Bi Ziyan's words were exactly what Zhu Youxiao thought at this time.

So, after hearing Bi Ziyan's speech, Zhu Youxiao sat upright and said, "My dear, please tell me in detail, why do you have this idea? And you want to come to Beijing and tell me personally?"

Zhu Youxiao said that, and walked down himself and took the memorial from Bi Ziyan.

Bi Ziyan said here: "Old ministers and some students of Lao ministers have investigated the consumption of the people over the years, and have planned a ten thousand words to make a memorial to make Your Majesty know your ministers and others' hearts."

"In the foolish opinion of the old minister, even in remote mountains and fields, there are prosperous towns and workshops. The sound of machines is constantly coming, and the people who run small-scale transactions are like crucian carp cars. Once the market is opened, the number of ships will cover the rivers, and the number of cars will also be congested. This is the good side of the Ming commodity economy! The people gradually have extra money, and therefore have the power to buy, so that towns far from the prefectures and counties can also prosper."

"Even many women and children have increased their incomes. The Qi family of Changsha County was only 22 years old and became a widow. Thirty years later, relying on glass painting techniques, accumulating more than 10,000 yuan in addition to daily use!

The Long family in Chengdu relied on the local silk reeling factory as a factory, accumulated 144 taels of silver and provided for his posthumous son to study. Now he is the prefect..."

"I have discovered that since Your Majesty ascended the throne, the people of the world have indeed been very rich. As the old minister found out, a landlord in Suzhou can earn a pound of meat, three spoons of wine, and two liters of rice. It can be seen that the wealth of the people is indeed better than that of the previous dynasty. It is not a problem to buy a broth every year and eat one meat every day.

However, the people of the world still suffer from hardships, because the trend of luxury and comparison has risen. This is all caused by the powerful and powerful families! It is also a bad side of the development of the commodity economy in the Ming Dynasty."

"First of all, it is necessary to expand the land and build a garden to build a family. This is OK. After all, it can be used for many years and can be passed on to descendants. What is not that marriage and funerals are extremely expensive. The bride price must be charged a lot of money, and the funeral must be buried with a lot of money to find a famous wood to make a coffin!

In addition, if you don’t know how to be frugal when having a banquet, you can spend as little as thousands or as tens of thousands. In terms of clothing, you like the new and dislike the old and despise the simplicity and luxury. Because there is no longer any ritual and law constraints, men and women wear clothes, and they are overwhelmed by the yellow and red colors, and even carve dragons and phoenixes, which makes it difficult to distinguish between high and low prices. Even if you wear precious clothes such as sable hair, peacock fur, fur, and velvet, you will be abandoned every day!

However, this is second. The more serious one is the fee for seeking official recommendations for the imperial examination. If you want to enter the prefecture, you will spend at least a hundred gold coins. If you are a juren, you will get a few thousand gold coins. The literati gatherings and banquets cost you more than the people for several years!

There is also a trend of visiting prostitutes and raising them to promote excellence. Even in order to raise a prostitute, one must spend ten thousand yuan to buy a house and redeem it for ten thousand yuan. In addition, wealthy people in the world like to collect antiques in calligraphy, paintings and antiques. In order to collect something, they will spend thousands of yuan to spend money."

"If the middle-class family is sealed, they will eventually lose their fortunes and ruin the foundation of their ancestors. In order to maintain this extravagant life, the wealthy families will levy their taxes, plunder them, increase their land rents privately, and collude with the government to establish names, and even issue usury loans to force others to destroy others. What's more, they secretly form first-class powerful people, control the government of a government or even a province, steal and sell official property, and embezzle the treasury silver."

"Therefore, this extravagant trend has led to the increase in wealth of the people, but they are still suffering from exploitation, and the remaining wealth has not increased significantly. Their consumption is still based on the means of living within their means and frugal restraint, which prevents the manufacturing workshops from expanding in scale, and even gradually becomes unsupported;

In order to seek extravagance, wealthy families must pay a lot of money to buy pure handicrafts for their daily use and despise industrial products, which makes craftsmen with exquisite skills still be obsessed with completing some extravagant and exquisite handicrafts alone, but lack the power to transfer the handicrafts in their hands into factory production, from luxury goods to popular goods, giving industrial products more power.

