Xinshun 1730

Chapter 897 England Falling into the Trap ([-])
Social consciousness always lags behind social existence.

A drastic change and war will speed up the pace of social consciousness to catch up with social existence.

Dashun’s journey to Southeast Asia in Asia and its intervention in the Russian coup in Europe are the drums that give birth to this social awareness and keep pace with the times.

Dashun's foreign strategy needs a group of enemies with good brains, at least a group of enemies who realize that "times have changed".

Otherwise, methods such as intimidation and deterrence will not be used.

This is like George Anson who came to Lingdingyang before, he is a standard person whose understanding of society is behind the times.The ocean supply line is tens of thousands of miles away, Dashun's battleships have already started cruising, and one-third of the sailors in his own fleet died of scurvy. Under such circumstances, a broken Centurion is still in Lingdingyang Niu Honghong, isn't this unaware of what "times have changed"?
How to deal with this kind of person?Normal thinking is completely useless.

Of course, after the Nanyang incident and the Russian coup, European countries have gradually changed their understanding of the world pattern.

The British East India Company was the first to be hit by this impact.

Just, not enough.

Now, Liu Yu used another method to awaken the anxiety in the British East India Company.

This is forcing the East India Company to diverge its thinking, create new ideas, and not rest on its laurels.

Not only should Fazakle be anxious, but Fazakle should pass this anxiety on to the board of directors of the East India Company and any shareholder who invests more than 500 pounds.

If you don’t want to lose money or go bankrupt overnight, it’s best to change your thinking and see where there are profit growth points in the Asian region east of the Cape of Good Hope.

For example... a place south of the Snowy Plateau and west of Nanyang?

For example, the company's profit growth point should be placed on tax collection in a wealthy place, rather than pure trade?
People without far-reaching worries must have near-term worries.

How far is far?

Liu Yu This is the anxiety of the trinity of far, middle and near.

Recently, there was an unresolved opium incident.

Among them, Dashun has opened up Sino-Dutch cooperative trade, which of course will suppress competitors.

Far away, the technological explosion caused by technological exchanges will eventually lead to unprofitable trade between the East and the West.

Naturally, this kind of guidance has advantages and disadvantages.

Leading to India also means that the Luzon issue may not be resolved until decades later.This kind of anxiety will inevitably make Britain abandon Luzon and concentrate its power on India instead.Would not hold such a hot potato.

And Spain, as a potential "anti-British alliance" quasi-ally, if Britain really returns Luzon to Spain, it will be really difficult to do it in a short time.

But this kind of pros and cons, in the long run, is not a problem.It will be a matter of time before the South Seas go down, India takes over, and Luzon, which is lonely overseas, will happen sooner or later.

If you gain something, you lose something.

Under the guidance of this kind of anxiety, Fazaklei in front of Liu Yu really started to think.

Although there is always a voice in my mind reminding Fazakle:

Be careful, be careful!The man in front of you is a devil, his words are untrustworthy, he has deceived many people, think about Ceylon immigrants, think about Sino-Russian border negotiations during the Sino-Russian War, think about the collapse of the Dutch East India Company!
However, besides this voice, there is another voice reminding him:
Yes, the man before you is a devil, but he is the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and he is not relying on lies.What if the Dutch East India Company does not accept the Ceylon immigration plan?The massacre did not dare to massacre, and the relief was unwilling to rescue. The result of the great uprising was that Dashun sent troops ahead of time. So what about accepting border talks?The outbreak of the Russo-Swiss War, if it is really not acceptable, wouldn't Dashun send troops to the west?

These two voices kept echoing in his mind, and Fazaklei became more and more nervous and fearful.

The man in front of him is very easy-going and has a good temper. Although he scolded his mother for half an hour just because of the opium problem, he is still politely inviting him to drink tea.This man was not cruel, nor did he enjoy killing and war.

But behind this person is a power that makes people inexplicably fearful when they are enemies with him.

unknown.

Fazakley thought to himself, everything you said seems to be true.

But behind every truth you say, there is no purpose you really want.

However, every word of your truth, let us think for ourselves, and in the end we can always achieve what you want.

What the hell are you going to do?
Unable to figure this out, Fazaklei was always restless.

Moreover, what is even more disturbing is that at the beginning, Liu Yu instinctively warned that what Liu Yu said might be a lie and contained some kind of conspiracy. An irrefutable and rational truth.

While Fazakle was nervous, he couldn't help drinking a few more mouthfuls of tea to moisten his throat that was a little dry due to nervousness.

