Chapter 73 Planning
After a moment of silence, Liu Li murmured:
"What is your plan?"
"I'm not sure either." Mu Qi was very frank: "To be honest, you can't expect me to be able to plan and strategize in the current situation and predict the outcome decades in advance. Most of the time, I just take it one step at a time, and even have to wait until the results of the future are revealed before I can barely guess how things will progress..."
He knocked on the table and pulled out another document. Compared to Old Deng, who knows nothing but watching foreigners flatter him and twisting in his quilt like a giant maggot fly, he, a modern man, at least knows how to get to the bottom of these outrageous remarks and spends the deviation value to double-check the details. And sure enough, after some careful reading, I immediately found the highlight - according to the information cited in this outrageous article, the Italian-style masterpiece "China's Observations" written by the foreign Taoist Smith was very popular inside the Central Plains, but it was very popular after it spread to Europe, and directly created the famous "laissez-faire school" in later generations, which advocated learning from China, emulating Da'an, reducing regulations and constraints, restraining power and restoring freedom, and "the government that controls the least is the best government."
——I can only say that the great scholars in Europe are also great scholars. When they are intoxicated, they can talk very well and recite scriptures.
However, he still has the level of a great scholar. The argument for "laissez-faire" in Smith's original text was very crude, and he only used Fei Xuan Zhenjun's "rule by inaction" as evidence. Later European scholars were very professional. They managed to get their hands on the archives of the Da'an Cabinet and after detailed statistics, they came to an important conclusion: although the country's economy was booming and production activities were becoming increasingly complex after the Jiayin Reform, there was no obvious change in the official documents handled by the cabinet. If the power of the government is measured by the number of official documents, then economic development did not actually lead to the expansion of power - does this not illustrate the "noble restraint" of the Da'an court?
People who can establish their own school of thought are extraordinary. Look at the angle and method of reflection. Isn't it much better than the low-end stuff that is simply licked by force? If Mu Qi had not been in the situation and understood the situation clearly, he would probably have been fooled into insanity.
But it doesn’t matter. Whether the scriptures recited by the great European scholars are accurate or not is one thing, and the facts they have found are another. Judging government power by the number of official documents is indeed a very clever idea. If the number of official documents has not changed much after decades of reform and the economy has expanded more than ten times, it can only mean one thing -
"The reform did not touch the root of the problem." Mu Qi said calmly: "The country's system is still backward, conservative, and corrupt. This makeshift court has no way to handle so many affairs. It's not that it doesn't want to manage, but it simply can't manage, or it doesn't realize that it has to manage. Outside the limited jurisdiction of the court, a large number of economic activities are basically growing wildly without any constraints. Although it is full of vitality, it is also chaotic..."
It was indeed a mess, and the clue could be found in the embarrassing incident of the so-called Douzi Ge Lao - the imperial court of the great Chinese country could not even complete a basic contract estimate, and it was not until the grain was transported to the port that it was realized that the warehouse was not enough, and it had to be temporarily allocated urgently; and the allocated treasury was so dilapidated that it was rotten after being stored for less than half a year, and the stench made everyone want to vomit... There was no estimation, no expectation, and no management. What was the difference between this and the opera performed at the village entrance?
It is really too much to expect a system that cannot even cope with surplus food to manage economic activities that are expanding as fast as a pancake.
Perhaps because he had stayed with his father for too long, Liu Li was too unfamiliar with the situation where there were insects everywhere, flatterers who should be killed but were not, and people who were not killed were everywhere. He was stunned and speechless for a moment, but suddenly came to his senses:
"That's not right. How can the economy grow so fast when the court is in such a state?"
Shit, are you really a laissez-faire person hiding among the radicals? !
“Because emerging economies have access to a steady stream of technological support.”
Mu Qi waved his hand casually and summoned a map: "This is the industrial distribution map of the third year of the reform. Most of the factories are just small-scale textile workshops. There are more blast furnaces for steelmaking and coal mining, but they are still just small-scale operations in the farming era."
He waved his hand again, and the map changed. Dotted factories sprouted from major transportation routes, covering most of the country. "By the tenth year of the reform, the number of steelmaking blast furnaces and coal mines had more than doubled, indicating that the use of large machinery had been promoted in factories, and efficiency had been further improved."
"What large machine?"
"The demand for steel and coal was so high that it was mostly primitive steam engines."
Liu Li was silenced. The first industrial revolution was completed in ten years. This level of technological expansion can only be described as incredible, and the productivity stimulated by technological progress must be immeasurable. The so-called thrust is big enough to make a brick fly. The industrial revolution is an elixir that is invincible in production and can bring the dead back to life. Swallowing seven or eight tonic pills in a row in just ten years can certainly make the economy vigorous and full of vitality, and can drag those fat and bloated old men in the court forward together. Even if there is no guidance, it can rely on wild growth to overcome all obstacles.
