"Is there any other reason?" Wu Dui looked thoughtful and asked thoughtfully: "Qiu Zhen is worried about the emperor..."
Gao pragmatic did not answer directly, but said: "I have recently realized something. I often heard a saying in my early years, which is: 'Nothing should be more moral than caring for the people, and no conduct should be lower than harming the people.' Therefore, Dong Zhongshu once said
: 'A family that receives a salary is just a living wage, and does not compete with the people for property. Then the benefits can be distributed evenly, and the people can have enough money.'"
Wu Dui naturally knew this, and nodded: "It is true that you plucking sunflowers and weaving them, but nowadays, people who can do this have long been extinct, at least very rare. Besides, Brother Yu, remember, you don't agree with this, please be honest.
What do you mean?"
What Gao Pragmatic said just now means that those who receive state salaries are not allowed to compete for interests with the people. From ancient times to the present, "not competing with the people for interests" has been the most basic governing concept, and is called "this principle of heaven"
, and it is also the ancient way."
"Those who live in salary are not allowed to compete with the people for profit, and those who receive the big are not allowed to take the small." According to "Historical Records", after Gong Yixiu became the prime minister of Lu, he stipulated that all officials were not allowed to operate industries or compete for profits with the people, and in this way
Be strict with yourself and your family.
When Gongyixiu ate the delicious vegetables grown at home, he "plucked out the sunflowers in his garden and threw them away"; when he saw someone in his family weaving, he immediately "rushed out his wife and burned the machine" and said angrily
: "Do you want to make the peasants and working girls have a safe place to pick up their goods?" Since then, "pulling out the sunflowers to weave" has become an idiom that has been passed down through the ages, and has been repeatedly used as a warning by those who came after.
For example, "Book of the Sui Dynasty" records that due to insufficient expenses for officials at that time, public funds were set up at the central and local levels for moneylending, "with interest." Su Xiaoci, then Minister of Industry, believed that this was a competition between the government and the people for profit.
"It's not the way to promote prosperity", just "please dismiss it from the top and ask the ministers to give their jobs and fields according to their differences".
"Zi Zhi Tong Jian" also said that during Wu Zetian's Chui Gong period, Pei Gong, the supervisor of Shang Fang who was in charge of the Royal West Garden, suggested selling uneaten fruits and vegetables in the market "in order to collect profits." Su, who was the prime minister at the time
Liang Si stopped categorically: "In the past, Gongyi Xianglu was still able to pluck sunflowers and weave them. I have never heard of the master of ten thousand chariots selling fruits and vegetables to compete with his subordinates for profit."
Logically speaking, it is not a big deal to weave some cloth and grow some vegetables at home, the government lends money and collects interest, and sells the fruits and vegetables that cannot be eaten. But from Gongyixiu, Su Xiaoci to Su Liangsi, why did everyone get so angry?
What about "Masterpiece"?
The reason is simple and the implications are far-reaching. On the surface, doing so will cause certain impact and harm to people's livelihood. But the deeper harm is that they believe that once this hole is opened, it will only get wider and wider in the future.
The more people will follow and follow suit.
Moreover, in ancient society, the government and officials had power in their hands. They used this public power to "compete for profits" with the "unarmed" people, and the strong and the weak were determined. If things go on like this, the weak and the strong may lead to the people's livelihood being deprived of their livelihood.
In the end, there will inevitably be many disadvantages, which will be difficult to recover from.
What is even more frightening is that the "competition for profit" often starts out openly and implicitly, but gradually evolves into blackmail or even robbery. For example, in "Brahma Lu Cong Lu", a eunuch in the Tatar Qing Dynasty used the name "Lao Buddha" to fight for profit.
Under the banner of the emperor, he went to Kaifeng to collect winter charcoal for the palace, and said to the county magistrate: "You need to prepare thirty kilograms of charcoal."
It was not difficult, but he immediately put forward harsh conditions: "Each branch must be one foot and five inches long and one inch and five cents round", and "there must be no knots" and "no cracks". When the county magistrate looked troubled,
The eunuch threatened: "If Lafayette is frozen, you will be guilty of a big crime!"
At this time, someone naturally came out to smooth things over, saying: "If you have money, it will be easier to negotiate." As a result, the county magistrate was knocked off more than a thousand taels of silver. From the meaning of this story, "Pull out the sunflowers and go weaving", "Stop the official business"
"Money" is a precautionary measure, the purpose is to nip disaster in the bud.
"The world is vast, Li Yuan is the first." Sima Qian divided the economic policies of governing the country into five categories in "The Biography of Huo Shi": "The good ones follow it, the next is the benefit, the next is the teaching, the next is the order, and the lowest is the
Fight with it.”
Why is "competing with the people" regarded as the lowest economic policy? This is because "policy thrives when it complies with the people's will, and fails when it goes against the people's will."
