Chapter 193 The villain (1)
After coming out of Tang Feng's office, Wang Qibu went straight to the parking place. After getting on the bus, oh no, in fact, he already knew what the three goods in the car were doing before getting on the bus. Even if Wang Qibu was not better than ordinary people's hearing, Shen Qingge's penetration ability of "Why don't you want it? If you don't want it, I'll want it" was really stronger.
"What's the battle situation?" After getting in the car, Wang Qibu came over and asked.
"Shen Qingge lost and has been clamoring to make a comeback." Wei Ni said, and this situation was expected by Wang Qibu before. So it didn't seem very surprising.
"Do you have something to do?" Shen Qingge looked up at Wang Qibu. Then he continued to stare at the cards in his hand. Wang Qibu could only shake his head and smile bitterly, saying, "Yes, but there is no hurry. He just wants to see the land and meet with several real estate owners. You can continue and think about where to eat lunch."
So when Wang Qibu and his party returned to the city again, it was lunch time. After having a sky-high working meal at the booked restaurant, Wang Qibu pointed to a large area outside and said, "It's that piece of land."
"Damn, do you know how big the place you just competed? One tenth of the area?" Shen Qingge was shocked at the time. It was too unrigorous to condemn Wang Qibu.
"Uh, it's not as exaggerated as one tenth of the area, but there is always an area of one twenty. To be honest, I'm pretty good at this place, and I'm going to buy it and build a cutting-edge block. It brings together some of the best things in this country, some expensive stores, etc. Of course, the threshold here will definitely be very high after the completion and closing." Wang Qibu sipped the hot tea ceremony. Are you interested in listening to the concept of boutique business? Well, since you have already said this, I don't consider your feelings. People always have times when they don't vomit, I think you can understand it. First of all, even Yanjing is not much different from the village in the eyes of people in some countries and regions.
There is no urban area, no real city. The concept of this city never sleeps is very broad. I know that for us, we can go out for bare-haired barbecue at midnight. Breakfast will be released at 3:30. But for girls? How many shops in Yanjing are open for 24 hours? Or more pure nightclubs? Although there are no statistics, I think there should be no one at this stage. So, this is not enough. In my opinion, it is urgent to develop a boutique block in Yanjing. If there is no development, people will laugh at us. If one day black people living in Queens, New York come to laugh at us, then I really have no face to meet people."
"Uh, didn't you say you just wanted a building? Why did it become a high-quality block today? Besides, what a huge amount of capital flow this has to do? Have you ever thought about it?" Yue Xiaochen frowned. Wang Qibu's various fanaticisms really test the nerves of the people around him.
"I used to think that I was really a little stingy to build a building. It happened that the New York Mafia had called me this morning and wanted to do a money laundering transaction. They asked me how much I could help with washing, so I asked them how much I wanted to wash. The guy bragged to me and said that I could wash as much as I could. I thought about it and said that I would wash 30 billion US dollars, and the other side of the phone started to swear. In the end, they said that only one needs to wash is 1.5 billion. After washing, they were willing to pay 25% of us. I said this just to show that we are investing money every day, so for a long time to come, thinking about how to spend money is likely to be our task." Wang Qibu said. His tone was so serious, but he was just so worthy of beating.
"Hey, isn't it just spending money? Wang Qibu, don't worry, this matter is covered by me. We can push every house in our village, build a villa, complete the appliances, and give a car. Build a park for our village, rebuild the school, and build a similar one to the noble primary school in Yanjing. Then build a nursing home. Then repair my master's broken Taoist temple, completely referring to the main hall of Shaolin Temple." When he said that he spent money, Yue Xiaochen started to talk. In fact, these are things that Wang Qibu would definitely go back to do as long as he took the money.
"If you go back when you have time, you can start. I will let someone know the work of the local government. No one dares to play with you. In the end, even if your master is alive, you will be angry to death sooner or later. You yourself say that your master is a Taoist priest, and that place is a Taoist temple. If you follow the Main Hall, you will be punished by God. However, repairs are also necessary." Wang Qibu said. Obviously, he accepted Shen Qingge's spending plan except for complaints. As he said himself, he really has to treat thinking about how to spend money as a job. This matter is fantastic, but in fact, Wang Qibu feels that he must be the first person to think about similar problems under the new economic form.
