unclear

Chapter 147 Although there are thousands of people, I will go

In the past, it was difficult for Hong Tao to find first-hand information on this aspect. After Li Zhi went to Guangdong and Guangxi to take up a post, he got first-hand information on the businessmen of Folangji, and he suddenly realized it through comparison.

It is true that the Ming Empire was a surplus country, and the amount of silver imported every year was also reliable, but the silver did not enter the circulation process, but was hoarded by domestic merchants.The less circulated, the less it is, the less it is, the more expensive it is, and the more expensive it is, the more people hoard it. The positive cycle has not entered, but the negative cycle has come first.

If you want to ask businessmen what is the use of saving so much money, just two words, it is useless!It can’t be said that the model of speculating on currency and making profit from the difference did not exist in the 17th century, but people in the Ming Dynasty basically had no idea.

Useless, that is to say, they have a huge amount of silver in their hands, and they have no other uses except building big houses, donating students to supervising students, bribing officials, and drinking flower wine. To put it bluntly, they lack investment channels.

At this time, we have to turn around and criticize bureaucratic capital. What is bureaucratic capital?It's very simple, it's just power and money coming together.This group of people do business not by vision, craftsmanship, product performance, or even credit, but solely by policy inclinations. Their means of competition are extremely single, and they will use their power to destroy anyone who gets in the way!
In this state, they will not invest a lot of money in developing new products or new technologies, nor will they intentionally cultivate the market, nor will they rack their brains to scheme against foreign businessmen.

As long as the power is in hand, the business must exist. It doesn't matter who is better at business than us. Competition is nothing. Just find a crime and deduct it. People are sent to the army and distributed, business is confiscated and then distributed internally. No effort is wasted, and the market will be wiped out. Monopoly.

Of course, bureaucratic capital is not monolithic, and there must be competition among them.But that kind of competition is not about who can innovate, be trustworthy, and improve product performance, but who can be an official, who has more power, and who can stand firm!
Faced with deflation, how did the emperors of the Ming Dynasty respond in history?They belong to the Mongolian doctors and govern badly.Regardless of life or death, Kaka is a violent operation, which is euphemistically called increasing revenue and reducing expenditure.

Open source means raising taxes, raising all kinds of taxes, so that the court will have money.Reducing expenditure means cutting back on clothing and diet, taking the lead from the emperor to live a simple life, lay off redundant staff, and reduce government expenditures.

On the surface, these two moves are not considered a mixed bag, but they forgot one thing, God's attitude!

The reason why accidents are called accidents shows that no one can completely avoid them.Therefore, when formulating any policy, sufficient redundancy must be created to prepare for emergencies.If you prepare ten times, you may not use it even once, but if you fail to prepare once, you will catch up without being able to save everything.

Emperor Chongzhen did not set an example of wealth, or simply did not care about it.As a result, God suddenly struck, and natural disasters occurred for several consecutive years, causing the already tense court and people to collapse together.

If Emperor Chongzhen could travel through time and return to the moment when he ascended the throne, would it be possible to find the right way to solve the problem and turn the tide?

If a person who only knows how to drive a horse-drawn carriage were to be the pilot of a large passenger plane, would it be possible to land safely when the plane malfunctioned and had to make an emergency landing?

If these two assumptions are actually the same property, it is possible, but it is extremely small and can almost be ignored.Even if Emperor Chongzhen knew the problem and mastered the correct method, he still could not solve the problem because he ran out of time.

What he faced was not that a certain part needed to be replaced, but that the entire control system had a problem and had to be overhauled on the ground before it could take off.Once in heaven, the Queen Mother can only shake off her hands and stare when she comes down to earth.

Now this thorny question is before Hong Tao. Can he be better than Emperor Chongzhen?There may not be anything outstanding in the skill of controlling hundreds of officials, but the advantage is that you have enough time. As long as you are not too unlucky, there is still a chance, and if it exceeds 50%, you can give it a try.

If you want to solve the financial problems of the Ming Empire, you can't get around the bureaucracy no matter how you go about it.In other words, all the contradictions in the Ming Empire were directly and importantly related to the bureaucracy.

Officials are the backbone of a country's management. If there is an irreversible failure in this group, it will be very difficult to repair it.Because this system has a self-destruction device, once it is detected to be in danger, it is likely to pull the entire aircraft to self-destruct.Hong Tao is in his fourth year on the throne. He has never revealed his true thoughts. He just keeps testing the surrounding areas. On the one hand, he wants to confuse the other party, and on the other hand, he is also looking for a tool that he can take advantage of.

The ancients said that if you want to do your job well, you must first sharpen your tools.As the saying goes, don't do porcelain work without diamonds.Without professional and convenient tools, it is easy to attack the entire complex system. Not only will the fault not be repaired, but it may also suffer from its backlash.

Hong Tao only has one tool at his disposal: force!

He had endured in the palace for 20 years, and he had already understood and thought clearly about one thing. The entire court, including the gentry group, could not be convinced by reason alone. Even if the Jade Emperor issued an imperial edict, they would turn a blind eye.

What is vested interest?The royal family, officials, gentry, and nobles were the vested interest groups of the Ming Empire.Anyone who wants to change the status quo will dig up their ancestral graves, and will only get the hatred of Chi Guoguo without any reason.

The only thing that can make them surrender their interests is a bloody butcher knife.No reason is given. Whoever has the bigger fist has the final say. Whether he agrees or disagrees, he will act obediently according to the winner's wishes. If he dares to say even a few weird words, he will immediately behead his head, confiscate his home, and exterminate his entire clan!

But to achieve this, it is far from enough to rely solely on the navy established in the name of the navy. It is just a stop-gap measure.Now that the conditions are ripe, it’s time to expand further.

Get more armed eunuchs or imperial guards, officials will not be impatient, and they can limit the scale by controlling Taicang and checking the internal treasury.But once the emperor reaches out to the army, the nature of the matter changes, and it will inevitably trigger a fierce confrontation. It is difficult to say who will lose and who will win.

Hong Tao never does anything he is not sure about. If he has to do it, he must prepare a way out and be prepared to fail. He will not put all his money on luck. The main reason is that his luck has never been easy to predict.

"If Your Majesty wants to interfere with naval trade, I'm afraid it will cause a lot of trouble."

Yuan Keli didn't know that he had been used as a gun by the emperor, and it was a gun that could be abandoned at any time.After listening to this long and reasonable analysis, I agree with most of the content, but I just can’t figure out how to implement it.

Every emperor has thought about opening up the sea, and some emperors have tried to implement it, but most of them ended in failure.The reasons are complicated. The most important thing is that without the support of the official and gentry groups, the emperor cannot be allowed to sail the ship himself.

If the emperor could persuade the courtiers to agree to open the sea, then he would not have to secretly build ships and train navy under the title of Governor of Water Transport. This would be like taking off his pants and farting.

"There will definitely be trouble. No matter what demands I make, I will not be praised by the court. Didn't I tell you just now that as long as the matter is done flawlessly, I will be sure to convince them. Can we revive the national destiny? I'm just an assistant, Li Qing, you are the key!"

The topic came back again. Hong Tao stood up and left the desk. While expressing his inner anxiety in a deep voice, he patted his hand on Yuan Keli's thick shoulder, his eyes full of expectation.

(End of this chapter)