Extreme Cold Era: Shelter Don't Keep Waste-Chapter 831 - 60

Perfikot is undertaking massive engineering projects, and naturally, the mining and industrial capacity in the Northern Territory must also keep pace.

Capitalists in various steel companies and related industries are experiencing both pain and joy at this moment.

The pain stems from seeing those immense orders laid before them, yet being unable to fulfill them, which is undoubtedly an excruciating situation for any capitalist.

Clearly, there is money to be made, but they just can't earn it; is there anything more agonizing than this?

So these capitalists are forced to find ways to expand their industries, raising the mining and industrial capacity as much as possible.

For this, they have even willingly adopted the automation technology developed by Perfikot, freeing up a large amount of human labor to increase production capacity.

Perfikot also understood some of the circumstances, so when promoting automation, did not push her fully automated technology.

After all, replacing all human labor with Alchemy Puppets, with mining, smelting, and forging entirely dependent on specialized large robots, is a practice only she can afford. Other capitalists wouldn't just struggle to support such a large investment; the issue of technical personnel and workers alone would be hard to resolve.

Alchemy Puppets and specialized robots require professional alchemists and specially trained technicians for maintenance, although Perfikot designed Puppets capable of self-maintenance, which not only increases costs but also intensifies conflicts between humans and machines.

This issue is not unique to this era; it also existed in the original world.

However, in the original world, because society was already highly developed, many problems didn't escalate as sharply.

But in this world, fully replacing human labor with machines leads to workers, who lost their jobs, actually daring to storm into factories to smash machines.

Although Perfikot is not afraid of such things, she doesn't wish for them to occur either.

So despite investing heavily in automated production machines, workers are still needed for operations.

Simply put, it's having workers do the work of Alchemy Puppets, though efficiency is somewhat reduced, it at least avoids the rather troublesome issue of human-machine conflict.

Moreover, this further demands that workers enhance their own skills, as being illiterate certainly won't suffice in operating automated machinery.

This also promotes labor force upgrades from another angle, with high-tech workers gradually emerging, and society being pushed to progress by productivity.

Nevertheless, even so, the mining and industrial capacity still cannot meet the bottomless pit-like demands of the two Floating Cities, let alone the floating warships being constructed, which bring colossal demands for mining and industrial capacity.

Even if capitalists brought out their savings to expand, it still wasn't enough.

Hence, these capitalists could only watch with eyes wide open as Perfikot allowed the Northern Territory's authorities to invest heavily in automated equipment to expand mining and industrial capacity.

These are industries under the name of the Lord of the North, since they employ Perfikot's technologies, especially as she holds an entire industrial chain in her hands, which can continually expand after acquiring the first batch of resources.

Previously, the restriction on this expansion was a lack of professional technical personnel, since even though these automated devices could operate entirely self-sufficiently, they still required professional alchemists for daily maintenance to prevent malfunctions and errors.

But as the alchemists in the Northern Territory were mobilized, this shackle wasn't entirely removed, but at least allowed Perfikot to unleash production capacity while causing her industries to grow like a snowball.

This undoubtedly greatly stimulated those capitalists; they, too, longed to expand their industries this way, but obviously, they had neither the technology nor sufficient manpower, and certainly not the capital and power to do so.

The Northern Territory is Perfikot's fief, and all of its mineral resources belong to her privately, with this ownership protected by Imperial law; not even the Royal Family can strip her of it.

Moreover, the Autonomous Knight in Perfikot's hands ensures this ownership is coveted by none, allowing her to expand with impunity.

Any other capitalist daring to do the same would inevitably face united opposition and ultimately be eaten up completely.

After all, no one wants a competitor above them all.

However, the situation now in the Northern Territory isn't that Perfikot wants to expand, but that these capitalists are incapable of expanding, allowing Perfikot to hold industries that overshadow all capitalists.

They envy and resent but dare not express any dissatisfaction.

After all, Perfikot has indeed left them some profit; she didn't directly use automated capacity to swallow up all of the Northern Territory's mining and industrial sectors; as long as these capitalists have enough capital, they can upgrade their industries and get a share of the pie from Perfikot.

Perfikot even explicitly stated that anyone who could pay could purchase ownership of these mining and industrial sectors from her, with no restrictions.

She truly has no interest in these matters; the industries under the Lord of the North's name are already ample, and if it weren't for the need for massive mining and industrial capacity to construct the Floating Cities, she wouldn't bother with such things.

But unfortunately, the industries in the capitalists' hands are, in terms of technology or capacity, hard to meet her needs, forcing through this method to press them into upgrading their industries.

So letting capitalists pay to buy industries under her control is also a means to promote market development.

It's just that most capitalists have already been drained of their wallets; their money was all used to expand their industries, with few capable of buying those highly automated industries from Perfikot.

Of course, another reason is they can't manage such highly automated industries; even the upgraded, still requiring workers automated industries have driven them to have to open night schools for workers and train them in technology. If they venture into highly automated industries, they really might be driven to despair.

This also suddenly turned graduates from many universities in the Northern Territory into hot commodities, as holding a full university degree ensures the absolute competence of these students, who can quickly and competently act as technical personnel.

Previously, university graduates typically looked down on such technical work; on the other side, capitalists had plenty of cheap labor to use, naturally looking down on higher-priced, cost-inefficient graduates.

But now, with the strict requirements elevated for hiring, capitalists, to recruit more highly skilled talent, have had to raise their offering salaries and benefits in hopes of hiring qualified talents.

One could only say Perfikot's wave of operations, though primarily aimed at enhancing the Northern Territory's military capability to counter invasions from the Gods, the promotion of the entire society's development is also undeniable.