I had a meeting with Leofwine and Eadmund today for an update on the progress of rail and train construction. I showed them my plans to travel the nation and set them a deadline of the end of the month to finish the current rail construction project from my tower to Dunburh Lake through Viirum. Eadmund looked rather worried at being able to meet the deadline and requested more time. I asked him what the limiting factor was in regard to finishing the project, and he said there were still two mountains that required tunnel excavation before the railroads could be finished, so I agreed to magically perform the boring later today.

Though the Viiradian railroad is not set to complete for a few weeks, I will not waste the time from now until then. I’ve arranged for a ship to travel down from the border with Wittenland to the ruins of Dunburh, where a significant amount of the population lives. I’ve also arranged for another ship along another distributary of the river that travels from the northern border to Viirum. The first ship is scheduled to leave this afternoon, so I must complete the excavation before then.

The excavation proved relatively straightforward. While I am well studied, the field of industrial tunnel excavation is certainly not something I have read about in the past. However, Eadmund was able to provide me with a brief description of the general processes given different levels of technology, and I was able to glean the relevant principles to perform the task myself.

As I learned, the 2 parts of tunnel construction are removal of the material and strengthening of the archway to prevent collapse. For dislodging the material, I set a series of point charge explosive spells along the path I desired. Once the rock was loose, I was able to apply force via levitation to remove the material while levitating the top of the tunnel to prevent collapse. Finally, I applied a transmutation spell across the tunnel to regularize the rock formation and distribute weight across an arch shape at the top of the tunnel. It won’t last forever, but it will last long enough for the construction ponies to add reinforced concrete.

After I had completed excavating the second tunnel, I was struck by another idea, hence why I brought out my journal. If I’m here with this construction team, I have the opportunity to increase their efficiency through mind control. I took the liberty of asking Eadmund where he got his workers from, and he informed me that there were two main groups of workers. First was the few skilled craftsponies from his company mostly organizing the effort, and the second was made up of unskilled laborers with meager contracts basically approaching indenture. In the wake of my purge, there are a lot of these ponies with hungry bellies who need work.

While hunger is a powerful motivator, it is a rather short-sighted one. Once one is no longer hungry, there is no more motivation to work or better oneself, and I’m sure these ponies have not an ounce of ambition. I would imagine they have some notion of improving their lives, but it may be a dream with no clear steps forward rather than a goal they move towards each day. I think I can help them with that.

Standing with Eadmund looking over the works, I tell him of my intentions, and begin to cast my spell. Enclosing the varied ponies within the region of influence, I sense their minds shifting. Upon completion of the spell, nothing seems to change. Spikes continue to be driven and rail continues to be transported. I suppose I wasn’t expecting them all to suddenly turn to me and bow, but I did expect to see some change.

Perhaps the issue is that they have not connected their current situation to me directly. To remedy this, I magically enhance my voice and declare that all must listen. I tell the ponies that their work directly contributes to me. In the instantaneous moment between sentences, I begin to consider if I should add something about rewarding good work.

Unlike the philosophers of old who attempted to describe systems of value by observing the behavior of creatures in society, I have the opportunity to shape what creatures value and therefore what they seek. The question then remains, what is the best way to allocate labor resources? If I demand all creatures serve merely based on their devotion to me, that puts no incentive for growth, and I would have to manage a bureaucracy that allocates resources a la Stalliongrad’s managed economy.

The fundamental end goal of my policy should be that each of my subjects is in the role that, when taken together, provides the most benefit for me. I could individually assess this, but I have already written on the issue of doing everything myself. Thus, I must foster a system which self-allocates creatures into the role that best serves me. I am able to motivate the masses via mind control, but they must then interact with my society in a way that sorts them into their correct bin.

In a harmonist society, the invisible hoof allocates resources. In Caramel Mark’s vision, it is the state, while the supremacist philosophy has a free market with state direction or oligarchy. The Aquileians call it “dirigisme”. The free market rewards the correct allocation of resources with money, creating a financial incentive to improve, while the communists reward better work with recognition via the state unrelated to market design but internal standards. Supremacists have a mix of both.

