Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1459 The Final Farce ([-])

To some extent, free trade and Zhouli are indeed quite similar.

It's similar to absolute zero.

It's all a dream, but in reality it is simply impossible to achieve.

Especially, with Dashun taking the initiative to participate in world trade, in this era, it will only produce counterproductive effects.

Europe is fragmented, underpopulated, and no country can build a complete industrial chain, including France at this time.

The theory of "absolute advantage" followed by "relative advantage" seems to be feasible in Europe.

For example, you can't produce silk in the UK. The mulberry trees transplanted by James can only live red mulberries, and the silk produced is not good at all.

However, Italy can produce silk, at least Italy can grow black mulberry. Although the quality is not as good as Dongfanghu silk, it is definitely better than red mulberry.

Adam Smith argued that, look, can Britain grow mulberries?Yes, it is not impossible to build a greenhouse and go against the natural conditions.

But, if this is the case, why doesn't the UK produce what it is good at, and go to Italy to exchange silk?

This is called absolute advantage.

In the era of Ricardo, there was another problem with this set, so Ricardo quickly applied a patch.This is called "relative advantage".

But the problem is that these things, in the age of steam—to the third and fourth industrial revolutions, the entire industrial chain may need at least 10 billion people, otherwise it will not work.But in the era of steam, the so-called industrial chain, the scale of tens of millions of people is basically enough - with the entry of Dashun, no matter whether it is an absolute advantage or a relative advantage, there are problems.

In short, the emergence of Dashun will rapidly intensify the ideological trend against free trade in Europe, and local nationalists and national capitalists in various countries will stand up one after another to engage in self-reliance and tariff protection.

It will dramatically lead to the awakening of Europe, and the anti-free trade movement in Europe.

Because, it is really necessary to force Europe to have neither "absolute advantage" nor "relative advantage".

For Dashun, it has one-third of the world's population.

And the territory is vast, spanning latitudes from the Arctic Circle to the equator.The variety of climates, the same period of rain and heat, and the development of handicrafts make this set of theories of "fragmented free trade in Europe born in the late handicraft era" go wrong.

For example, Shaanxi is not allowed to produce silk, so isn’t it possible to grow mulberries in the south of the Yangtze River?
Shandong and Liaodong see that silk is so good, so how about we raise tussah silkworms?

Another example is brass technology for zinc smelting and processing.

There is no zinc mine in your Songsu area, and you can't do it even if you want to.

However, in the Yunnan-Guizhou region, the "lack of money" problem caused by the recovery of Dashun's founding economy forced the large-scale development of the Yunnan Copper Mine.In order to transport copper, we have to build infrastructure to keep the waterways smooth.As a result, zinc and brass in Guizhou have also become important export products.

For another example, the British side has been arguing that the population is so large, if they all go to farm, who will do the handicraft industry?When the economy developed, there was still a shortage of people to dig canals, cut down trees, build ships, and engage in the textile industry.

Therefore, it is necessary to talk about some absolute advantages and relative advantages, so that the population will flow to the most suitable industries in the country.Don't send the population to industries with little advantage in the country.

But the question is, is this a problem in Dashun?

Agriculture is short of people?People who lack a hammer are agricultural people. Even if the two-year three-crop system is fully promoted in North China according to intensive farming, there will still be hundreds of millions more people.

Shipbuilding shortage?Textile shortage?Shortage of people to cut down trees?To put it bluntly, in the history of the late Qing Dynasty, Shandong recruited short-term workers, and they flocked to them for two catties of sorghum rice a day.

No matter the relative advantage or absolute advantage, as long as it can accommodate these "surplus population", even if the imperial court is idle, it is impossible to lack people by hiring people to dig holes today and fill them in tomorrow.

Relative advantages must be seized, absolute advantages must be seized, and if there is no advantage, then create opportunities and create an industrial chain to continue to seize.

The British Enclosure Movement produced 3 to [-] people a year to fill these industrial and commercial jobs.

A random flood or drought in Dashun, [-] to [-] landless refugees?That's just a fraction, at most the qualifications for the county annals, not even the memorials reported to the imperial court by the provincial envoys.