Naturally, this level of technological progress is unlikely to happen spontaneously. Someone must have deliberately manipulated it and taken the initiative to repeatedly inject vitality into production with a plug-in-like vision. The effects of this kind of productivity surge, which is like forcing something to grow by force, must be quite subtle - the dignitaries of Da'an had a hard time managing the production methods of the old era, and they even had to rely on silver from overseas to unify the currency; now asking them to manage a steam engine steel furnace would be too difficult.
In other words, the court's control over the economy was bound to become weaker and weaker, smaller and smaller, and more and more close to the laissez-faire policy of "ruling by doing nothing" advocated by the great European scholars. However, this kind of laissez-faire was not a subjective will but purely an objective helplessness. The later the reform progressed, the more deformed Da'an's system became - a shrunken, weak brain that could only act on instinct controlled a powerful and strong body, and the results would of course be very strange.
Liu Li whispered, "Isn't this Lu Bu riding a dog?"
"Lü Bu riding a dog usually means a strong core and weak edges." Mu Qi corrected him: "In fact, the situation in Da'an is exactly the opposite, so this should not be called Lü Bu riding a dog, it should be called A Dou riding Red Hare - and it has to be A Dou who is three years old and not escorted by Zhao Yun."
Liu Li: …………
Liu Li glared at him, but Mu Qi didn't care at all:
"This loss of control is comprehensive and not limited to just one industry. In fact, as the economy expands, the papermaking and printing industries are also developing rapidly. The number of printing workshops has increased more than twenty times. With just the current printing volume, the emperor is already in a state of panic and completely out of control. If the number increases by more than twenty times, then it will be..."
He paused, and after thinking for a moment, he finally found the right adjective:
"What a vibrant and dynamic world it would be!"
——By that time, Master Fei Xuan wouldn't have to worry about "Locking up the Elder in the Western Garden in Spring". Something a hundred times more exciting and explosive than "Locking up the Elder" was spread everywhere and everyone had a copy. There was nothing he could do to find out and nothing he could ban, so in the end he could only hide in the Western Garden and let things go bad.
Liu Li said unhappily, "So you deliberately wanted to create this kind of liveliness? What do you want to do?"
"It's just a simple experiment." Mu Qi said calmly, "Technological progress and free trade are invincible panaceas. Taking one pill can revive the economy and achieve rapid growth... But is there anything good in the world that has no side effects? What will happen if you take too much of this panacea?"
Liu Li frowned: "Technology is advancing too fast, of course..."
He suddenly stopped talking.
No matter how wonderful a medicine is, it will have side effects, especially when the effect of this medicine is so strong; the economic base determines the superstructure, and productivity that is not controlled by the court will certainly give birth to a superstructure that is not controlled by the court; and it just so happens that as a well-informed modern man, he knows very well what terrible and magnificent forces are hidden in those star-like factories, workshops and trading ports.
Once these forces are out of control, once these forces realize their own interests, once these forces become active -
His voice became shrill: "You want to--"
"It's not 'I want to', but 'I will'." Mu Qi corrected him: "In fact, I didn't have any clear plans before the system was leaked. It was not until I saw these maps that I guessed the future plan - of course, this plan is indeed incredible, using productivity to support a feudal dynasty or something..."
This sentence is really appropriate. The surging productivity cannot tolerate a backward system for a long time. Emerging things will inevitably burst the rotten womb, and from the wreckage of the old things will be born a society that is stronger, more powerful, and more suitable for productivity. Productivity determines production relations. If the production relations are too backward, then the forces that control advanced technology will tear apart these relations and create a completely new system tailored for themselves.
This is a process that both of them are very familiar with, the great transformation, the glorious replacement, the eternal metabolism of civilization.
"You're making it sound so easy!" Liu Li said loudly, "'Stuff to death'! Do you think society will naturally progress once technology is advanced? It's not that simple!"
"Of course it's not that simple." Mu Qi said calmly, "That's why I specially adjusted the layout of the factory."
Liu Li was stunned.
"Placing the arsenal that produces weapons near the industrial park means that once the workers are organized, they can quickly control the arsenal. The industrial park is next to the main transportation routes and economic centers. Once controlled by the rebels, the entire country's economy will immediately come to a standstill. And then use the developed cultural industry and communication technology to publicize their own ideas in all directions, that is the rhythm of collective response." Mu Qi said: "This is a typical three-heart shock idea, with the cultural center driving the economic center, and the economic center suppressing the political center, and finally crushing it to success in one fell swoop - no modern country will ever tolerate such a situation, but now..."
