

No force can solve this group of crazy humans. This is because of human nature, and because of the lack of supplies, the animal nature in human nature has to expand. Only in this way can they survive in this world.

Logically speaking, in such an apocalypse, the national system has already collapsed, and the currency system based on credit will also disappear, but Roger's Metropolis did not know what cost it took to promote the circulation of Metropolis Coin.

To Lin Guiyao, this seemed like a miracle. It was fine for the territories near the metropolis to buy it. Why would other territories thousands of miles away from the metropolis recognize this kind of currency that could be printed at any time?
Could it be said that Roger's Metropolitan credibility has reached the point where everyone in the world recognizes it?
It wasn't until he saw that the people in the oasis collar were still using bullet casings as currency that he realized that he was thinking too much.

The currency of the metropolis is not as powerful as it appears on the surface. It can only maintain circulation among large powers and small powers around these powers, and it cannot guarantee stability. The two major devaluations in the drought and rain have already proved Disadvantages of this paper currency.

The big forces may need currency to ensure exchange due to material storage reasons, but for the vast majority of people who have no choice but to eat one meal, this thing is just a piece of garbage that is too hard to wipe their butts. There is not even a piece of dried meat at all. A bullet is a sure thing.

Therefore, most of the people at the bottom and remote forces still maintain the original trading mode of bartering.

Some people may think that gold, as a rare precious metal, is much better as a currency than the paper money of the metropolis, but there are actually more disadvantages.

The first one is the lack of gold. There is so little gold that it cannot meet people's needs at all. So many people share it, how much can one person get?

The second one is useless, which is also why Lin Guiyao thinks that Jin Duoduo and the others want to grab gold with their heads broken.

The value of gold is based on its rarity, yes, but the most important reason is that this thing is a necessity for high-tech industrialization!
Gold with excellent chemical, physical and electronic properties has a wide range of applications, but its value can only be reflected in advanced fields such as electronics, communications, aerospace, chemical industry, and medical treatment.

For the wastelanders whose science and technology have already created faults, even cars have to be built by hand, and things like tanks can only be obtained by digging up relics. There are really few places where gold can be used. .

Although there are quite a few research institutes like the Institute of Higher Education, the Industrial Ring of the Metropolis and the Research Department of City of Hope that specialize in the research of new technologies, it is difficult to form industrialized mass production, let alone those high-precision electronics industries. .

Besides, how could a group of wastelanders who could barely read a few words support the development of these advanced industries?
The gap in technology and basic talents has led to a very low level of technology in this world. The role of gold is not only good-looking, but it is probably not very useful.

But even so, Jin Duoduo and the others still bite the bullet and want to swallow Lin Guiyao's G coins. Why?
Does gold have other functions?
Facing Lin Guiyao's question, Tu Qi shrugged helplessly.

"It's useful, and it's very useful!"

He rubbed the gold bar in his hand, and said with emotion in his tone: "Just such a small gold bar can be exchanged for hundreds of guns here, but we don't change it like this, but use it to hand over the protection fee."

"Protection fee? Someone dares to collect your protection fee?" Lin Guiyao was a little curious.

The Chiyun Mountain Range is a notoriously lawless place, yet there are still people who dare to collect protection fees here, and looking at the ugly expressions on Tu Qi and Jin Duoduo's faces, it is clear that they dare not refuse to pay.

"Of course you didn't know about the first time you came to the Chiyun Mountains. We wouldn't have done it if we had no choice," Tu Qi shrugged, grabbed a handful of soil from the ground and handed it to Lin Guiyao.

"Look at the soil and the surroundings. Do you think anything can be grown here?"

Lin Guiyao took the handful of brownish-red soil, and immediately felt the burning in the palm of his hand. He didn't even need to get his nose close to smell a sour smell, a bit like a vinegar jar was overturned and mixed into it, but However, the soil was still as dry as if it had been roasted by fire.

He looked around again, and the hills were like waves, undulating up and down, but without exception, they were all bare without any vegetation, and he immediately understood.

"The protection money you are talking about is actually food in exchange, right?"

In such a harsh environment, not to mention food, not even weeds can grow.

"Well, it wasn't like this before, but then a big fire burned here for three years, and even the clouds in the sky were burned red, so it's called Chiyun Mountains. And you can see how bad the soil is here. When we arrive, we don’t even have any hairs, we have to eat if we want to survive, after all, we are not the beasts of Nokia.”

Tu Qi pointed to the land under his feet again, and continued: "However, this place is not useless. Just under this hill, you can find a lot of iron ore, copper ore and even gold mines just by digging. This is the only place we have. Something that can be obtained."

Lin Guiyao nodded, and asked with some doubts: "But the ore is so heavy, so it's very troublesome to transport it out? I remember that when you shipped me the ore in the past, it was slow and rare..."

"More than that, we have to guard against other people's covetousness on the road, so the ore transaction in the future is getting more and more difficult to do. Coupled with the blockade of the metropolis, we often can't get enough food back." Tu Qi smiled wryly.

"Then why don't you leave here?" Lin Guiyao asked.

(End of this chapter)