New Shun 1730

The emperor has been exposed to some not-so-new truths in recent years, which were taken out of context and twisted by Liu Yu from the pre-Qin period.

He has a simple understanding of the profit-seeking nature of capital, similar to the idea that everyone in the world is here for profit.

The emperor's concerns about this issue are absolutely reasonable.

Whether now or in the future, China and foreign countries will always face a problem: the country releases money and hopes that the money will flow to a certain place, but the money never flows there.

On the Dashun side, it can be simply understood that Liu Yu hopes that the money will flow to industry and commerce, but the reality is that the money often flows to the land.

The emperor is worried about the five or six million taels of silver a year, which was clearly expected to develop Nanyang and solve the contradiction between food and land.

As a result, all this hot money was hoarded, which made the contradiction between land and people more serious.

Liu Yu imagined forcing small farmers to go bankrupt and forcing the people to go to Nanyang.

But that was talking about Fujian and Guangdong, with Songjiang Prefecture at most.

For the people who really need to go to Southeast Asia, the most difficult step is how to survive and reach a place where there are ships and people to buy people to go to Southeast Asia.

Whether it is Southeast Asia or the new Kuwu in the southern hemisphere, the problem that Dashun has to face is always: the rich are unwilling to go, and the poor cannot go.

The best way to solve this problem is "the rich think that they can make money there, so they spend money to let the poor go to make money for them."

Therefore, Liu Yu's hope for the new Kuwu in the southern hemisphere is placed on gold mines, rather than on those good lands that can be cultivated. The logic here is also very simple. No matter how good the land is, the grain cannot be sold for money and is only attractive to the poor.

Grain that cannot be sold for money is just grain, which has no appeal to the well-fed rich unless the grain can be exchanged for money. The only way for the southern hemisphere continent to exchange grain for money is that the local gold mines need miners, miners need to eat, and growing grain is to dig gold.

The hope for Southeast Asia is placed on the wealthy merchants to develop and trade slave labor, rather than spontaneous immigration to become self-cultivating farmers.

The best way to stimulate the development of Nanyang in the short term is for the state to collect grain from Nanyang. The only direction that can allow the state to collect grain is the grain needed by the capital and the garrison.

Dashun is a fake big government. It has an annual income of 30 million taels and does not have much ability to regulate the country. Grain is one of the few things that can be regulated.

But the emperor has some understanding of reality, so he has to doubt whether this can really be done as people wish?

Since the opening of the fields and the breaking of the well-field system, the land system has been a standard private ownership. Land can be bought and sold.

If you don't want money to flow into land transactions, there are two ways.

Either the land cannot be bought and sold.

Or the land yield is reduced and the yield of other industries is increased.

It is impossible for land to be bought and sold. As far as Dashun is concerned, it cannot be done.

Although the Northern Confucian scholars have always wanted to restore the well-field system, the method they gave is pure nonsense. Moreover, they are well-fields for the purpose of well-fields, which is purely reactionary.

Liu Yu did not disagree with the variant well-field system proposed by the ancient Confucian school, but the variant well-field system he understood was not for the sake of well-field, but to prevent small farmers from going bankrupt and having no means of livelihood in the tide of the times, leading to chaos and overall reaction.

The purpose of the variant well-field was to develop industry and commerce, and when industry and commerce developed to the point where they could accommodate the millions of bankrupt people each year, the well-field system would be kicked away.

This was a pure divergence of paths.

In terms of Confucian ideology, the well-field system was both a means and an end.

Just like a rushing river, the ideology of Confucianism was like "the theory of the governance of the Three Dynasties, the river is not right, it should be a big lake", so building a dam to block the water was both a means and an end.

The ideology accepted by Liu Yu was that the downstream should be dredged well to let the river flow into the sea. However, like the mother river, the special nature of Dashun made the river too manic and the water flow too large. If it was not blocked by a dam first, it would be impossible to dredge below. So building a dam is a means to dredge the downstream, and then remove the dam after ensuring that the downstream can accommodate enough floods.

So this is why after this ideology was introduced, China was permeated by Confucianism, which led to many people instinctively getting close to it and understanding it instinctively from the culture. But after completing the step of building the dam, there was a huge disagreement between the original fellow travelers.

This is not something that can be done by one person. It requires a group of people, millions of people with similar ideologies, to form a group, with a clear goal and long-term planning.

It is definitely unrealistic now.

