Qiming 1158

Chapter 1601 Inaction and Action

Su Yonglin didn't want to bring state affairs home.

It is not a good thing for family life to have no boundaries between home and country.

Zhao Xirui's understanding also made Su Yonglin feel relieved, and it also made Su Yonglin make up his mind to have a little talk with those people, and let them know what they should do when the country's new policy is about to be fully rolled out.

It is very difficult to train a shrewd and capable high-ranking official. Whether it is an army general or an administrative official, who can ascend to a high position under him, all of them are experienced and very capable, and they are the wealth of this country.

Su Yonglin didn't want to attack them unless it was a last resort. He didn't want to send the excellent senior cadres that he had trained so hard to send to Sakhalin to repair the house and repair the port. That would be a waste.

As long as they can still do things, as long as they don't commit crimes, Su Yonglin doesn't want to take the last step.

Unless they seek their own death, they have completely gone their own way, and they have completely come to the opposite side of the people, then there is nothing to say and they must be won.

Su Yonglin's ideal society is a society without exploitation and oppression, but it is a society in which the laws are clear and well-behaved. From top to bottom, everyone acts in accordance with the law.

This law is not strict, and more aspects of the norm are to create a good environment for people's livelihood in the use of public power, without excessively interfering with people's livelihood.

This is actually very difficult.

Rules are not a derogatory term. Rules mean stability, and stability means the stable continuation of people's livelihoods.

He actually admired Cao Can, the Han Prime Minister.

He believes that the word Xiao Gui and Cao Sui should actually be neutral, and should not become a derogatory word in daily life, and end up with the same treatment as sticking to the rules.

Cao Can was born in a military commander, and he was an expert in fighting, but he was not very good at building a country in peacetime.

After the founding of the Han Dynasty, Liu Bang did not know what the wind was, and asked Cao Can, who had a great military exploits, to help his eldest son Liu Fei govern the state of Qi and became the prime minister of the state of Qi.

Cao Can had no grievances, but he didn't know anything about governing the country. Facing a series of messes in Qi, he was dumbfounded.

At this time, Cao Can's advantages as a professional from a professional soldier came into play.

Professionals in the industry with higher industry barriers often have a better habit, that is, they especially respect the opinions of professionals.

As an excellent military general, Cao Can knows the principle of interlocking, and also knows that he is unprofessional in governing the country, which will lead to bad things, and he will be killed if he fails. His strong anxiety and professional awareness make him hire a professional Gai Gong for him with a high salary. Staff to govern the country.

Gaigong, a professional hired by him with a high salary, took people's money and eliminated disasters, and told him that governing the country is very simple, as long as you act in accordance with the laws formulated by the country, and provide a safe and stable environment for the common people. , and nothing else.

The essence of governing the country is that the government must not be too happy, pursue political achievements, and interfere too much in the people's affairs, just let it go.

This approach has been criticized for a long time, and it is considered to be a wrong approach without progress.

It is true that Su Yonglin himself admitted that this approach is problematic, but the real core of this theory of handling affairs is not doing nothing, but [acting according to the law].

For disadvantaged groups, doing this is almost equal to a vocation, and there is no difficulty.

But for those in power, this is precisely the hardest thing to do.

And Cao Can did it. He not only did it himself, but also led a group of officials under his command to do it together. He governed the state of Qi in this way. After nine years, the state of Qi became very prosperous, the economy was also very good, and it developed very well.

After that, Xiao He passed away, and Emperor Hui Liu Yingsui transferred Cao Can, who had made great achievements in governing the state of Qi, to the central government. Facing new challenges, Cao Can's actions after taking office were surprising.

He fully understood the group of officials under his command, and then dismissed almost all the efficient, eloquent, and ambitious officials, promoted a group of honest officials who only knew how to follow the steps and act according to the rules, and told them to act according to the rules, Do not overstep.

After that, he was completely relieved, drinking and eating meat and listening to ditty songs all day long, and his life flew by.

When Emperor Hui learned that, he was very angry, so he came over quickly to ask the teacher to ask the guilt, and asked Cao Can why he did things like this, and whether it was worthy of his trust.

The story that happened after this is the allusion of the famous Xiao Gui and Cao Sui.

Of course, Cao Can is not a fool or a slacker. He is just a very disciplined and professional professional, and he has a good political mind.

Not to mention that the sharp contradictions in the central Han Dynasty during the reign of Empress Lv could not tolerate a sharp-edged prime minister who could make a difference. As long as Xiao He has set down a strategy for governing the country that has proven to be effective, as long as it is implemented, it will surely bring the people to recuperation and the country. rich.

Cao Can is even more clear that the Han state, which had just established the state at that time, experienced the war at the end of the Qin Dynasty and Liu Bang's crusade against the vassal states. , for the Han state, the result would be disastrous.

After Cao Can's study, he has a very good understanding of the group of bureaucrats created by the convection official system.

The so-called term of office is for the benefit of one party, whether it is for one's own political achievements or the lives of the common people, everything that should be done must be done - otherwise, how can you be promoted based on your political achievements?
Boil seniority?Waiting for a white head?

No, we must take the initiative to attack, and we must solve the difficulties when we have difficulties.

