Luo Yuhong's Chengnan New Town project is the thing she has invested the most energy in during this time. But because Zhu Pingjin didn't think so, her plan was not made public.

During the Dragon Boat Festival, she avoided Zhu Pingjin and returned to Furentang to listen to the opinions of her four heavenly kings in person without interference: Hong Qihui, vice premier in charge of industry and commerce, Wang Kunshan, general office of the Firearms Bureau, Yang Neng, executive deputy general manager of the Machinery Bureau, and He Zhutou, the legal representative of the Sichuan Construction Engineering Bureau.

Unexpectedly, when the Four Heavenly Kings heard about this grand plan, they were almost all frightened. They unanimously expressed their opposition.

There are many reasons for opposition, but there are two main ones: first, the budget is tight; Second, the city is sparsely populated.

The tight financial budget can be solved in a roundabout way, because Luo Yuhong only invests in land, and the construction funds come from businesses that speculate on land. But the scarcity of the city's population surprised her.

In her impression, China lacks all kinds of resources, but there is no shortage of people. Even in the troubled times at the end of the Ming Dynasty, as far as she can see, the population is quite large.

Chengdu has been the capital of Sichuan, the largest province in Chinese for thousands of years, and according to her irresponsible account of visiting the temple fair during the Spring Festival in her previous life, there were so many people that she "couldn't wait to shoot with a machine gun for fifteen minutes." How can such a crowded city be short of people? Besides, this is not in line with her daily feelings.

In the face of Miss Luo's anger, Hong Qihui knew how to solve it.

He did not hurry up and cited the yellow and white card registration numbers of the police stations of Chengdu and Huayang counties in Chengdu Prefecture and told Luo Yuhong that as the displaced people from Sichuan and Shaanxi and some guards moved into the city to work, the population in the city and around the city had indeed increased significantly.

It must be noted, however, that this increase is a simultaneous increase in both urban and rural areas. Zhu Pingjin, the prince of the family, recruited the Zhuang Protector last year, and many Zhuang Zhuangding were incorporated into the National Protector Army, but they have not been able to come back until now, leaving a large labor vacancies. According to the number of displaced people recruited by Wangzhuang in the two counties to work as farmers, the increase in the rural population even exceeded that in the cities.

Once the rural population of Chengdu and Huayang counties is subtracted, and the workers nominally registered in Chengdu Prefecture, such as the Firearms Bureau, the Machinery Bureau, and the Construction Engineering Bureau, the absolute number of urban population has not increased much, and it is far from the point where a new city will be built to accommodate it, not to mention that this new city will stretch for two or twenty miles along the ring city wall of Chengdu and the north-south central axis of Chengdu!

For a strong business woman like Luo Yuhong with a 21st century thinking model, the rationality represented by numbers is always more convincing than the sensibility represented by emotions.

After Luo Yuhong personally took Xiaohong to calculate the numbers, she had to admit that Hong Qihui's analysis was correct. But emotionally, she is not willing to admit defeat. She felt that there must be some reason that she failed to recognize that was thwarting her plans for great genius. She felt that there must be a one-size-fits-all solution that would overcome the current obstacles.

At this time, she thought of his husband Zhu Pingjin, the fellow traveler who had opposed her plan.

……

"What the reason, it's simple!"

Zhu Pingjin watched with great interest as his wife who had withered into a kitten, and felt that the opportunity to shape his image as a tall and all-man man had finally come.

"Do you know Malthus?"

"Malthus is a Hui? I only know Marx, Ma Tencent and Ma Taobao. ”

"Malthus is said to have been an English priest. Pastor Ma proposed a population theory, also known as the Malthusian trap. This theory says that population growth is a geometric progression, i.e., to the Y power of X; Food growth is just a math ......"

"Don't mess around with math in front of me, just get to the point."

"In short, food doesn't grow as fast as population, so once the population hits the ceiling of food production, there will be all sorts of disasters to wipe out the surplus population, such as famine, plague and war. You see, in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, the climate is significantly colder than the climate in our previous life......"

"It's snowing all these winters, and last year there was at least an inch of snow on the ground...... No, at least two inches! Zheng Anmin said that even his hometown of Guangdong is snowing! Heck, we used to go diving in Hainan in the winter, and I really want to go again! ”

"Be quiet!" Zhu Pingjin quickly popped out a huge slap and pressed it her wife's gaping mouth like a dog skin plaster.

"You're taking advantage of me, aren't you?"

Luo Yuhong crossed her waist and bluffed her face to stand up, but was firmly pressed on the stone bench by Zhu Pingjin's other big hand.

"Please keep it up to the lady! I am the prince, and you are the future princess. In Shu, you and I are both kings, they are both ministers, and you and I are outright public figures. Any idea how Diana died? It's the paparazzi, it's the cannon barrel......"

"You know how to blackmail me with this!" Luo Yuhong straightened her skirt hatefully, lowered her head and sat back again.

A sly smile was hidden in the bangs that draped over her forehead.

"Since you've taken advantage of me, you have to do something to compensate me...... I'll punish you for me to come up with a way to find a reason to restart my Seongnam New Town project! ”

"You're not going to be reasonable? Don't forget, you and I are highly educated and rational civilized people! ”

"Phew! Is this the age of civilization? ”

"How not? China is one of the top ten ancient civilizations, with a history of 5,000 years of civilization......"

