"I believe that there are real patriotic businessmen in this world, such as Xiangao, who retired from the Qin army with a few cows in exchange for Zheng Guoquan, but refused to reward him afterwards ......"

Before Heifu finished speaking, he was interrupted by Zhang Cang.

"12 heads."

"What?"

Zhang Cang arched his hand and said: "Dare to sue the regent, to be precise, the price paid is 12 cows and four pieces of cooked leather." ”

Heifu is unhappy, he has grown fat, he reads a lot, and his brain is so good that he can't use it? The leader's speech, can you interrupt the questioning casually, you look at Xiao He on the side, a secretary's demeanor, how well-behaved!

Zhang Cang ignored Heifu's black face, and calculated the account seriously:

"The subordinate has a question in the "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic": Today, there are a total of cattle purchases, seven families have contributed a total of 190, less than 330, and nine families have a total of 270, and a surplus of 30. Q: What is the price of cattle? ”

He looked at Hef, waited for a while, and then replied, "A cow is worth 3,750, 12 heads, plus four fine pieces of leather, nearly 50,000 yuan, the property of a rich family." ”

"But what did Xiangao get out of this? That's right, he is saying that as a businessman, loyalty to the country is a matter of course, and if I receive the award, wouldn't I be regarded as an outsider? But this is not without interests, protecting Zheng Guo is Zheng Guo's businessman's own interests. ”

"Zheng Guo is different from the princes, extremely heavy on merchants, as early as the founding of the country, Zheng Huan Gong promised to Zheng Guo merchants, you have no rebellion, I have no strong Jia, no or 匄 (gài) to take, you are good for the city treasure bribe, I don't know."

Zheng Guo did not force him to buy and sell, and did not deprive merchants of their goods for no reason, but at the same time demanded that his juniors not betray Zheng Guo, and that if the princes were found abroad to be unfavorable to Zheng, they should immediately report back. From Zheng Huan Gong to the child, Zheng Guo has adhered to this covenant for generations, and Shangjia also hugged Qiong Yao. ”

Therefore, the little Zheng Guo can be rich and famous in the world, and he is good at dancing with long sleeves in the middle of Jin, Chu and Qinqi.

Zhang Cang said: "Therefore, Xiangao saved Zheng, and also saved himself, and saved Zheng Shang's shelter!" How can this be compared to 50,000 dollars? Only by knowing that the skin does not have hair will be attached to this truth, can the businessman love his country. ”

"It's a pity that this kind of situation is only in Zheng State, as for the other princes, for hundreds of years, but when they heard that merchants sold national profits and enemy countries to survive, there has never been a second string height!"

"Today, too, compared to restoring people's livelihood with money, what they think in their hearts is to use the trick agreed by the government to obtain more wealth for themselves!"

Heifu bowed his head: "You mean, it is difficult to make a fortune in the country?" ”

Zhang Cang recognized this word: "Yes, it is difficult to make a fortune!" This is the best way to collect money for hundreds of years! ”

"Bai Gui pursues the method of people abandoning me and taking me, and people taking me, but to put it bluntly, it is hoarding."

"When his family had a good harvest, he bought grain and sold silk and lacquer. When the cocoons are formed, they buy silk and cotton wool and sell grain. If there is a good harvest in the current year and a severe drought in the coming year, they will buy a large amount of grain, hoard goods, and wait until the disaster year, and then sell the grain at a high price! The major droughts in the Central Plains, the price of rice and hundreds of stones, have all been fueled by the Bai family. ”

"I recently heard that there is a merchant Jia Ren in Xuanqu County, Zhengdi, who has become a superintendent and cangist. Last year, Qin was defeated, and the thieves and heroes all fought for gold and jade, and Ren's single cellar took the cangsu. Sure enough, seeing that Aocang was burned, at this age, the people were not allowed to farm, the green and yellow were not accepted, Liang and Zheng Mishi were thousands, and the heroic gold and jade were all returned to the Ren family, and the Ren family became rich from this. ”

This is Bai and Ren's art of collecting money, and Su is another means, giving loans when the people are in difficulty, Luoyang people call it a loan money, the capital is the mother, and the interest is the child. In the following year, when the people couldn't pay the money, the Su family was still kind and pleasant, and allowed them to borrow again, and arrived at the farmhouse. In the third year, when the interest increased and the people had nothing to do, Su threw out the bonds and took the land of his generation. ”

"Such repeated annexations, by the time of Qin's annihilation of the Zhou, had occupied a large amount of land in the Eastern and Western Zhou."

