At the end of Qin, I became a son of the plane

Chapter 489: Cleaning up unscrupulous merchants, reducing overcapacity and making an example of others

On the tenth day of the second month of the twentieth year of the Han calendar, Chen County.

After three days of exchanges at the conference, more than 700 workshops in Chen County that were in debt crisis began to do the first batch of pilot projects for government-private partnerships. The court converted the debts owed by these workshops into shares and held % of the shares of the workshops. The court did not manage the factories, but sent supervisors to supervise the shopkeepers in running the workshops. Among them, the original owner of the workshop served as the manager, held % of the shares, and was responsible for running the workshop.

Craftsmen hold 25% of the shares, of which the employer owes the craftsmen wages, and this part of the arrears is transferred to the craftsmen's shares. In other words, the more wages the original workshop owner owes the craftsmen, the lower their shareholding ratio will be. The craftsmen in the workshop set up a craftsmen's meeting and elected supervisors to represent their interests and safeguard their own interests. The shares they hold are paid by the craftsmen themselves, and if they have no money, half of their monthly salary will be used to offset the shares.

Of course, the shareholding alone could not bring these workshops back to life. What they needed was orders and the market to get the factories running again. Just as these workshop owners were still wondering how the court would help them solve the order problem.

At this time Zhou Bo clapped his hands, and a group of people in shackles and with embarrassed expressions appeared in the meeting hall under the escort of the Han army. The appearance of these people caused a sensation in the entire venue.

"This is not Zhou Baopi!" Zhao Yun said in astonishment.

A merchant next to him asked curiously, "Is there anyone named Zhou Paopi?"

Zhao Yun explained, "This is a merchant from Xiliu City. I don't know his real name, but Zhou Paopi is his nickname. My workshop is right next to his. He is a swindler and a real con man. Every craftsman who worked for him was bullied by him. He first tricked outsiders into coming to the city to work with high salaries. In order to trick these craftsmen into working overtime, he promised them three times the salary."

"Three times! Can this be called Zhou Paopi? This is already a great good man in our county."

"If he could pay, he wouldn't have this nickname. The craftsmen worked for him happily and gave him overtime, but he always found various excuses to delay the craftsmen's salary and overtime pay. When he couldn't delay any longer, he turned his back on them and refused to acknowledge that the craftsmen worked for him. Even if the craftsmen found witnesses, he would not admit that they had worked overtime and would not pay them overtime pay."

"The Mohist forces in Chen County are so powerful. With them ruling over the craftsmen, how can Zhou Baopi keep the workshop open?" The merchants who heard this rumor couldn't believe it. Chen County was not only the birthplace of the Han Dynasty, but also the place where the Mohist forces revived. The Mohist forces here were the strongest except for Guanzhong. They were all very worried about the Mohist forces. If they dared to do this, wouldn't they be afraid of the Mohist forces coming to their door?

Zhao Yun said: "This Zhou Paopi is a little clever. He did not recruit craftsmen locally, but went to other rural areas to recruit craftsmen. These rural people are honest and have little experience. They don't know anything about the Mohist school. They dare not report to the authorities when they suffer losses, and can only endure it."

"But this kind of thing will eventually be exposed. Didn't the Mo family do anything about it?"

Zhao Yun said, "Of course, no one cared. But this Zhou Paopi made the employment documents extremely complicated. Even educated craftsmen may not be able to read them all, let alone the farmers in the countryside. Because of the employment documents, it is very difficult for the Mohists to help the farmers. But he did this kind of thing too many times, and people around him knew about it. So they gave him the nickname Zhou Paopi, saying that people who work for him not only don't make any money, but also get skinned by him."

"Later, the Mohists kept a close eye on him. Whenever new craftsmen came, they would immediately take charge of them. Zhou Paopi could no longer stay in Chen County, so he moved out of the workshop. The last time we heard from him was a year ago. It was said that he moved to the countryside and continued to cause trouble to farmers. But we didn't expect that he would be arrested by the court this time."

