As the eldest grandson of Tokyo's richest man, Li Wenzhong had overlooked the Imperial City of Tokyo many times.
Peeping into the palace was considered a serious crime in other dynasties.
But the Northern Song Dynasty was really weird. In order to collect more contract payments, the imperial court took the initiative to spend money to expand the Fan Tower and raise it to five floors.
But Fan Tower is next to the Royal Palace, and standing on the top floor is really a bird's-eye view!
Of course, you can't see the emperor's harem, only the palace complex (office buildings) in the imperial city.
After the invention of the telescope, the imperial court issued a new rule. Telescopes were not allowed to be pointed at buildings higher than the walls of the imperial city. Once caught, they would have to go to Dali Temple to drink tea.
Li Wenzhong has seen the East Palace.
Standing on the top floor of Fan Tower, you can peek into a corner of the East Palace.
Li Wenzhong was led into a small hall, and the eunuch warned him: "You are waiting here and are not allowed to move around at will."
After waiting for half an hour, Li Wenzhong was allowed to enter.
When he met Shi Yuangong at the door, he quickly bowed and saluted, not daring to show any signs of neglect: "I will pay my respects to Mr. Shi later in life!"
Nowadays, the Agricultural Encouragement Department has been formalized, but Shi Yuangong's intelligence system is still under the sole control of the prince, who only regularly reports information to the Privy Council and the Ministry of War.
There is a lot of speculation about this from the outside world, and Li Wenzhong has also heard about it.
Facing the greeting from a commoner, Shi Yuangong actually returned the greeting with his hand and smiled in return, without any hint of arrogance.
But that smile made Li Wenzhong scared, and he always felt as if there was a knife hidden in his smile.
Li Wenzhong walked into the palace and saw that Prince Zhu was reviewing official documents. He did not dare to disturb him rashly, so he stopped at a place not far away and stood silently waiting for the prince to finish the work at hand.
"Li Wenzhong?" Zhu Ming asked while writing without raising his head.
Li Wenzhong bowed quickly: "Li Wenzhong, a humble citizen, pays homage to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince!"
Ju Ming finally put down his brush: "Come closer, I can't see clearly."
"Yes!" Li Wenzhong stepped closer.
Zhu Ming remembered this face and said, "Give me a seat."
"Thank you, Prince!"
Li Wenzhong sat down carefully, not daring to look directly at the prince, and focused his eyes on the prince's desk.
Ju Ming asked: "Are you a Juren?"
Li Wenzhong replied: "I have already failed the exam once, and I can take the exam twice more."
"Is it your idea to speculate on the sales order?" Zhu Ming asked with a smile.
Li Wenzhong said: "It's a small skill, but it's all done in front of the prince. My family has lost a lot of money, and there is still a warehouse of cloth that cannot be sold."
Ju Ming said: "You can come up with such a bad idea just after the establishment of the exchange. You can be regarded as a talented person among profiteers. You will have many opportunities in the future. When the court supplies are insufficient, you will definitely be able to succeed by joining forces to speculate in stocks."
"Don't you dare!"
Li Wenzhong trembled with fright, slid from his chair to kneeling on the ground: "Hoarding and disrupting commodity prices are all unjust acts. Li will never do it again in the future."
"Can I still kill you while you are sitting and talking?" Zhu Ming said.
Li Wenzhong sat back and explained: "The big merchants of the cloth merchants made an agreement at that time, and they would not let the merchants and merchants lose their money."
"fart!"
Ju Ming angrily rebuked: "If the imperial court had not cracked down on loan sharks and declared the loan shark deeds invalid, countless people in Tokyo would have been ruined. Those people were so greedy that they mortgaged their houses for speculation. They were penniless and it was winter, so they couldn't afford to live in a house.
The streets will freeze to death! Have you ever thought that if someone is really forced to death, will the court punish the profiteers?"
Li Wenzhong's vest went cold: "The common people...the common people are really scared. I didn't expect them to be so crazy. Many of these people are not merchants. They actually went to the exchange to apply for purchase certificates and used all their wealth to speculate on cloth goods."
"
Ju Ming did not continue to pursue him, but asked: "How did you come up with the idea that the bill of goods can be speculated?"
Li Wenzhong said: "In fact, it's not difficult to think of it. It's just buying low and selling high. This was the case with the ultimatums of the previous dynasty."
The certificate was originally a certificate for monks, but in the Song Dynasty it was actually used as a futures contract.
Sometimes it sells for 100 guan, sometimes it sells for 200 guan, and sometimes it even sells for 500 guan.
Even if the monks and Taoists get it, they are not in a hurry to fill in their names for the time being, because they can continue to resell it and fill in their names only when they need to be used.
Ju Ming sneered: "I'm afraid it's not just as simple as buying low and selling high, right? If I don't take action, you can repeatedly lower the price and raise it several times, and cut off the traders, merchants and common people like leeks."
"Don't dare." Li Wenzhong quickly bowed his head, sweating on his forehead.
The prince really understands everything!
Zhu Ming smiled even brighter: "You guys, this is nothing. Do you want me to teach you how to buy and sell short? Neither the buyer nor the buyer has goods in and out, and the price difference will be settled directly when the order expires."
Li Wenzhong was surprised: "Can we still do business like this?"
"Huh?" Zhu Ming looked serious.
Li Wenzhong hurriedly explained: "Xiaomin didn't think much about it, he was just curious."
Ju Ming asked: "Do you want to be an official?"
Li Wenzhong said: "Xiaomin is studying hard and is expected to be a Jinshi next year."
"Since you are sure, then take the exam." Zhu Ming said.
