"All we're doing is catching some fish"

As the murder investigation continues, the Chairman (Mr. Hong) of the corporation behind the fishing company is brought into questioning for surpressing the murder investigation. The audience learns that he keeps his employees and their families quiet with his money and power in order to cover up illegal activities happening on his boats. The government representative hopes that the chairman cooperates with the investigation, she grills him on whether or not his fishing fleets are directed to catch fish outside of international regulations; like fishing out of quota, catching endangered species, or exploiting smuggled workers.

Mr. Hong is unapologetic for his business practicies; whatever happens out on the blue sea is all a matter of survival. What gets caught in fishing nets is out of anyone's control sometimes.

He reminds the representative that while Taiwan needs to abide by international fishing regulations in order to tap into foreign markets to export their goods, Taiwan is only a "Fishing Entity", which means Taiwan's fishing fleets doesn't get the same gurantees and protections of fleets of soverign nations. If a Taiwanese fishing fleet encounters trouble (i.e. pirates), no one will come to their rescue, and the fleets themselves have no bargaining or negotiation power to make deals with other foreign fishing fleets.

"This is an economic food war, the foreigners have long flooded our market with imported meats and grain while putting more and more restrictions on our domestic food production, like fishing. How can we even hope to care about the well-being of foreign wokers if we can't feed ourselves first!"

Taiwan at one point in time received tremendous food aid from the US as a means to achieve social stability because the sudden mass migration of Chinese fleeing from the Chinese civil war had tremendous impact on the mis-manged Taiwanese economy by the Republic of China government. So much food aid that the diet of Taiwan changed from predominately domestic rice dishes to noodles and bread made from imported flour. US Aid was ubiquitos, empty sacks of US Aid flour was turned into outfits for children. Taiwan has come a long way since then, it exports all sorts of delicious food items around the world. Have some boba milk tea and find some pineapple cakes where you are!

I always like to describe Taiwan's role throughout history as a pirate island, the tradition continues to live on. Perhaps one of Taiwan's advantages is their domestic markets existing outside of the purview of international organizations, so a risky gray area exists for those who wish to venture out on their own.

"Labor is getting more expensive, oil is getting more expensive, yet we can't catch more fish?"

Oh Mr. Hong, if only he had a mechanism to retain his profits and reinvest them to improve your fleets and improve the well-being of your workers as to not disgruntle them to commit murder. Adopting a Bitcoin Standard fixes this! Mr. Hong could avoid all of the hassles cutting corners in the shadows by measuring the value of his output in sats. It's not the value of the fish that is dropping or the costs to catch fish from regulation that are skyrocketing, its the tool he uses to measure value that is out of wack.

The series seems to ask:

"does survival allow one to exploit others?"

While the characters debate over ethics and struggle with their morals, I'm chewing on an orange pill imagining a system where it is simply not possible to do that.