So much so that in history, in the late Qing Dynasty, women in North China picked up straw in the wheat fields and braided them into straw hat braids when they went home. They could still be sold. You know, this thing is not silk, and Europe also grows wheat to eat steamed buns Yes, not rice.

In addition, China has been short of precious metals since ancient times.This makes the purchasing power of the silver price here very strong, at least it must be much stronger than that of Europe, which has been super-issued by Spain for hundreds of years.

This makes this set of theories correct, but the observation of samples and social existence is a result based on Europe with "late handicraft industry, early steam age, fragmented and impossible whole industry advantages".

And, to a certain extent, this set of things is also implemented in Dashun.

Although, not completely.

However, compared with Europe, which is fragmented and has numerous tariffs, is it more qualified to talk about "absolute advantage" and "relative advantage"?
To put it simply, has Shaanxi introduced a policy to impose a 100% tariff on Jiangnan silk to protect Shaanxi's silk industry?

Has Hubei introduced a policy to impose a 100% tariff on rice from Hunan to protect the interests of farmers in Hubei?
Adam Smith satirized Britain, saying that France is the fucking largest wine producing country, just across the strait, but Britain is far away and goes to Portugal to buy wine. Isn't this a disease of the brain?

Did Jiangsu say that Liaodong tussah silk and Jiangsu silk are in a competitive relationship, so they imposed a 200% tariff on the Northeast, looking far away, cheap and expensive, as a countermeasure, instead of using Northeast soybeans, they went to Japan to buy high-priced soybeans?

Obviously, no.

Moreover, the development of the cotton textile industry in the Songsu area was originally a tax in kind during Zhu Yuanzhang's time, which led to the great development of the cotton textile industry in the Songsu area with a comparative advantage.It's not that people can't weave cloth in other places, but it's better to grow rice or rub silk at home, and go to Songsu to change cloth.

But Dashun's problem lies more in "logistics".

Logistics costs and transportation costs have prevented this domestic unified market that is truly, purely, and theoretically perfect in free trade.

Britain is about as far from Portugal as the capital is to Changsha.But there is the sea over there, and there is the advantage of sea transportation. Not to mention now, even after a hundred years or 200 years, railways will be everywhere, and sea transportation will still be cheap.

The UK can import wine from Portugal, and Dashun’s capital went to Changsha to buy wine and transport it back to the capital to sell. Can you see if you can pay for the underpants?
Such a high logistics cost makes Dashun's handicraft industry bloom in many places and spread all over the place.

For Europe, the unification of Germany means that the Shinra tariffs have been broken.

But for Dashun, the great unification is completed, and the "natural tariff of logistics costs" that does not sell firewood for hundreds of miles and does not sell purchases for thousands of miles, how can it be broken?
France has achieved the unification of the domestic market by imposing labor and repairing roads; the UK has achieved a reduction in logistics costs in the domestic market by virtue of vigorously digging canals.

Dashun is not a fool, let alone Dashun, even Man Qing is not a fool.When they were short of money to mine copper in Yunnan, they all knew that they had to dredge rivers and cross the Three Gorges.

The question is, can Dashun build the Three Gorges Dam and build ship locks to realize navigation and reduce the cost of sinking?Or does Dashun have the ability to dig a canal from Yunnan directly to the capital?

Including, at this time, Dashun was digging zinc in Guizhou, copper in Yunnan, and improving soil flow to control the southwest with salt, so that Sichuan salt went south and Sichuan salt entered Chu.

But Dashun can't build the Three Gorges Dam, and it is directly accessible to navigation.

It can only be built on both sides of the Three Gorges, building plank roads, repairing tracker roads, and relying on the form of trackers to carry out logistics.

What is the cost of pulling fibers by trackers?
That is to say, Dashun's formal domestic unified market is about free trade, and also about relative advantages and absolute advantages.However, even if all the bills and customs are cancelled, the "natural tariff" of "transportation costs" caused by "mountains, rivers and distances" cannot be solved unless Dashun has the ability to move mountains and fill seas.

Therefore, Dashun essentially focuses on free trade internally.

However, what is shown is a state that was not obvious before, with flowers blooming everywhere, handicrafts fully developed, and relatively advantageous areas.