The human heart is actually the greatest politics.
"If you fight for trivial matters, you will lose the main road." Competing for profits with the people is tantamount to fishing for the best, and it is the greatest disobedience and harm to the people's hearts and minds. What you win is the interests, but what you lose is the people's support. "If you win the crowd, you will win the country, but if you lose the crowd, you will win the country.
Then the country will be lost." The metaphor of the boat and water by Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty and the principles of its rise and fall cannot help but alert people.
After Gao Pragmatic explained this to Wu Dui, Wu Dui looked a little doubtful. He hesitated for a moment and said in deep thought: "To be honest, you and I are competing for profits from the people in these logistics transactions, so we should stop."
?
If this is the case, then if you transfer this business to the imperial court, aren't you still competing for profits with the people? It's just that the person who competes for profits is replaced by the court - but the court is ultimately the emperor, and the emperor competes with the people for profits.
, isn’t it a bigger bad thing?
"Mencius" said: "Why should the king talk about profit? There is only benevolence and righteousness." "Salt and Iron Theory" said: "Therefore the emperor does not say much, the princes do not talk about benefits, and the officials do not talk about losses." If you, me and all the others
If no official can do this to 'fight for profit', why can the emperor do it?"
Gao Pragmatic had already expected that Wu Dui would call him Mencius after hearing what he said. Yes, Mencius said, "Why does the king need to talk about profit? There is only benevolence and righteousness." It became a famous saying among later generations of Confucian scholars.
What does this mean? As an emperor, you should not always talk about profits and other things. This is too vulgar. You should keep benevolence and righteousness in your heart at all times. This is the good emperor that people like.
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The Confucian scholar Xianliang in "Salt and Iron Theory" puts it more clearly: Therefore, the emperor does not say much, the princes do not talk about benefits, and the officials do not talk about losses.
Logically speaking, this statement is actually correct. If the emperor does not compete with the people for profit, and always keeps benevolence and righteousness in his heart, then the world will live well because of this. But the problem is that this statement reached the Ming Dynasty, because for
The difference in understanding of one word caused the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty who were full of benevolence and righteousness to personally destroy the Ming Dynasty!
Which word? The word "people".
What is the people?
When a modern person sees this word, he will naturally think that citizens are the people. In other words, ordinary people are the "people".
However, this view may not be the truth in ancient times. It is not necessarily wrong, but it must at least be controversial and can be confused.
The sub-sage Mencius mentioned just now, in addition to expressing a lot of "people-oriented" thoughts, he actually also said something that may be "less famous": "It is not difficult to govern, and there is no sin against a wealthy family."
.”
What does it mean? It means that governing the country is very simple. As long as you don't offend those big families, with their support, you can do anything.
Before the implementation of the imperial examination system, this was especially true for those officials at that time. As long as they spoke for their respective families, they could be as stable as a mountain in the officialdom. Even if they were occasionally dismissed from office, someone would recommend them to him soon.
Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the imperial examination has become the only way to become an official, and the situation has undergone some changes. If a wealthy family cannot maintain prosperity in the imperial examination for a long time, its family fortune will often decline. But because of this, the more in power, the more powerful the family is.
Officials who hold power are more and more eager to make money, because the more they invest their financial resources in the education of future generations, the more they can ensure the longevity of their families.
In modern Chinese, "people" is a word that expresses the same meaning. However, in ancient societies, such as today's Ming Dynasty, "people" and "people" do not mean the same thing. They actually express different meanings.
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Similar to this, there is "mass". In later generations, it was a word that was connected to express the same meaning, but this was not the case in ancient society: a crowd is a crowd, and a crowd is a crowd, and the two are not unified.
The meaning of the word "人" in the oracle bone inscriptions can be seen at a glance. "Things that can stand upright and move around" are people. Therefore, if you add a wood character to the right of the character "human", the wood is an obstacle, so "Hugh",
Stopped walking; if you add a word to the right of the character "人", that person will bring a message, which is "xin", a verbal message.
Therefore, people are free and have the ability to decide their own actions.
This is not the case for the people. In the oracle bone inscriptions, the people first draw an eye, and then derive the whole from the eyes. Guo Moruo has a famous conclusion that the "people" have "cross-eyed and thorny eyes, and blinding one of them is considered a slave. Therefore,
As the ancient saying goes, 'the people are blind'."
Guo Moruo believes that during the Yin and Shang Dynasties, the pictographic character "民" was to use an awl to pierce the left eye. Such people were the people, and the people were slaves.
But later, some scholars began to question it and put forward a new theory, believing that the meaning of the pictogram, the so-called "awl", actually refers to "eyesight", and the downward gaze means the people.
