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Technically, I wrote this a couple weeks ago, but I'll break it out of a deep YouTube comment chain for future reference. Also, it is about the video game called Sunless Skies, from Failbetter Games. The premise of this particular bit is that Space Victorian London's exploitation of workers has been made even more extreme than historical examples, using magical time dilation.
One of the major rationalizations of "those in the workworld must work" is that, without the furnaces, the entire settlement would freeze over. That's fundamentally ludicrous when you think about it; rugweaving and Hour processing do not generate heat. But the New Governor has not implemented a scheme to, say, have every worker get a shorter workweek and shovel coal for four hours every other day, which would be entirely sufficient for heating. And cutting the other production lines and telling exporters to go hang should have been easy: the Revolutionaries would be just fine with not being paid in sovereigns, since those are the coinage of Empire and a different sort of economy could be established locally.
Why, then, must the New Governor accept London's terms?
I have this sneaking suspicion that the workworld is kept under control by making sure that it cannot independently fulfill one of the major requirements of life - most likely that it cannot produce its own food. If it requires a continuous stream of outside resources, the resources can be held hostage until production improves. (In the real world, other examples of this kind of resource are clean water, or internet access.) And this threat is backed up by the implicit presence of other workworlds. You never hear any other workworld names, but their presence would give London an additional bargaining chip - "you are fundamentally disposable: if you decide that you don't want to bother, we can just ramp up production elsewhere and leave you to starve".
It is likely impossible to resolve this ingame, because a game can't get big enough to take this many interactions into account. But if this wasn't bounded by being a game world, I have a possible solution. London works very hard to keep time the same on every world in every corner of the Empire. Maybe they can't maintain it to the second, but it would be easy to keep every place aligned within about a day of each other. With some careful planning, a bit of extra attention paid to Royal Horological duties, and contacts in the New Street Line, a captain could get every workworld to revolt at the same time. That would put a dent in London's confidence.
This is a thing people have actually done. It is called a general strike.
One of the major rationalizations of "those in the workworld must work" is that, without the furnaces, the entire settlement would freeze over. That's fundamentally ludicrous when you think about it; rugweaving and Hour processing do not generate heat. But the New Governor has not implemented a scheme to, say, have every worker get a shorter workweek and shovel coal for four hours every other day, which would be entirely sufficient for heating. And cutting the other production lines and telling exporters to go hang should have been easy: the Revolutionaries would be just fine with not being paid in sovereigns, since those are the coinage of Empire and a different sort of economy could be established locally.
Why, then, must the New Governor accept London's terms?
I have this sneaking suspicion that the workworld is kept under control by making sure that it cannot independently fulfill one of the major requirements of life - most likely that it cannot produce its own food. If it requires a continuous stream of outside resources, the resources can be held hostage until production improves. (In the real world, other examples of this kind of resource are clean water, or internet access.) And this threat is backed up by the implicit presence of other workworlds. You never hear any other workworld names, but their presence would give London an additional bargaining chip - "you are fundamentally disposable: if you decide that you don't want to bother, we can just ramp up production elsewhere and leave you to starve".
It is likely impossible to resolve this ingame, because a game can't get big enough to take this many interactions into account. But if this wasn't bounded by being a game world, I have a possible solution. London works very hard to keep time the same on every world in every corner of the Empire. Maybe they can't maintain it to the second, but it would be easy to keep every place aligned within about a day of each other. With some careful planning, a bit of extra attention paid to Royal Horological duties, and contacts in the New Street Line, a captain could get every workworld to revolt at the same time. That would put a dent in London's confidence.
This is a thing people have actually done. It is called a general strike.