The so-called salt and iron monopoly, the history is very long, the Spring and Autumn Period Qi State Prime Minister Guan Zhong launched the monopoly system, the ancient name "Guanshan Hai", the iron on the mountain, the salt in the sea, are bought and sold by the state set up institutions, both of which are necessities, so the trade of these two commodities is controlled, and the profits are extremely rich; In fact, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the shadow of the monopoly system still existed, such as the salt ticket system, although it was the salt merchants who sold official salt, but the government controlled the scale of their trading through the salt ticket system, and also collected a high salt tax from it, so that the salt tax even became the main tax in the Ming and Qing dynasties, second only to the agricultural tax. Even in later generations, China's tobacco industry still used this monopoly system.

The iron monopoly was not implemented in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

As a literati who did not understand economics, the purpose of Wang Fu's monopoly on salt and iron was certainly not to loot the people through the monopoly trade of these two necessities, and his statement was very naïve and idealistic, he said that since the salt merchants were rich and rivaled the country, the salt trade must be a profitable business, but the official salt sold by the salt merchants was not only adulterated, but also expensive, and the people suffered greatly. Instead of enriching the salt merchants in vain, it is better to take them under the government, and reduce prices on the one hand to benefit the people, and on the other hand to make profits to fill the government treasury. The same is true of the iron monopoly, the common people are inseparable from iron tools, and the government monopolizes the operation, on the one hand, lowering prices, and on the other hand, filling the official treasury.

Wang Fuqian was confident that his suggestion was completely feasible, because Fujian was close to the sea and could boil salt, and Fujian had a tradition of iron smelting, and there was no shortage of blacksmiths.

But Wang Fuqian couldn't figure out why the monopoly system looked so good, but later dynasties abolished it. In the era of Guan Zhong, the monopoly of salt and iron was indeed a creative system, because at that time, whether it was boiling salt or making iron, it was still in the initial stage, and ordinary merchants and ordinary people did not have the technology and capital.

But later, the development of private capital and technology has allowed private individuals to operate these industries, but various drawbacks of government-run workshops have frequently appeared, corruption can not be broken, quality is difficult to guarantee, etc., so that later dynasties gave up the special system, the Ming Dynasty began to indirectly manage salt merchants in the form of salt stamps, etc., and the taxes collected from them are more generous than the direct operation of the government itself. Far inferior to businessmen with stronger business skills.

In addition to the monopoly of salt and iron, Wang Fuqian also proposed a monopoly on wine and tea. The monopoly of wine has also appeared in history, the Song Dynasty in order to solve the financial problems, has implemented a long time of wine monopoly system, it is said that at that time officials around the country in order to sell the inferior wine brewed by the official workshop, it can be said that they tried their best, such as the great literati Su Dongpo when he was an official in the south of the Yangtze River, whenever the new wine came out of the pot, he mobilized the women of the Qinglou to sell on the street, and for a time the warbler Yanyan was very lively. The government also used its power to show down with merchants such as restaurants, tea shops and even hotels, so that they had to sell the government's liquor.

Wang Fuqian valued the monopoly of tea, because he found that the profits of tea were also very rich, and the merchants of the thirteen lines were extremely rich, and he believed that if the government monopolized, it would definitely solve the financial problem.

Most of the books read by Chinese literati are Confucian classics, which teach people how to behave as human beings and belong to the category of morality, and there are very few professional and academic classics, and literati rarely dabble in them, so their knowledge of economics is limited to the realm of common sense.

It was very rare for the literati to realize that the taxation of merchants was actually passed on to the common people, at least they had touched the concept of the economic chain, and knew that the economy was a chain, and that starting from any one of them would have an impact on the others.

However, from a professional point of view, this impact is long-term, and the conductivity cannot be released in the short term. Therefore, the most advantageous way to increase tax revenues is to introduce new taxes from a technical point of view. When there are too many types of taxes that affect the cost of taxation, then there will be a reduction, and it will be called reform, and the taxation method in Hong Kong will be very streamlined in later generations, known as the simple tax system, which has inspired many countries to have a popular reform of combining taxes and simplifying the taxation scheme.

The purpose of Zhou Lang's plan to introduce a universal commercial tax is also a deep-seated consideration, that is, he has always intended to fundamentally reorganize the organization of Chinese society.

Chinese traditional society is centralized, political, to commercial, which is related to China's historical development context, after the unification, trade is no longer the only way to exchange materials, in the past Qin and Zhao, Qi and Chu between the exchange of necessities, must be carried out through merchants, now suddenly found that a highly consistent regime, through administrative orders to transfer resources, more efficient and convenient, so commerce is no longer irreplaceable; In addition, after Confucian morality began to be generally accepted by literati and rulers, rulers became less and less able to accept the anti-moral elements that existed in business.