"And once these businessmen are powerful, they are even more incredible, and they can be rich with the king in terms of financial resources, such as Su and Bai, if Zhou Tianzi is the puppet of the East and West Zhou Gong, and the East and West Zhou Gong is Su Bai's puppet in terms of financial resources! That's why King Zhou was forced into debt, disgraced, and had to promise to let Su Bai be the secretary and fight against him. ”

"These giants have power and wealth, and they gradually become extravagant, with the joy of hunting in Tianchi, and the king of imitation, buying a large number ......of slaves and maids and slaves, seeking to obtain Yanchi Tieshan, and the government's taxes are getting less and less, and it is not an exaggeration to say that their generation is 'Sufeng'."

Obviously, Zhang Cang doesn't like these big businessmen.

"This is Shaofu's opinion?"

Heifu looked at the other man.

"What does the history of Zhisu think?"

As the right and left hand of the economic field under Heifu, Xiao He is older, thinner than Zhang Cang, and more low-key than Zhang Cang, and has always been immersed in farming and repairing ditches and water conservancy damaged by the war.

"There were many peasant scholars under the command of the subordinates, and in addition, I collected their opinions and the opinions of the rich people of Kanto on the merchants."

"Today, the farmer is a family of five, and there are no less than two of them who serve, and those who can cultivate no more than 100 acres, and the harvest of 100 acres is not more than 100 stones. cutting firewood, repairing the government, and serving servitude; Spring is not allowed to shelter from wind and dust, summer is not allowed to escape heat and heat, autumn is not allowed to avoid rain, winter is not allowed to avoid cold and freezing, and there is no time to rest between the four seasons; There are also private people who send them to usher, hang themselves to ask about the sick, and raise orphaned old children, and the expenses all depend on this hundred stone corn. ”

"For every farmer, the land rent is good, and when collecting the payment, it can occasionally be replaced by silk, and most of the time, the money must be paid. So he had to take the grain to the bazaar and sell it, and the price of the grain was cheap, so he had to sell it at half the price, or even if he could not sell it, he had to borrow money at twice the interest rate, so that he could pay his money and avoid punishment. ”

"Hard work is so, but it can't ensure life, if it suffers from floods and droughts, urgent government and tyranny, endowment from time to time, wars, and government orders change every day, then you can only rely on selling fields and houses, and your descendants to survive."

"But what about the merchants? The big ones accumulate double the interest, and the small ones sit in the column to sell, with the strange things they have accumulated, travel to the city every day, and take advantage of the urgency, and the sale will be doubled. Therefore, his men do not cultivate, women do not weave, clothes must be beautiful, and food must be meat; There is no farmer's suffering, but there is a thousand gains. ”

"Because of its wealth, the princely of transportation, the power exceeds that of the officials, travels thousands of miles, faces each other with crowns, rides on a good chariot and drives a fat horse, and wears silk and white silk. This is the reason why merchants have been farmers and farmers in the past 100 years, and farmers have been in exile......"

"This is the view of farmers and most smallholder farmers, and it is not necessarily extreme, but most of it is true."

In a word, the conscience of the capitalists, I can't believe it!

Therefore, the fundamentalist group of people in the peasant family strongly advocated that all the merchants should be eliminated and the world should be restored to the period of self-reliance in ancient times.

Of course, this is impossible, but behind the prosperity of commerce in the six countries of Kanto, there are really many problems, some people got rich first, the markets are lively, and luxury goods are extremely popular, but many farmers are still struggling with poverty, and the country itself has not become rich and strong......

As for the germ of capitalism that some people think "can emerge just by developing commerce"? I can't even see a shadow!

As long as they have savings, in addition to buying luxury goods to show off their wealth, the magnates are bent on annexing land, and the more land they have, the greater their sense of security......

To put it bluntly, don't look at the giants of the Warring States who are nominally businessmen, but their thinking is still that of farmers and officials!

What's more, there are also people who collude with foreign races for profit, and contraband such as copper and iron are also secretly transported out of the plug! Heifu has mastered the evidence of Wu's naked and Hun secret communication, but it is a pity that this old thief is cunning, and Ren Heifu warmly invited, but he stayed in Qiang and did not come back, this fat sheep is not easy to slaughter.

"Five beetles."

Zhang Cang continued: "My senior brother Han Fei also feels that Shang Jia, especially Ju Jia, is one of the five beetles on the torso of the state. ”

Translated, it is the national moth......

