I was the emperor in the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 373 Information Equals Wealth
When such a large sum of money is involved, Huang Zhun, who is now the veritable God of Wealth of Daming, said with some distress,

"But Your Majesty, if you want to monopolize the vast majority of commodities, you need at least tens of millions of taels. Even if you add up the silver deposits in the royal bank and the imperial treasury, it may not be enough!"

Li Tian thought of the treasure that was still buried in the ground at this time, and smiled faintly,
"You don't have to worry about this, I will take care of the money. You just need to be responsible for setting up the capital exchange."

In fact, the exchange has already existed in its embryonic form in this era, or even earlier, but it is called differently.

In this era, there are many chambers of commerce, such as the Jiangsu-Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce, the Shanxi Chamber of Commerce and the like.

Most of them are places where merchants from the same place negotiate and buy and sell with each other.

Because they all come from the same place, everyone knows each other well.

It only needs to make a verbal agreement to complete a transaction.

For example, today you need thousands of shi of silk, and I happen to have the goods. After signing an agreement, you can go directly to the warehouse to pick up the goods. Sometimes you don’t even need to pay in advance.

This kind of private transaction between the same chamber of commerce can be said to be the basic prototype of an exchange.

It's just that the exchange accommodates all commodities and merchants in a region.

After the goods are transported to the capital, they can be included in the list of transactions after the exchange's transfer personnel inspect the quality and price the goods in detail.

Whoever wants this batch of goods can directly pick up the goods as long as they sign an agreement with the seller at the exchange and pay for the goods.

This saves the process of inspecting the quality of the goods and bargaining, which can be said to be very simple and convenient, and it can be guaranteed.

The existence of exchanges also plays a very important role.

That is because we have mastered the relationship of big data, we can judge what is in short supply and what is overflowing based on the purchase and shipment of a certain product within a period of time.

To control prices.

In this way, whoever wants to increase the price of a certain commodity by manipulating and monopolizing it to make huge profits, the exchange will soon be able to know this situation through the situation of incoming and outgoing goods.

After that, no matter whether it is to increase the price or block the transaction, it is easy to curb some people's speculation.

After explaining the detailed rules that I can think of, as well as the operation mode of the exchange, the role of existence, etc., to Yang Shiqi and others.

Yang Shiqi passed the written report to several other people for circulation.

Several people scrambled to read it carefully.

They all cast awe-inspiring gazes at Li Tian.

Xia Yuanji, who has been an official for decades and knows well that prices are hard to come by, said excitedly,

"Your Majesty's move is simply a rock-shattering move. In this way, the price of the capital will no longer be determined by those merchants, and the people will be able to live a good life from now on!"

The establishment of the exchange may not have a big impact on other things. At best, it is to maintain stability and prevent the price from fluctuating too much.

But there is one thing that can be extremely powerfully controlled.

That is salt.

As we all know, because of Daming's strategy of exchanging salt for grain to support the nine borders, a large amount of salt was controlled by a few big salt merchants.

In order to make huge profits, they raised the price of salt to an abnormal level.

In the Song Dynasty, a catty of salt was only [-] Wen, in the Qing Dynasty it was [-] Wen, and in the Ming Dynasty it rose to [-] Wen.

People who want to eat some salt have to plan carefully and dare not let go.

How happy are such people.

Is Daming short of salt? It is not. Why is salt so expensive? It is nothing more than the fact that the price of salt is strictly controlled by those salt merchants.

However, the existence of the exchange can strongly intervene in it and lower the price of salt to a level acceptable to most people.

This is just one of the functions of the exchange.

Due to the lack of information and the difficulty of transportation in this era, the prices of many things are actually inflated, such as fruits such as bananas and pomelo in the south and spices that are almost equivalent to gold.

There are also many things whose value is greatly reduced because no one knows their usefulness, or no one knows how to develop them, such as fish and salt in the sea, and kelp that can be eaten and can be used to make monosodium glutamate.

This world is still in the primitive stage of development, and not even one percent of various resources have been developed.

High-yield crops and gold mines in the Americas, oil in Saudi Arabia, kangaroos and iron mines in Australia, copper mines and guano in Peru and Chile.

There are still many, many things in this world that no one has discovered and utilized.

With the emergence of the exchange, there is a possibility that he can clearly tell people what is valuable, what is useless or what is valuable.

There are ginseng in Changbai Mountain, and snow lotus in Tianshan Mountain. As long as you make an offer, someone will try their best to help you get it.

There is no shortage of adventurers in any era, what they lack is nothing but information to make a fortune, and a truly generous buyer.

As long as you give the address and method, there are plenty of people who are willing to try and take risks.

The exchange is just like Rogers' declaration to everyone, telling people of this era that there is a huge treasure somewhere in this world, go and develop it.

The next generation is the era of information explosion. Even a child knows where America is, the earth is round, and what can be eaten and what cannot be eaten.

Such knowledge is valuable in this era, and the exchange is an excellent platform to convert information into something of real value.

Yang Shiqi and the others probably won't understand these principles in a short time.

But it doesn't matter, as long as Li Tian understands.

On that day, his workshop was short of raw materials, so he only needed to post a request for a high price on the exchange, and someone would take the initiative to deliver the goods.

One day he wanted to eat some southern fruit, so he sent a message, and the people who stopped by would naturally get him what he wanted.

The development of this world does not necessarily require him to do it himself.

Sometimes, he just needs to send out a request. As long as the value is high enough, no matter whether it is a businessman or an adventurer, there will always be someone who will jump out and accept this task.

Someone once said that the Chinese lack the spirit of adventure.

But Li Tian will tell them that this sentence is wrong, and it is a big mistake.

It is not that the Chinese lack the spirit of adventure, but the motivation to take risks.

The closed-door policy of the Ming and Qing dynasties not only made the Chinese lose the opportunity to see the world with their eyes open, but also missed the best opportunity to develop the entire world.

But it is different now. At this time, Ming Dynasty is still at the pinnacle of the world, and the vigorous age of great voyages has just sprouted.

(End of this chapter)