What does looking downward mean? It means looking down at the ground, which means not daring to raise your head and look straight - of course, those who dare not look straight refer to the rulers or the ruling class.
So from this we can draw the conclusion: the status of "people" is higher than that of "people".
This is not just a casual comment. If you look at the common word combinations, you will know that "people with lofty ideals", "people can conquer nature", "dare to be the first", etc., all contain strong complimentary meanings, and the word "min" certainly has some complimentary meanings, but more
Instead, they are derogatory terms such as "untouchables", "grassroots", "mob", etc.
It is for this reason that the ancients rarely used the word "民" when naming people, which formed an extremely strong contrast with the naming style after the Red Dynasty.
But some people may also ask, how do you explain "Li Shimin"? Of course he was not the King of Qin when he was named, let alone the emperor, but the Li family in Longxi was also a powerful figure at the level of the Eight Pillar Kingdom at that time, so why did he have "Min"
Is it in the name of a young man from a noble family?
That's because Li Shimin's "people of the world" is by no means "for the people from generation to generation". Its original meaning is "to help the people by managing the world" - to help the people, what is economic? The meaning of "relief" is to save all people.
Precisely because "people" and "people" were not the same thing in ancient society, "people" can be divided into broad and narrow senses in the Analects and other pre-Qin documents.
"People" in the broad sense refers to "people" who are different from all things, all "people"; "people" in the narrow sense refers to the "nobles" of the "scholar" and above classes as opposed to "people". And "people" refers to
Common people except "people" in the narrow sense.
In ancient Chinese, the word "teaching" comes from "language", which is related to "speech", and "jiao" comes from "literary" and is related to "force". The object of Confucius' "teaching" is "people", and the content of "teaching" is "knowledge".
(Wisdom)"; the object of "teaching" is "people", and the content of "teaching" is "rong" and "war".
If you understand this, you will find that for "people", Confucius advocated "teaching people tirelessly", and for "people", Confucius advocated "teaching people". It can be seen that the structure of "teaching people" and "teaching people" in "The Analects" are distinct
, Confucius would never confuse the two.
By the Ming Dynasty, because the civil servants had firmly controlled the right to speak in society and used various people-oriented ideas to limit and restrain the imperial power, they also had changes in their attitudes towards the ownership of the "people", sometimes even somewhat
Schizophrenia.
For example, when talking about "educating all the people", the literati and officials exclude themselves from the "people" and think that they are superior to the "people" and are the ones who educate rather than the educated.
But if interests are involved, especially interests that conflict with imperial power, the attitude of the literati and officials changes and they consider themselves "people" - I don't even have a title, and my official position cannot be hereditary, so I obviously do not belong to the "nobles".
So why am I not a "people"?
Because I am the people, you, the emperor, cannot compete with me for profit. This is also the basic source of the Donglin Party's historical thinking that collecting business taxes from them is "competing with the people for profit."
As for your question, why can the land tax be collected? Well, because the land tax has been paid by all dynasties and has historical inertia, and the Donglin Party itself does not need to pay the land tax, even if it has to be paid, it will be paid.
If the income is very small, then of course there is no problem. If you tell the Donglin Party that from now on the government and the gentry will pay for it as one, do you think the Donglin Party will react?
However, the current problem facing Gao Pragmatic is that the Donglin Party is the representative of interest groups in North Korea and China. Isn’t the Pragmatic School an interest group?
Obviously it is impossible, and the Practical School itself cannot escape the stereotype of interest groups. If there is any difference, it is that the original Practical School headed by Gao Gong was to a large extent "royalist" in nature, and its interests were basically attached to it in the early days.
It was formed by imperial power.
During the Gao Gong era, the Practical School relied on imperial power to obtain official positions and the right to speak in the court. However, after the eras of Guo Pu and Zhang Siwei, the Practical School had gradually grown in size. How could it not consider maximizing its own interests at this time?
At this time, everyone discovered that if they wanted to maximize their profits, there was a ready-made way. As long as they boarded this big ship, their profits would be guaranteed - this big ship was Jinghua.
Relying on the magical power of high pragmatism that turns stone into gold, officials from the Pragmatic School gradually entered the "Pan Jinghua" system. If Jinghua is the trunk of a tree, then they gradually become branches and leaves.
"Do you have a gardener in the other courtyard of your senior brother's house?" Gao Pragmatic asked: "The gardener cuts off redundant branches and leaves so that the whole tree can grow taller and leafier."
Wu Dui frowned and said: "Then what are you going to do with these 'tangled branches and leaves'? Brother Yu just said that if you abandon them, I'm afraid there will be people who are willing to collect them."
Gao pragmatically said: "How can we discard it and not use it? Didn't my younger brother also say that removing redundant branches and leaves is to make the main body taller? Senior brother, we are going to see the real deal with those people in the Jiangnan area."