The old minister finally discovered that the wealth given to the Ming Dynasty has been concentrated in non-producers, and the increase in the wealth of the people who are truly producers is not as high as the wealth of those who do not work in the world.

For ministers, if the increase in wealth does not mostly concentrate on the hands of producers, but does not serve the hands of producers, it will not only not help the long-term stability of the country, but will instead cause the country to decline earlier!

Because if this continues, there will inevitably be more people who are lazy and hate labor!

Nowadays, the population has surged, and the number of new people, although they have no land and no property, are unwilling to enter the workshop to work. They would rather commit themselves to a wealthy family as slaves and servants, or even do things to promote excellence, which can prove the harm brought by this phenomenon.

Therefore, Your Majesty, the old minister dared to say frankly that the court would stop this and increase the wealth of the empire to the hands of those who work hard to produce, and not to the hands of those who do not do anything to produce!

As far as I know, in the Jiangnan area, a famous prostitute who is good at playing and singing can earn tens of thousands of gold a day, while a virtuous woman who is good at managing her family can earn only tens of gold a year. This phenomenon cannot be ignored by the court! Otherwise, the world will die because of this!"

Zhu Youxiao threw Chen Que's experience to him: "Some people mentioned this. What I just said is right. The consumption level of the people was suppressed, and the consumption of wealthy families was not suppressed. Instead, it hindered the development of productivity and made the country retreat.

Zhu Youxiao said and looked at Liu Hongxun: "It was right for Liu Aiqing to restrict the literati and officials from taking concubines and even rebuild morality."

Liu Hongxun said: "Your Majesty, the old minister now feels that what he did in the past is not enough. Now, if you want to curb this extravagant trend and to make the world more profits more labored, you must be stricter on the scholars and officials, and there must be regulations on public expenses, and morality and style must also be required!"

"Very good!"

Zhu Youxiao nodded and asked, "Your dear friends have other good plans to make the world's growing wealth more reflected in producers, so that the world can truly know that the workers are glorious! Instead of the Han people willing to fall into depravity, refuse to serve the people, but are willing to be a wealthy family!"

After listening to Bi Ziyan's explanation and with his current experience, he couldn't help but discover that although the economy developed highly during the Longwan period in history, the Ming Dynasty failed to undergo capitalist transformation. It turned out that there was a problem with the consumption model brought about by economic development.

The wealth added after economic development has been fully reached by the landlords and bureaucrats, and has become the capital for these people to squander. Instead, the lives of the people are getting harder and harder, so large factories cannot be opened because the landlords and bureaucrats do not need cheap industrial products and expensive luxury handicrafts, which has led to the failure of economic transformation.

This forced Zhu Youxiao to start thinking about how to avoid this phenomenon in the Ming Dynasty.

Obviously, it is not possible to just copy the Western model. Even if the Ming Dynasty can prosper for a long time due to global colonial plunder, if you don’t pay attention, the Ming Dynasty will inevitably decline in the future.

Moreover, history has proved that the great powers that rose to the West will rapidly decline after their strength due to the free development of capital.

If the Ming Dynasty wants to prosper for a long time, it will have to take its own path.

And what path to go?

This is the answer Zhu Youxiao needs to find now.

"Your Majesty, the old minister has thought about this matter. The old minister believes that the court should control the free development of the commodity economy at present and appropriately control it. The court should have the power of control. The court should still make huge profits in the world. The court should implement the strategy of officials advancing and retreating. Most private merchants who run factories only know how to exploit workers, so that although the workers are hard-working but not rich, can only promote the official industry at present. If Your Majesty used to establish official industries in Tianjin to support hundreds of thousands of refugees, and then divide the profits of the official business to workers, and even share the shares with workers, so that workers can hold shares, then the workers will have to work hard and gain!"
Chapter completed!