Recreating the prosperous Tang begins with summoning players

Jiang Lun rubbed his eyes, and looked away from the reports of various branches of the Wangfu Bank. He rubbed his temples with a headache. The entire Longyou economy began to overheat.

From a series of reports, Jiang Lun saw that the products produced by Longyou Workshop were becoming increasingly unsalable.

As a student of economics, Jiang Lun quickly saw the crisis, which is - overcapacity.

Longyou's production capacity has been developing rapidly, and it has developed by leaps and bounds after the steam engine appeared.

A steam engine workshop can produce the goods that ten or even a hundred workshops could produce in the past. At the beginning, as long as the products produced can be exchanged for money, merchants and players at that time were all vying for it. The latest equipment needs to be expanded and the equipment improved.

However, with the increasing number of merchants and players, officials and players from all over the country are actively developing industry and commerce, which has led to the explosive development of the production capacity of the entire Longyou. In the past few months, there have been signs of overcapacity.

After all, life in Longyou has improved, but a person can use at most one piece of soap a month, and if the excess soap is not sold, it will be piled up in the warehouse and slowly deteriorate.

At this time, thanks to the efforts of the players who ran the business, the soap was sold from Longyou to the grasslands, to Chang'an and other areas. At first, the demand in these areas increased, and more soap workshops expanded their production capacity, but soon these The demand is also filled.

Herdsmen on the prairie need more necessities such as tea, and soap is just the demand of some nobles.

The same is true in Chang'an. After all, there are only a small number of people who can afford soap, and ordinary people in Chang'an are not so extravagant that they use soap every day.

Those players who invested in building soap workshops began to sell soap to more places, but a structure of overcapacity has formed, and the competition in soap workshops has intensified and profits have also decreased.

Jiang Lun sighed. Economic overheating is a headache for all countries, and Longyou cannot escape economic laws.

Not only soap workshops, but also a series of industries such as cotton wool textile industry and iron smelting industry in Longyou have a certain degree of overcapacity, that is, too many products are produced.

Jiang Lun sighed, if other places in Datang can develop like Longyou, then these products will definitely be able to sell.

However, in most areas of the Tang Dynasty, there were only a few rich people, and most of the people were still living a life without enough food, let alone buying things that improved life such as soap.

It's like a newspaper office. Except for Chang'an and Chengdu, even Cui Tao's newspaper office in Lingzhou is in a state of loss, and needs subsidies from the Lingzhou government to keep it from going bankrupt.

After Cui Tao arrived in Lingzhou, he also developed the three axes of Keynesianism in the same way as he did in Zhangye.

That is, the government invests in infrastructure construction, attracts investment to build industrial parks, and increases the income of the people through industrialized production capacity leaps.

Relying on these three axes, Cui Tao has carried out many projects in Lingzhou, and also attracted many workshop masters and players to Lingzhou.

But this time, Cui Tao's three tricks in Lingzhou did not have the same effect as when he was in Zhangye. Many workshops even went to Lingzhou, but they began to lose money as soon as they opened.

The merchants and players in Longyou are too involved. The prices of tools such as shovels, which are produced in the Dashuixia Iron Works and then transported to Lingzhou, are even lower than the prices of local products in Lingzhou. The original development model of Zhangye was in However, Lingzhou failed to fully replicate it. The large amount of investment from the Lingzhou government did not benefit the local workshops, forcing Cui Tao to demand that local workshops in Lingzhou must participate in the local projects in Lingzhou.

This was another war of words, and the owner of the workshop in Longyou criticized Cui Tao for engaging in trade protectionism.

Jiang Lun was a bit troubled. The development model of Longyou was actually a Keynesian one, and all countries that practiced Keynesianism could not escape the result of overcapacity in the end.

For example, Roosevelt's New Deal after the Great Depression was actually the Keynesianism in which the government led infrastructure construction.

Roosevelt's New Deal seems to have solved the problem of the Great Depression, but in fact it just digested the problem of excess capacity with national investment.

However, investment in many infrastructure industries is delayed. For example, the construction of a railway in Longyou requires a large amount of steel. If the demand for steel increases, the price of steel will rise.

Then many workshop owners will devote themselves to the profitable steel industry, but the investment and construction of the steel industry takes a period. After a large number of steel workshops are built, the demand for steel disappears.

At this time, these blindly invested steel workshops have become excess capacity, and this kind of government-led infrastructure investment is even more likely to breed this excess capacity.

Had it not been for Roosevelt's fate to meet the war, the overcapacity increased through the New Deal would be enough to cause another Great Depression in the United States.

