Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1441 Disagreement ([-])

This is not just a matter of radical and conservative big policy directions.

It is about some "double-edged sword" issues in industry and commerce, especially in commercial development.

Dashun's ability to rule but not govern, and the almost vacant grassroots control ability, businessmen, that can really play tricks.

In addition to merchants, there are also local forces.

For example, the grain transportation industry in Hubei.

[Rice boat boat owners are moored at the pier, and there will be local water discharge in the middle of the night, and they come here to steal rice.Sell ​​cheap along the way to make a profit.The missing amount is filled with sand and gravel, which is called "turning over the warehouse"

Another example:
[Wuchang Luojiadun, there are thousands of local homeless people, who specialize in the 'sand and gravel' business.Use a large sieve to sieve sand and gravel. If it is large and flat, add broad beans; if it is small and round, add mung beans; if it is white stone sand, add rice; if it is yellow stone sand, add sesame seeds.All trade with those who 'overturn']

Another example:

[The intermediary of the grain store prevents buyers and sellers from meeting each other, and they monopolize it, and lower the price to collect more grain——Rice grain traders are forced to ship for a long time. There will be a risk of 'fire' and have to be sold at a low price.And the grain bank buys low and sells high, and threatens to burn the ship...]

Another example:

[Songsu Dashang, which exported sesame to Southeast Asia, Japan and other countries, divided and ruled with Chudi Trading Company.For example, sesame seeds from Hubei are not only exported, but also needed locally.Various commercial firms also practice "futures" methods.However, Songsu Dashang agreed with Company A to buy A’s sesame seeds at a high price, and told Company A not to talk to Company B; and then had a secret discussion with Company B, telling Company A not to tell them... so that the companies in Chudi thought they were making a lot of money. They sold all the sesame seeds originally reserved for others to Songsu big merchants one after another, thinking that they were short of money, A thought they could get it from B, and B thought they could get it from A... At the end of the delivery, there was no goods to deliver , had to borrow from Songsu Dashang, and within two years, Songsu Dashang fully controlled the bulk pricing power of sesame in Chudi. 】

The bottom line is, you want business, and you get everything in business.

Deceit, fraud, loan duress, futures trading, hoarding, futures delivery... These things have been played in the first-developed areas for decades. When I went to Hubei and met local merchants in Hubei, it was like cheating a fool. .

But in the countryside, the problems brought about by business are even more fucked up.

Whether small farmers grow grain or cotton, they need to sell these things.

Only by selling can you pay taxes, pay rent, buy salt, pay off debts, and so on.

Later generations can say, "If you think it's cheap now, then you'll sell it later."

But now, that's bullshit.

Those who have not waited for the grain to enter the warehouse, debt collectors, rent collectors, and tax collectors fly here like flies on blood.

They all have the financial ability to store things for several months, how can they be in debt, owe money, and have no money to pay rent and taxes?

And if you need to repay debts, pay back money, pay rent, and pay taxes, how can you store these agricultural products for several months before selling them?
Businessmen, gentry, and gentry who have transformed into commercial operations have really played a lot of tricks.

Even some gentry said proudly after drinking: "I only need to keep this batch of grain at home for three months before selling it, and I can earn half of the capital."

As for the local "per capita food possession" issue, it's none of my business?Sell ​​it along the river, if the price is high in other counties or provincial capitals, I will sell it to the provincial capital.In the market economy, anyway, the silver you get can be spent in the Western Regions, the Northeast, the Southwest, Songsu, or even India.

The food problem was already serious.

The serious food problem forced the locals to reclaim land around the lake, which accelerated ecological collapse and made floods and droughts more frequent.

With the deepening of commerce, along with factors such as Sichuan salt entering Chu, tea and sesame raw silk needed for foreign trade, and selling cotton cloth to Sichuan because Sichuan is not suitable for growing cotton, the area of ​​economic crops continued to increase, which intensified the food problem.

Again.

Does Dashun have food?
Have.

Even the food in Nanyang, Ezo, Dongbei, Fuso and other places cannot be eaten up.

However, is there any shortage of food in Hubei?

lack.

Even if the businessmen don’t control it, in fact, Hubei at this time is still far from the per capita grain consumption of 450 catties per year. Do you think that if you calculate this, a person needs to eat more than one catty of grain a day? Is there so much?In fact, there is no oil, water, sugar, fat, or meat in the stomach. For these working people, there is no sense of satiety at all if there is more than one catty of grain.

But now, the performance of the "double-edged sword" of commerce in Hubei can be said to be a continuous display of why it is necessary to "emphasize agriculture and despise commerce", and blood is still dripping from it.

Should there be restrictions on commerce, speculation, etc.?

No limit, or want to limit, but do not have the ability, the result is that Songsu Dashang, with its strong capital, killed the local business firms in Hubei in two years and controlled the pricing power of sesame.This is just a little bit of futures operation.

limit……

Restriction, just relying on administrative orders, will play a big job like a prince, and the whole "rice ban" order will cause a lot of trouble, and the whole world is watching jokes.

