New Shun 1730

The prince felt that he had a rough idea and thought that his father would think that he had some opinions.

But in fact, the emperor asked the prince to consult Liu Yu. After consulting for a long time, the prince still didn't understand what "primary and secondary" was all about.

At this time in Dashun, with the monetization of silver and the formation of a unified national market, the essence of the dispute between primary and secondary was actually a dispute between production and commerce.

The gentry class of Dashun was similar to the commercial capital thinking.

Cultivated land was the most valuable, safest, least affected by war, and the highest return investment in Dashun.

Many gentry have said that after the war, even if the dynasty changes, the land of the Zhang family is still the Zhang family, and the land of the Li family is still the Li family. It will always maintain its value and be least affected by any economic fluctuations. It is the final investment direction.

Liu Yu told the prince about the dispute between primary and secondary and the equalization of the exchange rate. The prince seemed to understand, but in fact he still didn't understand Liu Yu's true meaning-if he really believed in the "dispute between primary and secondary", he should try his best to strip the commercial speculation attributes of inland land.

The two favorite investments of the Dashun gentry are buying land and lending at high interest rates. They say "focus on the basics and suppress the details", but in fact they are more "detailed" than anyone else, because the "basic" in the virtuous literature is production.

The invisible hand of Dashun is too powerful - this invisible hand is usury and land annexation and rent collection, which is the investment direction with the highest yield and the highest return rate - so a visible hand is needed to invest the surplus of agricultural production in water conservancy construction, transportation development, farmland transformation, and expansion of cultivated land instead of usury and land annexation.

The problem is that under the high return rate of buying land and rent collection and usury, under the shadow of the invisible hand, how many gentry landlords have invested their accumulated capital in water conservancy construction and farmland improvement?

This is the true meaning of the principle of "focusing on the basics and suppressing the details" that Liu Yu wanted to tell the prince, based on the material and social foundation of Dashun.

Don't try to find a sword by sticking to the boat, and use the population, cultivated land, land ownership, tax system, and the popularity of animal-powered machinery in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties to fit the reality of Dashun.

Han Feizi was very venomous in the past, and he created an idiom for this situation, called "waiting for the rabbit by the tree".

In addition to special means, if you want capital to invest in land improvement and water conservancy projects, there is another way if you rely on the invisible hand.

That is to increase the value of per-acre yield, relying on the high returns of certain cash crops, which are higher than the rent and interest, so that capital will choose to improve the land and promote production to obtain more benefits.

But this is no longer possible in the interior of Dashun. Because Liu Yu placed all the production sites and commercial grain bases of valuable raw materials and crops in the Northeast, Nanyang, and later India.

The income from opening a plantation in Nanyang or cultivating beans in the Northeast is already higher than buying land and collecting rent in Songsu, so the problem of the silver-money exchange rate in Dashun has not occurred in recent years.

A large amount of hot money, accumulated capital, and trade surplus silver actually went to Southeast Asia and Northeast China for infrastructure construction. Relying on large-scale output, there was no silver inflation and price revolution, ensuring that the "exchange rate" of Dashun was still extremely favorable for exports. Although everyone was using silver, and it was even possible that all of this silver came from the same mine in South America, or even from the same South American Indians, there was actually an exchange rate between the two sides. Hume had grasped this "exchange rate" issue when he was debating with the free trade faction.

So, in fact, when the problem came to this, even if the prince really understood the "primary and secondary" issue, or even further understood these things basically.

That would be useless.

Because the solution introduced from this, which is based on all the people living on this land as the main body, is something that neither the prince nor the emperor can do, and will definitely try their best to stop.

Even if the main body introduced from this is not all the people on this land, but only the bourgeoisie of Dashun, then the prince or the emperor will not accept their line, and will definitely try their best to stop it.

Lao Ma said that the real task of the bourgeoisie is to establish a world market (at least an outline) and production based on this market.

Let's not consider the entire people.

If Dashun is a country with the bourgeoisie as the ruling class at this time, then the next step is obviously to open up the domestic market, abolish domestic tariffs and local protectionism in various provinces, and then take the internal market after obtaining the external market, so as to establish the outline of the world market; implement nationalization of land and differential rent system, which is the purest capitalist land system that Lenin evaluated Mr. Sun Yat-sen, so as to facilitate the use of capital for production activities based on land as a means of production.

And this is not the final solution, but only the solution of the bourgeoisie.

Only this, can the emperor or the prince support it?

Even if they understand that the future of the nation-state is like this, will the emperor, the prince, the landlord bureaucrats, the gentry, etc. do it? They assume that they are loyal to the emperor and the country, but when they are told that in the new era, the real love of the nation-state is to abolish their feudal privileges, gentry privileges, reduce rent and interest, and even nationalize land, they will choose to raise the butcher knife without hesitation.

