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

Chapter 494: Mohist Model and Zhou Bo’s Policy Agenda

Qin Bo's words hit the core contradiction of the Han Dynasty. Because of Xu Fan's plug-in, the productivity of the Han Dynasty was still in the handicraft stage, and they began to formulate standardized parts and assembly line production methods. When the steam engine was developed, standardization began to accelerate, and all walks of life began to formulate their own standards. To produce a complex steam engine, all walks of life need to start working together. This division of labor and cooperation greatly improved production efficiency. In the words of later generations, this is the socialization of production. But 90% of these workshops in the Han Dynasty are private, and they have gained too much benefit in the distribution of benefits.

Ye Teng said unhappily, "Over the years, the court has always favored the craftsmen and has been trying to find ways to solve the problem, but nothing can be accomplished overnight. It takes a process, and if the craftsmen in Chang'an City really couldn't survive as you said, they wouldn't have spent several months protesting. Those workshops were built by the merchants themselves, and the court can't force them to pay most of their profits to the craftsmen as salaries."

In Ye Teng's opinion, craftsmen from any part of the world are eligible to hold demonstrations, except for those in Chang'an, because their salaries are the highest in the world. The Han court also provides the most comprehensive protection for their rights and interests. They also have the best welfare benefits.

Five years ago, the Mohist school proposed a motion at the Sages' Council, saying that in recent years, more and more craftsmen had come to Chang'an City to work, and the houses in Chang'an City could not accommodate so many craftsmen, resulting in 30% to 50% of the salary of the craftsmen in Chang'an City being paid for rent.

People who do not work can earn 30% to 50% of the salary of several craftsmen by owning a house. Their lives are several times better than those of craftsmen, but they do not have to work. This seriously violates the common sense of getting rich through labor that the Han Dynasty has always advocated. This is another kind of land rent, another kind of oppression. If the court does not pay attention to solving this problem, the landlords and tyrants will return to the Han Dynasty in another form. They will obtain more and more wealth in this way, and houses will become a new means for these tyrants to exploit ordinary people. The concept of getting rich through labor will be completely destroyed.

Mo's case attracted Xu Fan's attention. He had the deepest understanding of this model in later generations. Looking back now, when did the benefits of labor get replaced by capital gains? It was probably after the Olympics.

Xu Fan naturally couldn't let such a thing happen in Chang'an City. The technology of this era had not yet developed to the point where it could support millions of rentiers. If the Han Dynasty wanted to continue to expand in all directions, it would have to use huge dances to develop vassal states one by one. To maintain the current prosperous scene, it would require a large number of craftsmen to produce wealth. The Han Dynasty must find a way to save the living costs of workers and completely remove the obstacles that made ordinary people become workers. Any stumbling blocks on the road to industrialization must be kicked away.

Therefore, the Han Dynasty invested 100 billion in five years to build a large number of artisan houses. Any artisan could apply to live in the artisan house as long as he paid 5 coins for rent. Of course, in order to prevent some bad things from happening, these houses were built in the mode of collective dormitories, with four or even eight iron beds in a room. Each artisan who lived there had a bed and an iron cabinet, and the kitchen and toilet were shared. Each such house was built with 6 to 2 floors, and a house could accommodate 3 to artisans. There were five such houses in Chang'an City, and almost one artisan house was built every year. Now it can accommodate more than artisans.

Moreover, these workshops were concentrated together. Xu Fan didn't believe that under the attention of hundreds of thousands of craftsmen, someone would dare to drive the emperor's carriage and live in such a house.

This is the experience Xu Fan learned in the Lion Country in later generations. Don’t underestimate their small country, but they still have certain advanced experience in developing industrialization.

Later, when Xu Fan went to work here, he lived in this kind of special workers' dormitory. Eight to ten people lived in one room. There were tens of thousands of people living in one community, all of whom were workers like him. The most important thing was that workers like Xu Fan didn't have to pay for this kind of dormitory. The factory paid for it, and the money the factory paid was not much. A room like this only cost a thousand yuan (Singapore dollars, equivalent to 5000 yuan here).