The restriction is not that it cannot rely on administrative means, but that Dashun's administrative efficiency and organizational ability simply do not have this ability or ability.

Before Liu Yu reformed the salt administration, re-divided the salt areas, and killed those big salt merchants.

Of course, it relies on administrative means.

But more importantly, he set up a large-scale salt drying plant. The ultimate goal is to kill the big salt merchants who have been entrenched in the salt industry since the 45th year of Wanli. Small and medium-sized businessmen who walk the last mile of the street.

What he relied on was the "commodity" provided by the huge productivity development of large-scale salt drying farms and steam extraction, which made the big businessmen at that time almost desperate - didn't you buy low and sell high, hoarding goods?The price of salt here keeps dropping, I want to see how much you can eat?If you have the ability and you have a lot of money, you can eat the salt from the underground well in southern Sichuan and the sea water from the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea.

Regarding the food issue, is it possible for Dashun to engage in similar measures?
In theory, yes.

Pingbu method.

In reality, there is no play.

It took a lot of effort for Dashun to get salt. Liu Yu had to struggle for so long before the reform was successful, and he had to prepare for a long time.

As far as Dashun's administrative ability is concerned, do you still want to play the Pingbu method?Salt and grain, that's not the same thing.Whether it is consumption, storage warehouses, transportation, or problems to be solved, they are all an order of magnitude worse.

There are two ways of thinking in order to engage in flat purchases.

Or, come a wave of big reforms to solve the financial problems of the "central" and "local" that have been a bit problematic since the reform of replacing the real tax with silver tax in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, or in the early Ming Dynasty.

The local government canceled some silver taxes and returned them to collect taxes in kind, such as collecting grain.Each warehouse in the locality must have food in order to play the method of flat purchase.

The collection of tax in kind will bring new problems.

Storage costs, corruption, reselling, fire dragons burning warehouses...

In addition, grain cannot be flown to the warehouse by itself, which goes back to the problem of water transportation reform: if grain cannot be flown to the warehouse, is it necessary to transport grain by labor?Can the manpower required to transport the amount of silver and grain be the same?

And labor labor is equivalent to "robbing the poor and helping the rich".

Does the gentry give labor?

Who was the last to do the labor?
The subordinate staff holds the right to labor in their hands, so don't they have another carnival?If you are asked to do hard labor, your family will be ruined; if you don’t do hard labor, then you will be paid.

Or, develop productive forces, especially transport capabilities.

If the mainland does not have the advantage of shipping, it will vigorously engage in large-scale infrastructure construction.

Make a canal.

Engage in steamships.

Engage in railways.

and many more.

Obtaining the "per capita grain possession" mentioned by Liu Yu has practical significance; obtaining grain from the Northeast can appear in Hubei within a month...

And this involves another issue.

For example, Liu Yu's reform of shipping is based on the registration of merchant ships by monopoly companies and the fulfillment of imposed obligations by merchant ships. In essence, it allows maritime merchants to equally share Dashun's training of sailors, navy, shipbuilding, and emergency supplies. Shipping costs.

For example, merchant ships engaged in trade with Japan.

The profit is extremely high, because Dashun granted them monopoly rights, and the Japanese shogunate also wanted to get exclusive tariffs, so the two sides jointly suppressed smuggling and guaranteed the monopoly.

Therefore, Liu Yu said, you must fulfill the obligations of registering merchant ships, requisitioning during wartime, training sailors, mandating the placement of trainee officers, and transporting military supplies when necessary.

These obligations are very heavy.

Historically, Spain has done this and it collapsed.

Dashun, relying on its fact that it is a commodity-producing country and its productivity has improved, has a substantial monopoly and dumping effect, allowing these businessmen to carry a heavy "obligation" and still feel happy.

This is also the basis for Dashun's participation in World War I.

Otherwise, the logistical supplies, sailors, ships, etc. for transoceanic operations all depend on Dashun's finances to support professional military transport ships, which can directly drag Dashun's finances to death.

And such as the food problem in Hubei.

River boats are different from sea boats.

Small steamships, even if put into practical use, are now the most cost-effective, and they are also used for upstream transportation on the Yangtze River.

Dashun is not a controlled economy.

Even the level of mercantilism in the Song Dynasty has not been reached.

The ability to control various commodities is not that strong, let alone the level that everything is government-run.

That being the case, how to do it?
If you want to stabilize the grain price in Hubei with grain from Nanyang and other places at any time, you need to have a strong upstream transportation capacity of the Yangtze River.

The extremely strong upstream transportation capacity of the Yangtze River is based on economy, trade and commerce.

Salt and the like can be done this way, because the transportation volume is not too large.The big deal is to raise a special salt fleet, and when they come back, they will bring some tea, raw silk, and Jiangxi porcelain from Poyang Lake. That is enough, enough to maintain the operation.

