Chapter 340: A Matter of Interests
When a natural disaster strikes, it is not only a devastating disaster, but also the best opportunity to unite people's hearts. Zhu Youxiao believes that the natural disasters of the Ming Dynasty in history occupy a large part of the reason, coupled with the Donglin Party in the imperial court, resulting in poor disaster relief, displaced people everywhere, and it is a miracle that the Ming Dynasty does not perish.
Now that Zhu Youxiao has unfortunately encountered this historical period, he has to make good use of this opportunity, not only to deal with the natural disasters in the past, but also to take this opportunity to completely eliminate the influence of the Donglin Party on the imperial court, and from then on he began to return to the normal Qingming political model.
Any new thing has its strong vitality, the reason is that the beginning stage or its leader and founder will be based on public spirit, and the goal is to obtain a strong group and organization, but when it is strong to a certain point, qualitative changes will occur, which is the law of historical development and a rule that is difficult to change.
For example, "Zhenguan Shengshi", which is a famous historical period of political clarity and social stability, created the historical foundation of the Tang Dynasty for nearly 300 years, but only in the time of his grandson began to decline, losing the vast western region, the reason is that Li Shimin himself has lost the determination to enter in the late stage of his life, and has entered a leisure life, especially the chaos of the harem, leaving hidden dangers.
Another example is Donglin Academy, which was founded in the first year of Zhenghe in the Northern Song Dynasty, and was a place where the Northern Song Dynasty physicists Cheng Hao and Cheng Yiyan's disciples and well-known scholar Yang Shi gave lectures for a long time. In the 32nd year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, Gu Xiancheng, a scholar of Donglin, was rebuilt and repaired and gathered here to give lectures, they advocated the spirit of "reading, lecturing, and patriotism", which caused a general response from scholars across the country, and became famous for a while, and Donglin Academy became the main public opinion center of the humanities gathering area and discussing national affairs in the south of the Yangtze River.
Originally, the spirit advocated was "reading, lecturing, and patriotism", and the couplet in front of the door was "the sound of the wind and rain, the sound of reading, the sound of family affairs, national affairs, and everything in the world were concerned". Xialian has the ambition of ruling the country and leveling the world. The wind is to the rain, the home is to the country, the ears are to the heart, extremely neat, especially the use of overlapping words, such as hearing the sound of books.
What a noble sentiment! But after only twenty years, its essence has changed, why? Because for it to survive, it must have a certain material basis. According to Mr. Gu Xiancheng's own intention, it was to cultivate scholars with patriotic spirit, but because it contained the meaning of discussing state affairs, some people with ulterior motives took the opportunity to enter, especially the ambitious children of some families, through materials, financial support, plus some poems and other things, slowly and gradually grasped the right to speak in the academy, and the academy became a tool for them to seek benefits, and even against national policies.
When Donglin Academy became a tool for businessmen to seek profits, it was no longer a simple academic research group, its nature became a political group, the core purpose of this political group was to serve businessmen, and the rise and fall of the country was no longer its purpose, so more literati joined this group in order to pursue interests, and gradually became the "Donglin Party" by the eunuchs.
The eunuchs are not necessarily all good people, nor are they all bad people, but their biggest characteristic is that they are loyal to the emperor, their relationship with the emperor is the relationship between skin and hair, and their rights are based on the emperor's trust. They are a group that loves money very much, and they don't have a complete personality, but because of their loyalty, the emperor is very relieved to use. Therefore, many eunuchs in history are extremely powerful and can even interfere in court politics, but often the end is not good, and whenever the new emperor ascends the throne, it is often the time when the eunuchs are most nervous.
There are eunuchs and ministers fighting in all dynasties, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty in history, it has reached the extreme, the eunuchs not only have to fight with the ministers, but also have to fight wits with the Donglin Party, but because of the existence of the Donglin Academy, they have the right to speak in the southern region, and more officials have been funded by the Donglin Academy, making their political tendencies more inclined to safeguard the interests of the family merchants. Therefore, the eunuchs had to rely on the imperial power to suppress it forcefully, which also made the literati who wrote history hate them even more, and made later generations feel that the eunuchs were very unbearable.
The unexpected appearance of Zhu Youxiao made history take a turning point in the first year of the Apocalypse, especially the training method of the new Ming Officials College held by Zhu Youxiao, so that the students wanted to completely subvert the way they wanted to pass the imperial examination, apprenticeship, and then become officials, so that they wanted to pass the training of Donglin Academy, and then promote through layers of relationships, and finally achieve the road of seeking political interests for families and businessmen, and Donglin Academy lost its meaning of existence, and its influence on students became weaker and weaker.
Those who tried to cultivate interest agents through Donglin Academy were naturally unwilling to be blocked on their own roads, and had to choose a new way to fight for their own interests, so on the basis of Donglin Academy, they established a more closely related interest group through the relationship between the bank, which is the Chamber of Commerce Group, trying to use the huge wealth to control the market and grab excess benefits.
Under what circumstances is a businessman an opportunity to make money? When crises and disasters come, it does not mean that they can only make money in these extreme circumstances, but in these extreme circumstances, they can control the market, create public opinion, and grab unreasonably high profits, and from a legal point of view, what they do is not illegal, but from a moral point of view, their behavior is indeed despicable, harming the interests of more poor people and putting more people in hardship.
The purpose of the existence of the state is to protect the interests of the majority, and to serve the majority. In order to ensure the normal operation of the organs of state power, taxes are the only source of income, and in layman's terms, everyone needs to pay protection fees. In terms of normal order, those who have the ability should make more contributions, and ordinary people only need to do their part, but things are often the opposite, rich people try to have more property, ordinary people also expect to become rich, taxation has become a game between the state and individuals, and who should get more part is a very contradictory question.
Zhu Youxiao carefully studied the tax policies of various countries in later generations, some countries adopted high taxation and high welfare policies, and used state rights to carry out the second distribution of property, some countries adopted low taxes and low welfare, and hid the wealth from the people, while more countries adopted the method of budget deficits, through the excessive issuance of currency, and covertly grabbed the interests of the people, which was an unconventional means, but it was used as a conventional method, and the result was that market prices soared, especially the promotion of early consumption and borrowing consumption, which caused prices to soar, damaging the credibility of the state.
Zhu Youxiao believes that the national balance of payments policy in the contemporary Taizu era is the best, this policy ensures the long-term stability of the market, although on the surface it seems that the economic development speed is not fast, but the victory lies in social stability, the people's will is stable, there will be no big ups and downs, can maintain the sustainable development of the country, so that most people are in a state of happiness, this is the normal development of a country, than the pursuit of superficial numbers is much better.
Intervening in the market by virtue of state power is an unconventional means, but if this goal is achieved by relying on national education and a huge means of state regulation, this is the highest state of patriotic education. Zhu Youxiao's goal is to use a series of commercial means to let the families and businessmen of the Ming Dynasty understand that only reasonable and law-abiding operators who advocate social morality can obtain reasonable benefits.
The emperors of the Ming Dynasty did not have strong financial resources to do these things, even the Wanli Emperor, who was the most able to save money, could only use internal funds to pay for the war to aid Korea, and the result was very tragic, his money was spent, and when Nurhachi led his troops to fight, there was no money to fight.
Zhu Youxiao now has a royal trading firm, and Tenglong Bank as a strong backing, not afraid of these at all, and Zhu Youxiao intends to build the Daming Royal Trading Bank and Tenglong Bank into a law-abiding moral model, the most law-abiding and tax-paying enterprise, so that all enterprises in Daming take them as the standard to demand themselves.