New Shun 1730

Knowing that "technological industrial products" are good and hoping that these technological industrial products can fly into the homes of ordinary people does not mean understanding industrialization.

Just like Zhao Yi knew that it was good to repair the Yellow River and even radically to dredge the two rivers in the north and south in turn, this does not mean that he understood the Yellow River problem.

God said that light is good, so there must be light.

This logic is not the logic of reality.

Even the key to its anti-reality lies in the process between "being good" and "getting this good", which is avoided. Or, it is condensed into a miracle, without considering how to get it at all.

Most of the scriptures are based on this logic.

The emperor's understanding of Liu Yu's so-called "the world is material" is still stuck on the issue of "the contradiction between people and land continues to intensify and the per-acre yield does not increase, and there will be not enough food to eat."

In other words, at most, he understood to the extent that "even if the three dynasties were restored, the five emperors were reborn, and the civil and military officials came, even if the great way was established and the Master did not have to ride a raft on the sea, it would still not be able to solve the problem of population increase and food shortage."

But the emperor did not understand that the statement that the world is material led to a series of thoughts about society, social relations, and other issues.

However, after all, the emperor of Dashun could still understand part of the social state of Dashun.

After talking about the problem of small farmers, the emperor did not continue to delve into the problem of small farmers, but turned to say: "But no matter what, currency reform is inevitable."

"There are many reasons for the plight of small farmers. There may be corrupt officials, or clerks revelry, or labor levies, or merchants' oppression...all kinds of reasons, but there are many reasons for the plight of small farmers, and currency is one of them."

"Many local officials complained that the exchange of money and silver caused the people to suffer; there was also the need to collect more copper coins in exchange for silver; there were also fire consumption and transportation of silver, etc. These are all very unfavorable to small farmers."

"But if the currency is changed...the silver in Songsu and other places is connected to the gold and silver mines in Europe, India, and even Fuso's South Ocean. If these gold and silver flow into the inland, the land prices will soar, arable land will be annexed, and even loaned to the world to imitate the story of controlling the Mongols with business..."

The emperor shook his head, obviously quite worried about this matter.

Controlling the Mongols with business was the suggestion Liu Yu gave to the emperor after the northern expedition to Luosha and the conquest of Junggar. After all these years, let's put it this way, if all the cattle and sheep in Mongolia were sold, whether they could repay the current debts is another matter.

If it were implemented among the people, Songsu's capital would pour into the interior, even if they didn't buy land, but just lend money, it would be a desperate thing.

The small peasant economy is fragile.

Some places like Dashun, where the per capita land is only three mu, are even more fragile.

Wang Jinggong's Qingmiao Law is impossible to implement. Because even in later generations, big banks don't like to lend to small farmers, because lending basically means bad debts. And the court lends money to extremely fragile small farmers who will go bankrupt completely at the slightest disturbance... It's even more nonsense. And those who have the ability not to go bankrupt... In this year and this broken feudal society, those who have the ability not to go bankrupt, how could they need to operate loans?

Britain, France, the Netherlands and other countries have a lot of "debt prisons" and a lot of "debt slaves".

Did Dashun really build a lot of debt prisons and rely on the labor of "debt slaves" to compensate? If this happened, the whole world would be in turmoil.

Therefore, whether it is the Ming Dynasty or the Dashun Dynasty, the legal maximum annual interest rate is 36%, but the tricks such as 9 out and 13 back in private cannot be completely banned.

Even if we don’t talk about other things, just consider it according to the pure, fundamentalist capitalist financial industry thinking: the risk of lending to small farmers is so great, so the interest rate must be high. The greater the risk, the higher the interest rate. This is the standard market logic of financial capital.

In the case of "currency squeezes out other gods and declares itself to be the only true god", the big merchants in Songsu and other developed areas are now closer to the gods to the gentry in the interior, and are simply the "tangible saints" of the new era.

Although Dashun still has a certain social consciousness of "scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans".

But in fact.

Let alone Dashun.

Even in the Qing Dynasty, scholars went to Yangzhou to play and were amazed that the scholars in Yangzhou had to curry favor with merchants. When those with official titles met big merchants, they had to say in a humble tone, "I went to your house to pay a visit to you yesterday, but you were not there. Did your housekeeper tell you?"

Scholars, farmers, merchants and artisans... it's just talk. Can a poor tenant farmer really tell a big businessman that his social status is higher than yours? It's just talk.

The emperor was worried that once the currency reform was carried out, the advantages of the first-developed regions, especially the currency advantages, would quickly cause great problems for the internal small peasant economy.

However, the emperor's statement that it must be changed is also reasonable.

Under the advanced system, the problem of copper-silver exchange is indeed a mountain weighing on the small peasants.

Even after the Qing Dynasty fought the Opium War, the problem of copper-silver exchange could directly affect foreign trade, so much so that British and French merchants discovered the huge fluctuations in the sales of "foreign cloth" caused by the copper-silver exchange ratio.

Small farmers can't afford silver.

The copper coins collected were exchanged for silver to pay taxes. In this process, merchants took a wave of exchange differences, officials took a wave of fire consumption, and local governments took a wave of additional taxes, making small farmers extremely vulnerable to the copper-silver exchange problem.

A similar situation occurred in North America: Britain required North America to pay taxes in silver instead of paper money; paper money could still be used in North America, but the exchange of paper money and silver was regulated by the market... This directly led to North American handicraftsmen joining the anti-British ranks.