The consequence of the Han Dynasty's actions was that the housing prices and rents in Chang'an City dropped by 20% to 30% every year. The newly formed landlords all wailed, and they finally found a way to make money, but it was cut off by the court. Later, other industrial counties in the Han Dynasty also began to follow the court's policy, but the local financial resources were insufficient, making it difficult for them to build a market town like Chang'an City that could accommodate hundreds of thousands of craftsmen.

Therefore, in Ye Teng's opinion, among all the craftsmen in the world, the craftsmen in Chang'an City have the best welfare benefits, and they should be most grateful to the Han Dynasty court. However, it is they who hold the most demonstrations. There are one or two demonstrations every month, but the scale varies.

Qin Bo said: "Why not? All the factories under my Mo family do this. Their salaries are generally three times higher than those of Chang'an craftsmen. Even the old gatekeepers can support their families. Even though my Mo family pays so much salary, the craftsmen still don't have to work overtime. They have time to spend with their families and a large amount of funds for technology research and development. During this economic crisis, none of my Mo family's factories went bankrupt. Doesn't this prove the vitality and advancement of this model?"

Ye Teng said: "You compare your hundreds of small workshops in the Mohist school with tens of thousands of workshops in the world?

If you, the Mohist, are really that capable, the four major banks still have many mortgaged workshops. If you have the ability, you can take them over. The court will not charge you money. As long as you make money and pay off these debts, that will be enough."

After the crisis bottomed out and the economy began to improve, many people took over these workshops again, saving a lot of losses for the Han Dynasty, but there were still some inferior workshops that merchants were unwilling to buy. These basically had to be thrown into the hands of the four major banks and become bad debts. If the Mo family really accepted these practices, Ye Teng would be overjoyed.

Qin Bo said calmly: "My Mohist School does not have that many Mohists, so it is difficult to take over so many workshops."

This is Qin Bo's most helpless thing. The collective workshop model of Mohism is not so easy to build. It took Mohism a long time to gradually take shape and develop to a certain extent. However, this development only started in Guanzhong, which is the area best controlled by Mohism.

The higher the salary of craftsmen, the better, because they also have to compete with countless private workshops. At the beginning, the Mohist School raised the salary of craftsmen too high, which led to the high cost of goods. Eventually, the workshops had difficulties in operation and almost went bankrupt.

Xu Fan reminded Qin Bo that if the workshop wanted to survive, it had to reduce the cost of goods. It would be impossible to compete with those merchants' workshops by only increasing the salaries of the craftsmen without improving the production efficiency of the goods. Even the Mohists could not violate this rule.

But they can give these craftsmen a dual identity as the owners, and give the owners a share of the profits to the craftsmen.

This is Xu Fan's understanding of the Pang Donglai model. In later generations, Pang Donglai became famous on the Internet, and everyone envied their employees. Xu Fan only knew that there was such a supermarket when he went online. Their employees' salaries were very high and their treatment was very good. They were one of the few companies that treated people as human beings, not just cattle and horses.

Of course, how does he operate internally? How to ensure profits? Xu Fan didn't understand. He could only tell Qin Bo in a way that he understood, that is, to distribute part of the boss's money to employees. The highlight is a core idea, and the rest depends on your own understanding and comprehension.

Later, the Mohist school also changed the model. The basic salary was the same as that of other craftsmen in Chang'an, but the bonus followed the profit. If the profit was high, everyone would get a larger bonus, and if the profit was low, everyone would get a smaller bonus.

The advantage of this model is that everyone can exploit themselves as the boss. The disadvantage is that it requires very high organizational skills and very high requirements for managers. If the upper-level managers are dissatisfied with their income and have evil ideas, the factory will be in turmoil and fall into trouble.