Then other merchants soon discovered that they knew these arrested merchants, and most of them had bad reputations, cheated people, and walked on the edge of Han law. They would break the law, but only commit minor mistakes that were harmless. Even if they were caught, they would at most be fined and apologized.

However, this behavior can allow them to test the bottom line of Han law. When they find that the Han officials do not care about these things, they will do things according to the bottom line.

Just like the policy of doubling salaries implemented by the Han Dynasty a few years ago, all counties in the Han Dynasty doubled their salaries within five years according to the local minimum salary standard. However, there are loopholes to exploit. The minimum salary is set in the city, but there is no such standard in the vast rural areas of the Han Dynasty. Even if there is, the standard is only 200 to 300 coins per month, and doubling it is only 500 to 600 coins.

As long as they moved their workshops to the countryside, they could save more than half of their salary costs. Although this increased some transportation costs, it was a good deal for these people. Therefore, the rural economy of the Han Dynasty has been developing in full swing in recent years.

And these unscrupulous businessmen did more than just this one thing. They moved their workshops to the countryside and hired farmers at low prices, but their skills were poor, and the cloth they wove was also poor. Naturally, it was difficult to sell because of its poor appearance. Their way to solve this problem was very simple, that is, to lower the price, and they kept lowering the price. The normal price of a batch of linen was 300 coins, but they had some ideas, so they lowered the price of the cloth to 250 coins. It still didn't sell, so they lowered it to 240 coins, 230 coins, and as the competition became more and more fierce, they finally lowered it to 200 coins.

Even if they hire farmers, this price is their cost line, and they cannot make any profit. But it doesn't matter, as long as their thinking does not slip, there are always more solutions than problems. Since the cost is too high, they can use their craftsmanship to find ways to reduce the cost, reduce the weft of the cloth, use various unique technologies of their own, and stretch the length of the cloth, which will save costs.

As for whether the cloth is durable or shrinks after washing, such issues are none of their business, because the cloth has already been sold.

These cheap cloths were popular at first, but the people of Chen County soon realized that they had been cheated, and these defective cloths soon could not be sold.

But these profiteers were very capable. This low-quality cloth could not be sold in the city, but it could be sold in the countryside. Farmers in the countryside did not care too much about quality, but they attached great importance to price. So they started their own cloth-sending activities in the countryside, specifically deceiving those farmers who did not have much knowledge. Later, they formed a complete industry. They first invited a troupe to perform to attract farmers in the countryside to watch the play, and attracted farmers from all over the country to watch. After watching, they would sell their own cloth. With this method, farmers in the counties and villages of Jianghuai were deeply harmed. However, these people were like guerrillas. They would never go to the villages where they sold cloth, and the farmers who suffered losses wanted to find someone to take revenge, but they could not find anyone.

This kind of thing does not only happen in the textile industry, there are many such unscrupulous businessmen in other industries. They dare to do anything for profit and ruin every industry they start. They can be said to be a group of industrial locusts.

Zhou Bo coughed to suppress all the noisy voices. Everyone's eyes were focused on him. He said sternly: "The court welcomes and supports merchants who abide by the law. You open workshops to make money, the court can earn taxes, and the craftsmen can earn salaries to support their families. This is a win-win situation for all three parties. However, some merchants are so greedy that they turn a win-win situation into a situation where only they win and everyone else loses. The court cannot collect their taxes, the craftsmen work themselves to death and cannot support their families, and even their customers can only sell some unusable inferior goods."

Zhou Bo thought for a moment and said, "These are not inferior goods, but fake goods that are useless. The whole world has suffered greatly from these unscrupulous merchants. Today, on behalf of the court, I sentence all of your property to be confiscated and your entire family to be exiled to Southeast Asia. I want to tell you, the unscrupulous merchants, that the Han Dynasty is not a place beyond the law, and all your illegal and disorderly deeds will eventually be punished."

"At the same time, I am also warning everyone present that businessmen must have a bottom line. It is best not to do anything that violates the law. If you do, these people will be your future."

After hearing the verdict, all the arrested profiteers were terrified, and several of them even fainted from fright.