Of course, this was the previous question.

Along with the application of railway and steamship technology, Dashun had to consider the issue of "sub-port tax".

In the past, natural "tariffs" were made by the mighty power of nature.

But now, although Dashun did not move mountains to fill the sea, it conquered the power contained in the corpses of ancient plants, and the steamship officially declared war on the four words "go down the river".

Therefore, domestic problems have suddenly become severe.

To put it simply, in the past, the cotton cloth in the Songsu area did have a comparative advantage.But maybe, the production cost is 10 yuan, and the cost of transportation to Hubei is 15 yuan, so as long as the cost is controlled at 24 yuan in Hubei, there is no need for local protectionism, and it can still develop.

But now, on the one hand, the colonial plunder and the cost of technology have reduced the production cost to 5 yuan;

Well, this means that unless the cotton cloth that originally cost 24 yuan in Hubei area is reduced to 9 yuan, these people will have to lose their jobs.

Social existence determines social consciousness.

Adam Smith, using the social existence of Europe, the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the sea, came up with the theory of free trade.

In his free trade theory, the issue of "logistics cost" is not too much involved.

However, this does not mean that his theory is completely wrong.

Because, at the end of the handicraft era, he came to this conclusion based on the material basis of European shipping, although it lacked too much consideration of logistics costs and the inland empire of over tens of millions of square kilometers.

But, not long after, man conquered nature, driving the power of the ancient corpses, using trains, ships, railways, and roads.

This makes the concept of free trade beyond the scope of the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

It is the efficient means of transportation such as ships, trains, and railways that Adam Smith had never seen before, which made free trade possible worldwide.

Otherwise, the applicability of his theory, or the applicability under the condition of logistics transportation capacity at this time, is questionable.

It's like taking three's beet pimple problem.

Nassan is worried about sugar cane in Martinique, affecting sugar beets in France.

And where is Martinique?How far is France?

Translating to Dashun is equivalent to the distance from Yili River Valley to northern Jiangsu, or even further.

But in Europe and on the basis of sea transportation, it is not unreasonable to worry about Nasan, and the sugar beet planting industry in France has also felt tremendous pressure.

But in Dashun.

Assume that the Ili River Valley in the Western Regions grows high-quality cotton.

With the current traffic conditions and transportation capacity, would the cotton planting area in northern Jiangsu and Huaihe River, which is equidistant from Martinique to Paris, be worried that the cotton in the Ili Valley would affect their income?

Obviously, with the current traffic and logistics situation, not to mention the cotton in the Ili River Valley, even half of the cotton planted in Shaanxi, the cotton plantations in northern Jiangsu will not feel the slightest worry.

People in Dashun, especially those who have experienced the changes in the past 30 to [-] years, have the deepest memory, or the one who has the greatest impact on the economic structure of Dashun.

Neither is the use of new technology.

Nor is it the spread of free trade doctrine.

It's... to change the waste water into the sea.

The changes in transportation and logistics are the most intuitive and significant changes in the drastic changes in Dashun in the past 30 to [-] years.

Yangzhou is abolished.

The once prosperous Luxi area, known as Little Yangzhou and Little Jingdezhen, has become a "national poverty-stricken county" in later generations.

And the Jiaodong area, which has always been looked down upon by the western Shandong area and regarded as the "child of Donglai", began to ridicule the northwest of Shandong as "the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of Shandong" because of the sea transportation and the experimental railway from Jiaozhou to Jinan.

Going forward, the value of "hollowing out the Western Regions" is getting lower and lower.

With the development of navigation technology, apart from the military and political value of hollowing out the Western Regions, its economic value is completely impossible to compare with that of the Han and Tang Dynasties.

This is the internal logic of what Liu Yu said to the emperor that "the Western Regions are the Western Regions, and my Western Regions are Nanyang".

transportation cost.

Any theory that does not take into account the material foundation of the country will always end up learning to walk in Handan and seeking a sword without hesitation.

The same goes for trade theory.

Just as Lao Ma satirized those who went to Australia to bring [-] men and women, saying that you have transferred capital and population to Australia, but do you have the ability to transfer British production relations, material conditions, and arable land conditions to Australia?
Same thing.