At the beginning, Qin Bo would also hire some managers. After all, not everyone has management talent, and the Mohist School also needed to introduce talents from outside.

However, when these managers see other people with similar status earning dozens of times more than themselves, they will naturally feel unbalanced and even think that they can replace them. Those with higher moral standards will directly quit their jobs and start their own businesses, while those with lower moral standards will try every possible means to bring the practices of all craftsmen under their command and directly make money out of nothing.

After experiencing several crises like this, Qin Bo found that managers should be selected from the workshop's own craftsmen. Craftsmen who grow up with the workshop have a stronger sense of belonging. At the same time, supervision of the management was strengthened. Those with entrepreneurial ideas were directly sent out, and even a certain amount of investment was given. However, this led to the fact that each of the workshops controlled by the Mohist School required more than a dozen Mohists to organize production. The number of Mohists limited the growth rate of this production model.

But it is undeniable that this model is advanced to a certain extent. During this economic crisis, private workshop owners were wailing everywhere, and bankrupt workshops were everywhere.

However, none of the Mohist collective workshops went bankrupt and easily survived the crisis. The reason was very simple, because they had the dual identities of both the owner and the craftsman. When facing the crisis, they were no longer craftsmen but owners. They could give up their salaries just to keep their workshops.

But other private workshops don't have this ability. Craftsmen come to your workshop to work for a salary. Who would work for you without a salary? As for whether the factory goes bankrupt or not, what does it have to do with these craftsmen?
More importantly, when a crisis comes, these workshops can unite into a close collective. For example, cloth workshops can sell cloth to clothing factories at cost price, and clothing factories can sell clothing to craftsmen in all Mohist subordinate factories at cost price. Kiln factories can import pots and pans at cost price, and minerals can also import coal at cost price. This approach of Mohism directly turns hundreds of its subordinate workshops into an independent economy. Except for a few goods that cannot be produced, such as food and salt, they can be self-sufficient in other goods. Although the income of these craftsmen has decreased, their cost of living is several times lower than that of the people in Chang'an City, and they can even export goods during the crisis.

Xu Fan was stunned by this model, because he was too familiar with it. He had heard since he was a child that this model was rigid and backward, and it had been criticized for decades.

But in the hands of Mohism, how come this model is more dynamic than private workshops? At least a large number of private workshops collapsed during this economic crisis. But Mohism was able to build a paradise with this model and save the jobs of tens of thousands of people.

Later, Xu Fan remembered that the biggest advantage of this model is that it can resist economic crises. The fastest development of this model is during economic crises. It's just that everyone in later generations has intentionally or unintentionally ignored this point.

Ye Teng snorted coldly, "So the development of the Han Dynasty mainly depends on those private workshops. To be frank, they pay more taxes. The court should protect their interests. The craftsmen of the entire Han Dynasty can live so well. This is the court constantly protecting their interests. People should be grateful and know how to be content, instead of being greedy like they are now."

Qin Bo said: "This is a question of stance. In the eyes of the Prime Minister, those merchants have turned over more profits and made greater contributions. But in my opinion, the wealth of the world is either produced by farmers or craftsmen. They are the ones who have contributed the most to the prosperity of the Han Dynasty and have made the greatest contributions. The court should protect their rights and interests."

Seeing that the conflict was getting more and more intense, Cao Shen acted as a peacemaker and said, "We are all working for the development of the Han Dynasty. Why should we start disputes? Now that the crisis has passed, everyone should focus on production and work hard to live a good life instead of continuing to have conflicts like this."

Zhou Bo also advised: "Prime Minister Ye is about to retire, Qin Bo should not embarrass Prime Minister Ye at this time. If the craftsmen have any needs, you can raise them at the Sages Conference and we can discuss and solve them together."

Qin Bo thought for a moment and said, "Indeed, during this economic crisis, many rights of craftsmen are difficult to be protected, especially when the crisis comes, they even lose their jobs, while farmers have a piece of land to go home and farm. Craftsmen should also have such a way out. This year's Sages' Meeting, my Mohist School has many questions and proposals."