After thinking for a long time, Fazakle finally asked: "Your Excellency, your words are undoubtedly very reasonable. From your point of view, or from the point of view of you as a senior official of the country and a member of the cabinet, what do you think? The direction is beyond reproach."

"However, I still don't understand, what is the relationship between this and your "navigation clock" as our sincere purpose?"

Liu Yu still didn't answer, but asked, "Have you read a book? It was written by you British people."

"The Instructive and Amusing Golden Book of the Most Perfect State Institutions and New Isles of Utopia."

Of course, Fazaklei knew it, and he was sure that Liu Yu didn't want to use the nautical clock to find the Utopian Islands. This is what romantic visionaries would do.

This person is not romantic at all.

So he nodded, indicating that of course he had read the book.

But I only said that I had read it, but I did not express any political views and opinions on this book.

Liu Yu quoted a sentence in it in a soothing tone.

"Sheep are very tame and do not want much, but now they have become very greedy and fierce, and even want to eat people. They want to destroy our fields, houses and cities."

After quoting this sentence, Liu Yu said with a smile: "Our Celestial Dynasty played earlier than you. The village community and so on disintegrated earlier; the mine field system and so on have been over for 2000 years. There is no public land to be encircled. , There is no so-called public land of the village community. The hierarchy of the gentleman and the common people has long existed in name only."

"Our Celestial Dynasty has always practiced the most standard private land ownership system. Since the disintegration of the land equalization system in the Tang Dynasty, land can be bought and sold freely and rented freely, and the state cannot interfere."

"Of course, we don't have the traditional land rent of your village community. Tradition is worthless in the face of monetary interests. We proved this a thousand years ago, and your recent land enclosure movement also proved this point."

"I think you must be impressed by the landless peasants wandering the streets of London? Of course, you have the Poor Law."

"From the issue of the Poor Law, we can see the major differences between China and Britain on some issues."

"This will help you understand the celestial dynasty, what is the celestial dynasty, and what needs to be done for the existence of the celestial dynasty, so as to avoid many misunderstandings between us."

By means of the question of the Poor Law, he gradually led the question to the land question.

In other words, it led to the huge differences between Britain and Dashun on the issue of "suppressing mergers".

In the 29th year of Jiajing in the previous dynasty, Britain began to levy the poor tax.

This is a standard asset tax, which is levied according to the amount of land, real estate, and property, and the total amount of assets determines how much poverty relief obligations to bear.

From an economic point of view, this kind of tax, as well as this kind of poverty relief system, is actually a kind of regulation that "encourages mergers".

For example, a self-cultivator with 100 mu of land is supposed to pay a poverty relief tax of 10 taels of silver.

A farmer with 10000 mu of land has to pay a poor tax of 1000 taels of silver.

So, who is helping the poor?
Naturally, it is impossible to benefit the owner farmers and small producers, and they are taxed.

Instead, help the poor.

Theoretically, only those who have no job or wages are too low can enjoy the poverty relief subsidy.

Originally working on a farm, the wages must have been higher than the minimum wage stipulated by the Poor Law.

But it is clear that the farmer will choose to lower his wages to the point where the poor law wages were lower.

For example, I originally worked on a farm and earned 5 denarii a month, but the Poor Law fixed a monthly salary of 4 denarii to receive poverty relief.

The farmer saw it, isn't it simple?I lowered my wages to 3 sen a month, and the part-time workers can receive 3 sen a month as a salary, and can also receive 2 sen in bread subsidies for the poor, rent subsidies, and so on.

Hello, me, hello everyone.

What does this mean?
It means that for big farmers, big property owners, and big bourgeois, this is the cycle of taking off their pants and farting: the poor tax I paid was finally adjusted through wage adjustment, which means that I didn't pay at all.It's just that the wages I should pay are distributed to the hired workers, half in the form of wages and half in the form of government subsidies for the poor.

For self-cultivating farmers, small landowners, and small handicraft practitioners, this is not taking off their pants and farting: I am a self-cultivating farmer, and it is impossible to hire people to work, but I still have to pay the poor tax.

Obviously, what's driving this?

It is the bankruptcy of the owner farmers and the bankruptcy of the small handicraftsmen.

What was promoted was the expansion of farms and the merger of land, and the defeat of small handicraftsmen by handicrafts.

What drives it is that the lower class work hard to have children, and then the wages get lower and lower, so they either go to work or become contract slaves.