Dashun was originally engaged in "free trade", and it was like this internally.Although not perfect, at least East Asia has a stronger "free trade" atmosphere than Europe, which is fragmented and has many tariffs.

but.

Mountains, rivers, canyons, plateaus, these natural and natural "tariffs", as well as the huge empire area, made the "free trade" within Dashun develop in a form that blossomed everywhere.

However, a person who really understands "free trade" will understand one thing and will have a premonition of a new crisis.

That is:
When the railway track extends from the plain, when the steamer ship changes the logic of "going down the river", when navigation can take the black water ocean instead of the Grand Canal...

A huge crisis is about to befall Dashun.

The premise of this crisis is what Lao Ma said [the sporadic and scattered state of rural real estate complements the free competition in the city and the emerging large-scale industry...the sideline business of small farmers is rapidly developing].

Combined with the reality of Dashun, that is, the reality of "different from European shipping" and "'natural tariffs' composed of mountains, rivers, plateaus and canyons".

Dashun's handicraft industry presents a characteristic form of Dashun: it blooms in multiple spots, spreads everywhere, surrounds Dafu counties in various provinces, and relies on the existence of "natural tariffs", forming a dotted pattern.

Before the reform, before the railway steamer appeared.

Songsu, Northwest Shandong, Jianghan, Dudu, Guanzhong, Hebei, Guangdong...the handicraft industries in these places all have their own characteristics, and have at least achieved "the province's self-sufficiency and the province's market filling".

Abolishing the water to change the sea, losing the Grand Canal invested by the imperial court to maintain every year, the Luxi area and Yangzhou area were the first to decline.

Along with the upcoming emergence of new technologies to reduce logistics costs such as railways and steamships.

A "rewriting of the economic structure" that is comparable to the rapid decline of Yangzhou, Luxi and other canal economic zones caused by the abolition of water and the reform of the sea is about to occur.

Judging from the "total productivity" of Dashun, there is no doubt that it is progressing and improving.

But judging from the scattered handicraft economic zones in various regions, provinces, and prefectures, this will bring ruin.

Rapid change can cause severe pain.

A waste water was transformed into a sea, and a trade center was moved from Guangdong to Songsu.

This has caused Dashun pain for 30 years.

From the waterworkers' uprising in western Shandong, to the Yangzhou salt workers' uprising, to the Wuling porters' uprising, the Guangdong embroidery weavers' uprising, Songsu's rebellion against the low price of Nanyang rice... the turmoil continued continuously.

It seems that Dashun's transformation in the past 30 to [-] years has been glamorous.

But behind this brilliance is Liu Yu's Qingzhou Army reformed army, which suppressed from Gyeonggi to Wuling, and from Yangzhou to Luxi.

However, the waste of water to the sea and the trade center moving northward to Songsu only involved "commercial", not "industry".

The tea farmers in Wuyishan are still growing tea, but the porters in Wuling have lost their jobs.

Salt in the Lianghuai area is still produced by the sea, but the salt packers in Yangzhou have lost their jobs.

The basic economy of the Luxi area is fairly complete, but people who are related to commerce and transportation around Linqing, Jining and other places have lost their jobs.

however.

The use of new means of transportation and the reduction of logistics costs will completely reshape the economic structure of Dashun.

simply put.

Before there were steamships.

Hubei's textile industry, even if the technology is inferior to Songsu, even if raw materials such as cotton and indigo are not as good as Songsu's proximity to the colonial sea.

But relying on the "natural tariff" of "going against the current".

The textile industry in Hubei can still resist—this is the same as before the Suez Canal was completed in history, Europe did have a steam engine, and the industrial revolution in Europe, but, doesn’t shipping cost money?Do not cost?Didn’t the famous scene in 1893 when Nantong cloth counterattacked machine weaving and pushed European cloth into Shanghai?

It is not the steam factories in Songsu, nor the new technologies in Songsu that really want to change the economic structure of Dashun and cause severe pain.

It's... logistics costs.

More specifically, it is about to be put into use and can go upstream [fire steamer].

This has an impact on Dashun.

Like the 16th century, European sailing ships came to India and China along the sea.