"Are Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong civilized people? Are they barbarians popping out of the pile of civilized people? ”

"They seem to be revolutionaries."

"That thug is also a revolutionary? You cut off a bunch of revolutionaries' heads by the Langzhong River, so you are a god thing? ”

“…… Are you going to let me finish my sentence? Zhu Pingjin was annoyed and ashamed, and his face was already red.

"Yo, you have to blush when you talk to your wife, is this disciple of yours more shy than Master Shu? Then when we get married in the future, how can we relive our married life? ”

……

The Malthusian theory of the population trap can effectively explain why China has always been chaotic for 300 years.

Because the birth of a new dynasty brought about a stable life, political clarity, and abundant resources, it would lead to a massive increase in the population. With a large increase in population, a large amount of food and materials will be needed, and people will try their best to reclaim barren ridges and fields to make use of resources.

But once the limited arable land resources are exhausted, then the growth of the quantity of food supplies will stagnate. But the population will continue to grow by inertia, and then there will be hunger and poverty, and there will be plunder and war.

The Ming Dynasty officially had arable land statistics ranging from 1.1 billion to 6.7 billion, and the population statistics were meaningless, so Zhu Pingjin estimated that the Ming Dynasty had a maximum population of 200 million to 250 million in the Wanli Dynasty according to the constant of food and clothing for one person of four mu.

However, at this time, the catastrophic Xiaoice period arrived. The climate cooled dramatically, drought and cold followed, and famine, plague and war went hand in hand with reduced agricultural production. When the Ming Dynasty was on the verge of death, the peasant rebellion in northern Shaanxi was nothing more than the last sword.

However, the Malthusian theory of the population trap can explain the problem of population numbers, but it cannot explain a mystery:

Why was China unable to gradually progress from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial society like the West before the Opium War?

In fact, before the widespread spread of chemical fertilizers and new high-yield crops, it is difficult to say that it has completely entered the industrial society anywhere on the planet, even in Britain, where the industrial revolution first occurred. However, Britain used the plunder, conquest and colonization unique to the Age of Discovery, overcoming the limitations of small land area and local grain production, and jumped out of the so-called "Malthusian trap".

But in most of the world's relatively closed countries, including China, the agrarian economy, an inefficient economic system, still holds much of the population firmly tied to the land.

A country or region based on an agrarian economy is bound to have a low level of urbanization. Even if the urban population increases, it is only the result of an increase in the total population, not an increase in the proportion of the urban population in the total population.

The reason is simple: efficiency has not improved.

Originally, one person could feed three people, and now one person can feed three people, almost no change, or quantitative change is not enough to trigger qualitative change.

Therefore, the increase in the proportion of urban population depends on the improvement of agricultural efficiency, and the increase in urban population depends on the increase in the total population and the proportion of urban population, which in turn determines the level of urbanization or the level of industrialization of countries and regions.

Agriculture in a closed system is inefficient. This is the fundamental reason why China has been unable to progress from a traditional agricultural society to an industrial society for more than 2,000 years from the Qin and Han dynasties to modern times.

……

"You mean, without migrant workers coming to the city, there will be no real estate development plan for me?"

The wife's eyes flickered, both confused by Zhu Pingjin's crooked reasoning, and dissatisfied with Zhu Pingjin's dumping.

Zhu Pingjin had no choice but to answer in standard political terms: "The improvement of agricultural production efficiency is a prerequisite for increasing urbanization; The improvement of the level of urbanization is a necessary prerequisite for the development of the real estate industry. ”

"And what about your solution? You're a traverser! ”

"You're also a time-traveler, and you graduated with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and interned at a fertilizer factory. If you have a way, I have a way; You can't help it, why should I, a liberal arts student, find a way? ”

Facing the leprous-skinned Zhu Pingjian, Luo Yuhong finally became popular.

"You're a big man! I'm a little woman! You are a ready-made prince of Shu, and I am a princess with an uncertain future! ”

"Okay, I'll use my brains!" Zhu Pingjin was afraid that the conversation between the two would be overheard, so he had to draw a circle on the door of his head.

"I have it!" Zhu Pingjin announced to his wife.

"I have it too!" Luo Yuhong reacted at the same time, "You are a big man, say your way first!" ”

"Chairman M taught us to be self-reliant and work hard. My method is the method of Chairman M: to maintain a high accumulation rate and not relax, and the people of the whole country should tighten their belts to create conditions for entering the era of industrialization in an all-round way! ”

"What is the accumulation rate? How come I haven't heard of it? ”

"If you don't read Xue Duqiao's book, of course you don't know what the accumulation rate is. Western economics does not have such a word. To put it bluntly, this accumulation rate is ...... This accumulation rate is the ratio between what a family saves and what they earn. Only earn money, do not spend money, and even do not eat or drink, for example, the state of outsiders buying houses in the fourth ring road of Beijing, the accumulation rate is 100%; Those losers of the Moonlight Clan only know how to buy, buy, buy, and the accumulation rate is zero, or even negative. Got it? ”

"Phew! I bought stocks, it was an investment, and I made money! ”

"I'm talking about those, so you don't count!" Zhu Pingjin got out easily, then looked at his wife, waiting for her to come up with a solution.

"A mere high accumulation rate does not solve the underlying problem. Without a corresponding technological breakthrough, it is impossible to improve the efficiency of agriculture. My approach came from a TV series...... Don't laugh! ”