Ma Rixi frowned and thought hard, and finally sighed deeply.
"What you said makes sense. I admit that I can't convince you, but if you continue like this, the official's resentment will be very great. When the time comes, you..."
"It is better for officials to have a lot of resentment than for people to have a lot of resentment."
Liu Bei shook his head and said: "Officials have great grievances, so what? Can their grievances exceed the necessity of being officials? If they have to choose between their grievances and their status as officials, what will they choose? They will only continue to do what they do with all their grievances.
Official, I dare not speak out.
But it is different when the resentment among the people is great. When their resentment is great, they will rise up, give up their identity as citizens, and fight to the death with the government. For them, is it better to wait for death or to die for the country? The choices between the two are completely different.
, so it doesn’t matter if the officials are more resentful.”
After Ma Rixi heard this, he actually felt that what Liu Bei said was very reasonable.
but……
Isn't this a bit dangerous for those who torment them?
and……
"What you imagined is correct, but how long can you maintain this situation?"
Liu Bei glanced at Ma Rixi.
"Ma Gong, this situation will eventually end, but now, aren't we going through it? Aren't the big men recovering their strength?"
Ma Rixi was stunned for a moment, and a glimmer of light suddenly appeared in his eyes.
After a while, he showed a wry smile again.
"But, this will eventually end, right?"
"Everyone will die eventually. This is an unchangeable ending. There is no such thing as immortality in the world. Therefore, the most important thing is to have a clear conscience when you are alive. After you die, no matter how much you miss or how reluctant you are to let go, what can you do?
"
Liu Bei smiled and said: "Just do everything you need to do while you are alive, live up to the years, and have a clear conscience. That's enough."
Ma Rixi finally understood Liu Bei's intentions.
So, he shook his head.
"Yes, people are destined to die. It is enough to have a clear conscience and live up to the years. I will keep your words in mind."
"Very good."
After speaking, Liu Bei looked at Guo Hong again.
"Mr. Guo, where are you?"
Guo Hong spread his hands.
"What can I do? The position of Commander-in-Chief is such an unpleasant one, so you just have to do it. This has always been the case in the Guo family, but before I die, I want to be the Third Duke."
Liu Bei nodded.
"This is what I promised you."
"good."
Guo Hong said nothing more.
In the past, the Luoyang court also had a general concept of a state council, but it did not have more practical requirements for local development.
Because of the difficulties in data collection, transportation, and a series of practical problems, even the emperor of the Han Empire did not necessarily know how big his empire was, its population, and scale.
The emperor's understanding of this empire may be one-sided, because many emperors never left Luoyang City or even the imperial palace throughout their lives.
Under such circumstances, it is simply too much to expect them to effectively govern the country.
At this moment, the situation in the Han Empire has undergone profound changes. Some unexpected things have appeared, and some unexpected people have risen, giving the empire an opportunity to change.
The biggest opportunity is that paper, as an important writing medium, has begun to be used on a large scale in daily administrative affairs.
Before Liu Bei made paper, the Han Empire also had paper, but due to technical constraints, high-quality paper was too expensive, production efficiency was too low, cost was low, and high-production efficiency paper was of too poor quality to be used in Zhengerba.
on current national affairs.
Therefore, at this stage, the officials of the Han Empire were still using bamboo slips, which could better preserve data, on a large scale to write. The trouble that came with it was that the price of bamboo slips was not low, the writing efficiency was not high, and the weight was too heavy.
.
If you want to collect data on a large scale and record data such as population and land, the cost is hundreds or thousands of times that of writing on paper, which greatly affected the effective local governance and supervision of the central government of the Han Empire.
Liu Bei discovered this problem and started making paper very early and perfected the papermaking technology.
Finally, papermaking began in Liangzhou and Yizhou, gradually replacing the systematic writing habits of his officials with paper.
Three or four years later, the technology of papermaking was further improved, the number of papermaking craftsmen was greatly expanded, and the number of papermaking workshops was greatly increased.
At present, the main papermaking base of the Han Empire is in Shu County, Yizhou.
The number of officially controlled papermaking workshops in Shu County, Yizhou has exceeded 200 in the fourth year of Jian'an, with more than 10,000 employees. They use bamboo as raw material to make paper day and night, providing the government with a huge amount of paper for use.
During administrative work.
Judging from the current production and transportation conditions, it is still difficult to provide readers across the country with paper to write freely, but it is sufficient to use the produced paper at the national governance level.
The entire Han Empire only had 160,000 officials and a population of more than 50 million. The place was not small, but it couldn't handle the small number of people.
If we really want to manage it, can it still be difficult for a superpower with a population of hundreds of millions?
The paper produced at this stage is indeed enough for use. After the paper is produced, a large amount of paper is transported to Luoyang and distributed by Luoyang. Over the past few years, there is a considerable amount of paper inventory in various places.
Paper, which is lightweight, easy to use and has high load-bearing efficiency, gradually replaced the bulky bamboo slips and became the first writing tool used by officials.
Because of the sufficient supply of paper, large-scale data collection became possible, something that was unimaginable in the bamboo slips era. Compared with the bamboo slips era, its costs, both in terms of transportation and construction costs, have dropped significantly on a large scale.
On this basis, Liu Bei promoted the State Council system and also promoted the local system of comprehensive data statistics and aggregation to Luoyang. Local governments could no longer use high costs as an excuse to delay and refuse to carry out this task.
If you refuse, the consequences will be very bad.
Moreover, after the implementation of the new system, the main person in charge will directly point to the General's Office, directly to Liu Bei. Liu Bei will be personally responsible for the review of the official data of each county and the formulation of tasks. Just like Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he will personally interrogate these data.
.
After Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty, the local governance of the Eastern Han Dynasty basically maintained the status quo and muddle along. All development was based on natural growth, with very little active growth with human intervention.
The government basically has no subjective initiative to get things done. If I have a good life, it’s God’s blessing. If I have a bad life, it’s God who is against me. Whether local governance is good or bad all depends on the conscience of officials.
Counting on this thing is worse than counting on gold falling from the sky.
Therefore, Liu Bei's meaning is very clear. Rest is rest, welfare improvement is promotion, but you have to do things for me and do them properly, otherwise you don't want anything.
For officials who have completed their work indicators, they will not enter the elimination sequence. For officials who have not completed their work indicators or have falsified their work indicators, the official elimination system is a sharp sword hanging over their heads.
Regarding this point, many officials within the Luoyang court said that Liu Bei's reforms were a bit too radical. This has never happened before. Even in the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, officials were so harsh and there was no such elimination system.
.
Liu Bei nodded and said - yes, Emperor Wu did not eliminate officials very much. They usually eliminated them physically. It doesn't matter where you are in the central government or what you have done. If you are unhappy, you will be killed.
How about we give it a try?
So no one continued to discuss this issue with Liu Bei.