And the once-rich Western Regions were completely reduced to desolation; the Ottomans, who used to sit on the ground to collect money, gradually declined; the once-brilliant Arab civilization began to decline.

In Dashun, those who cannot see this problem are not qualified to talk about free trade.

Before technology kept advancing, before steamers and railroads started worrying prescient minds about internal economic collapse.

Dashun has a unified domestic market, and theoretically has no internal tariffs and local protectionism.

Because nature is natural tariffs.

There are natural tariffs, why do we need administrative measures?
But now, people who don't realize that human beings have begun to tear up the "natural tariff" of nature, people who don't realize that Dashun is about to usher in a wave of changes in the economic structure that are more severe than the waste of water and sea.

There is absolutely no right to meddle in the throne.

Even, in fact, if you can't understand this point, you won't even be qualified to enter the Temple of Heavenly Blessing and the Six Governments.

Luxi, which was prosperous in business yesterday, has become an economic depression in Shandong for 20 years. It is so depressed that some prosperous commercial cities can't even compile "county chronicles".

Even if they don't understand the reason why, they resort to conservative ideas, lack of business sense, and investments that are not cleared... Such people are not worthy to lead Dashun forward in this era of change. In the prosperous "Little Yangzhou" 20 years ago, could it be that the people there were unconservative and had a sense of business 20 years ago, but 20 years later there will be no more?
Social existence determines social consciousness.

The existence of some societies, such as shipping, such as a small country, such as a lot of internal tariffs, is "taken for granted" in Europe.It is a question that does not need to be discussed in theory.

It's like, when Northeasterners talk about the twelfth lunar month, they don't need to add the condition of "the weather is twenty or thirty degrees below zero", because they think adding this sentence is equivalent to taking off their pants and farting.

However, as a complete set of theories aimed at universal application and centered on world trade, various conditions must be added.What's more, the issue of "transportation costs" that is completely regarded as unnecessary in Western Europe cannot be ignored.

In Europe, especially a small island country like the UK, shipping costs seem to be negligible.

But in Dashun... Technological progress, in this day and age, can't even offset the advantage of transportation costs.

This is why many, many years ago, when Liu Yu went to the banks of the Heilongjiang River to resist the invasion of Rakshasa, he saw the "dogs cannibalize people" in the homes of the soldiers on the Songhua River, but they were all so short of money that they cried their fathers and mothers. .Before there was a railway running through the Songliao watershed, the Songnen Plain was not even qualified to be a commercial grain base.

In other words, the "per capita grain possession" in Liu Yu's "two legs" has no practical meaning in Dashun.That is why he insisted on solving the problem of "these two legs".

In the end, Liu Yu chose the route of "unprecedented migration to the east", in essence, he chose the route of "food does not grow legs but people have legs" among the two legs, rather than "food does not grow legs, then Just put legs on it" route.

After all, it is easier to install legs for goods, or to let people have long legs to run to places where goods are more convenient to transport. Of these two paths, the latter seems to be easier.

However, for Dashun, whether it is adding legs to products or concentrating long-legged people in coastal shipping areas, it will be a "great change unseen in a thousand years" and will completely reshape Dashun economic landscape.

It is the process of letting the "stars" scattered in various provinces and governments due to natural tariffs be crushed and turned into a round of "scorching sun" along the coast of the East China Sea.

Compared with abolishing the water and changing the sea, this is just a "small reform" that affects the interests of "commercial and transportation" and does not affect too many people.

This big change to connect goods can really make the continuous uprisings from the Gyeonggi Canal to the Lingnan porters in the past 30 to [-] years - just a million waterworkers, salt workers, and boatmen.It's drizzling.

The ones to be moved this time are the star-like handicraft centers scattered all over the country with at least 2000 million people.And about [-] million small farmers and handicrafts of small producers in the regional economy centered on the county seat.

Million water workers? 20 Wuling porters?Millions, is that a lot?
Have you ever seen a big change involving hundreds of millions of rural people going bankrupt and the small peasant economy collapsing?
One million, in Dashun, is a "small" matter that can be suppressed.The million level is really a "small" thing.

(End of this chapter)