The words of Li Dian and Xun Yue suddenly made Liu Xie feel like he was clearing the sky, as if something was in his mind, and he was immediately enlightened.

As a powerful manor, according to what he said, their family's manor economy is not as good as the Chen family in Runan. Although the Li family has many tribes, on average, it is far less than that of the Chen family in Runan. Instead, it is better for their lives after being incorporated by the court.

He attributed his family's problems to their family's failure to spend 2,000 stones. However, in Liu Xie's view, Li Dian's thinking must have entered a misunderstanding: the biggest problem in their family is that there are too many people.

If their family is really a family of two thousand stones in the past few generations, then when their number becomes a little more, their manor economy will definitely collapse.

In other words, the population of the manor economy has a threshold.

The reason why the Xun family cannot support the manor economy is at least that it cannot support a small manor economy that can protect themselves in troubled times and can only continue to rely on this and that is because the family has too few people, and the reason why the population is too small is because the local officials in Yingchuan are worthless and the land is valuable.

In other words, the existence of the manor economy itself must be based on a specific base of population. It is not enough if there are too many people or less. This is the fundamental reason why the manor economy cannot represent advanced productivity and can only be used as a deformed social system and is eliminated by the times.

Such a deformed system is not good for the country and the people. As long as a practical and feasible way is found to adjust the underlying economic foundation, the manor economy will inevitably be eliminated, the reform will inevitably be successful, and the tragedy of the Wei and Jin Dynasties will inevitably be avoided!

This reminded him of a famous scene in the classic TV series he saw in his previous life, and Kang Youwei knelt on the Golden Palace and shouted: Kill one or two first and second ranks of officials, and this method will change!

Liu Xie really wants to say to Kang Youwei now: Fart, Liu Xiu killed dozens of 2,000 stones back then, hasn't this method changed?

For the sake of the people, Liu Xie didn't care about killing people. He really had no celebrity plots about the Three Kingdoms. As long as it was needed, Cao Cao and Liu Bei were willing to kill them. He would definitely not be ruthless than Liu Xiu's killing, but killing people could not solve the problem!

Fortunately, as a modern person, he is more knowledgeable than Liu Xiu and Guangxu. After this conversation, he almost found the root of the problem.

Liu Xie saw a very interesting saying in his previous life: the sorrow of the Ming Dynasty lies in the lack of money, and the sorrow of the Qing Dynasty lies in the large number of people.

Is it easy to understand that the money is low? The economic system of the Dameng Dynasty was rotten to the point. It was obvious that the commodity economy was developed during the Southern Song Dynasty, and the court had already tried to issue paper money. Even in the war-torn dynasties like the Southern Song Dynasty, it was at least guaranteed that paper money would have value for a considerable period of time.

In the Ming Dynasty, even copper coins were worthless, so they could only use silver, which had no coin value, as currency. Because it did not produce silver in China, it was smuggled in large quantities by overseas countries, which caused great harm to the economic order.

The concept of the large number of people in the Qing Dynasty was relatively complicated to understand.

During the ancient Qin, Han, Sui and Tang dynasties, unless there were years of war, the population always fluctuated up and down at the value of 40 to 50 million. By the Song Dynasty, the population exceeded 100 million, and then continued to rise. Especially during the Qing Dynasty, the population exceeded 400 million in one fell swoop.

However, the growth of the country's arable land area and land output was far from keeping up with the rate of population growth. In the Qing Dynasty, arable land increased by 300% compared with the Han Dynasty, and the average grain yield per mu increased from more than 200 kilograms to more than 300 kilograms, which only increased by 139%.

The increase in yield per mu is completely disproportionate to the increase in population.

Although the two foreign crops, potatoes and corn, actually had a huge impact on ancient society, they were not that great. In fact, until today, these two are not the staple foods of our country. Not to mention the wasteland, early potatoes and corn cannot reach the current per mu yield.

So was the surge in population in ancient times due to the advancement of production technology? Yes, but not all, and it was not even the main reason.