Of course, the copper coins of Dashun are not the same as the paper money of North America. But since silver is used for paying taxes and large-scale trade, the currency attributes of copper coins and North American paper money are similar. It is nothing more than that copper coins themselves are a kind of semi-precious metal. In addition to being assigned currency, they also have the attribute of "copper".

Of course, the currency reform that the emperor is talking about now is close to "returning the fire consumption to the public" from the perspective of historical reforms.

Because "fire consumption" is not just about melting broken silver into silver, but also about collecting copper coins but handing over silver.

There are two solutions to the "fire consumption" problem.

One: increase taxes, do not let local governments levy them on their own, increase taxes by the central government, legalize levies, but stipulate specific amounts.

Two: solve the "fire consumption" problem itself. If there is no fire consumption, then wouldn't the fire consumption problem be solved? Of course, it is only a technical solution, which cannot stop local levies and tax increases, but at least the name of "fire consumption" will not appear. In essence, it makes little difference if the local government changes the name of the fire consumption; but in terms of technical terms, there is indeed no fire consumption.

And Dashun can only solve the fire consumption problem technically.

Because, to solve the fire consumption problem in essence, regardless of human nature and official administration, it is necessary to make a big move, completely change the tax expenditure logic of the Dashun Dynasty, and solve the tax distribution between the central and local governments.

Even if the contradiction between the central and local governments is not considered, it is nonsense to say that Dashun changed the tax and expenditure system and the local government used money from the national treasury. It is impossible to complete it in full. Because, according to the idealized Ming and Dashun system, the local government actually has basically no money and can basically do nothing, but reality requires them to do something.

Therefore, Dashun can and can only choose one of these two ideas on the issue of "fire consumption".

Either, legalize the illegal fire consumption.

Or, solve the fire consumption itself, that is, the problem of copper and silver exchange.

In other words, the currency was unified by changing the relationship between copper coins and silver, which were two currencies, or even considered as local currency and foreign currency. Copper coins could be issued, but they had to be subsidiary coins of silver, fixed-amount subsidiary coins, not foreign currency exchange.

I have never heard of a black market for subsidiary coins exchanging for large-amount currencies.

And there must be a black market price for foreign currency exchange. The court stipulated that one thousand coins could be exchanged for one, and the court's regulations and the market price could never be the same.

Simply abolishing the two-yuan system and changing the yuan system only collected seigniorage.

And a further step of abolishing the two-yuan system and changing the yuan system is to make copper coins subsidiary coins, silver standard or gold and silver bi-standard. This is a reform that solves the heavy burden on small farmers in addition to the seigniorage.

This is like the Dashun tax collection and foreign currency collection; while the people use local currency in daily life. The local currency must be converted into foreign currency to pay taxes. At the very least, those who control the foreign currency must make a lot of money.

Even if we don't consider collecting taxes, let's say collecting tea, goose feathers, pig bristles, peanuts, soybeans, cotton, rapeseed... Generally speaking, small farmers also get copper coins. The difference is so large that for a period of time after the Opium War in history, some compradors were theoretically breaking even with silver, but they were very enthusiastic about it, because of the copper-silver exchange problem.

The emperor believed that currency reform should be changed.

Whether it is true or not, at least it can be regarded as a reform to solve the "fire consumption", and in theory it can also reduce the pressure on small farmers.

But at the same time, the emperor's worries are not unreasonable. The massive amount of currency in the developed regions will flow into the inland, into the inland that lacks silver.

Why did the currency reform of Dashun have to be delayed until now?

Why must the First World War be fought and gold must be dug in Fusang before it can be changed?

Because, if it is not delayed until now and gold is not dug in Fusang, the gold and silver precious metals of Dashun are not enough to support the total economic volume of Dashun at this time.

Dashun is not Japan, and there are no mountains of gold and silver. But even Japan, which has mountains of gold and silver, experienced large-scale deflation before and after the Arai-Hakuishi reform.

Of course, Dashun was not the Kingdom of Korea, so it was not so depressed that it was thinking about abolishing currency and engaging in barter, because it could not issue money, precious metals were insufficient, and it did not have the kind of surplus that the Ming Dynasty could rely on exports to monetize silver.

And where were the gold and silver of Dashun concentrated?

In a sense, the feudal dynasties, including the Qing Dynasty, levied taxes and fought wars, which was also a kind of "currency transfer". This currency transfer, the rise of Shaanxi merchants, which controlled the economic lifeline of Sichuan, and the situation where pawnshops were opened to the point that Sichuan people smashed Shaanxi people, was closely related to the Northwest War. The silver in Jiangnan flowed into the Northwest through taxation, which increased the currency in the Northwest and provided a foundation for the rise of Shaanxi merchants.

But how many taxes could Dashun collect in a year? How much of the collected taxes could be transferred to the inland? Especially with the basic completion of the land reform, the end of the Western Region War, and the basic abandonment of the canal repair, even if Dashun levied taxes and spent them, the taxed silver did not flow to the inland, but to the Northeast and Nanyang where grain was produced, the surrounding areas of the capital where consumption was used to support the army, Songsu where cloth was produced, and Bohai where military equipment was produced.

In other words, Dashun had no conditions for currency reform. Because the total amount of precious metals was insufficient, it was too far from the economic scale of Dashun.

Now, Dashun has the conditions to carry out currency reform, because the total amount of gold and silver in Dashun has increased too much compared to before. However, most of the gold and silver that have increased to the conditions for currency reform are actually concentrated in the first-developed areas. Even more specifically, most of them are concentrated in the Songsu area.

Then the emperor’s worries were not groundless.