There were already five hundred more old men in the territory, which Roland had brought back from the village of Serenmis.

Anson had also led the team back, but the people he brought back were basically the proletarian poor who had heard that Mai Xiangling's taxes were low and came to defect, basically all of them were young and strong, about 100 people.

The Three Prophets did not harm the other villages, but the exorbitant taxes of the unscrupulous nobles plagued many commoners—for example, some knights of Hermined were able to collect seventy percent of the grain tax!

Mai Xiangling, who only collects 30% of the tax, is completely heaven in their eyes. If it weren't for the good weather this year, probably more people would have come.

Merchants are no longer in the human business, and because of the existence of transportation companies, many merchants have discovered new foreign trade opportunities and have begun to travel long distances with convoys - being traffickers is not very good after all, and they have also found that the cost of transporting people is greater than they think.

So Li Ang also stopped the policy of buying people and changed to propaganda.

It will take some time for the transport company to fully gain the approval of all the merchants, but most of the merchants are already following the convoy, which can be regarded as rubbing the convoy to protect the convoy.

This is actually a good thing, as soon as the merchants follow up a few times and make sure that the convoy will not be guarded and turned into robbers, they will start to think about the cost and gradually stop feeding the convoy on their own.

In fact, there are already a few merchants who pack up their wagons and coachmen to sell them to the River Express.

The overall development seems to be going well.

Today, there are 1,200 people in Mai Xiangling, and a large amount of wasteland is being reclaimed.

It is true that the lord would not farm at all—he had never farmed, let alone medieval land......

However, not being able to farm does not mean that there is no way to engage in agriculture.

As long as agricultural production becomes the logic of capital, the lord can still do it!

The people of Pander are sometimes, just like modern people, who misunderstand various production capacities, and often make some strange comparisons.

For example, in two counties, one of them has an average yield of 100 pounds per mu, and the other county has an average yield of 200 pounds per mu.

Then they expressed how advanced the latter was, how it should be intensively cultivated, and how to improve the tools...... Wait a minute.

But in fact, the county with a yield of 100 pounds per mu is likely to have a per capita planting area of 50 acres.

In counties with a yield of 200 per mu, the per capita planting area may be less than five acres.

If the difference in population is not too great, which county has more total production?

The latter is indeed intensively cultivated and technologically advanced – but these technologies are not necessarily unusable, but not used.

In this era when there were no large machinery, it was impossible for one person to cultivate fifty acres of land and to cultivate it intensively.

Only when per capita resources are scarce, will they be forced to build a dojo in a snail shell, and there are many people and few places, so they have no choice but to do it.

The lord does not know how to farm, so he cannot increase the yield of his territory in a short period of time.

But now that he has a large amount of grain seeds in his hands, and there are countless ownerless wastelands around his territory, the lord can increase the overall output by cultivating a large area.

Therefore, Leon's logic is to plant in large quantities and use the area to pile up the yield!

Moreover, the old men brought back by Roland and the destitute people brought back by Anson were all experienced farmers who knew what to do for themselves.

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All the lord needs to do is provide them with seeds, tools, and wasteland.

In fact, even the tools only provided raw materials, there were carpenters and blacksmiths in the territory, many old people could also do technical work, and many farm tools could be made.

In fact, these so-called old people are not old in the eyes of modern people - most of them are only in their fifties.

But in this era, it is indeed half buried in the earth.

Leon did not allocate shares to the newcomers again - the shares were too much to be worthless.

He used it another way.

In order to avoid unfairness, and to improve efficiency, the lord enacted a rare policy.

In other words, it's a policy that people here have never seen at all, the 'group accountability'.

To put it simply, it is to divide several young people and several old people into a group according to the same ratio, and the age structure is basically the same.

After grouping, each group had six young people and four elderly people, two of whom were women.

This group is considered a basic unit of production, and all production is measured in groups, not in individuals.

Of course, this is a short- and medium-term strategy, mainly to deal with the current situation of bachelors except for the lonely elderly.

Young people can be responsible for all kinds of hard work.

The elderly, on the other hand, teach the younger ones work experience and take on the relatively easy but patiently manipulating chores, such as picking seeds and weaving ropes.

In this way, the old and the young will form a group to cultivate the land together, and the tax will also be collected according to the group.

This is, of course, to complement each other, but also to properly use all the workforce to improve overall efficiency.

This policy quickly made Mai Xiangling a place where the age structure of the population seemed relatively normal.

In fact, Pander has always had little respect for the elderly - the main reason is, of course, that the elderly are old and frail and cannot afford high-intensity labor.

In fact, even in modern times, this is still the case in many places......

In fact, this is mainly due to the way the work is evaluated too rudimentary.

The aristocracy only sees what is superficial – and of course, most of the unskilled capitalists are also.

For example, conscripted soldiers can only be young people, coolies can only be young people, and only young people can always work overtime and repetitive work, while the consumption of the elderly is not much less than that of young people.

But this is all superficial......