The economy in the 1990s was actually the most reflective of the characteristics of the times and had typical properties. In fact, when economics or any social science is applied to a specific society, it will always lead to the problem of "practice" form. The phenomenological criticism of the positivist attitude of pure science is that on the one hand it reveals the sociological connection between cognition and interest that Habermas once emphasized, thus drawing a reasonable boundary for the discourse power of economics; on the other hand, it uses criticism.
Practical rationality of judgment provides a basis for reflection for economics, and only economic science that has the ability to reflect within its own scope is the "pure" science discussed by Hegel's criticism of Kant. In contemporary China's reflection on the practice of economics led to the political economy of China's reform and the political-economic problems faced by China's reform. These political-economic problems posed serious challenges to China's liberal economics, and the response of liberal economics to this challenge also largely determines the fate of Chinese liberalism.
The "South China Model" that was first affirmed and promoted by the elderly in the early 1990s became the basic model of Chinese economic development throughout the 1990s. No matter how many different versions of this model are, compared with the incentive mechanism of traditional state-owned enterprises, its institutional economic characteristics are very clear, that is, the protection of "separated property rights". Hayek made a full discussion of how this property rights form fundamentally improved the economic and political rights of most citizens. According to his understanding, this property rights form and developed around it.
The complete set of support systems that have been established should not be misunderstood and followed its special history of Western society, and was named "private ownership" or "capitalist system", but should be called "the extended order of human cooperation". The rapid increase in the per capita income level and real living standards in the entire 1990s was essentially the result of the continuous expansion of this cooperation order. As the scope of cooperation expanded in human resources, division of labor and specialization were deepened, and ultimately produced huge economic benefits of scale, manifested as the growth of labor productivity and national wealth.
If the technical conditions of production are the same, then the institutional arrangements described by the family or the curve group on the left have the highest agent productivity. However, the technical conditions of production that the family economy can accommodate lack economic benefits in scale, and economic benefits are the fundamental reason for the order of "human cooperation" to expand outward from the family. Although state-owned enterprises use the technical conditions for large-scale operations, the supervision cost under their institutional arrangements is too high, so that they even completely offset the benefits of economic benefits in scale. The pros and cons of these two extreme institutional arrangements highlight why township enterprises or the "South China Model" can become almost the only effective driving mechanism for China's economic development in the 1990s.
The reason why township enterprises have low supervision costs is not only because they can provide support through local ties and blood ties, but also because they mainly implement a system to protect the "profit rights" of corporate supervisors. Township enterprises have a relatively clear goal of pursuing wealth growth rates, so the protection of agent profit rights provided by township local governments has led to the behavior of maximizing corporate profits.
The above analysis also shows that the problem that the "South China Model" needs to be further solved is how to achieve "industrial upgrading", that is, how to develop and replace the large-scale economic technical conditions that state-owned enterprises have. The solution to this problem is closely related to the innovation of investment mechanisms and the development of the capital market.
What is the "profit right" of an agent? The "profit" defined for economic efficiency is that Xiong Bitter calls the profit or "value surplus" of innovation. In the view of Knight of the Austrian and Chicago School, entrepreneurial innovation behavior is the only source of national wealth growth. Therefore, Hayek believes that a society's ability to develop its economy depends ultimately on whether the society protects the "profit right" of entrepreneurs, whether "encourage all individuals to innovate in all possible directions", and whether the innovator's profit right is implemented as the core clause of the Constitution. Economic freedom is the basis of other freedoms, and the innovator's profit right has thus become one of the most important principles in Hayek's "principle of free order".
The principle of efficiency is in the "South China Model" and almost mainly through such an economic growth model, which conflicts with the "Principle of Fairness" throughout the 1990s and late 1980s. This concept based on the "economic growth is the best prescription for treating all social problems", namely, "South Korea's growth model", is the reason why mainstream economists almost generally ignore the fair problems that arise under this model.
We must admit that in the Chinese society in the 1980s and 1990s, and in the entire 20th century, development is always better than stagnation, and "development" has always been forced to the Chinese people. Therefore, we must find the legitimacy basis for the "right to profit" for innovators, and we must propose and solve the "political economy" problem of China's economic development.
The relationship between labor and capital is a classic and core issue in political economy. Engels once expressed Marx's view that the key to understanding capitalist production relations lies in understanding the axis relationship of "labor-capital". The transformation of the traditional socialist system toward the market system has encountered ideological crises caused by the reconstruction of this axis relationship in the Soviet and Eastern countries, and ideological pressure in turn inhibits the development of the market system.