Bureaucrats have been like this since ancient times.

You don't have any difficulties, how can I get a political promotion?

The ancient court also held annual meetings, financial meetings, military meetings, etc. At the beginning of the year, the things to be done in the year would be regulated, and the amount of money would be prepared. If the budget was strictly implemented, the finances would never be Something went wrong.

Of course this is not possible.

It was because of this insight that Cao Can restrained his personal desire to "strengthen his power" and show his power. Empress Lv's suppression also passed his three-year term as prime minister safely and died in office.

Later, the folks called Cao Can, who drank meat and listened to ditty songs all day, as a virtuous prime minister.

The behavior of several generations of prime ministers in the early Han Dynasty was called rule by inaction, which accumulated a strong foundation of national power for the Han state.

In the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, in order to fight back against the Xiongnu, and thus [change from inaction to action], in order to unify people politically, and to conform to the trend of dismissing the Confucianism of a hundred schools of thought, the practice of inaction and governance in the early decades of the Han Dynasty was condemned. Denied to some extent.

However, in Su Yonglin's view, there is no way of governing that can be called governance by inaction, and it is impossible to govern a country with real inaction.

The so-called wuwei is essentially the gathering of a large group of capable people in the early days of the dynasty to formulate perfect laws, and to act according to the rules after the eradication of the previous generation’s bad government. form of organization.

During the period of peaceful construction, the advantages of this low-loss model are obvious, but during the period of total war, this low-loss organizational form cannot adapt to the high-intensity total war.

Think about it and understand that once human society has formed an organization, where can there be so-called inaction?
The people's sense of inaction and inaction proves the success of the government's governance.

The government has set up a set of rules, and I have entered it myself. Everyone works together according to the rules, not detaching, not messing, and not breaking the rules. After a long time, the initial good will become the physical inaction of the people at the bottom.

If you want to do great things, you need to be ambitious.

If you want to govern a country well, accumulate national strength, get the recognition of the people, reduce the cost of governance, restore people's livelihood and the population lost due to war, you need to "govern by inaction".

Although the times have changed and the stars have shifted, the inaction-governance advocated by Huang-Laozhi in the early Han Dynasty can no longer adapt to the current state of productivity. Forcibly returning to the past, like Wang Mang, it is a large-scale social experiment that is doomed to fail.

But its essence is not outdated.

That is, everyone obeys the rules, whether official or private.

It is not difficult for the people to abide by the rules, but it is difficult for the official to abide by the rules, because the rules themselves are also formulated by the government.

This is the essence of inaction.

Cao Can did not have the prestige of Liu Bang, nor the genius of Xiao He, so he drove out the unstable elements who liked to do things and wanted to get promoted and rich every day from his ruling team, and replaced a group of honest people who only knew how to follow the rules to help him implement Xiao He. The rules and regulations left behind.

Official compliance with the rules means no tossing, less infringement of civil interests, lower administrative and judicial costs, and social harmony and economic prosperity.

Of course, no matter for the Western Han Dynasty or for Daming, Cao Can's approach can only have a positive effect within a certain period of time. When it is the turn of the reform period, this mechanism must be changed.

But the problem is that this switch is almost irreversible for ancient dynasties.

Once the ancient court ended this state of inaction for some reason, it was almost impossible to switch back after the major events that needed to be dealt with intentionally. The next rule of inaction must be the next one. a dynasty.

Because after a promising revolution exhausted the people's strength, the bureaucrats broke the rules and did not give the people the next chance to rest, and they continued to be so promising.

In the agricultural era, the accumulation of people’s power was not fast enough or not enough to withstand the repeated “promising” in the form of political achievements by the bureaucrats. The peasants would go bankrupt and the empire would go to ruin.

Up to now, Su Yonglin no longer expects the country he built to remain hot even after his death, but he can't allow the country to degenerate.

So he decided to establish three sets of mechanisms for the Ming Kingdom, and set up three sets of rules under the three mechanisms.

The first set of mechanisms is for peace-building periods, the second is for local wars, and the third is for total wars.

He wants to complete these three sets of mechanisms while he is still alive, and make them into three sets of rules for the implementation of the Ming Kingdom.

What happens in Daming in the future can be distinguished according to three situations, and it is enough to decide which set of mechanisms to activate.

From what Su Yonglin knew, it was relatively easy to change from inaction to action, but it was quite difficult to switch from action back to inaction.

the reason is simple.

In the state of inaction, the official abides by the rules and cannot do whatever they want, the people rely on the rules, and the countermeasures are stronger, and the government needs more concessions to the people, so it is more difficult to be an official.

In short, officials who want to be promoted, achieve political achievements, and gain fame will not be very comfortable during periods of inaction.

In the state of action, due to various needs, the rules of the state of inaction are broken, the official force begins to freeze the previous rules, the tentacles of power penetrate into all aspects of society, and the power suddenly increases, which is convenient for general mobilization.

The human, material and financial resources mobilized under such circumstances were quite terrifying, and Emperor Wu of the Han mobilized the entire Han Dynasty to launch an unprecedented and violent strategic attack on the Xiongnu.

However, this is not without cost.

(End of this chapter)