This is also the reason why Shang Jun emphasized agriculture and suppressed business. The government of King Fuming made it a small number of people who were engaged in business, industry, and food, so as not to have fewer people engaged in their own business, and more people who were committed to the end of the business. ”

The life of the Qin farmers is more miserable than that of the ordinary citizens of the Kanto region, there is no way, the government has strong control. If they find out that the officials they have worked hard to get in exchange for cutting off people's heads, the merchants can buy them with money, and the merchants can earn them in half a year after a year's hard work.

So who the hell is willing to fight for the country? 100,000 people and 90,000 businessmen a long time ago!

The peasants are bound to the land, have a fixed output every year, and their huge population and stable residence are the most convenient objects for the state to collect taxes, and grain and cloth are just needed.

On the other hand, the merchants are running around without actual production, and always resell what they buy with their left hand and their right hand, and their speculative profit-seeking behavior will even cause price fluctuations, which is very detrimental to stability.

Therefore, in the blueprint planned by Shang Ying for Qin Xiaogong, Shang Jia is a street rat that everyone shouts and beats, and his political role is similar to that of German Jews in World War II......

In the Qin state, merchants were heavily taxed and conscripted according to the number of people (including domestic servants), and whenever war broke out, the city and sons-in-law were the first to be requisitioned, and were dragged to the front to be cannon fodder.

The merchants were given a city registration and a special area to live, and they were allowed to wear white clothes as a symbol, they were not allowed to go out without permission, they were strictly forbidden to ride in cars, their children and grandchildren were not allowed to be officials, and their status was only a little higher than that of prisoners and slaves.

The foundation of the founding of the Great Qin, the peasants and the landlords of military merit, immediately felt comfortable.

The peasant pointed to those lowly merchants and said to his children, "Don't be a Jia, compared with their generation, why can't we be satisfied?" The only way out for them is to fight and farm.

The landlords of military merit enjoyed political and economic advantages, and there were no more nouveau riche who had no size but had accumulated hundreds of dollars in front of their eyes, which annoyed them.

Only the businessman, whose political status was trampled into the mud, and whose economic status was not reflected at all.

So the question is, why are you still a businessman? So unless the Qin people really can't survive, they would rather be assigned by the government to be hired farmers than be Jia!

Shang Ying had insight into human nature, and he succeeded, and since then he has made a profit.

Except for the Wu family nude and widow Qing, who won the favor of Qin Shi Huang and obtained political immunity, there was no big man in the Qin State, and the traffickers and women were even more humble.

At the national level, the most extraordinary thing Shang Ying did was to strictly implement the government monopoly, and grain, wine, salt, iron, and copper, as long as everything could be thought of, was handled by the government. In the Kwantung countries, the benefits intercepted by the feudal monarchs and magnates continued to flow into the stomachs of the government in the Qin state.

After eating the agricultural rent tax and continuing to eat the franchise dividends, the government of the Six Kingdoms was empty but still flooded with moths, and when the stomach was hungry, the Qin State became stronger and stronger, and finally beat the Six Kingdoms.

This is the victory of the system, the victory of Legalism, and the victory of physiocratism!

But then again, the emphasis on agriculture and the suppression of business have always been criticized by later generations, as if this has ruined Chinese civilization and made China miss "capitalism", but few people have really thought about why this is the case.

Heavy agriculture is always wrong, and suppressing business is by no means a mistake, but a measure that has to be implemented in a special era.

Now, after sitting in this position of "insisting on the world as the shepherd of the world", Heifu can see more clearly that for the government, there are three problems that must be solved.

1. The operation of the government requires huge financial expenditures, and agricultural taxes alone are not enough.

2. What should I do if I urgently need money in a war, famine, etc., but the treasury is empty?

3. If the central government does not control the important financial resources in its hands and form an overwhelming force, what will happen if the local forces swell and rebel?

This is the "Sanghong Sheep Trap" that stumped China for 2,000 years in later generations, and it is also the consensus reached by the current Shaofu and the internal history of Su Zhisu, and it is also the national policy that Heifu must inherit and firmly control the country's economic lifeline......

"But can this kind of big government really do no harm? Can it really be strictly enforced in this era of backward traffic information? ”

Daqin is rich and powerful, and it is unified, but the people's lives have not changed for the better at a speed that is visible to the naked eye.

The problems that were previously covered up in Guanzhong also appeared one by one as Qin officials parachuted into various parts of the Kanto region:

After the large industrial and commercial owners in various places became unprofitable, the mining efficiency of salt and iron gradually decreased, and the things produced by the government-run workshops were expensive, because of the lack of supervision, the quality was not very good, and in the past ten years, the salt and iron industry in the Kanto region withered and degenerated.

