Chapter 1655 The intention of the cooperative, the classical mage
Arriving at the cooperative so quickly, Xia Duo noticed that there were many folded pages in the "Agricultural Book" on the table. If he traced his memory based on the book itself, he could even find out which pages the other party had folded.
But at this time, when Master Yerevan said these words, Sha Duo immediately realized that it was not that the master did not know how to work hard, nor did he know how to deal with natural disasters, or other problems.
Maybe he just uses such a reason to open the topic, or maybe he wants to test his quality as an author. What the other party really wants to hear may be the cooperative!
While Xia Duo was surprised in his heart, his mind was racing very fast, his expression remained unchanged, and he asked the master: "I wonder what aspect of the cooperative you want to know about the master?"
In the "Agricultural Book", he has clarified how cooperatives are organized. If you just want to ask about the details of cooperatives, just read the book.
"First of all, let's talk about why you came up with the idea of a cooperative as an organization. You must know that land private ownership has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. Now that you have established this kind of cooperative, do you want to take back the land in disguise in this way?"
Master Yerevan’s question was very insightful, and he could see the inner core of this organizational method almost at a glance.
It is true that if such a cooperative is established in Netheril currently, even farmers who provide the means of production may not be able to enjoy all the benefits after the cooperative is established.
After all, there was a lord above them who was watching. Even in Chateau's "Agricultural Book", this organizational method was taught to the lords and asked them to organize farmers to establish cooperatives.
The process and result will definitely not be as ideal as Xia Duo expected.
If some lords use the form of cooperatives to regain land that has been enfeoffed and sold, turning the original landed farmers into landless serfs, then Xia Duo will not be surprised at all.
So how to answer this question?
Perhaps Master Yerevan truly cares about ordinary people, or perhaps like most other lords, although he was born as an ordinary person, he thinks that he is no longer a member of the ordinary people.
Their care and love may be more out of the classical lord's duties, or it may simply be a kind of hypocrisy used to show benevolence.
But since this kind of behavior can still be called "good", even if it is just hypocrisy, it means that in the perception of most people, or strictly speaking, in the perception of most spell casters, they are still one of the ordinary people.
A few high-ranking people failed to break that layer of window paper after all, or in other words, they haven't been able to break it so far.
Thinking like this, Xia Duo slowly spoke: "Actually, the question Master asked is a bit too far away in my opinion.
"As for me, I am more concerned about whether ordinary people can have enough harvest to cope with famine under the current abnormal climate, especially when the current abnormal climate does not last for how long.
"The biggest role of the cooperative organization method I proposed is not to increase field yields, but to allow many farmers to unite and share the risk of famine.
"Abnormal climate cannot cause all land to significantly reduce production at the same time. There will always be land that maintains a certain yield even under abnormal weather. The cooperative uses the output of this part of land with high yield to cover the output of the originally reduced land."
Of course, this is only the first level of intention in Xia Duo's plan. He really needs to use this method to help more ordinary people survive natural disasters smoothly.
But above this level, he hopes to use this method to improve agricultural production efficiency and generate more surplus population.
In addition to this part of the surplus population being able to turn to other more profitable industries under the planning of the local lords, Xia Duo himself can also recruit some from them.
After all, Netheril has never lacked lords who do not regard their people as human beings. Whenever they find that the population required for the normal operation of their territory has decreased, they will always find ways to reduce these unnecessary burdens in their opinion.
In addition, when industries other than agriculture develop, new markets may emerge that can afford mass-produced magic items.
The current mass-produced magic items in the Tower of Time are mainly sold to spellcasters. If the purchasing group is expanded to a wider range of ordinary people, it will undoubtedly greatly reduce the time for Xia Duo to accumulate resources in the early stage.
The key to this is largely to find ways to circulate wealth from spell casters to ordinary people.
It is basically impossible to achieve this by relying on agriculture alone. After all, spellcasters have the ability to build arcane gardens, and they will not starve to death even if they do not eat a bite of food grown by ordinary people.
Only the output of industries other than agriculture, such as Chinese clothing, food, art and other industries that the caster is unwilling to directly engage in, can be consumed by the caster, thus completing the transfer of wealth.
Of course, if it is in Daxia, Xia Duo will also transfer wealth downwards in the name of the government, such as building new public facilities, opening compulsory education, increasing jobs, raising basic wages, etc.
However, these are related to the future planning of Daxia Territory, so there is no need to explain them to Master Yerevan here.
…
In Shado's view, just mentioning "risk sharing" is enough to deal with Master Yerevan, and the actual situation is similar to what he thought.
After hearing this explanation, Master Yerevan couldn't help but admire, "You are really a generous and kind lord. I see the shadow of my former companion in you."
In the era when Yerevan was young, being a spellcaster was certainly sought after by everyone, but those who cast spells rarely gained a more transcendent status because of it, and instead added extra responsibilities.
At that time, spell casters might work with ordinary people during the day, and at night, they would also play a vigilante role.
In their view, magic is just a novelty from the elves, or just a tool that can be used to develop.
Although there is a reason why elven magic is not suitable for humans, it at least shows that most of today's spellcasters have forgotten their original intentions and regard magic as a way to be superior to others.
Thinking of this, Yerevan felt a little sad. Because of his long life, he had personally watched the Nese magic system be established and perfected little by little, and the power of magic also continued to grow.
However, during this process, the casters became somewhat lost and lost their simplicity.
Seeing such an empire, Yerevan had an extremely strong feeling in his heart. If things continued like this, the spellcasters of Netheril might completely separate themselves from ordinary people, and even develop into two completely different races!
If he can still live until then, maybe it is better to die at this moment, because Netheril is no longer his country!
At this moment, Yerevan suddenly asked a digression:
"Lord Xia Duo, why are you so concerned about the survival of ordinary people?"