If I promise better results for better work, I am directly acting as the state in providing incentives for work which may or may not be the correct market equilibrium that maximizes my output. Perhaps one of these ponies would be better suited to research work, but for my command today, continues to work here as a construction laborer and never discovers their greater potential. If I do not promise such things, and the pony leaves, there is no guarantee that they will discover that greater niche.

I am, unfortunately, not omniscient. In the complex interplay of these thousands of lives, I must rely on systems which can approximate maximization of output. The free market has shown itself to be effective at increasing productivity, but has also increased leisure products and consumer goods, which I believe are unnecessary for my subjects to maximize output to my benefit. The Karthinian saying of “bread and circuses” is irrelevant, as while I may not be able to remove the need for bread, I can change my population to replace their circuses with a desire for more service to me.

Therefore, the supremacist nature of directed market economics seems to be the best choice. My subjects, though, will not be motivated just by greed, but by a desire to increase their economic output for me. Apt, as my philosophy is, by definition, a supremacist one as it does believe in its own superiority such that it is incompatible with other worldviews and must dominate over others. I don’t see much in common between myself and Eros, Beakolini, or the Discrets, but if the wars of reclamation they are all waging are any indicator, it is clear there is at least a passing similarity in our geopolitical ambitions.

With my resource allocation reasoned through, I do add a statement about rewarding good work. This job is not fueled by a demand from the market, and therefore reward is determined by me and my proxies closer to them on the organizational hierarchy. With my dual consciousness, I am able to think through all of this in that momentary pause between sentences, and not alter the cadence of my speech. My writing, however, cannot keep the pace of my thoughts. I have already switched to a 2-pen method of writing where I can write 2 letters at a time, but I require an even greater speed. Perhaps I can acquire a stenotype machine to increase my pace.

Time will tell whether my words increase the efficiency of these workers. For now, they give me a bow before returning to their work. I make sure to tell Eadmund to be meritocratic as to avoid wasting resources like these state actions tend to do across the world. I decide to add a small implication that he will be mind controlled if his performance appears to be impaired by his free will, but he responds that he does believe in meritocracy, and displays positive sentiment towards many of Queen Honoria’s meritocratic reforms in Wittenland. There are two kinds of egomaniacs that were attracted by Ambrosius’ invitation to Barrad: the kind that will do anything for themselves, and the kind that will do anything for an ideal. As the former, I am glad to see Eadmund is the latter.

With my business concluded, I must go to the ship at the Wittenlandian border to begin my first voyage and first implementation of mass mind control. I am wary that my magic must not cross the border as to not draw the ire of the Wittenlandians too soon.

Day one of the trip down the river has concluded, and I have learned much of how the rest of this mind controlling process will go. This was only a half-day of travel, but the tiredness I feel speaks to the magnitude of the scale of this spell. Upon ordering the ship full steam ahead, I cast the field of control in a rectangular prism as I had designed with a very wide width. I aimed for 10 miles in each direction. Population surveys have shown that most creatures live quite close to water even in our modern age of plumbing. Though I will only be traveling along major rivers, and later railroads, I should be able to capture a great majority of the population in my spell.

As planned, the spell field region extended upwards a few thousand feet, and then downwards from the deck of the ship to the river. For width, based on the speed of my ship, I chose a relatively narrow 50 feet so that each creature got a few seconds within the region as the ship passed by.

This river journey will take us 4 more days, and I plan to be casting for 8 hours of each. I feel the great power I am drawing upon weighing on my body already, so I foresee each day will be strenuous. While I have nearly unlimited power to draw upon, I can feel my biology failing me as my body was not designed to be a conduit for this much magical energy, so rest and nourishment will be paramount. Luckily, I always bring my servants with me. Once this is completed, I will have another 2 weeks on another channel of the river. While I don’t look forward to the inevitable malaise I will feel, I do look forward to seeing the results of my work.

Author's Note

As the focus shifts from research to implementation, these journal entries are going to get further apart in time.