Li Wenzhong was startled, and quickly added: "Actually, I am not sure. Although Xiaomin is good at mathematics, physics, astronomy, and geography, and he is still asking Tai students for chemistry, he has not yet thoroughly learned the Confucian classics. The articles on the meaning of the classics are more
It’s not what people want. I actually know the truth in my heart, but when I write it down, it seems a bit plain.”
Ju Ming asked: "What do you think of Wang Anshi's reforms?"
Li Wenzhong replied: "The intention is good."
Ju Ming asked again: "If the emperor had supported it to the end, would Wang Anshi's reform have succeeded?"
Li Wenzhong said: "It may succeed for decades, but it will definitely fail in the end."
"Why?" Zhu Ming asked.
"Official officials are corrupt..." Li Wenzhong blurted out and quickly emphasized, "The common people are saying that officials in the previous dynasty were corrupt. Even if the reform could be successful at that time and many miscellaneous factions were merged into the exemption fund, new miscellaneous factions would be born in ten or twenty years.
The burden on the people will be even heavier if the officials are not greedy. Even if the officials are not greedy, the officials still have to eat. If the miscellaneous factions are not recruited, what will the officials eat?"
Ju Ming couldn't help but sigh: "You are really a great talent. You can figure this out on your own."
Li Wenzhong asked doubtfully: "What did you realize?"
"Nothing." Zhu Ming didn't say much.
Of course, it is to realize "Huang Zongxi's Law"!
China's tax consolidation reforms in the past dynasties, even if they were successful at the time and reduced the burden on the people, will inevitably lead to the burden on the people becoming heavier in the future.
This is a curse and a strange circle.
The principle is actually very simple. The imperial court stipulates regular taxes, and officials will increase exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes.
Tax reform is nothing more than reducing various exorbitant taxes and merging them into a single tax category.
Let’s call this single type of tax a miscellaneous tax. Over time, everyone got used to it and regarded the miscellaneous tax as a regular tax. So the officials levied exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes in addition to the miscellaneous tax, causing the people to bear even heavier taxes than before the reform.
The reform of the two tax laws in the Tang Dynasty was equivalent to "renting mediocrity + miscellaneous factions".
It is equivalent to the Tang Dynasty version of the "sharing the land", which already included the head tax into the two taxes. But over time, everyone regarded the two taxes as regular taxes and charged an additional head tax.
The tax reform carried out by Wang Anshi in rural areas is equivalent to "two tax laws + miscellaneous factions".
Zhang Juzheng's whipping method is also equivalent to "two tax laws + miscellaneous factions".
Yongzheng's method of spreading people into acres is even more powerful, which is equivalent to "one whip method + miscellaneous factions".
Zhu Guoxiang and Zhu Ming are useless now. A hundred years from now, they will definitely become as bad as the Two Taxes Law of the Tang Dynasty.
At that time, people will regard the taxes that have been apportioned to the farmers as the regular taxes that farmers should pay. Then, they will collect the miscellaneous taxes in a different way, just changing the name.
If sharing a small share of land into an acre becomes an ancestral method, the only effect will be to no longer block household registration, make population movement more frequent, and make people willing to register and settle down.
Excessive taxes and miscellaneous taxes will still come out!
Even in the industrial age, "Huang Zongxi's Law" could not be broken. It was not until the abolition of agricultural taxes that the vicious circle was broken out, and Chinese farmers were finally relieved.
At present, the national treasury is full and the court is not short of money.
After Ju Ming ascended the throne, the first thing he did was to reduce agricultural taxes!
Reducing agricultural taxes can, firstly, spread the income from farmers to farmers more quickly, and secondly, it can leave room for tax increases and reforms for future generations. Perhaps it can add a few decades to the life of the Ming Dynasty.
It's useless to think about this kind of thing too much.
Ju Ming asked: "What do you think money is?"
Li Wenzhong was stunned for a moment.
Yes, what is money?
He wanted to blurt out the answer, but swallowed it back because it was impossible for the prince to ask such a simple question.
Ju Ming reminded: "Tokyo was besieged until the end, and there was no food left. Is the money still useful?"
Li Wenzhong shook his head: "It's useless. Even if you have money, you can't buy rice. If you have money, you can't buy cloth. You can't even buy firewood."
"So, what is money?" Zhu Ming asked again.
Li Wenzhong thought carefully: "Money is just like a bill of exchange or a bill of goods. It is actually a kind of voucher. People have agreed, or the court stipulated, that how much money is worth, then how much goods can be purchased."
Ju Ming smiled and said, "What else?"
Li Wenzhong thought hard again: "If the money is removed, the transaction is actually an exchange of things. A sells a load of firewood to B and earns tens of cents, and uses the money to buy a few buckets of rice from C. In fact, A exchanges firewood for C.
Rice. If B's money was also obtained from selling goods, then B used those goods and exchanged firewood with A. Hey, A clearly only sold one load of firewood, but why did it seem like it was exchanged twice?"
"Hahahaha!" Zhu Ming burst out laughing.
Li Wenzhong couldn't think straight for a while, so he raised his hands and said, "Your Highness, I'm a dull man, so I need to go home and think slowly."
Ju Ming said: "Then you go back and think about it slowly. If you want to be an official, first go to Yangzhou to be a tax collector, and then be transferred to the Shipping Department to be a ninth-grade official. You should be familiar with various taxes, and then study the nature of business.
And think about what the use of money is. You can discuss it with Qian Chen through correspondence, and I have been asking Qian Chen to think about these issues."
"Thank you, Prince, for the appointment!" Although Li Wenzhong was happy, he was not as happy as he had imagined.
There is only one question left in his mind: What is money?