What you can't see is that the experience that the elderly have can avoid stepping on the pit, and it can also greatly improve efficiency, in fact, in most industries, an experienced old employee can top ten raw melon eggs.

But the problem is that these experiences are not visible, and it is difficult to make a purely quantitative assessment.

Because, any job needs to be designed and planned.

'Design' and 'planning' cannot be assessed.

For example, it's like farming – what to plant, how to use, what tools to use, how many stages, how to fertilize, how to control insect pests, these are all design and planning, based on experience and knowledge. Processes such as digging the ground with a hoe are the ones that are carried out, and they require physical strength.

Even if it's hard work, such as anti-sacks. What kind of resistance to use, whether the tools can be used, what tools to use, and what route to take are all design and planning, and the process of resistance is the concrete implementation.

This kind of design and planning in the broad sense of the word is often not visible, and it is impossible to evaluate its practical effect, since the aristocracy and bureaucracy usually do not think about specific matters.

The aristocracy could only see the deputies execute those things concretely - who looked stronger, who could work overtime, who was more obedient, who demanded less.

Then, they use the logic of individual goal quantification to evaluate each person's output.

After all, farming in this era is mostly individual labor, and teamwork is almost non-existent.

And if it is quantified by a single target, the disadvantage of the elderly is even more obvious - because of the physical strength, they cannot keep up in the implementation process of specific implementation.

So, most of the time, when people evaluate a noble territory, they look at how many young and strong people the territory has...... The elderly are basically seen as a burden.

Even in modern times, most capitalists always only want young people who are young and strong and can work overtime for a long time, and old guys who can't afford to stay up at a little age will be abandoned.

However, the experience of the elderly and the physical strength of the young and strong, this is the most reliable way of working, and it is also the basic meaning of subdivided work content and teamwork.

It's just that even in modern times, there are still a large number of stupid companies that don't recognize this basic truth - especially some Internet companies.

The group responsibility of the lord was quickly accepted in full - it was actually a coercive policy, and those who did not fit in could not get the land, and had to accept it.

The young people may not understand, but none of them dare to complain, after all, the lord here is the sky, and he has the final say.

But soon, this seemingly simple policy worked.

Those old guys who claimed to be 'a few years to live' used extremely fast speed to make Mai Xiangling fully moved.

It's not how good they are at work, it's because they keep young people from taking detours.

These old guys really didn't expect Mai Xiangling to be treated so well, have food to eat, something to do, and treat them as a complete equal, so they burst out with unimaginable enthusiasm.

When you truly show respect for people, they will naturally reciprocate you – especially if they were in a desperate situation.

In addition, Morgan and Sir Roland planted a seed of goodness when they moved them over.

Now this kindness has been passed on.

The old people are almost devoting themselves to the construction of Mai Xiangling, they not only spare no effort to guide the younger generations in the way of doing things, but even take the initiative to do the work.

This makes the young people have to work overtime - can't everyone work in a group and do nothing themselves, right?

I can't afford to lose this person!

And it's likely to be beaten...... It's a common interest!

Seeing that all the people in the territory were moving, Li Ang ordered again that each group of cultivated land must be connected together to form a farmstead, but there is no upper limit to the amount of reclamation - anyway, there is all wasteland from Maixiangling to Bailu Fort, you can just go and enclose the land yourself!

There is only one - if you receive seeds, you must plant them, and if the amount of seeds does not match the land, all of them will be expelled from the wheat collar.

This policy of free reclamation required a large number of junior managers, and in order to manage these production groups, the lord used all the non-commissioned officers.

There are more than a hundred non-commissioned officers in the territory, and they have even learned a little bit of culture.

Leon assigned all the peasants to the non-commissioned officers, each of whom was divided into a group.

These non-commissioned officers will be given a farm and will serve as the leader of their subjects.

And the four senior non-commissioned officers will become middle managers - Eggy Eric is in charge of the convoy, and there are only four senior non-commissioned officers in the territory.

But none of them had a master-slave or employment relationship, but a management-employee relationship of corporate nature—that is, the lord had four agricultural divisions, each with two dozen production groups.

The loyalty of these hundred or so non-commissioned officers to the lord is unquestionable, and it can even be said that every soldier wearing a griffin coat of arms chain mail burqa looks at the lord like he looks at his own father, and they will carry out whatever Li Ang says to the end - they have shares.

Allotment of shares to key employees and let them manage the rank-and-file is a common practice in modern businesses.

This operation also seems to be in line with the logic of the era, like dividing the realm and the territory for several knights, and then the knight has his own squire to manage some farmers.

It is because it looks similar that it is easy to accept.

After all, those incomprehensible ways of operating do not apply to this era.

However, the actual logic of this set of operations is completely different from the sub-feudal system, and the non-commissioned officers only have the right to manage the people, but not the control of the people.

Those non-commissioned officers were not the owners of the fields, they were also the leaders themselves, and they also had to farm the land when necessary.

