After breakfast, the group walked through the snow amid the murmuring of Huhu and the complaint that he had not eaten enough, and followed Gu Yi to the Ishiyuan construction site and the Qingwachang mine for a few days of inspection work, and by the way, finalized the various details involved in the "clothing, food, housing, and transportation" plan discussed yesterday.

After taking Zhen Ning around, he took a general look at the factories and mines on the edge of the Qingwa Camp, as well as various processing workshops such as "oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, sugar, tea, wine, iron" hidden by Gu Yi in the Hollow Valley, and after having an intuitive concept, Gu Yi led them back to the Sun Palace.

Double the fragrance of flower and fruit tea, a plate of small snacks, and everyone sat together again.

"As the businessman has seen, that's all I can do at the moment. 'Clothing, food, housing, transportation, four aspects,'clothing, and food,' will form a series of group industries,'housing,' can be divided into two parts, one is building materials, one is the construction team; And..."

Gu Yi paused and frowned: "Before I have a new means of transportation invented, this project cannot be carried out for the time being, but it can be carried out a certain amount of infrastructure construction first, for example, the road builders are the main goods in the world, and it is a headache for the road conditions in various places, right?

Zhen Ning's eyes flashed, Gu Yi said this, he, a perennial businessman, naturally knew it.

Surrounded by mountains on three sides丨Zhongrong County丨Because of the existence of a large number of alpine flowing water, the waterway network is very developed, the water network is almost all over the territory, and you can reach the place you want to go from any river.

But after all, rivers cannot completely replace roads, and most of the time, the time it takes to transport materials from one fort to another by land is even longer than the time it takes to transport supplies from one city to another by water, and the large amount of transportation time delayed by land undoubtedly seriously hinders the flow of materials.

Not to mention the roads in the wilderness, even in the towns, there are only some stone slabs symbolically laid on the roads, and when it rains, the whole town becomes a large mud pond, and once the carriages and horses used for transportation get into it, the whole convoy has to stop and try to get the carriages and horses out, which is very delayed.

If all the roads can be paved into cement roads like Bluestone City, the convenience of land transportation will be increased countless times

But......

Gu Yi saw that Zhen Ning was frowning and thinking, as if he was stumped by something, so he smiled and said, "The merchant is worried about the money and grain for laying the cement road?"

"Yes"

Zhen Ning nodded: "Although the cement horse road is good, if you want to pass through the counties, mansions, cities, and forts, even if the commercial bank under my name is thin and wealthy, I am afraid it is a drop in the bucket, and I can't afford it at all, and just building a place will not help the commercial bank much, this..."

Gu Yi sweated for a moment, did Zhen Ning want to build the entire road of Zhongrong County by himself?

Shaking his head with a smile, Gu Yi said with a smile: "To build the roads of the counties and prefectures, why do we need the capital of the commercial bank, on the contrary, not only do we not need to contribute, but we also have to make a lot of money."

Zhen Ning and the others looked at Gu Yi puzzled, not only did they not have to pay, but they also had to make a lot of money?

"After the cement road is repaired, it's not just us who uses it, so it's impossible to just let us pay for the road, right?"

Gu Yi explained: "Once the horse road is repaired, it will also be a good thing for the counties, prefectures, cities, and forts, whether it is the circulation of resources between towns and towns, the development of commerce, or the military mobilization of troops, and the transportation of baggage." The merchant can completely sell our cement as a commodity to the county king, the government king, the city commander, and the fort in charge of the county, the government, the city, and the fort, and let them pay for the grain to build the horse road."

Everyone including Ji Xiaonuo stared at Gu Yi with strange eyes, and the word "profiteer" was almost written on his face, he was a typical method of stealing the concept, although it was also true, building horse roads was indeed beneficial to the business and military of the counties and prefectures, but the most profitable was undoubtedly a businessman like Zhenning.

But Gu Yi now asked Ling Ning not only to spend a dime, but also to let the family spend money to buy cement to build a horse road for him to use, isn't this a profiteer?

Although Zhen Ning was born in the Nanwan merchant family, but the people in the great wilderness are very honest and credible, even if they are businessmen, they also follow the law of a promise of a thousand gold, and will never be like the businessmen in the world of Gu Yi, who are short of catties and shoddy in business.

