Snapped!
Zhu Yuanzhang's hand holding the wine glass trembled.
The wine glass suddenly fell to the ground and shattered into pieces.
"What did you say? The Ming Dynasty must perish?"
He looked at Zhu Yunzhen with disbelief on his face.
Such words actually come from the mouth of a prince?
That is to say, the person in front of him is his favorite grandson, so he can sit here properly.
If it had been another person, I'm afraid Lao Zhu would have called the people around to push him out and kill him.
"Yes, if the vassal system is not changed, the Ming Dynasty will fall within three hundred years."
Zhu Yunzhen said again.
Lao Zhu took a deep breath and looked at him with very complicated eyes.
"Tell me, why?"
he asked in a deep voice.
After all, the weight of Zhu Yunzhen's grandson was different in his heart.
Although he is young, his talents and abilities are far beyond ordinary people.
What he does is often imaginary, but in the end it makes sense.
It's just far more sophisticated than ordinary methods.
Did he really see some serious disadvantages?
"The rules set by the Emperor's Grandpa are that every prince of the Ming Dynasty will receive 50,000 shi of rice, 25,000 guan of banknotes, 40 pieces of brocade, 300 pieces of silk, 100 pieces each of gauze, 500 pieces of silk, and each piece of winter and summer cloth. One thousand horses, two thousand taels of cotton, two thousand pounds of salt, one thousand pounds of tea, and fifty horses of fodder per month."
"Except for one of the prince's sons who succeeds as prince, the rest are all county princes."
"The county prince earns six thousand dan of rice and two thousand eight hundred guan of money every year."
Lao Zhu nodded slightly and said, "Yes, this is the rule we have set."
"Although the prince will not inherit the throne, he is of the emperor's lineage and should be given preferential treatment."
"Being an emperor is a hard job. It's not easy to worry about governing the country."
"Since ancient times, the joy of being a prince has been better than that of an emperor."
"This is also to allow them to feel at ease as princes, so that they will not fight for the throne of the emperor and lead to tragedy."
"Zhen'er mentioned this today, but is there any problem?"
Zhu Yunzhen said: "Yes, Grandpa Huang, there is a crisis of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty hidden in this system."
"For ordinary people, because they are born into poverty, their descendants may die from hunger and cold, or from disease, or worse, they may die because they are too poor to marry a wife."
"However, the wealthy and aristocratic families, princes and marquises, are pampered and have no worries about food and clothing. Although there are diseases, there are not many dead, but there are many living."
"Therefore, a poor family has many descendants and no descendants, but a wealthy family has many descendants and prosperous descendants."
"This is a principle that has never changed since ancient times."
Lao Zhu nodded again.
He came from a poor family.
The situation of our ancestors is very clear.
It is not easy for poor people to survive, so it would be good if they could continue their bloodline.
Many poor families cannot survive for more than a few generations before they have no descendants.
Those who can grow loose leaves are often from families whose ancestors were wealthy.
"As a prince and a county king, I live with my country and live a life without worries according to the treatment set by the emperor. In this way, I will naturally flourish a lot."
"Grandpa Huang has twenty-one sons alive today."
"The prince's salary, all added up, is no more than a million dan per year, and the money is no more than 500,000 guan. The rest are not much. With the Ming Dynasty's national power, there is no problem in supporting him."
"But if a generation of twenty years is calculated, every prince will have five or six children. Then there will be more than a hundred new princes in the future."
"The county prince's salary only totals 600,000 dan. The money is only over 200,000 guan."
"It's still not a problem."
"But whether it's a prince or a county king, they will continue to have children and grandchildren and spread their branches and leaves."
"In the next twenty years, more than a hundred county kings will produce five hundred descendants."
"In another twenty years, there will be 2,500 descendants."
"In another twenty years, there will be 12,500 descendants."
"In another twenty years, there will be 62,500 descendants."
…
Zhu Yunzhen said calmly.
Lao Zhu next to him had his eyes wide open, as if he had been struck by lightning.
This is a very simple algorithm, but he has never thought about it.
“One hundred and twenty years from now, there will be three hundred and twelve thousand five hundred people.”
"One hundred and forty years from now, there will be 1,562,500 people."
"One hundred and sixty years from now, there will be 7,812,500 people."
"One hundred and eighty years from now, there will be 39,062,500 people."
"Two hundred years from now, the number of royal family members will be as high as 195,312,500."
…
At this point, Lao Zhu was stagnant, and his breathing became heavier and heavier.
Anyone who heard such a huge astronomical figure knew how powerful it was.
Zhu Yunxuan continued: "By analogy, after three hundred years, the number of royal family members will..."
"Impossible, impossible." Lao Zhu interrupted: "Zhen'er, did you make a miscalculation somewhere?"
"Come here, bring me some pen and ink. We must make it clear."
Zhu Yunzhen smiled bitterly.
Lao Zhu still doesn't understand the terrifying power of exponential growth.
Right.
Although this is a very simple mathematical concept, for those who have never learned it, it goes against their own intuition.
People naturally tend to trust their intuition more.
Only in the face of rigorous calculations do we have to admit that our intuition is wrong.
certainly.
If you have received a certain amount of mathematics education, as soon as you hear the words exponential growth, you will immediately think of its power.
"Grandpa Huang, your grandson's calculation will never be wrong."
"However, this is indeed a very imprecise calculation, because there will still be deaths along the way."
"Maybe some princes and county kings will not have five or six descendants, and some will have more."
"This is just a rough model."
While he was speaking, the eunuch had already taken the pen and paper.
Lao Zhu picked up his pen and started counting again.
Soon, his face became increasingly ugly.
Although he has not received systematic mathematics education, simple arithmetic is still easy for Lao Zhu to do.
He has personally calculated the amount of money and grain in the Ministry of Revenue many times.
"It's not wrong, it's really not wrong! How could this happen...how could this happen?"
Lao Zhu looked at the calculation results on the paper and was not confident, but no matter how he calculated it, this was the answer.
He looked up at Zhu Yunzhen and murmured: "The Zhou Dynasty has eight hundred years of national destiny, and the Han Dynasty has five hundred years of luck. Why do the Zhou and Han Dynasties not have such problems?"
Zhu Yunzhen said: "Nowadays, all the people in the world are descendants of Yan and Huang, so they are also called descendants of Yan and Huang."
"Many people's genealogy records show that they had the same ancestor hundreds of years ago, but there are thousands or tens of thousands of descendants. Such examples abound, and Grandpa Huang should be aware of them."
"In a royal family, one is pampered and has many descendants, as it should be."
"Hundreds of years from now, the number of royal descendants will naturally be extremely large."
"The descendants of the Zhou Dynasty do not receive such high treatment as this dynasty, and the hereditary system is inheritance by demotion. Most of the numerous royal members became commoners after a few generations."
"The same was true in the Han Dynasty."
"Liu Xuande is the descendant of the Zhongshan County King. His ancestors are also in the lineage of the great ancestor Liu Bang, but by his generation, he was already a mat weaver and shoe seller."
"The descendants each pursue their own careers, and naturally there is no need to worry about family support."
"Only this dynasty, if we follow the national policy set by the emperor, in at least two to three hundred years, all the taxes of the imperial court will not be able to support so many royal family members, and we can only increase taxes three feet from the ground."
"The people of the world are overwhelmed and will rise up in rebellion, killing the descendants of the Zhu family and massacring the royal family members."
"The Ming Dynasty is dead!"
(End of chapter)