Because he understood the truth behind it to some extent.

And because he was the crown prince, his position was very secure.

Therefore, when the emperor summoned the prince again a few days later and asked about the communication between the prince and Liu Yu, the answer the prince gave the emperor, that is, his opinion, was a natural compromise.

The prince knew that after he asked Liu Yu, his father would definitely look for him again.

The emperor also knew that the prince should know and give him a direction and answer for what he should try to do.

So the emperor went straight to the point and asked the prince: "I asked you to ask Duke Xingguo. If you listen to him, you may not necessarily listen to him. It doesn't matter what he told you."

"The key is, after you listen, what do you think, apart from the things I will ask you to supervise and observe the public sentiment in a few days, what else do you want to do?"

The prince said what he had prepared and replied: "I would like to ask my father to allow me to select young talents to establish Hankou Industry."

This answer was within the emperor's expectation.

It was one of the more predictable answers that the emperor thought the prince might give.

What exactly Liu Yu and the prince said, the emperor didn't want to know in detail. But basically, the emperor thought he understood quite a lot of Liu Yu's ideas. Although most of the time he understood them randomly, the emperor still thought he understood them.

Regarding the attempt proposed by the prince, the emperor did not first ask "Why did you choose this place?" nor did he ask "How far are you prepared to go?"

Instead, he asked two strange questions that the prince had never expected.

"Since you want to build Hankou, I think this can be done, and there are many benefits. But before that, I want to ask you something, such as Songjiang's cotton cloth."

"When cotton from Songjiang leaves the port in Songjiang, a tax will be levied. So, if cotton from Songjiang goes to Hankou, will another tax be levied?"

"This is one of them."

"Secondly, if you want to develop Hankou, it is impossible without capital."

"Are you going to raise Chu people's capital? Or allow Songsu's capital to flow into Hankou? Or some other method? Or the government? Or the government-supervised commercial office? Or the commercial office to levy taxes? Or what?"

These two questions sound painful to the ears and feel like nonsense.

However, the emperor actually felt that these two issues were very critical.

This is related to the taxation model in the Songsu region. Taking Songsu glass as an example, taxes are actually imposed on the production side. The same goes for cotton cloth, which is equivalent to a tax levied on the production side.

Of course, the tax is not heavy. If necessary, you can choose to get a tax refund to ensure competitiveness. Although it is basically not necessary at this time, it is theoretically possible.

From a bourgeois perspective, the question of whether to impose another tax in Hankou can actually be understood as "whether to support a unified domestic market."

From the perspective of bureaucratic achievements or the prince's desire to perform meritorious service, the question of whether to impose another tax in Hankou can actually be understood in two ways.

One is the emperor's experience from Liu Yu's methods of dealing with Japan and North Korea: bureaucrats or feudal nobles are more inclined to collect tariffs and obtain revenue. The more customs duties they collect, the more their political achievements and taxes they pay will be.

In other words, this is a comprador idea.

The other is the experience the emperor drew from Britain and France: developing local industry and commerce requires imposing high tariffs on foreign goods. The ban on cotton fabrics in Britain and France is based on the same principle. If the prince wants to revitalize Hankou's industry and commerce, then it is not impossible to impose additional "tariffs" to ensure the development of local industry and commerce. Otherwise, I would be washed to pieces by the Songjiang cotton before I even started.

In other words, this is the idea of ​​developing local industry. But from a national perspective, this is the rise of local forces and provincial provincialism, which is probably not a good thing.

This thing is different from salt.

The idea of ​​​​the salt policy reform is to directly tax the production side, then establish a unified national market, remove the remaining exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and levy a one-time tax that will be adopted nationwide.

But that's salt.

So it seemed that the emperor asked two questions that sounded innocuous and nonsense. They seemed to be trivial questions compared to the myriad of "political connections and people".

But in fact, the first question about whether to impose additional tariffs and whether Songsu's cotton textiles can enter Hankou is a very difficult question to answer, or it is a question that tests the prince's understanding of the route.

Although Liu Yu didn't talk to the prince in such details, some ideas still gave him some inspiration, and he said: "I think this matter should be looked at carefully."

"In the past, Taishi Gong said: Therefore, those who are cheap should be conquered by the noble, and those who are noble should be conquered by the humble. Everyone is encouraged to do their work and enjoy their work. Just like the water tends to flow down, day and night, it will come on its own without calling, and the people will come out without asking. Isn't that not the case? The Tao conforms to the truth, and the nature detects the evil? "