Since it is unrealistic, Liu Yu would rather cause a flood than absolutely oppose building a dam and being reactionary.

The emperor's concern was based on the stability of the Dashun Dynasty.

The more stable the small peasant economy, the more stable the dynasty.

For the emperor, external expansion is a means to make money. Making money is to make the dynasty more stable.

But Liu Yu has no interest in the stability of the dynasty, especially the stability of the dynasty based on the stability of the small peasant economy. Not only is he not interested, but he has been digging graves to bury Dashun.

But this grave is not so easy to dig.

And the problem that the emperor is worried about now seems to be just about the specific details, but in essence it is still the hidden worries about the development of industry and commerce.

The root of this hidden worry comes from the legalization of private land transactions.

The richer and more money merchants have, and the faster they make money, the more worried the emperor is that a large amount of money from industry and commerce will be used to buy land, exacerbating the problem of land annexation.

The worry about a large amount of capital being used to buy land stems from the fact that the land yield is too high.

The ridiculously low land prices and ridiculously high land rents in Dashun have led to a really high yield on buying land.

Since merchants are profit-seeking, then, obviously, money will flow to buy land. It is not just the millions of grain purchase money that the emperor is worried about this year, but also any industrial and commercial practitioners.

The emperor did not consider it from the perspective of the classic "everyone is doing business, who will farm the land", but purely from the perspective of "what should merchants do if they have so much money to buy land and merge".

Unless land cannot be bought and sold, so that money has no other way to make money except flowing to industry and commerce. Otherwise, this kind of thing is difficult to prohibit.

Go and reason with the merchants: Oh, don't hoard land to cause mergers, you should invest money in industry, only the development of industry and commerce can make the country rich and strong.

The businessman looked at the rate of return and risk of land, and then looked at the rate of return and risk of industry and commerce, and thought to himself, "Fuck you."

Relying on emotions and reason will not solve the problem.

Now the emperor is worried about this, and Liu Yu can only tell the truth.

"Your Majesty is wise and your concerns are correct."

"Since this matter was caused by flood control, I would like to use flood control as an analogy."

"When money flows, it can be called capital, and capital is like flowing water."

"When it flows here, it will fork."

"On one side is the land in the Celestial Empire."

"On the other side is industrial and commercial and wasteland in Southeast Asia."

"In ancient times, flood control was nothing more than blocking and draining."

"This is the same."

"Blocking means suppressing mergers, or taking measures to reduce the benefits of buying land... or making a big move, risking chaos in the world, and making it impossible to buy and sell equal land."

"Draining means making the profits of industrial and commercial enterprises in Southeast Asia higher than the profits of buying land in the country. Merchants will naturally go for profits."

"This blocking and draining are all related to national policies, which cannot be done by a single state or prefecture."

"Increasing taxes and reducing levies is blocking. I have no idea about the internal affairs of the Celestial Empire. "I don't know much about the matter, and I have never been in charge of local affairs, so it is beyond my ability."

"But in terms of industry and commerce, I am confident that there are still some means to ensure that the money flows to Southeast Asia. It can also ensure that part of the money is spent in the form of resettlement of refugees and disaster victims."

"Your Majesty's concern is actually a huge matter. Although merchants hoard and buy land, will local gentry and landlords not buy and hoard land? It is probably beyond human power to solve this problem."

"Since it is beyond human power, I think why not find another way? Buying and hoarding land, is it because people love land? No, they just love money."

"In this case, find a way to give them a better way to make money. This is the best way to solve the symptoms. As for the root cause, unless the ancient Confucian school revives the well-field theory, there is no solution.

"Are the people unable to survive because they have no land? Yes and no, but to be more precise, they have no other viable means of making a living except land. If there are other means, such as working, joining the army, or going to sea, they will not starve to death even if they have no land. ”

“Since this is the case, it is also feasible to find a way for the people to make a living other than owning their own small piece of land.”

“Nanyang is vast, the land is fertile, and there are multiple harvests a year.”

“Since we cannot have a well-field system, some things will happen sooner or later. However, by dredging to Nanyang, it can be postponed.”

“Since I have the means to let them invest their money in Western trade, I also have the means to let them invest their money in Nanyang.”

“As for the fact that they make more and more money, and all the big profits will be made in the future, and they will consider land again…I think that since we cannot cure the root cause, it is better to find a way to control it within the scope of several coastal states and prefectures while acknowledging that it will inevitably happen.”