"I don't accept it." Zhou Paopi shouted, "According to the court's laws, it was the Fa Cao and the Tingwei Mansion who tried us. Even if we broke the law, it was not so serious. You are perverting the law and making a random judgment. I will report it to the higher authorities."

The profiteers who walked on the edge of the law had already read through the Han Dynasty laws. They knew which criminal law could make them how much profit. They knew that they had not committed such a serious crime. Zhou Bo sneered, "The court has issued a severe crackdown order to punish you profiteers. During this period, all profiteers' crimes will be severely punished. When you go to prison, I will send someone to copy the notice for you to see, so that you will be convinced to go to Southeast Asia. None of you profiteers can escape. Go to Southeast Asia to work and pay for your sins in the future."

Xu Fan experienced too many economic crises later. It can even be said that the whole world was still in an economic crisis before he traveled through time, not to mention the dozens of crises recorded in history. The solution to the crisis summarized by later generations is also very simple. One is to expand the market. The Han court tried to transport people to the Western Regions, Liaodong, Jiangnan, and Nanyang to develop these desolate places and expand the entire Han civilization market. Of course, it takes a lot of time to see the effect, and it is difficult to see the effect immediately, but this is a fundamental solution.

And there is also a quick and effective method. The Han Dynasty had already established Anxi County in Tianzhu. Xu Fan ordered the Tianzhu Trading Company to transport 300 million pieces of cloth and dump them into the Tianzhu market. As for the tragic fate of the local textile craftsmen in Tianzhu, he could only pretend not to see it.

Of course, the size of the Han Dynasty is too large, and the production capacity is too high. Such a huge production capacity is simply not something that other civilizations that are still in the slave system can digest. These dumping methods cannot even reduce one tenth of the production capacity.

Then the only option is to use the second method often used by the Celestial Empire in later generations, which is to reduce overcapacity and eliminate a number of small factories with backward and low production efficiency, leaving the market for those factories with high production efficiency.

The Han Dynasty wanted to reduce overcapacity, so it was natural to investigate industries with overcapacity, such as the textile industry. This investigation was not important, but Xu Fan discovered that many workshops in the Han Dynasty were actually doing the same thing as the so-called paraquat in later generations, making some low-priced and low-quality goods, which not only made the industry unprofitable, but also completely ruined it. This made Xu Fan furious.

Xu Fan used to work in a slaughterhouse. He saw with his own eyes how his peers brought an industry to ruin. For a while, the price of pork heads in Tianfu was very high, so vendors used refrigerated trucks to transport pig heads to Hongdu to make money. However, in order to grab business, the pig head vendors in Hongdu initially lowered the purchase price from 5 yuan per catty to 4 yuan, 5 yuan, and finally to the cost price of 4 yuan.

The local vendors buy the pigs from slaughterhouses at 3 yuan, pay the refrigeration fees, and then sell them at 6 yuan. This price is so high that not only does everyone lose money, but they also have to lose money on the refrigeration fees and labor costs, forcing everyone to lose money.

The regular way started to fail, so in order to grab business, everyone started to resort to crooked means. They bought a syringe and injected one or two kilograms of water into each pig head. The one or two kilograms of water was the profit of the vendor. Of course, it was also normal for some greedy people to inject three or four kilograms.

But there was a flaw. Once the pig heads were placed in the cold storage, they expanded due to heat and contracted due to cold, and the places where water was drawn bulged out like tumors. Soon, merchants from Tianfu no longer came to Hongdu, and this trade route was cut off by Hongdu people themselves.

Xu Fan was speechless. Why did they have to leave a dead end? They could have kept some profits to save the industry. Everyone would have another way out, and people who make a living from this could also make a few more dollars. Why did they do such a thing that would ruin everyone's life and leave everyone without food to eat in the future?

Later generations on the Internet said that the Chinese were smart, but most of them were petty cleverness that hurt others and benefited themselves. Many people on the Internet said that the Russians liked to buy expensive Western goods and were unwilling to buy our goods, and they discriminated against us. Many people were indignant, but they didn't know that in the 1990s, those dealers had already ruined our reputation. They suffered a generation of losses, so what's wrong with seeing us as scammers?