"Capital employment labor" is actually not a general economic relationship between capital and labor. In many cases, there is an efficient economic system of "labor employment capital". For example, United Airlines, as long as "labor" is no longer labor in the sense of classical political economy, but intellectually intensive labor of human capital. It is only in the stage of large-scale industrialization, that is, the development stage in which China is currently in, division of labor and specialization have to adopt a highly alienated way of labor - large machine production treats people as parts of the production process. With the accumulation of capital wealth and the increase in labor productivity, the market will be gradually scarce. The dynamic induces the development of "capital-intensive" production technology, thereby liberating labor itself. As Marx said, the market contains huge liberation power. It was precisely because of this liberation power that Habermas turned to revise Marx's "state theory". The liberation of labor, like the legitimacy of "profit rights", is a historical process. The intellectuals of the Chinese New Left seem to not intend to recognize this historical process, so there is a social plan that attempts to step through the "Great Wall" of economic development represented by "second ideological liberation", "new evolution theory", "post-Fordist mode of production", etc.
As for the current Chinese society, the most important legitimacy basis of the government in the transition period still lies in the development of the economy and allowing most members of society to share the benefits of economic development. This was clearly reflected in the historical events of China from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. However, just being content with economic development and sharing the results of development through income redistribution relatively equitable means cannot guarantee that the government in the transition period establishes its legitimacy. Because the long-term and stable economic development requires a stable "social middle layer", or It is called the "middle class". This class is the carrier of "human capital" economically. They share the benefits of economic development most directly, thus becoming the main supporters and promoters of economic development. Politically, this class is enough to reconcile ideological conflicts between the top-level powerful groups and the bottom-level marginal groups, so as to propose and maintain "social justice" that all parties may accept and establish channels of rational dialogue, rather than splitting society into a state of war of "whose justice? What kind of rationality?"
Recently, research by several domestic sociologists tells us that the powerful groups in the old system are forming a huge "capital power" relationship through power rent-seeking activities under the new system, or in the terms of researchers, it is called "total capital". Due to the formation of this capital power relationship, according to the observations of these researchers, the "social middle class" that had just begun to grow is being disintegrated into a vassal group that is attached to the capital power relationship, or has become one of the social marginal groups. The phenomenon shows how fragile the market economy lacking a proper moral foundation is, and how easily it can transform into a decadent bureaucratic monopoly economic activity. At the beginning of this year, a joint seminar between senior economists and sociologists with liberal stances hosted by a publication in the financial industry in Yanjing focused on this phenomenon and its possible serious consequences. In China, "controlling capital" should be given a new meaning in contemporary political economy and should become a support point for liberal economic policies.
Due to the core position of liberal economics in China's reform concept, the criticism of China's liberal economics by new left intellectuals, and the political economic problems faced by China's economic development have inevitably led to the dilemma and way out of Chinese liberalism. I briefly discuss this issue in the next section to think the conclusion of this article.
Thanks to the dialogue between domestic liberal intellectuals and "new left" intellectuals in the late 1990s, we realize that liberalism is in a double dilemma in China. On the one hand, China is a society that is transforming from a traditional socialist public ownership to a market society. In the "constitutional spirit" of such a society, it still lacks respect for profit rights. Moreover, due to the unprotected profit rights, the innovation ability of the entire economy is destroyed, which accordingly encourages the ability and ** behavior of power rent-seeking. Therefore, Chinese liberals advocate and adhere to the "classical liberal" position of Scottish Enlightenment tradition. This position regards "property rights" - the broad property rights defined by Locke, namely life rights, basic freedom rights, and property rights - as the most fundamental guarantee of personal freedom, personal freedom as the highest value, and the free market as the most valuable institutional heritage of civilization evolution. On the one hand, China's "market society" is a market society that lacks a self-critical spirit. It is very easy to collude capital and power, thereby corroding the moral foundation of the market economy. Therefore, Chinese liberals must adhere to the alienation and critical attitude of mainstream ideology and power relations, and adhere to the "enlightenment" explained by Foucault - a critical attitude of eternal power. In this way, liberalism in China must fight against the slavery of the old system on the one hand, and on the other hand, criticize the alienation of labor by the new system. Due to this double task, the differences and conflicts between Western classical liberalism and Western contemporary liberalism have become particularly complex in "Chinese liberalism", and it seems meaningless to classify Chinese liberalism according to the history of Western liberalism. Also, due to the double conflict and dilemma of liberalism in China, I call it "Chinese liberalism".
Chapter completed!