Zeke no longer wanted to use the word "envious."
But honestly, the Terran Dominion, in this state, truly resembles a genuine interstellar civilization.
In a situation akin to Warhammer, where things are as bad as a throne, for the Imperial citizens to live in such conditions is truly not what an interstellar civilization should be like; the disparity is simply too vast and absurd.
Although Zeke lamented that these "guilty" Dominion citizens lived better than he, a former Imperial noble, he still passed the living standards bill.
It wasn't for any other reason, nor for the sake of so-called prestige, but rather the benevolence of the Human Emperor, the Lord of Humanity, bestowed upon humanity.
A Human Emperor who was even willing to incorporate the Supreme Good Way into the Interstellar Council—how bad could he possibly be?
Zeke had always been good to his people; after all, if he weren't, he wouldn't have directly granted all the people of the Terran Dominion a utopian, prosperous life.
This was the Emperor's benevolence—
Zeke reluctantly accepted the bill he had enacted, but just as he accepted it, his Custodian Commander and Fleet Admiral once again tiptoed over to him, looking sneaky.
Undoubtedly, his previous tears had made these two feel extremely guilty, and now these two clowns had come to apologize and make amends.
"We are sorry, Your Majesty; we have failed your expectations and did not arrange this matter properly, causing you distress."
As they spoke, both men lowered their heads, looking extremely remorseful, while Zeke could now accept the high-welfare living standards they had devised.
Therefore, upon seeing his two subordinates admit their mistake, he didn't feel any anger; instead, he felt that his subordinates had matured.
It's not easy, not easy at all! They can actually perceive my current poverty and know to come apologize on their own initiative. That's great; having this intention is enough.
Zeke was very satisfied that his two subordinates had come to apologize and recognized their mistake. He simply reached out and helped them up.
"It's good that you two recognize this mistake; I am very pleased with this. I will not pursue your issues, and I can now forgive the mistakes you have made."
Zeke was truly able to forgive the mistakes they had made, as his output still seemed quite good, with some surplus even after supporting these living standards.
Except for the slightly low alloy production, but alloy workers require some training, so a little less production now is acceptable.
It just so happened that his subordinates had pulled off an extreme maneuver: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and another 8 hours for these people to study and entertain themselves. Wouldn't this allow them to quickly acquire enough qualified workers?
What excellent subordinates!
Zeke wanted to curse, "Excellent my ass!"
8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of rest and entertainment, 8 hours of work—what kind of hard life did I used to live?
As he thought this to himself, the two simpletons opposite him grew even more remorseful.
"We are sorry, Your Majesty; we know our mistake. After a night of overtime and adjustments, we have a new plan."
"We conducted detailed calculations with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and also felt that 8 hours of study and entertainment, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of sleep was truly too terrible. Therefore, we made adjustments to the activities."
"To make the Dominion's laws appear more humane and to allow all local human citizens to enjoy the Dominion's friendliness towards them, we decided to reduce working hours to 6 hours, which meets the maximum limit of Dominion law."
"This way, during the extra two hours, these Dominion citizens can arrange their own desired activities, making it much more humane."
Strauss Yaeger solemnly conveyed the conclusions they had discussed to Zeke.
And Pixis echoed from the side.
"That's right, Your Majesty, we've discussed it, and this is indeed inhumane. We even had our Custodians try this work, making them work for a full 8 hours, and the Custodians also reported that doing so is indeed inhumane."
"We did not understand Your Majesty's intentions and allowed the citizens here to suffer such cruel treatment. We were wrong, we admit our mistake, we repent; this is our letter of self-criticism."
The two simpletons directly handed a copy of their self-criticism to Zeke, and Zeke's expression froze as they spoke.
6-hour workday?
Good, good, good.
You are an interstellar civilization; you are prosperous.
I've never lived such a good life, so why should these people?
No, absolutely not.
This proposal was naturally rejected directly by Zeke.
"No need to change it; this is fine. You two stop dwelling on this matter and quickly get back to production."
Zeke urged the two of them to get to work on serious matters and stop fussing over such laws. Then, he used his psychic powers to send the two out of his Ecumenopolis Governor's palace.
It was utterly impossible to reason with these members of the Terran Dominion who lived such good lives among the stars.
After sending these two simpletons away, Zeke's increasingly capable brain instantly calculated how much loss he would incur by doing so.
The colony world under his control, after meeting the living standards of 8 billion people each month, would still have a surplus of 40 units of food.
If the hydroponic farm workers, or rather, the laborers, could be fully staffed, he could have a surplus of at least 60 units of food each month.
When not all workers were staffed and only robots were working, his basic alloy factory could produce 10 units of second-tier alloy each month.
Still unable to build Null-armor.
Null-armor is a Tier 5 armor. If he were to have his current basic alloy factories produce Null-armor, it would take 4 months to produce one unit.
Of course, everyone might not have a concept of one unit of Null-armor. To put it this way, an outpost with a size of about 20 kilometers consumes 100 units of alloy.
A single Retaliation-class battleship consumes merely 1000 units of alloy.
If he could fully staff his basic and space-based alloy factories with both workers and robot units, his alloy factories could produce 40 units of Tier 2 alloy for him each month.
Even if used to produce Null-armor, 4 units could be produced per month.
Additionally, he had a surplus of 20 units of consumer goods each month.
Consumer goods represented various valuable items, or a series of civilian necessities, all included under consumer goods.
If described using the Imperial Forge worlds, Zeke's current colony produced roughly 4 to 5 times the output of an Imperial Forge world, and this only referred to armor.
And this was merely his production after one month of development.
More importantly, he also had a greater food output than other Forge worlds.
Later, as these ordinary humans would also be put into mining and some power grid production, it would mean his planet would have more abundant energy and a large output of minerals.
These newly added human citizens could not yet enter factories to work, so Zeke could put them into mining, replacing the mining robot units and filling them into alloy production.
In at most three months, Zeke could build his first outpost in this star system.
With an outpost, everything would get better. He could build a Starbase, then build shipyards, and then forge more of his own fleet of warships.
Everything was so beautiful, and Zeke began to feel a bit more cheerful.
Of course, getting back to the main point, Zeke wasn't sure if other things would need increased consumption if they followed what they were currently proposing.
But Zeke was certain that consumer goods consumption would increase by two units, and food consumption would also increase by two units.
Don't let these two units seem small in the eyes of Stellaris or the Terran Dominion, but where is this? This is Warhammer!
An extra consumption of food for 2 billion people for an entire month—go ask those Imperial governors if they would be willing?
Of course, Zeke wasn't sure if there would be any reduction in production capacity, as these people hadn't gone to work yet.
Zeke didn't know how much production capacity they could bring.
However, Zeke didn't have much hope for them.
After all, these guys hadn't undergone genetic modification, so what they could do was very limited.