"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: "Recently, I have realized something. I often heard a saying in my early years, which is: 'No morality is higher than caring for the people, and no conduct is lower than harming the people.' Therefore, Dong Zhongshu once said : 'A family that receives a salary will only eat the salary, and will not compete with the people for the industry, and then the profits will be distributed evenly, and the people will be able to 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, I beg you to be honest, you don't agree with this. 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 common people. From ancient times to the present, "not competing with the people for profit" has been the most basic governing concept. It is called "this principle of heaven and 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 Gongyixiu became the prime minister of Lu, he stipulated that all officials were not allowed to operate industries or compete with the people for profit. 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.
As recorded in "Book of the Sui Dynasty", due to the insufficient expenses required by officials at that time, the central government and local governments set up public funds for money lending, "with interest." Su Xiaoci, then Minister of Industry, believed that this was a competition between the government and the people for profit and was "not the way to promote prosperity", so he "asked me to dismiss him, and asked the ministers to give me different jobs and fields".
"Zi Zhi Tong Jian" also said that during Wu Zetian's Chui Gong period, Pei Gong, the supervisor of Shang Fang who managed the Royal West Garden, suggested selling uneaten fruits and vegetables in the market "in order to collect profits." Su Liangsi, who was the prime minister at the time, categorically stopped: "In the past, Gongyi Xianglu was still able to pull sunflowers and weave them. I have never heard of the master of ten thousand chariots, who was 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 uneaten fruits and vegetables. However, from Gong Yixiu, Su Xiaoci to Su Liangsi, why did everyone get so angry that "little people" What about "Masterpiece"?
The reason is simple and the implications are profound. On the surface, this will cause certain impact and harm to people's livelihood. But the deeper danger is that they believe that once this hole is opened, it will only open wider in the future, and more and more people will follow and follow suit.
Moreover, in ancient society, the government and officials held power in their hands. They used such public power to "compete for profits" with the "unarmed" people, and the stronger and the weaker were determined. If things continue like this, under the influence of the weak and the strong, the people may not be able to make a living, and ultimately, there will be numerous evils that are difficult to recover from.
What's 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, "Brahma Lu Cong Lu" records that during the Tatar Qing Dynasty, under the banner of "Lao Buddha", a eunuch went to Kaifeng to collect charcoal for the palace for the winter, 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 the old Buddha 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 discuss." As a result, the county magistrate was knocked off more than a thousand taels of silver. From the meaning expressed in this story, "pulling sunflowers to weave" and "stopping work and collecting money" are all measures to prepare for a rainy day, with the purpose of nipping disasters in the bud.
"The world is vast, Li Yuan is the first." Sima Qian divided the economic policies of governing the country into five levels 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 Fight with it.”
Why is "competing with the people" considered the lowest form of economic policy? This is because "government thrives when it obeys the people's will, and government 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 miss the main road." Competing for profits with the people is tantamount to fishing from the lake, which is the greatest disobedience and harm to the people's hearts and minds. What is gained is interests, but what is lost is the people's support. "If you win the crowd, you will gain the country; if you lose the crowd, you will lose the country." The metaphor of the boat and water by Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty and the principle of rise and fall cannot help but be alarming.
After Gao pragmatically explained this to Wu Dui, Wu Dui looked a little doubtful. He hesitated for a moment and said in deep thought: "Qiuzhen, if you and I are doing these logistics businesses, we are also competing for profits from the people, so we should stop. ?
If this is the case, then if you transfer this business to the imperial court, wouldn't you still be competing for profits with the people? It's just that you and I have replaced the people who are striving for profits for the court - but the court is ultimately the emperor. Isn't it a bigger bad thing for the emperor to compete for profits with the people?
"Mencius" said: "Why should the king say profit?" There is only benevolence and righteousness. "The Treatise on Salt and Iron" says: "Therefore the emperor did not say much, the princes did not say anything about the benefits, and the officials did not say anything about the loss." 'If you, I and all the officials can't do this 'striving 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? That is, 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.
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 is actually true. If the emperor does not compete with the people for profit, and always keeps benevolence and justice in his heart, then the world will live well because of this. But the problem is that this sentence reached the Ming Dynasty. Because of the difference in understanding of one word, the Ming Dynasty civil servants who were full of benevolence and righteousness personally destroyed 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 crime in the wealthy family." .”
What's the meaning? 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 everything to your advantage.
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 rock in the officialdom. Even if he is dismissed from office occasionally, someone will recommend him again 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 precisely because of this, the more powerful officials are in office, the more eager they are to make money, because the more they invest financial resources in the education of their descendants, 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. .
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 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 human character, wood is an obstacle, so "Hugh" stops moving; if you add a word word to the right of the human character, that is the person who carries the message, which is "xin", the oral message. letter.
Therefore, people are free and have the ability to decide their own actions.
This is not the case for Min. In the oracle bone inscriptions, Min first draws an eye, and then the whole is derived from the eye. Guo Moruo made a famous conclusion that "the people" have "eyes that are barbed and barbed. If one of them is blinded, they are slaves. Therefore, 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, the people who dare not look straight refer to the rulers, or the ruling class.
So from this we can conclude that the status of "people" is higher than that of "people".
This is not just a casual comment. If you look at the common phrases, 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. This is in extremely sharp contrast with the naming style after the Red Dynasty.
But some people may also ask, how to explain "Li Shimin"? Although he was not the King of Qin when he was named, let alone the Emperor, the Li family in Longxi was also a powerful family member at the Bazhu Kingdom level at that time. Why was the word "民" included in the name of a son from a noble family?
That's because Li Shimin's "people of the world" is by no means "serving the people from generation to generation". Its original meaning is "to help the people by managing the world" - benefiting the people, what is economics? 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, and all "people"; "people" in the narrow sense refers to the "nobles" of the "scholar" and above classes as opposed to "people". "People" refers to ordinary people except "people" in the narrow sense.
In ancient Chinese, the word "teaching" comes from "language" and is related to "speech", while "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 Confucius advocated "teaching people tirelessly" when it comes to "people", and Confucius advocated "not being able to understand them" when it comes to "people". It can be seen that the structures of "teaching people" and "teaching people" in The Analects are distinct, and Confucius never confused the two.
By the Ming Dynasty, because the civil servants had firmly controlled the social discourse and used various people-oriented ideas to limit and constrain the imperial power, they also had changes in their attitudes towards the ownership of the "people", and sometimes even some 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 those who are 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 land taxes have always been paid by all dynasties, there is historical inertia, and the Donglin Party itself does not need to pay land taxes, and even if it does, it will be very small, so of course there is no problem. If you tell the Donglin Party that from now on the government and the gentry will receive food 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 Practical School an interest group?
Obviously it is impossible, and the Practical School itself cannot escape the trap of interest groups. If there is any difference, it is that the real school headed by Gao Gong was to a large extent "royalist" in nature, and its interests were basically attached to the imperial power in the early days.
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 want to maximize their profits, there is a ready-made way. As long as they get on this big ship, their interests can be guaranteed - this big ship is Jinghua.
Relying on the magical power of high pragmatism, which turns stone into gold, officials of 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 pragmatically 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 truth with those people in the Jiangnan area."