Most of the time, the Great Wilderness businessman looks at the integrity and reputation of doing business more than how much money he can make, which can be seen from the style of Jin Ning when he first exchanged gold essence from Gu Yi's hands, one when two hundred is one when two hundred, and he will never deliberately lower the price because Gu Yi does not know the other functions of the gold essence

Therefore, Gu Yi's proposal made Zhen Ning struggle a lot, but the tangled expression made Gu Yi think that he was doubting the feasibility of this matter, so he then analyzed for him: "Of course, if those city orders and forts are short-sighted and can't see the benefits of building horse roads, or if they don't have the money to get their hands and can't get the money and food to build horse roads, we can also do it in another way."

Zhen Ning listened attentively when he heard this, although he was a little difficult to accept Gu Yi's proposal, but after changing the concept, he agreed with what Gu Yi said, after the road was repaired, it was not only used by themselves

"If the city order and the fort are unwilling to pay for food, or can't afford to pay for food, we can ask the town manager for preferential policies to build the horse road, I call this the construction industry. ”

Gu Yi said with a smile: "Whether it is to exempt the town manager from the commercial tax of the commercial bank, or to approve a piece of land for the construction of various shops in our plan, the land building in the prosperous road, or the promise of public funds to purchase various goods of the commercial bank, or to pay in installments in the form of overpayment of loans, it can be exchanged for our commercial bank to build the horse road." ”

"It's really not possible, you can also ask the town manager to grant a large number of subordinate laborers to assist the commercial bank in building horse roads, this is a matter of living for them, they are embarrassed not to even pay the rations of the subordinate people, right?"

Gu Yiba clicked his mouth: "The most important thing is that if our firm undertakes the construction of the horse road, they can't let us suffer, right?

"Of course, we have consumed a lot of money and grain to build the road, which will definitely cause the liquidity of the commercial bank to be stranded, even if it can be retrieved through the road tax, but it will be a long process, and the loss caused by the detention of liquidity in this process must also be calculated into the cost."

"In addition, the maintenance and repair costs incurred in the process of using the horse road will also be gradually added to the road tax and gradually collected back, and this collection process may take several years or even decades..."

Gu Yi smiled and said: "The profit of this, the merchant should estimate it, right? The people who live near the horse road for short distances, we can not charge road tax, but the horses and vehicles on the long-distance road must be charged, right?

Zhen Ning was dumbfounded, just building a road, can it still be like this?

How much does it cost to build a road?

In addition to buying the material called "cement", which can turn mud into stone, and recruiting the rations of the people to build the horse road, they have a gross cost?

Don't look at a horse and a small gold, a car is only two small gold, the cost is not high, but you can't stand the flow of people, how many people come and go between the two cities every day?

If the floating population is calculated according to 1 percent of the total local population, a 500,000-strong Rongbao will have to collect a "road tax" of 250,000 to 500,000 gold a day, which is 100,000 to 200,000 gold a year

According to what Gu Yi said, this "road tax" will be collected for several years or even decades, and the compromise will be calculated according to ten years, and a horse road between two Rongbao can recover a profit of one million to two million gold, but how much is the actual cost of investment?

Again, this is based on the minimum standard

At present, because of the problem of "difficult roads", people generally do not travel far without trouble, resulting in the situation that it is difficult to leave home for a lifetime, but once the road is opened and the road conditions are improved, the business environment and the number of floating population will inevitably increase geometrically, and the amount of "road tax" will inevitably increase sharply

In other words, it was Lin Ning himself, and he thought that spending a little money could make the caravan's trucks unimpeded, which was really nothing to them merchants.

It's dark, it's dark

The most important thing is that the most fundamental purpose of building the horse road is to let the commercial houses under the name of Zhenning obtain a good road environment, but he didn't spend a penny, not to mention, he can still collect decades of "road tax", isn't this borrowing other people's chickens and laying his own eggs?

Gu Yi's method of demolishing the east wall and making up the west wall made Zhen Ning, who had to be admired, breathtaking, but this was not all of Gu Yi's plans.

Gu Yi thought for a while and said: "Of course, the income of the hall tax can only be slowly recovered after the construction of the horse road, and it will not be of much help to us to plan to quickly lay the horse road network in the whole Zhongrong County in a short period of time." ”