Of course, they also came forward when collecting taxes, but all of them received from the lord's treasury.

Li Ang did not intend to divide the land of the core territory, and he wanted to maintain a unified management around Mai Xiangling.

After all, the logic of knight division in the Pande Continent is that once the territory is sealed, then even the superior lord has no right to manage the affairs of the knight's territory under him.

That is, full authorization.

This is caused by the knightly culture of the Pander continent - knights are force, and the big lord needs to monopolize force by co-opting knights, and the power of knights in the territory is already very high.

After the establishment of the Pander Kingdom, the birth of various knight orders gave the knights a new backer in addition to the lord.

The original Knights were more of an alliance, an alliance of samurai who belonged to the same knightly class and shared a common faith.

Because of the common beliefs, under such alliances, the knights would abandon the struggles between the superior lords and cooperate with each other to elevate the status of the entire class.

This creates tensions between the noble lords and the knights.

In fact, the continental policy of not allowing any knights to enter the noble realm was also due to the contradictions between the high lords and the knights.

This is a contradiction caused by the monopoly of force.

The high nobility wanted to monopolize the armed forces, but the armed gangs such as the Knights were not necessarily willing to obey, because they may have different beliefs, and perhaps half of the members of the group supported political opponents.

Then the nobles are naturally very uneasy, after all, the internal power of the knights has increased, from force to politics, and there have been cases where they have overwhelmed high-ranking nobles.

Therefore, the establishment of the Knights is strictly restricted, and it has always been strictly controlled by various countries.

Therefore, in order to encircle the knights under them, the noble lords gradually delegated their power, allowing the knights to taste the power belonging to the aristocratic class, and counteracting the knights' inclination to beliefs or hobbies with privileges.

This decentralization made the knights' territory a completely independent territory, and the knights gradually became the emperor of the soil in their own territory, and formed a legal principle, and the knights also became real nobles.

The privileges of the Earth Emperor were indeed tempting, and since then, few knights have turned their backs on the nobility. If there is a conflict between the Knights and their own liege, most knights will also choose to obey their liege.

This model of the emperor can easily give rise to some evil things, such as brutal abuse and oppression of civilians; For example, all kinds of adultery and plunder; Like Rainier's kind of bastard who burned and looted his own village.

Therefore, Li Ang was not willing to divide the land of Mai Xiangling, lest there be such a thing as one place and two worlds.

Rather than waiting until the bad consequences are caused and then make up for it, it is better not to open this opening in the first place.

Unless it's an enclave like Fletcher that isn't next to the core territory, it really needs to be managed by the knights independently.

The matter of assigning personnel did not delay too much, and everyone was very cooperative.

Subsequently, with each 'department' and 'production group' as a unit, the lord lord opened the internal competition mode.

As a well-known unscrupulous capitalist in the Pander Continent, the lord directly turned the matter of land reclamation into a quantitative competition like a sales team......

The North Star indicator, or the core indicator, is, of course, the effective earnings of each quarter......

However, the current short-term indicator is the area of land reclamation.

Since almost all the lords are proletarians at present, the lord also opened the agricultural loan for the first time.

This is not a loan, but a loan of grain and seeds.

That is, each production group is asked to register according to the household, go to the warehouse every day to receive grain and seeds, and keep accounts, but after the harvest, they must pay back the book.

In simple terms, this is the cost consumption.

After all, the core indicator is effective earnings, not total production – earnings are only when all costs are deducted.

The four departments, ranked first, have doubled the dividends of the management, and the people only need to pay 30% of the tax, and they are exempt from repaying agricultural loans.

In the departments at the bottom of the ranking, the management dividends are gone, and the people have to take 40% of the tax, and they have to pay back the agricultural loans with interest (double).

There is also competition between the groups, and the top three teams, the non-commissioned officers in charge of management will receive a heavy reward equivalent to the capture of the flag, and the leaders can be awarded a stake in Maixiang International!

As for the worst groups...... The whole group received a 'lazy' sign and hung it on their farm. The team leader temporarily loses all the benefits of being a non-commissioned officer, and the members of the group will be responsible for all kinds of hard work in the field during the slack time until they can wash away the shame with their performance in the future.

Isn't this just a mobilization......

And in this way, the lord easily concealed his core purpose - the de facto owner of all the fields was still Leon himself, and he did not grant the farm to anyone, but only let them cultivate and obtain the output of the land.

Capitalists...... How can the means of production be handed over directly to the employees?

In the entire territory, only the first 800 acres of land belonged to the earliest group of members, and there were title deeds.

This is a benefit for the old employees - these old employees are the non-commissioned officers of today.

That is, the Metenheim, the crossbowmen, and most of the first lords, who numbered more than a hundred.

As a founding member, these people have followed him through a lot of dangers, so naturally they have to be treated differently.

Li Ang didn't plan to make any big pot rice, although he was now prestigious enough in the territory, and it was estimated that it would work to make a commune model, but the big pot rice was not suitable for future development, so he used the commercial model.