Zhao Jun had another brilliant idea.

In fact, this was not his original idea, because during the Northern Song Dynasty, natural disasters occurred frequently in various places, and high taxes caused the people to go bankrupt and were forced to sell their land to landlords, and voluntarily became slaves of the landlords.

However, the imperial court did not allow slavery, so there were even cases where the imperial court and local officials bought people back from landlords.

For example, in July of the second year of Chunhua, Zhao Guangyi issued an order: "If the starving people in the border states of Shaanxi sell their men and women to the nearby tribes, the government will redeem them." And in the third year of Dazhong Xiangfu, Song Zhenzong also issued an edict: "Last year, there was a starvation in Shaanxi. If someone sold his children, the government would redeem them and return them to their families."

In other years, such as the first year of Mingdao, the eighth year of Qingli, the first year of Longxing in the Southern Song Dynasty, etc., once large-scale natural disasters occurred, causing the people to go bankrupt and become slaves to the rich, there are many historical records of the government redeeming them.

However, this situation only occurred in a small number of disaster-stricken areas in the past. Now, if the entire Song Dynasty redeemed slaves and helped tenants and slaves pay off their debts, the financial expenditure would probably be very large.

Fan Zhongyan worriedly said, "There are so many slaves and tenants all over the country. Does the government have enough money to buy them back?"

"Let's take it one step at a time."

Zhao Jun said, "The government brought them here not to free them, but to make them work, to build canals and reservoirs, so that more farmland can be reclaimed. The government has more land, and people work on it. The landlords still have the same amount of land, but no one works it. In the end, won't the power of decision return to the government?"

"Well, I understand what you mean. You want to transfer the tenants' debts to the government. In the future, the tenants will have to work to pay off their debts to the government instead of paying off their debts to the original landlords. Although the landlords occupy the good land, the government is trying to make their land go to waste."

"Yes, there are plenty of barren lands across the Song Dynasty. However, due to the lack of adequate water conservancy facilities, we cannot transform thousands of miles of wasteland into thousands of miles of fertile fields. They are annexing the land, so we should start from scratch and create a large amount of arable land again."

"That's a good idea, but I don't know how much it will cost."

Fan Zhongyan smiled bitterly.

It is obvious that the landlords have the best land in the Song Dynasty, but they are trying their best to rebuild a large number of facilities and reclaim new land, which is simply a waste of time.

But it seems that there is no other idea besides this method. After all, if you rob them openly, it will only cause the landlords to rebel.

If they did this, the landlords would never imagine that the government was trying to steal their manpower.

After all, they could not resist the government's imposition of corvee labor, and even the landlords had to pay for the labor service themselves, so the court's actions were reasonable and they could not find any fault with it.

When they were like a frog in boiling water, they found that they were short of manpower, and the young and strong men under their command were confiscated by the government and not returned to them. When the fields below were left uncultivated, it was too late to regret. At that time, they could only hold their noses and accept the fact that the land in their hands was rotting, and then sell it to the government at a low price.

"This move is called removing the fuel from under the cauldron."

Zhao Jun laughed and said, "That's only possible now that the Song Dynasty has money and food. If it were another dynasty, like the late Ming Dynasty, with no money and no food, they would have had to resort to mass murder. Even so, we'd probably have to kill a lot of people. For example, with the land sales and population exchanges, there would inevitably be a large number of corrupt officials and landlords who would be unwilling to hand over their people."

"Are you planning to kill these people?"

"yes."

"I guess they'll kill a lot of people."

"Compared to the Holocaust, it's less."

"Too."

Fan Zhongyan turned his head to look out the window and murmured to himself, "It's better to cry as a family than to cry alone."

I've only updated once every few days, but each update is still quite long. It's mainly because I caught a cold and the world has changed so dramatically that I'm not in the best shape. Some friends have said that my main and side plots are a mess, but I don't think so. The main plot has always been about reform and change, and the protagonist has already experienced four reforms: the first was to reform the officialdom system, the second was to rectify the administration through the performance evaluation system, the third was to reduce labor service and taxes to allow for a period of rest and recuperation, and the fourth was to deal with the "three redundancies" problem. The others are side plots and the groundwork for reform.

This is the fifth reform, which has resolved land annexation and started to stimulate population growth.

There will be a sixth and seventh time in the future.

This broken Song Dynasty is really exaggerated. Other dynasties could probably solve a problem in one or two times, but the protagonist had to work so hard so many times, step by step. It was really difficult.