Today, the United Kingdom is planning a new round of reform of the Poor Law, but the direction of the reform, from the perspective of economic principles, is still to "encourage mergers, encourage manufacturing, eliminate small farmers, and eliminate small producers" as the direction.

Conversely, Dashun is actually planning a tax law reform.

However, judging from the "Eleventh Taxes" national treasury and local taxation reform that Songjiang Prefecture is going to implement on a trial basis, Dashun's tax law reform is actually a reform of "suppressing mergers".

Through the clear [-]th tax, the apportionment, local additional payment, corvee and forced labor on the owner farmers, small farmers, and small producers will be cut off.

The knife cut in this reform is actually cut on the gentry, because they have the legal ability to avoid taxation and labor.

In other words, in the past, there were at least 2500 million taels of tangible or labor-based taxes in the country every year, of which 7500 million national taxes and land taxes were apportioned according to the land; and the remaining [-] million local taxes were actually all pressured on the land. on the owner farmers and small farmers.

Now, in theory, if the tax law is promoted nationwide, the total land tax of the country will be set at 7000 million taels, and the treasury will still take 2500 million taels as before, and the remaining 4500 million taels will go to the local government.However, the total tax amount of 7000 million taels is evenly distributed on the land of the whole country.

This makes the self-cultivating farmers less likely to go bankrupt, the small-scale peasant economy more stable, the pattern of men farming and women weaving more durable, and more resistant to shocks and natural disasters.

The difference between the two tax reforms is also a manifestation of the biggest difference between the UK and Dashun.

No matter which emperor in Dashun, at least from the starting point, he would never dare to implement the policy of "encouraging mergers" and "encouraging small farmers to go bankrupt".

Of course, what will become of the implementation is another matter.

Liu Yu and Fazaklei said that the Celestial Dynasty had already completed the land enclosure movement, and they were not completely nonsense.After all, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang are "servant farming" rather than "tenant farming" with others. If there is no village communal land or well field public land, if they are all private land, how can they be circled?Who did the common land of the pre-Qin village commune belong to?
However, it can be understood that agricultural technology has advanced rapidly but industrial technology has not reached the standard. In the end, this step is completed, but the progress in industrial technology is not enough to accommodate so many people in cities and factories, but agricultural technology has already reached the European 16th level. At the level of the century, the tenancy system and small peasant economy were finally developed.It also promoted the Confucian magic reform that emphasized benevolence and righteousness, and Fu Jingtian became a reactionary under the agricultural technology level of the Han Dynasty.

It should be said that if the British enclosure movement continues, but there is no pressure relief and industrial progress in the Americas, and the population continues to surge, sooner or later it will have to reach the step of increasing small farmers and renting tenants.

This is a kind of compromise, to give the huge population at the bottom a way of life that is almost impossible to starve to death, otherwise it will be life and death.The earth-digger movement during the period when the king's head was beheaded in Britain already had this trend.

Liu Yu talked about the difference because he wanted to send a signal to the British government through the British East India Company and let the British government "understand" China better.

Even, it seems like a tactful gesture.However, it seems that due to the existence of France, it is difficult to say too clearly.

This can be called "opium punishment diplomacy".

The so-called, under the fire cooking oil, under the blooming flowers, the crisis is at hand.

Dashun is undertaking a huge Huaihe River governance project costing tens of millions of taels; Dashun has to consider domestic reforms and solve many domestic problems; Dashun’s armed neutrality is an absolutely sincere armed neutrality, because Dashun is solving Before the domestic crisis, there was no room for further expansion.

Of course, he couldn’t say it so bluntly, so he wanted to raise the issue of the nautical clock—so that the British could make a logical judgment: the purpose of Dashun’s voyage to Nanyang was to obtain the immigration area to solve the domestic land problem, and to get it Springboard for immigration to the southern hemisphere mainland.

In view of the existence of the equatorial windless belt, it is necessary to rely on ocean currents, which requires the use of islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean to perform triangle jumps.

The Pacific Ocean is vast, the islands are small, there are no continents, and the longitude cannot be determined without a nautical clock, so it is impossible to make a triangle jump.

This thing, the island is not the American continent, regardless of the longitude, just sail, and you can always get there.

The latitude of the island is slightly off, and the longitude is unknown. Maybe a storm will float to the Americas, and there is no way to make a triangle jump.

Of course, Liu Yu is just talking nonsense. His immigration to the southern hemisphere is pinned on the future "Dashun version, but there is real gold in the South China Sea and Mississippi Company", but this egg is very round in front of the British East India Company.

(End of this chapter)