"GE-03, what is that... Wait, I think I saw it in an internal announcement of the group a few years ago." Gu Chen quietly moved Miss Jiang, who was leaning on him and sleeping, away and sat opposite Jiang Ling. Then he continued, "Isn't it a prohibited item?"
Jiang Ling nodded and used her psychic powers to put the two young men into their insulated sleeping bags. She then took a deep breath of the cool filtered air in the inflatable tent and spoke again, just as she had before, as if telling a bedtime story. "To be precise, they're addictive drugs. The community still doesn't understand their mechanism of action on the nerves, but addicts call them 'bridges to communicate with Jehovah.' I suspect their actual effects are similar to those of LSD."
She took a sip of her creamy hot tea, smacked it, and continued, "The Community has classified it as a substance strictly prohibited from production, sale, and use, and it carries the strictest regulatory oversight, similar to most known drugs. Therefore, it's essentially restricted to where we are now. If you watch the news regularly, you'll know that many people living in the Americas are drug enthusiasts. They not only smoke themselves, but also constantly seek ways to get others to smoke. Statistics show that in the late Earth Age, the 300 million people in the northern part of Country M alone consumed 90% of the world's drugs, while that number only accounted for 3% of the entire human population during that period."
Gu Chen was very interested in her little story, completely unlike the stubborn middle-aged man he had been some time ago. After being amazed, he asked again, "What about now?"
"It didn't work." Jiang Ling shrugged helplessly. "You know, the Community doesn't have much binding force on non-directly governed countries. They can only provide a general direction, and actual policy coordination still depends on local governments. The Community's top leaders are very eager to achieve the goal of unifying humanity. They borrowed the 'one country, two systems' concept proposed by a leader of the Earth era and carried it forward. The 'Message to My Fellow Earthlings' is the result of these ideas. Many countries established after the 20th year of the Star Calendar have incorporated that article into their constitutions, so the end result is like the current situation... In fact, the top leaders have long known that such a hasty approach would cause many problems, but they did it anyway."
She paused, then dropped a piece of emergency rations into the boiling campfire. "After all, if a dynasty fails to achieve its ultimate goal from the outset, it will be difficult for future generations to attempt such a feat again!"
"In other words, our current situation is actually - 'one human civilization, multiple human countries'?" Gu Chen asked.
Jiang Ling shook her head and replied, "That's a far-fetched summary. If I were to summarize it your way, it would be this: there are many human civilizations, but only one entity; there are many human nations, but all nations have only one attribute." She took another sip of tea. "The community represents the highest interests of human civilization, while the nation is an administrative unit of the community. Furthermore, the level of the 'nation' isn't high, probably only mid-level. Various government agencies are half a level higher than them. You should be aware of this, right?"
"Oh, so that's how it is!" Gu Chen realized belatedly, "No wonder when I was in the passenger and freight transport business, I only had to deal with customs and tax bureaus all day long. No one ever bothered me in the name of 'the country'!"
"Yes. However, a portion of the commercial tax will still be used in the 'country' where the transaction is located. Of course, the 'country' has no power to require you to pay taxes - unless you plan to leave the community and migrate to a planet - requiring you to pay taxes is the power of the tax department, and all these powers are granted by the Community Congress."
"Yeah, yeah. I know that. My daughters often tell me about their learning achievements."
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