“Even if it is annexed, the people can go to Nanyang to make a living, which is convenient for the coastal areas. Or, it can also be relieved.”

“Instead of pretending to be able to solve it, pretending to work hard but actually having no use. It is really better not to hide the disease and avoid treatment, just admit that this matter cannot be solved, and find a way to control it within a controllable range. "

"I have some ideas about this. It may be controlled in the coastal areas or a few prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River. But it still needs to be carefully considered."

The emperor's eyes lit up, thinking that since there is a way, it is easy to say. If it is only controlled in the south of the Yangtze River or the coastal areas, it is indeed easy to solve. The only thing to worry about is that these merchants will use the money they earn to hoard and buy land in Henan, Shandong, Jingji, Hubei, Shaanxi and other places, so that the people have no place to live and cannot go to Southeast Asia, then they can only rebel.

Since Fujian and Guangdong can go to Southeast Asia and Taiwan, there are fewer rebellions in these places. And even if they rebel, most of them will not succeed. On the contrary, if Henan, Shaanxi, Anhui and other places are really annexed too much, there will be a big problem.

Liu Yu only said that this idea still needs to be carefully considered, and the emperor did not ask any more questions.

Weighing the pros and cons of all parties in his mind, he had a tendency to think about it, and finally decided.

So he summoned Liao Hanhui to his side and spoke earnestly.

"You also heard it. ”

“Water control is related to the navy, trade, Southeast Asia, grain transport, and even land, well fields, taxes... All of these are important matters for the country. ”

“Without the navy, there can be no sea transport.”

“Without sea transport, the river cannot be abandoned.”

“Without abandoning the river, there can be no water control.”

“Without money, there can be no water control.”

“Without a stable source of grain, there can be no water control.”

“Without the placement of grain transport workers, there can be no water control.”

“Without the treatment of the poor people after the abandonment of the canal, there can be no water control.”

"Controlling the Huaihe River is not just an ancient achievement like taming the Yellow River. But behind it, there are also many things involved."

"It's no lie to say that it took the world 20 years to do it."

"It's not that I don't care about the people of the two Huaihe Rivers. I might not have been able to do it before, but now that I can, I will carry out benevolent and good policies for the people of the two Huaihe Rivers."

"Please remember how much responsibility and involvement there are behind the Huaihe River governance. Don't let me down for all your hard work!"

"I have been waiting for this day since the establishment of the Navy in the past. Now this matter is entrusted to you. I hope I have not misjudged the person."

When Liu Yu heard this, he thought, "You didn't think so far ahead when you were building the Navy."

However, the emperor's words made Liao Hanhui kneel on the ground with tears in his eyes.

"Come here, get some pen and ink!"

With a shout, the emperor said something in person.

Wei Yu, I am a fish! The thirteenth day of the month of Jihai.

After writing these words in splashing ink, the emperor simply said: "I will keep it for you. If the true cure is achieved, you will be worthy of these words."

"Dong Xingguo once restored the Western Regions, which had been separated for thousands of years during the Tang Dynasty, and was awarded a title for his merits. If you can restore the rich and prosperous Huaihe River, which was separated for six hundred years during the Song Dynasty, why would it be difficult for you to be granted a title?"

"In all dynasties, no one has ever been awarded a title for controlling floods. I hope that my beloved will dare to be the first in all dynasties!"

Just a few random words in "Zuo Zhuan", Liao Hanhui did not express panic that he could not afford it, but burst out with emotion and cried on the ground: "I will do my best!"

Liu Yu on the side saw this and thought that the emperor was preparing to make a big gamble. Listen to this meaning, water transportation reform and tax reform must be suppressed by the success of Huaihe River control. If it succeeds, the prestige will skyrocket and everything will be successful; if it fails, God will give a warning and everything will be ruined.

Dashun is quite good at drawing pictures of refugees.

Now I can only pray silently, hoping that God will give the people of Huaihe and Huaihe a way to survive. If there is a huge flood during the construction, it will be a slap on the hat of sensing and warning from heaven. It is estimated that the emperor will never dare to do anything that dares to do anything for the past dynasties. First things first.

Liu Yu secretly prayed: "Oh God, God, this is also a critical time for you and Jesus to fight. You have to give me some strength. Everything a person can plan has been planned. Whether it succeeds or not depends on you."