The key is that the Russians have connections with the West. The same Chinese goods, but the Western ones are better than ours. I am afraid that the Russians think we are discriminating against them. They really don't regard the Russians as the Western uncles, and treat them the same way they treat local people. What's the problem with your goods not being able to sell?

In the past ten years or so that Xu Fan has been working, he feels that the atmosphere of the entire society is very impetuous and eager for quick success. People go to extremes in everything they do, and do things at the expense of their descendants' jobs.

Of course, the main reason is that they did not set a good example. The source of all these mistakes was created by themselves in the beginning. The first class is from the Western uncles, the second class is from foreign uncles, and the third class is reserved for local products. Even the quality of the same product is different. They even have two special production lines. Only we have such a thing.

They didn't do anything that could guarantee the quality, and just pushed the competition to the limit, until no one could survive. The key point is that the person who should have been the referee just didn't care about these things.

The whole society complained, but he said he couldn't do anything about it. There were too many people doing such things and there was no manpower to manage them. However, he could manage the quality of exported goods. Is it really impossible to control it, or do you have your own agenda?

In the past, Xu Fan had no ability to change this, and he could only go with the flow. But now that he sees that the unscrupulous merchants in the Han Dynasty are also doing this, what else can he say? If he doesn't clear these inferior unscrupulous merchants out of the market, will he have to wait like in later generations, waiting for these unscrupulous merchants to use inferior goods to eliminate excellent products, and then play the game of bad money driving out good money?

So in January of the 20th year of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty launched a special campaign to clean up the merchants, the merchants and their workshops that produced fake and inferior products, the merchants who were harsh on their employees, the merchants who reduced the purchasing power of the entire Han society, and the merchants who violated laws and disciplines.

Only after their production capacity is completely cleared up, will the market in Dahan improve. Only then will the whole society's atmosphere improve, and only then can we achieve a market where good money drives out bad money.

After Zhou Bo and Li Si received the document, they felt that this was a good opportunity to reduce the number of competitors, and immediately launched a special cleanup campaign. After all, since Chen County began its state-run pilot program, they hoped that the fewer competitors the better, and it would be best if all the workshops in Chen County were state-run. They would not touch those law-abiding workshops, but for those merchants and workshops that were on the court's blacklist, there was nothing to wait for, so they just cleaned them out.

In less than a month, Zhou Bo and his colleagues arrested hundreds of unscrupulous businessmen and closed down hundreds of illegal workshops.

Moreover, Li Si suggested to Zhou Bo that before the end of the meeting, these merchants who had accepted the reform should be shown the fate of their peers, so as to make an example of them and frighten them. This is why the current situation has occurred.

Legalists do not trust human nature. Li Si does not think that if the court allows these merchants to retain the management rights of the workshops and retains 20% to 30% of the shares, these merchants will be grateful to the court. Not at all. Instead, they will feel that the court is exploiting them. They will use various means to transfer the court's assets.

Therefore, before these people take office, they must be given a warning to let them know that the court can save them but can also throw them into the abyss. If they do not work peacefully for the court, then these unscrupulous businessmen will end up like this. Although this method cannot completely intimidate the merchants, it still has a certain deterrent effect in the first two years, so that they dare not act recklessly.

The effect on the scene also made Zhou Bo very satisfied. These unscrupulous businessmen were dragged out miserably, and their entire families were exiled to Southeast Asia, which greatly shocked the merchants on the scene.

Zhou Bo looked at the expressions of these people and nodded with satisfaction, saying, "The court has allowed Chen County to borrow 2 billion to improve the tracks of Chen County, from the original wooden tracks to iron tracks, from loess gravel to asphalt roads, to expand the Chen County docks, and to renovate the dilapidated neighborhoods in Chen County to accommodate more and more people in Chen County. And the 2 billion order from the court will be taken over by you, the first batch of government-run workshops."

The merchants present finally showed joy on their faces. With this 20 billion order, their factories would be able to come back to life.

(End of this chapter)