Solve the case

“Then please, my Great Strategist, analyze it for me. I’m all ears,” Lin Yuan said to Zhang Yan, his tone lazy and teasing.

Zhang Yan immediately perked up, then got up and rummaged through boxes.

“What are you doing?” Lin Yuan asked, bewildered, “What are you looking for?”

“My props.”

Before long, Zhang Yan had laid out various white papers, hard cards, thumbtacks, string, and a soft plastic board on the table.

Lin Yuan was utterly confused, as it was clear Zhang Yan was about to play detective.

“Junior Sister, is this really necessary?”

“You wouldn’t know. The key to your current problem is to sort out the relationships between the various forces and individuals, and this set of mine is perfect for that. Analyzing a case is essentially the process of sorting out logical chains, and the principles are the same.

Come over and help quickly.”

Zhang Yan quickly stood up the plastic board and fixed a hard paper card in the center with a thumbtack. The card naturally read: Musk.

“I still prefer using thumbtacks. Old Mo taught me all this. Senior Brother, be careful not to prick your hand; many of these thumbtacks are rusty.”

Lin Yuan rolled his eyes at her, speechless, treating it as if he were playing house with a child.

Zhang Yan then began her performance. “According to what you said, Musk has extensive connections with Silicon Valley’s tech capital. Although they have conflicts, they share a lot of common interests. All right, now we can add another card—Tech Capital represented by Silicon Valley.

And since The Other Shore is a country built on capital, even if I don’t understand international affairs, I know there’s still the biggest force on The Other Shore—the group of people built on traditional industries.”

“Oh~, you even know that.”

“I’ve been with you for so long; I’ve picked up a thing or two.”

Lin Yuan then added, “Although The Other Shore’s de-industrialization has reached an obsessive point, in agriculture, petrochemical energy, and military industries, these people are the true old money, with a history spanning over a hundred years.

The Civil War was an internal struggle between the factory owners and farmers among these very people.”

As Lin Yuan spoke, he picked up a pen and a card from the table and began to write.

“If we really want to divide them, The Other Shore can be categorized as: Traditional Conservative Forces represented by the agricultural and energy industries. These people hold various mineral resources and vast farmlands, not only in their own country but also controlling them worldwide. So, you’ll find that some countries have fertile lands for thousands of miles, yet their people are still starving.

Then there are the Tech Forces represented by Silicon Valley. These people are more outward-looking because only globalization can allow them to collect tech taxes from the entire world. They are naturally at odds with the conservatives.

Finally, there are the Financial Forces represented by Wall Street. These people care even less about nationality. Finance, after all, needs openness to collect global seigniorage.

As for the media, it’s entirely a puppet of the Tech Forces and Financial Forces.

If we want to simplify it further, the latter two can be simply categorized as Globalists, and the former as Conservatives.

Of course, they aren’t completely distinct.

The Globalists have profited handsomely from the process of globalization, while the Conservatives are generally in decline. Seigniorage and tech taxes provide too little share for the Conservatives.

In the past, when they were advancing rapidly, they plundered a lot from outside. When they returned home, they gave the Conservatives a larger share, and they would cause less trouble. After all, military pressure was mainly carried out by the Conservatives’ decent folks.

But now, they are plundering less and less from outside; you can see it by looking at their share of global GDP. Even with The Other Shore’s bottomless statistical methods, their GDP’s share of the global total is getting lower and lower. Not to mention the share of industrial output, which is simply unwatchable.

With a smaller cake to divide, conflicts erupted.”

Before long, three cards representing the three forces appeared around Musk’s card.

Lin Yuan muttered to himself, looking at the plastic board, “Musk certainly can’t take on all three sides simultaneously. To be precise, if he wasn’t connected to any of them, he couldn’t have become the Efficiency Minister. However, his background is too complex. He has the traditional conservative image of The Other Shore, deeply rooted in technology, but his tech companies need to earn money globally through globalization.

So, he can actually work with both tech capital and financial capital, and I suspect he’s had no shortage of dealings with both sides. With so many mergers, acquisitions, and investments during his entrepreneurial journey, it’s impossible he didn’t interact much with those people. And things like hyping digital currencies clearly wouldn’t be practical without financial capital pushing them along.

If we’re talking about internal conflicts, Musk actually has greater conflicts with the Conservatives because his company is dedicated to developing New Energy, which naturally clashes with the traditional energy industry.

But his values don’t align with most Globalists; on a values level, he’s closer to the Conservatives.

Ah~~, it’s so messy.”

Lin Yuan suddenly realized, “It seems that the values and interests among these forces are not unified at all.”

Zhang Yan then interjected at the right time, “That’s very normal. Eating is eating, sleeping is sleeping. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be the saying ‘eating in the east and sleeping in the west.’ These three forces are definitely intertwined and complex, with each having elements of the others.

Let’s break it down.

The Other Shore created this LGBTQ+ system to divide and deconstruct people all over the world. Once divided, they cannot form a united front. Then, by controlling modern social media tools, they can interfere with votes and thus achieve control over power.

By taking the lead in the ideological sphere, combined with military pressure, they can control various regions.

Then, they monetize through seigniorage and tech taxes, and Musk’s tech companies also profit from this process. If he only wanted to be a businessman, he could completely stay out of it and just go along with it.”

Lin Yuan agreed, “Exactly.”

Zhang Yan continued, “But this deconstruction method of dividing people, before it takes effect on others, will first act upon themselves. So, they are now in chaos themselves.”

Lin Yuan clapped his hands and said, “Exactly. If The Other Shore doesn’t lead by example, they can’t spread this system worldwide. But if they do it themselves, their own country will collapse first. This means nothing to the stateless Globalists; they don’t care about countries anyway. To them, a country is just a tool for making money.

So, they comfortably do not share the profits they’ve divided from the world with their own citizens. But then again, they are an immigrant country; why should they share with their own people? Who knows you? Our ancestors were never together.

This creates a huge conflict with the Conservatives’ ideology. Damn it, my ancestors fought and bled, sailed from Europa, traveled thousands of miles, enduring an extremely high death rate with half the ship’s people dying, just to get here. Once here, they fought natural disasters and chopped down natives, and now you want to blow up our churches? My son isn’t a son, and my daughter isn’t a daughter anymore?

Ideology, when it doesn’t matter, truly doesn’t matter, but when it does matter, it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Conflicts then arise, and when you add the misfortunes of the rednecks in reality, the powder keg explodes.

For someone like Musk, I think it’s more about ideology.

I suddenly feel a bit sorry for him.”

Lin Yuan began to imagine, “If I ever became that rich, and my son was tricked into getting castrated, I’d go crazy too. I’d definitely fight those people to the death.

So, even if Musk and those people can eat from the same pot, ideologically, they can’t see eye to eye.

What’s more, Musk represents traditional tech elites. These tech elites are not the people who play social media games, but rather embody the pioneering spirit of the Western expansion era—they want to genuinely create impressive things in the field of technology.”

Lin Yuan stroked his chin and said, “I understand...”