On the contrary, the means of diligence and never adding taxes are the real fundamental reason for the surge in the Qing Dynasty. Here we must distinguish it from taxes and taxes. Kangxi said that he would never add taxes, rather than never adding taxes. The simple understanding of taxes is almost the same as the capitation tax. Some modern people actually cannot understand this concept. In fact, Liu Xie’s current policy of exempting capitation taxes is not much different from that of Kangxi, and there is no essential difference.

(I actually don’t like Kangxi very much. Some of Kangxi’s policies are indeed very evil, but to be fair, Kangxi’s evil cannot be erased with the important historical significance of the four words “Never add fu”. There is no need to evaluate historical figures either the great emperor or the pockmark. It seems that a good person cannot have stains, and a bad person cannot have shining points)

However, it is not a good thing to have a large population. The above set of data shows that compared with the Qin and Han dynasties, the per capita grain output of the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties was always decreasing, and the germination of capitalism was actually cut off because the pressure of 400 million people during the Qing Dynasty was too great.

It's very simple. Because there are many people, labor is relatively low compared to land and physical objects. Because there are fewer land, limited grain must ensure that sufficient grain crops are planted to compress the cultivation area of ​​economic crops. The income from opening a factory is not as stable as buying land and farming. The value of production and processing is far less than the value of raw materials themselves. Is any production invention that improves labor efficiency and liberates labor? Is it normal for superstructure construction to be weird and deformed under such an economic foundation?

When there were few people and more land, people were the most important means of production. Therefore, the national policies and the energy of the powerful in the Qin, Han and Tang dynasties were all focused on the population. After the Song Dynasty, the focus of the country was gradually shifted from population to land. Because the per capita production efficiency actually decreased, the surplus value that the country could extract from workers was also reduced. Especially in the Qing Dynasty, when the count tax was almost no longer collected, the direct control of people became extremely loose. To be cruel, half of the 400 million people died. As long as the area of ​​arable land did not decrease, the country's financial resources would probably not decline on a large scale.

When the court's life and death concerns the lives of the people, the benefits of the court will naturally decrease. There is no need for wealthy landlords to tie tenants to the farmers, so there is no need to be as strict as the manor economy.

Therefore, after the increase of the population, due to changes in the economic model, whether it is a country or a powerful person, its strength is getting weaker and weaker: per capita labor output is decreasing, and the surplus value that can be extracted becomes less, because the management cost of more people increases, so the national functions and powerful power have to shrink on a large scale because the production cost exceeds the production income, and its control and mobilization ability on people has seriously declined.

Specifically, the state withdraws from the basic production link and the management of the lower class of society. The court's ability to organize and mobilize the people continues to decline with the continuous growth of the population. The Qin and Han Dynasties and the early Tang Dynasty almost used compulsory military service as the main means of military service. The court can pull ordinary people out at any time to train them into the army to go to the battlefield. The combat effectiveness is often quite strong. The rulers almost only consider the issue of fighting or not fighting for foreign races, but do not consider the issue of winning if they fight or not. (including the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, but this period is relatively complicated, so I won't explain it here. If you are interested in discussing it with my book friends group)

After the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the government system collapsed completely, and basically all those who fought became professional soldiers. Although Zhu Yuanzhang established the garrison system according to the Han and Tang dynasties, the collapse speed of the garrison system was far higher than that of the Han and Tang dynasties, and soon it completely became a bad policy.

This result led to the fate of the country, or the fate of the court, and the personal fate of ordinary people, and the people of the lower class depended on the land rather than the country. Therefore, after the Qing Dynasty entered the pass, the northern land was quickly pacified because of the existing land structure. On the contrary, due to the enclosure of land by the Manchus during the Kangxi period, the northern land was everywhere due to the enclosure of the mankind. To the extreme, when the Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing, ordinary people were fighting to help foreign invaders transport supplies in order to make money. This was also because of this.

400 million people spitted one mouthful and drowned the Eight-Nation Alliance, but 400 million people had no reason to spit at the invaders. Instead, because the Eight-Nation Alliance paid a higher salary, the people near the capital rushed to become auxiliary soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance, and couldn't wait to help them step on the body of Qingting a few times.