Commodity……

Such a large transport capacity means that the small peasant economy in Hubei will collapse in an instant.

This is not a problem in Hubei alone.

Rather, the current cottage economy in Hubei, especially the textile industry, developed on the basis of "salt from Sichuan entering Chu and Chubu entering Sichuan".

Just talking about the textile industry and the shipping industry, once the small steamer develops, it will involve the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of boatmen and river workers transporting along the river.

Although Hubei is located in the Jianghan Plain, it is restricted by the small-scale peasant economy.In terms of cotton seed improvement, it is not as good as the large cotton fields after the Huaihe grass enclosure; in terms of fiber length, such as cotton from Java, India; in terms of yarn cost, it is far inferior to the cotton yarn shipped from India in the Songsu area.

One of the problems that restricted the large national market before was logistics, countercurrent costs, and transportation costs.

Including Europe, the problem that Hume said "the sea is a natural tariff, otherwise all Europe would be made in China" is the same.

Once the transportation capacity is improved, and once the business is allowed to continue to develop, large-scale grain transportation can be carried out. With this transportation capacity, the Songsu area relies on the cost of cotton, cotton yarn, etc., and the cotton textiles in Hubei will not be directly washed away?

Historically, the collapse of the small peasant economy in Hubei was the result of the sub-import tax issue after the Second Crows.

Similarly, the early trade of the British East India Company in India also had such a tendency——[Because the transportation cost is fixed, the company tends to transport high value-added commodities.Cotton cloth is preferred to cotton yarn; cotton yarn is preferred to raw cotton].

The same goes for Yangtze River Shipping.

Once it is released, Songsu and other pioneering regions rely on the advantages of overseas raw material production and shipping, and their cotton cloth can not be said to completely kill Hubei's textile industry, but at the very least, the trade pattern of [Sichuan salt into Chu, Chubu into Sichuan] will be will change.

And restrictions... For example, tax on Songsu cotton cloth and tax exemption on Songsu cotton yarn.

This, in order to protect the cotton textile industry in Lancashire, the United Kingdom launched the "Oriental Cotton Cloth Prohibition Order", but exempted Indian raw cotton from taxes, and at the same time passed the "Manchester Act" to allow Manchester's cotton cloth to bypass the "Cotton Cloth Prohibition Order". There is no essential difference.

So, is this question unsolvable?
No.

Learn from England.

Rely on strong national control measures and strong control policies.

Don't come up and engage in a unified national market.

Once the currency reform and the development of the transportation industry are completed, and the radical industrial and commercial policies played by the prince in Hubei are directly radicalized, and the unified market of the whole country is established, then it will really become a first-developing area to colonize and a later-developing area.

Something big is going to happen.

So, this requires dominance skills.

Don't be too aggressive.

If you are too radical, it is easy to turn things against each other, not to be afraid of other things.

Theoretically, it is possible to levy "internal high tax" on Songsu cotton cloth, but exempt overseas cotton yarn from tax, so as to stimulate the cotton textile industry in Hubei and emulate the story of Nantong - yarn is used for weaving rather than spinning, and local capital is primitively accumulated. Leverage the markets of Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan to develop the textile industry.

In other words: after the crown prince messed up in Hubei, Dashun had to take one step forward and two steps back, and stop engaging in radical policies. A few more aggressive policies might really bring about a full-scale reactionary counterattack by the old forces.

We must rely on regulatory policies, or even rely on such a wonderful anti-domestic large market policy of "local tariffs", to create a situation of "multiple blooms and development in all provinces".

From the perspective of the bourgeoisie, is it reactionary to impose tariffs locally?
It was extremely reactionary.

The task of the bourgeoisie is to create a world market, and before creating a world market, it must first create a unified domestic market.

Dashun wants to restrict the circulation of local commodities, how can this not be reactionary?

However, looking at it from a farther perspective, in the case of Dashun, there is no "one step forward, two steps back" approach; no domestic tariffs, no regional restrictions...

The bourgeoisie may not yet have a large unified domestic market. Hubei textile workers, boat workers, and some local scholars may have to read a few lines of poetry on the spot and go to the nearby Dabie Mountains.

Reform is one thing.

Revolution is another matter.

Accelerationism, that's another thing.

The fetus in the new era is very fragile now. If we can reform and raise more, it is better to raise them first.

Although Liu Yu said that Dashun's reforms will inevitably fail in the end; the Dashun Dynasty is bound to explode.

However, if the explosion is now, it is easy to cause a similar effect to Wang Mang's reform, and it will fall back.Now, it is a year, and this little fetus in the new era will be stronger. When it explodes in the future, the new power will be more powerful to carry out the terror of revolution and end the pain quickly.

At the very least, until the Yellow River channel is dug.Anyway, a radical industrial and commercial policy like the prince's is definitely not going to work. It's pure nonsense.Moreover, the prince's will is not firm, and he has no unwavering industrial goals. This time, he has shrunk from a radical to a conservative all of a sudden.

(End of this chapter)