"Have you heard of the term 'panic spending'?" Ji Zhengqi asked.
"Panic spending? What do you mean?" Jiang Ye was confused.
"The research funding system on Spiral Star is quite unique. For example, if I apply for funding for a project, and after working hard to achieve the final results, I find that the money hasn't been fully spent, leaving a surplus. Not only will I not be praised, but I'll be severely criticized," Ji Zhengqi began to explain.
Jiang Ye seemed to recall something and became thoughtful.
"The reason is that the total research funding pool is fixed each quarter. If one lab applies for too much funding, another lab might face budget constraints. So, the auditors' attitude is that no one should take more than their share; apply only for what you need."
"However, the research process is unpredictable. Sometimes you get lucky. What you thought would require a thousand experiments to yield results might be achieved in fifty, leaving you with the material costs for nine hundred and fifty experiments."
"But the auditors don't care about that. If you don't spend all the money you applied for, leaving a large surplus, the auditors will get very angry, thinking you're greedy and hoarding resources, affecting other labs. Then, when you apply for your next project, the auditors will drastically cut your funding or delay its approval."
"Over time, everyone has become smart. Even if a lot of research funding remains, they never return it. Instead, they engage in panic spending, using up all the remaining money, preferring waste over saving."
"Panic spending often happens under tight deadlines with huge sums of money. So, many labs indiscriminately buy a batch of newly released experimental equipment, regardless of whether it's useful or not, just to put it in storage and study it later. Or they order a large quantity of experimental mice, monkeys, parasites, reagents, and glassware, planning to use the leftovers next time."
"The result is massive waste. Some labs buy a pile of instruments with duplicate functions or ones they'll never use, which then gather dust in warehouses. You can at least look at a decorative item, but the instruments in the warehouse purely become trash. As for the experimental animals and reagents, storing too many that cannot be used leads to them dying or spoiling over time, eventually being disposed of as garbage."
"A colleague of mine, formerly from a university on Jiang Ye Star, told me that last year they cleared out their warehouse and found over four hundred boxes of spoiled reagents, worth more than eighty million. They also found over a hundred unused instruments, each costing over four hundred thousand, with the most expensive being two million. Since lab instruments cannot be arbitrarily sold or donated, these instruments can only sit in storage."
"This means that my colleague's small lab alone wasted hundreds of millions in research funding in one year."
"This is just one example. I also have colleagues transferred from Bi Rong Star and Liúwáng Star, and their labs almost universally exhibit this kind of large-scale waste."
Jiang Ye's brow furrowed. "That sounds terrifying. Research funds wasted in astronomical figures every year. I've noted that down. So, Mr. Ji, do you have any solutions to this problem?"
"I'm very sorry, but I don't. As you know, I'm from Ke Lan Star. Our planet is extremely poor, and research funding is difficult to obtain, and when it is approved, the amount is insufficient. It wasn't until I came to Spiral Star that I learned about this widespread waste," Ji Zhengqi smiled. "It's like I was a starving beggar from a village suffering from crop failure. Suddenly, I entered a prosperous city and found that restaurants of all sizes were pouring buckets of leftover food into the sewers. I could only marvel, not knowing how to solve it."
"Alright, thank you very much for providing this information. I will seriously address this issue when I return," Jiang Ye said. "I'll think of ways to reduce some waste, ensuring that good steel is used on the blade. Besides this, are there any other issues?"
"No, I've been on Spiral Star for too short a time, and this is all I've observed so far," Ji Zhengqi said.
"Thank you very much for your statement, Mr. Ji. Now, please welcome the next speaker, Ms. Marta Helena Skowrońska." Jiang Ye said.
Everyone turned their gaze towards the blonde beauty beside Ji Zhengqi.
Helena appeared to be a typical robust woman, with a grand demeanor and a height of 1.8 meters. She wore a casual sweater and work pants, with a very ample bosom that could easily hold a mobile phone.
"I'm from Qian Hu Star, and the reason I came is quite simple: I want to make money on Spiral Star," Helena said with a generous smile, her chest visibly swaying. "My job is rather specialized: dog training."
"Dog training?" Jiang Ye pondered. "Pet dogs, training them to use the toilet or fetch slippers for their owners?"
"That's 'civilian training'; I do 'military training'," Helena said. "Qian Hu Star's axis of rotation is quite tilted, resulting in vast northern regions. The planet isn't very wealthy, and the prevalence of expensive machinery and robots is low. People living in the arctic regions rely mainly on dogs."
"Sled dogs?" Jiang Ye understood.
"Yes, dog sleds are very common there, everywhere. To go to work, people sit on sleds to transport goods; to transport goods, they lie on sleds. But in any case, it's dogs running in front. There are many wild animals, and many dogs are needed for guarding homes and yards," Helena said. "There are 130 million people in Qian Hu Star's polar regions, but there are 590 million registered dogs, with many more unregistered. On average, each person has seven or eight dogs."
"It truly is an ocean of dogs," Jiang Ye exclaimed.
"Therefore, the dog market on Qian Hu Star is enormous. I didn't finish high school and dropped out at fifteen to train dogs in Adalin Ridge," Helena smiled.
"Adalin Ridge is a very large mountain range, said to have eighty thousand peaks. There are a vast number of wild dogs inside. Because many plants and mushrooms that dogs can eat grow there, and small animals like squirrels, mountain rats, and rabbits are everywhere, but there are no large predators, the wild dogs reign supreme in the absence of tigers."
"There are companies that sell dogs. To obtain more dogs, they directly drive truckloads of old dogs into Adalin Ridge. These old dogs are retired sled dogs, too old to run fast, so customers don't want them. However, even though they are old, many dogs can still reproduce."
"When dogs of different breeds enter the mountains, they quickly interbreed and produce a multitude of puppies, reproducing at a terrifying speed, like rats."
"The quality of mixed-breed dogs varies greatly; some are very strong, others are weak. The weak ones are usually frozen to death or killed by their companions. Only the strong ones survive to adulthood. Since sled dogs require strong dogs, nature's selection saves the dog-selling companies a considerable amount in testing fees."
"As the dog population in the mountains increased, the companies organized dog-catching teams to go into the mountains to capture them. However, the wild dogs are accustomed to the wild and retain their wild nature. They are actually very similar to wolves, brutal and bold, often attacking unsuspecting passersby. This is where dog trainers like me are needed, to transform these ferocious wild dogs into obedient sled dogs."