Qin Bo agreed to persuade the demonstrators to disperse and left. Ye Teng and others were obviously relieved.

Xu Fan asked Zhou Bo, "What did you see during this inspection? Don't talk about the so-called achievements. When they report, the governors will tell you for themselves. You should mainly talk about the shortcomings and deficiencies encountered in the local areas."

Zhou Bo took a deep breath and thought for a while before saying, "Local government affairs are complicated and there are naturally many deficiencies and defects, but I think the biggest defect is the lack of local financial resources."

"Since the imperial court began to take industry as the foundation of the country, the entire Han Dynasty has experienced 20 years of rapid development. The wealth of the world has increased dozens of times. Almost every county has an industrial zone and workshops. Correspondingly, the government affairs of local counties have also increased exponentially. Now, the government affairs that a prefect of a county in the Han Dynasty has to deal with are more than ten times more than 20 years ago.

Therefore, the number of Han officials in the localities has been increasing over the years. This cannot be attributed entirely to the fact that the local governors are ambitious and like to place their cronies in positions of power. Instead, there are really so many affairs to deal with. As the number of Han officials increases, local expenses are also expanding. This is also the reason why the governors and county magistrates of the Han Dynasty like to build workshops in recent years, because the income from workshops can make up for the shortfall in local finances. "

Ye Teng said: "It's not that serious, right? Local taxes have also been increasing over the years, not to mention that the court is still making transfer payments."

Zhou Bo said: "The bulk of the tax revenue is mainly collected by the court. This part of the increased income cannot make up for the increase in local expenditure. In the past, local governments could just recruit laborers to build roads, but now they have to pay them. The original loess road is increasingly unable to adapt to the current industrial development. Now local governments need to build tracks, asphalt roads, docks, canals, workshops, and craftsmen's workshops. Take any one of these projects separately, and it would take a lot of manpower and material resources in the Former Qin Dynasty to complete them.

But now we can only rely on the financial resources of local counties, and we can't stop building these infrastructures, because if you don't build them, others will. If the roads in other places are built and smooth, merchants will naturally set up workshops in the local area, and then other counties will naturally become rich and develop quickly, which will form a scale effect, attracting more and more merchants to set up workshops in wealthy places, which forces local counties to repair infrastructure even if they have to borrow money, otherwise they will be in a situation where one step is worse and the other is worse. So I think the reason why the local governments lost control and took over so many workshops is because of the huge financial expenditure. If the court does not solve this problem, after the crisis, the local governors will still build a large number of workshops and collect money. "

Then Zhou Bo said seriously: "The taxation model of our Great Han has reached the point where it must be reformed. The court cannot completely help the localities with infrastructure construction. Most of these can only be done by local Han officials. This requires giving the localities a certain degree of financial autonomy. This model of full allocation by the court is increasingly unable to adapt to the future development of the Great Han."

Xu Fan asked: "What do you think?"

Zhou Bo said: "I think that the Han Dynasty has added a lot of new things in the past 20 years, many of which were not taxed before, but now it is necessary to collect these taxes to ease the financial pressure on the local areas."

Ye Teng was surprised and asked: "Increase taxes?"

Since the asset tax, the Han Dynasty has not increased taxes for nearly ten years.

Zhou Bo said: "It's not entirely about increasing taxes, there are also some taxes that need to be reduced or exempted. There is already a clear gap between the income of farmers in the Han Dynasty and that of craftsmen, and it is showing a trend of getting bigger and bigger. I think the court should reduce or exempt some farmers' taxes, especially those in the impoverished border areas. The local people are already fleeing to the Central Plains, and only tax reduction can make them stay in their hometowns."

Zhou Bo started his career in taxation, and he intended to use tax reform as his policy agenda.

(End of this chapter)