Without competition, the market will eventually be dead and difficult to innovate.

However, the forced purchase of granaries in various places, which was originally used to regulate grain prices, in turn, caused a competition with the people for profits.

What is more, the monopoly system has fostered the economy of the elites, forming a privileged group that grabs private interests in the name of monopoly.

Another trouble is that the establishment of a monopoly salt and iron mine requires officials, right? All aspects of mining, transportation, and sales are handled by the government's supply and marketing cooperatives, and small officials are also needed, right? Fortunately, in the Kanto region, it is inevitable that there will be a lot of man-made losses and administrative expenses.

This is the many problems encountered by Shaofu after the unification of Qin Shi Huangdi.

Zhang Cang and Xiao He only criticized the Kanto giants, and now they are criticizing the disadvantages of the franchise, and they are to the point and ruthless!

And an executive order, did the merchants of Kanto really suppress it? No!

Although there is a monopoly on salt and iron by the government, there are also many people who are willing to take the risk of violating the law and severely punish them to resist the state monopoly and smuggle them on a large scale.

"Although it is about the difficulty of Liang and the danger of thieves, the businessmen always shuttle through Lingnan Saibei, Wuyue Jingxiang, Dai Xing in and out, relying on bribery, forgery and other ways to obtain the talisman test, and it is not bitter to travel hundreds of miles a day, and although Luoyang Su, Bai, Hedong and other giants have been suppressed for a while, they still retain their heritage, and they are desperately trying to recover the lost territory in the official mansion of Kanto!"

Although Zhang Cang doesn't like businessmen, he also has to admire these people's ability to drill camps.

"That's right."

Heifu did the same, and said with emotion: "In the Western Regions, in Lingnan, and in Haidong, it is not the army, nor the officials or envoys who go farthest, but the merchants, in order to chase the legendary pearl and jade, they have passed through the north to the house, crossed the Dianchi Lake, and explored the South China Sea and the poison road......"

"The world is bustling, all for profit; The world is crowded, all for profit. ”

"Night and day, thousands of miles away, the benefits are also ahead."

Zhang Cang and Xiao He said at the same time, which coincided.

Why is this possible? Saying a thousand things and ten thousand is still a matter of interest.

Therefore, no matter how much the government tries to suppress business, commodity exchange is a necessary means of economic development under the current conditions, and it is human nature to get rich and get rich, so it is impossible to suppress business.

Not only can the tail of capitalism not be cut clean, but once the time comes, the merchants can grow back like the tail of a gecko, and can grow rapidly and become richer than the country......

For example, at present, the Kanto regions - including Jiaodong, perhaps politically are those anti-Wang heroes, Cao Shen Chen Ping has the final say.

But economically, it is the giants from all over the world who call the shots......

Heifu said secretly: "That's why, I must make a good start in Luoyang and set the future industrial and commercial national policy......

If you can get the financial and human support of the Kanto giants, it will make the reunification of Heifu much smoother.

Now, two routes lie ahead.

On the one hand, there is the extremely laissez-faire trade of merchants in the Kanto region, and the economy is active, but there are giants who sit big and are rich enough to rival the country.

On the one hand, there is the Qindi region in Kansai, and although the monopoly economy run by the big government is stable and convenient for the rioters to enrich the country, the private business is sluggish and there is a lack of competition.

How to choose?

Fortunately, Heifu has hanging, and he looks to the future.

He first looked at it for two thousand years...... It is a pity that the iron frame has been cast, and from the perspective of economic policy, for more than 2,000 years, as long as China is still an agricultural society, it is difficult to do anything new under the sun.

What Sang Hongyang and Wang Anshi, turning over and over, are still the rest of the Warring States Administration and Business Play, and it is difficult to get out of the trap......

Looking further back, learning from the West to the East seems to have a lot of choices, but after trial and error, I fell a lot, and the fog became thicker and thicker, making people confused.

Fortunately, history finally gave him the perfect answer!

"Neither extreme is advisable."

Heifu smiled and said something that sounded like a book from heaven to Zhang Cang and Xiao He, but was regarded as a guide and a saint by later generations:

"The productive forces determine the relations of production, and the relations of production must adapt to the development of the productive forces!"

"With public ownership as the mainstay and the common development of economies under various ownerships, this is the basic economic system of Daqin!"

……

PS: There is only one big chapter today.