Business is anti-moral, of course, businessmen can also do good deeds, and even have many big philanthropists, but this cannot change the essence of business, the essence of business is competition, that is, the survival of the fittest, that is, the efficient replacement of inefficiency, that is, the strong replace the weak, so when a disaster occurs, the business-driven resource allocation behavior is hoarding, sitting and watching the poor starve to death, and businessmen get super high profits. As a result, business has resulted in the elimination of the poor who lack social competitiveness and the survival of the rich.

But the politically driven resource allocation behavior is a relief, not considering the cost, but considering a bottom line, that is, to let people live as much as possible, but to a certain extent, it is to compete, to the survival of the fittest, to protect the inefficient, to protect the weak. So politics is not necessarily moral, but to a certain extent, he is more ethical than business. This is the deep-seated reason why Confucianism, which emphasizes morality, will gradually get closer to politics and finally be closely integrated.

But if society is politicized for a long time and lacks commercial drive, competition will be insufficient and dynamism. Inefficient, debilitating elements accumulate little by little, eventually leading to the weakening of the whole society. From a human point of view, China's thousand-year-old politicized organization has protected the weak and retained inefficiency.

It is not the race that is weak, but the ideology, the cognitive concept. Therefore, in Chinese culture, there will be characteristics such as dependence on groups, blind obedience, etc. When a disaster occurs, ordinary people instinctively think not about how to save themselves, but about huddling together to keep warm. Even the business culture of this politicized society does not like competition, and businessmen prefer to do business under the protection of the regime, whether it is the merchants of the Thirteen Banks, the salt merchants of Yangzhou, or the ticket merchants of Shanxi, everyone regards maintaining relations with the government and officials as the top priority. This is the weakening of ideological concepts, the sequelae of being protected by strong organizations for a long time, and the emergence of a large number of giant babies.

Compared with Westerners who survive in the high competition of business culture, they have a strong sense of competition in their ideological concepts, and they are very adventurous and have independent personalities.

The contrast between the adventurous spirit and the sense of competition of a single person is not yet reflected, but if the differences of thousands of people are added together, the difference is immediately manifested.

In modern times, China and Western countries have overseas development, such as China's voyage to the South Seas and the West's great voyages, the difference is that Westerners are active and Chinese are forced. The West opened up overseas colonies, up to the aristocracy, scholars, officials, all joined in such a cause, and the Chinese went to the South Seas was a forced choice by a group of poor people who really could not survive. So when Westerners open up overseas, they go to conquer, to learn, to rule, and the only purpose of the Chinese is to make a living!

Zhou Lang is clear about the characteristics of strong collective consciousness and weak independent personality of the Chinese, and he has not studied much on the underlying reasons, but he feels that the strong sense of competition is by no means a shortcoming.

Therefore, he felt that injecting a sense of competition into Chinese society and using more commercial rather than administrative means to allocate resources would make the society more efficient, more energetic, and more passionate, and then he could fight abroad, break into the stormy waters of the Age of Discovery, and fight Westerners.

Therefore, it is of special significance to change the fiscal system from the traditional agricultural tax to the commercial tax.

But in these aspects, Zhou Lang found that he and Wang Fuqian were not from the same era at all, and he couldn't understand it with the other party at all, and he knew that he had consulted with the wrong person.

As for Wang Fuqian's opposition, who can oppose Zhou Lang now, even if Wang Fuqian has the status of the head of civil officials, he can't interfere with what Zhou Lang wants to do.

Thinking of this, Zhou Lang fortunately didn't discuss it with him.

"So it was decided. Each county has a tax officer, who is dispatched by customs. With the method currently in place at the port, the commercial tax was fully levied. ”

At present, the tax system implemented in the major ports, in addition to the tariff on tea, there is also the shop tax levied according to the length of the door, and the entry and exit tax levied according to the number of ships, which are very simple, clear at a glance, and difficult to cheat in the taxation method, because the objects of taxation are some dead, fixed objects, ships enter the port to pay the port tax, regardless of the size of the ship, the same amount of tax, and the port tax is paid out of the port, regardless of the size, the same tax amount; Shop tax, according to the length of the façade, the façade will not change, after the measurement and registration, it is fixed, and a street to pull a ruler, the total tax will come out.

One of the obvious features of all forms of taxation is that they are very easy to supervise, and the purpose of the tax system is clear: it is better to pay less than to plug any loopholes in corruption.