Jiang Lun sighed, the situation in Longyou is the same now, the most advocating expansion now is not the generals, nor the officials, but the merchants.

Merchants and players are actively demanding external expansion, adding more markets and population. This trend has blown from the forum to Datang World. In the newspapers hosted by these merchants and players, a large number of speeches advocating expansion have begun to affect Longyou of the people.

Jiang Lun smiled wryly. Otherwise, economics is the most useless knowledge. Even if you know economics, the industry in Longyou is still in trouble. The problem of economics does not mean that you can get around it if you know it is a pit, or else Successful countries in this world would not be so rare.

Jiang Lun sighed, there is still a solution to Longyou's economic problems, and that is to continue to expand.

For example, with the increase of player power in Chengdu Prefecture, a large number of merchants and players flooded into Shuzhong, bringing new markets for the surplus goods in Longyou.

Another example is that Pinglu, which is controlled by Longyou, has become a new hot spot in the eyes of merchants and workshop owners. Even Silla and Fusang have become targets for merchants and players.

The forums are full of people clamoring to open the gate of Silla and to send a black ship to Fusang. Jiang Lun scoffed at this. Now the people of Silla and Fusang are eating dirt, even the little nobles are hungry. One meal, even if you open the door of Fusang, how much market can it provide?
Instead of traveling thousands of miles to expand the markets of Silla and Fusang, it is better to deeply cultivate the market of Datang. If they can control more areas, they may be able to digest these excess production capacity.

After Jiang Lu wrote these questions into an official document and submitted it to the King of Yue, he started to worry about the troubles of the Wangfu Bank again.

Just like the run on Yangzhou Wangfu Bank this time, the cash shortage of Wangfu Banks in various places has once again impacted the reputation of Wangfu Bank.

As long as Datang still has too little money!
When it comes to Datang's currency and finance, it is simply a disaster.

From Zhenguanbao to Kaiyuan Tongbao, they are all legal currency in the Tang Dynasty. However, the coins minted in the past dynasties are of different quality, copper content and weight. Although they are all money, they have different values ​​​​when they are used.

The most popular currency among the people is the Kaiyuan Tongbao issued by the emperor.

Because Kaiyuan Tongbao is the currency minted in the prosperous age, it is the most fine and exquisitely made, and it is the most issued coin.

In addition to coins, silk is also a legal currency, but the fineness of silk is more complicated, and it is more troublesome to measure its value. Nowadays, folks only use silk to pay taxes, and rarely use silk for transactions.

But including the money issued by the entire Datang, the problem of money shortage is still serious.

In some cities with developed trade, there is even a shortage of money, and some transactions have to degenerate to the stage of bartering.

For these relatively distant Wangfu Banks, such as the Wangfu Bank established in Yangzhou, transporting copper coins to Yangzhou is a very costly matter.

However, Jiang Lun found that in Longyou's trade, money shortage did not seem to be a problem.

Jiang Lun was surprised to find that Hu merchants and local merchants who traded in Gaochang City often used foreign silver coins for transactions.

For example, the Roman silver coins minted in Rome are called Daqin silver coins by the local people in Gaochang. This kind of silver coins minted in the Roman Republic era before BC has considerable circulation in Shazhou. Local merchants already have a set of formulas for converting Kaiyuan Tongbao into silver coins. up.

In addition, the silver coins minted by the ancient Persian Empire are also very circulated in the Western Regions.

Jiang Lun got inspiration from it, and the way he used to solve the money shortage problem was to ask the king of Yue to mint gold and silver coins.

Similar to Jiang Lun's problems, Fifth Qi, Du Zhilang of the Tang household department, was also troubled by the money shortage in Chang'an.

After the East Palace used donations to solve the problem of arrears of salaries for officials, it caused a tight circulation of copper coins in Chang'an City. Now that the price of rice in Chang'an has plummeted, it has caused a shortage of food in Chang'an.

The reason for this contradictory situation is that there are a lot of copper coins on the market in Chang'an and there is little money, so the value of money rises, and the rice that can be bought by one plant of money naturally increases.

But the price at which grain merchants buy rice is still there. Now that they sell grain at the current rice price, they will definitely lose money.

This also made the grain merchants in Chang'an stop selling grain one after another, or no longer transported grain to Chang'an.

As the most proficient financial official in Datang, Fifth Qi saw the crisis from it.

If the price of rice in Chang'an continues to go down like this, there will definitely be a food shortage in Chang'an. When An Qingxu is besieging Luoyang and waiting for an opportunity to attack Tongguan, it is very important to maintain the stability of Chang'an.

Fifth Qi came up with the idea of ​​asking the court to cast new money.