Ruling technology also has an iterative upgrade process. Feudal dynasties were very good at dealing with refugees, vassal kings, and rebellions, but they would never be able to understand this unprecedented model of rebellion, which was the great force of the new era. But the most fatal thing in the world is precisely this information gap.
"Of course, this alone is not enough." Mu Qi tapped the screen and summoned a new paper - it seems that he has spent a lot of money for today's few words: "In order to increase the chances of winning, I have to do something about the military..."
The charts and graphs in the paper sparkle, showing that after the Jiayin Reform, new generals such as Qi Yuanjing were promoted extremely quickly and rose to extremely high positions. Of course, this does not mean that General Qi will favor the Prince of Mu. The Prince of Mu does not care about military power. What he needs is something else:
"Qi Yuanjing has a habit of selecting hardworking miners when training soldiers, because workers are naturally organized." Mu Qi said, "If this habit is promoted and more soldiers are trained according to his method, it means that a large number of workers will join the army. They will learn military training techniques, master the ability to kill the enemy in battle, and understand the essence of organizing the army. Once these people are released by the army, the effect will be..."
A completely uncontrolled economy, public opinion spreading like wildfire, workers with military training, and factories guarding key locations... This is the big cake that Mu Qi carefully prepared for Master Fei Xuan for subsequent kings. Every bite of this cake is sweet, and only when you eat it to the very end will you know what is waiting for the emperor.
Liu Li was stunned for a moment, and could only say: "You think too well... What if someone sabotages it?"
"Then let him destroy it." Mu Qi shrugged. "If you want to destroy my plan, there are probably two ways. The first is to awaken now and look at the future 500 years later, and transform yourself into the world's most powerful master of economics, so that you can see my intentions at a glance after hundreds of years of experience. The second way is to make up your mind to carry out drastic reforms and transform this shabby system into one that can adapt to productivity and manage productivity. You can choose either of the two methods, I have no objection."
Liu Li: …………
Obviously, if there really was such a great figure in the Da'an Dynasty who could reverse the trend of productivity development by himself, there would be no need for Mu Qi to save the situation. Throughout the history of the dynasty, Zhang Taiyue was probably the only one who had the ability to shake up the system - but regardless of whether he had the ability to do such a big thing, even if he really wanted to loyally defend the dynasty for a hundred years, there was still the imperial power, a top-notch pig teammate who was dragging him down.
Reform the system? Do you look down on us too much? !
This is an open conspiracy, one that is impossible to resist once it is started. but……
"...I originally thought you would do it yourself." Liu Li said slowly.
"Each generation has its own affairs." Mu Qi said, "Of course I have thought about doing it myself, but I may not have enough time, and I may not be able to do it cleanly."
Having said this, Mu Qi paused unconsciously. At the beginning of his journey, he had had such intense and impetuous thoughts; but the feudal system was indeed the most desperate dragon in the world, which could easily crush all futile resistance; and only now did he finally understand his responsibility.
Success may not be achieved by me, but what I do will not be in vain; the power of new birth is about to rise up like the sun; for the sake of this glorious new world, what does a little patience matter?
He had seen this new world before, so of course he would not doubt the strength of the new forces. This new class had achieved such a glorious and great victory in their time, so in this new world, it would also surely achieve its goals through its unyielding efforts - in the face of such a goal, what would his little cleverness matter?
However, before the new forces come on stage, the predecessors still have to fulfill their final mission and do the work of cleaning the stage.
"...Of course, the speed of the reform and the rapid development of productivity are beyond my expectations." Mu Qi sighed, "With the speed reaching this point, many things will be forced to speed up."
Liu Li: "...What are you going to do?"
"The biggest fear of a huge reform is external interference, so we have to deal with the outside world in advance." Mu Qi said: "On the premise of having absolute advantages in military technology and organizational strength, we must completely wipe out the surrounding forces to ensure that when the country is deadlocked, foreign enemies are unable to interfere, and give new forces sufficient and complete development space. Therefore, after the initial completion of the reform, we may have to take action against Mongolia, Japan and the Jurchens one by one. Of course, Southeast Asia cannot be neglected, Jiaozhi is also a big trouble..."
He paused for a moment, then continued, "...Also, I have some selfish motives for this. Maybe I am too weak by nature, I just don't want to bleed too much."
"……What?"
"Revolution develops step by step. In the beginning, no one wants to kill people. It is not until the situation becomes more and more tense and out of control." Mu Qi said, "If the foreign enemies are wiped out, the uprising can be carried out in a relatively relaxed environment without worrying about external interference. In this atmosphere, as long as the emperor does not cause too much blood debt, it is very likely that he will save his life and leave peacefully."
"This can be considered as my way of repaying Lao Deng. I am indeed a conservative."
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