When he reached the door and walked out onto the street, Bill turned around and couldn't help but admire the people who were left behind. Except for a few elderly people who were weak, they had managed to completely improve on all of his original designs.
Due to a lack of resources, their capabilities were limited, but from the plans that several people brought him, it seemed that they were trying to turn the interior of the warehouse into a completely mechanical mechanism.
This included tables and chairs that extended out from the floor, and apartments suspended one above the other and rotating using a system of gears and winches.
What was even more impressive was that all of their proposed ideas were based on a spring mechanism, as there was no external power source. Thinking that if he had introduced them to steam power, they would have definitely created a steam island, Bill laughed to himself.
"That's a funny idea," he thought.
But he was in no mood for fun at the moment. Closing the door, he climbed onto the roof of the warehouse and sat down, looking out over the harbor.
Sitting there, Bill tried to put some order into the world he lived in so that it would be easier to understand.
"For starters," he thought.
"The world government is more like the Holy Roman Empire than a modern state."
That was the main takeaway from hours of conversation with his father, and then from his request for information from Sentomaru.
It turned out that there are not three, but four great powers in the world.
The Revolutionary Army was a real problem, spread across all the blue seas to at least some degree. The man Bill was fighting was one of the most dangerous criminals in the world, comparable in power to the four Pirate Emperors.
But even after all he had learned about the man called the Revolutionary Dragon, even after learning the names of the seven Sea Lords and their abilities, even knowing that the people in this world could destroy entire islands, none of it could compare to the problem of the World Government.
As was the case with the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, the World Government did not strictly prohibit wars between its vassal kingdoms.
This was a huge revelation for Bill, who had believed that the World Government functioned like the United States and the kingdoms functioned like individual states.
After all, the central government of the United States would never allow Virginia to re-annex West Virginia. In fact, no Virginia governor would even consider such an idea.
This was not a simple matter of semantics, because it meant that the political system was not mature enough to have a functioning central authority that could protect the people from the petty squabbles of local aristocrats.
Even more troubling, Bill knew that if the political machine was turned back far enough, very bad things would happen, especially if you added superpowers to the equation.
The key difference between modern, medieval and ancient systems of government was the broad embrace of humanism. The further you go back in history, the more brutal the politics become.
How would some simple despot act if he really possessed divine power compared to the masses around him? The answer was obvious!
It didn't even require a Devil Fruit to do this, as some people were born superhuman, but it was easy to imagine how even a lazy aristocrat could abuse his power if he gained the abilities that one of these fruits provided. Hadn't Bill seen an example of this with the Bear King?
He even suspected that the Bear King, despite being a pirate, might not be an exception.
Besides, as far as Bill knew from Earth's history, it would be impossible to convince a king who believed in some version of "Divine Right" to abandon the idea.
So in this world, not only could there be potentially superhuman aristocrats intoxicated with their own power, but it would also be almost impossible to negotiate with them.
Because of these thoughts, Bill directly asked Aramakki if the World Nobles believed that they were appointed by God.
At first, Aramakki was surprised at this question, but then answered affirmatively: "They themselves are not gods, but they are the descendants of gods."
After this statement, Bill realized that the political situation could be very bad and began to ask about the laws of the World Government and how they were made.
He knew it was impossible, but it seemed that his father had anticipated his fears and was answering them in the best possible way.
Who makes the laws of the World Government? The World Nobility.
Why does the World Government allow its vassal kingdoms to fight each other? They have no right to violate the freedom of sovereign kingdoms.
In fact, Aramacchi said, one of the Marines' main jobs is not just to hunt pirates, but to prevent these wars from getting out of control.