So in fact, although the Qing Dynasty, which had 400 million people, was indeed the pinnacle of the feudal dynasty in terms of national strength, the national strength that the court could freely mobilize was relatively low. In the middle and late periods, it was probably not much stronger than the Wei and Jin Dynasties. It was naturally not incredible that it could not defeat a small Japanese country with strong organizational and mobilization capabilities.

The national strength does not equal the government's strength, and the same is true in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad.

For the powerful and powerful people, the population has skyrocketed and the per capita labor output has decreased, and their strength is actually declining like a cliff.

After all, the stricter the management is, the higher the management cost. The principles of the country and the country are the same. That is to say, when the population has flourished to a certain extent, it is not very meaningful to strictly control the tenants of personal freedom. After all, if you raise a slave, you have to care about his food, clothing, housing and transportation, and you have to meet his basic living needs? In the social reality where there is no freedom in the human body, the subjective initiative in production is insufficient, and the per capita cultivated land area is small, the cost of raising a slave or tenant may be higher than the production output of a tenant or slave.

This is even more so from the perspective of industry and commerce. The small-scale endogenous cycle of the manor economy is that it is impossible to spread production costs with economies of scale and cannot allow professionals to do professional things. The production efficiency itself must be low, and this low production efficiency cannot meet the explosive growth of the population. The cost of making a pound of iron by yourself is much higher than the cost of buying a pound of iron. Will you still build a manor to produce it yourself?

So, as long as any complex problem is digging to the root, the decision will be very simple, and the rest are the details.

As mentioned in the previous article, when the population grows, the manor economy will naturally collapse, and the powerful will naturally weaken itself. However, in this process, the country's organizational and mobilization capabilities were also weakened simultaneously. The number and intensity of internal turmoil in the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties were significantly smaller than those in the Han and Tang dynasties. This is not so much because of the strong, trunk and weak branches caused by centralization, but rather because the powerful no longer has the ability to mess up the world.

But isn’t such stability at the cost of national decline? The Han and Tang dynasties were destroyed by civil strife, and the Song and Ming dynasties were defeated by barbarians. Isn’t it still a disaster for people inside and outside? (In the early Qing Dynasty, the Eight Banners’ children were actually very similar to the Guanzhong soldiers of the Tang Dynasty. To put it bluntly, it was a variant of the conscript system. Later, the Eight Banners’ children lost their ambitions and the Qing army’s combat power became weaker.)

Are there any exceptions?

In fact, there are also some. The population of the country where Liu Xie was before he traveled over was already 1.4 billion, and the government's efforts to organize the people have not declined.

Is this because of the great increase in productivity? But from the perspective of agricultural output, the amount of cultivated land in modern society has actually decreased compared to ancient times, and so many non-staple foods and cash crops have been created. Modern people can be said to be aristocrats in the word "eating" compared to ancient society. Anyway, as the emperor, Liu Xie did not think that his diet was really better than in his previous life. So is the unit per mu of this modern society really hundreds of times that of ancient society?

Is this really just a credit for the development of productivity rather than the progress of superstructure? Is there really nothing that Liu Xie can learn from?

So, when the Chen family was first left by Liu Xie in such an early spring day, kneeling outside the door for an hour and a half, and then waiting for Liu Xie to wander around their house for an afternoon of fear. He waited for Liu Xie in panic until Liu Xie went to bed at night, but Liu Xie still did not summon them.

But one day later, Mi Zhu rushed over from Xu Du, but the emperor still did not summon them.

One day later, Chen Dao, who was far away in Nanyang, ignored the order of the emperor and rushed back overnight with the Chen family's children, but finally made the Chen family's members feel a little more at ease.

After all, if the emperor wants to kill someone, there is no reason to call Chen Dao and his soldiers over. Isn’t this more difficult for me?

But at dinner time, Guan Yu personally invited the Chen clan people, including Chen Tang, to say, "Everyone, Your Majesty personally invites you to the banquet. Your Majesty said that the night is beautiful and the wind is cool. He wants to roast the whole sheep banquet himself to entertain all the great sages."
Chapter completed!