Riding and Slashing

Chapter 135
There are already [-] more old people in the territory, which Roland brought back from Seren Meath Village.

Ansen has also led the team back, but what he brings back are basically the proletarian poor who heard that Mai Xiang's taxes are low and came to join him. They are basically young and strong, and there are about 100 people.

The Three Prophets did not harm other villages. On the contrary, the super high taxes of those unscrupulous nobles harmed many common people—for example, some knights of Erminide were able to collect [-]% of the grain tax!

Mai Xiangling, who only charges [-]% of the tax, is completely heaven in their eyes.If it weren't for the good weather this year, probably more people would come here.

Merchants are no longer in the human business. Due to the existence of transportation companies, many businessmen have discovered new foreign trade opportunities and have started to travel long distances with the transportation team. The cost is greater than they imagined.

So Li Ang also stopped the policy of purchasing people and changed it to propaganda.

It will take some time for the transportation company to fully gain the approval of all merchants, but most merchants are already following the transportation team, which can be regarded as taking advantage of the transportation team's protection along the way.

This is actually a good thing. As long as the merchants follow up a few times and confirm that the transport team will not turn into robbers, they will start to consider the cost issue and gradually stop supporting the team.

In fact, there are already a small number of businessmen who have sold their carriages and drivers to Changhe Express.

Overall development seems to be going well.

Now there are 1000 or [-] people in Mai Xiangling, and they are reclaiming wasteland.

The lord is really not good at farming this kind of thing - he has never planted land, let alone the land of the Middle Ages...

However, not knowing how to farm does not mean that you will not be able to engage in agriculture.

As long as agricultural production is turned into business logic, the lord can still do it!
People in Pendor Continent sometimes misunderstand various production capacities just like modern people, and often make some weird comparisons.

For example, in two counties, one of them has an average yield of [-] pounds per mu, and the other has an average yield of [-] pounds per mu. Everyone will think that the former is too weak, and it is simply a primitive society.

Then they expressed how advanced the latter is, how to cultivate intensively, how to improve tools...etc.

But in fact, in a county that produces [-] pounds per mu, it is likely that the per capita planting area can reach [-] acres.

However, in a county with an output of [-] mu, the per capita planting area may be less than [-] mu.

If the difference in population is not too large, which county has the higher total output?
The latter is indeed intensive cultivation and leading technology-but the former does not necessarily know how to use these technologies, but cannot use them.

In this era without large-scale machinery, it is impossible for one person to cultivate fifty acres of land intensively.

Only when the per capita resources are scarce, will they be forced to build dojos in snail shells. There are too many people and too little land, so they have no choice but to do so.

The lord does not know how to farm, so he cannot increase the yield level of the territory in a short period of time.

But now he has a lot of food seeds in his hand, and there are countless unowned wastelands around the territory. In the situation where there are many lands and few lands, the lord can cultivate a large area to increase the overall total output.

Therefore, Li Ang's logic is to plant in large quantities and use the area to pile up the output!
Moreover, the old people brought back by Roland and the impoverished people brought back by Anson are all experienced farmers who know how to work themselves.

The lord only needs to provide them with seeds, tools and wasteland.

In fact, even the tools are only provided with raw materials. There are carpenters and blacksmiths in the territory, and many old people can do some technical work, and many farm tools can do it.

In fact, these so-called old people are not old in the eyes of modern people-most of them are only in their fifties.

But in this day and age, this is indeed half buried in the soil.

Li Ang didn't allocate shares to these newcomers again - if the shares were divided too much, they would be worthless.

He used it another way.

In order to avoid unfairness and improve efficiency, the lord has issued a rare policy.

Or rather, a policy that people here have never seen before, 'group accountability'.

To put it simply, it is to divide several young people and several old people into a group according to the same ratio, so that the age structure is basically the same.

After grouping, each group has six young adults and four elderly people, two of whom are female.

This group is regarded as a basic production unit, and all production is based on the group, not the individual.

This is of course a short-to-medium-term strategy, and it is mainly to deal with the current situation that apart from widows and elderly people, they are all bachelors.

Young adults can be responsible for all kinds of physical work.

The old people teach the young people work experience, and take on those relatively easy but patient tasks, such as picking seeds, weaving ropes and the like.

In this way, the old and the young form a group to cultivate the land together, and taxes will also be collected according to the group.

This is of course for complementarity, but also for the proper use of all labor forces to improve overall efficiency.

This policy quickly made Maixiangling a place with a relatively normal population age structure.

In fact, Pan De Dalu has always shown little respect for the elderly—the main reason is, of course, that the elderly are old and weak, and cannot afford high-intensity labor.

In fact, even in modern times, many places are still like this...

In fact, this is mainly because the evaluation method of work is too rudimentary.

Aristocrats only see what's on the surface -- and, of course, most unskilled capitalists too.

For example, young people can only recruit soldiers, young people can only do coolies, and only young people can work overtime and repetitive labor all the time, while the consumption of the elderly is not much less than that of the young.

But this is all superficial...

What you can't see is that the experience possessed by the elderly can avoid stepping on pitfalls and greatly improve efficiency. In fact, in most industries, an experienced veteran employee can beat ten raw eggs.

But the problem is that these experiences are invisible, and it is difficult to make a purely quantitative evaluation.

Because any work requires design and planning.

But 'design' and 'planning' cannot be evaluated.

For example, it’s like farming—what to plant, what method to use, what tools to use, how many stages to use, how to fertilize, and how to prevent pests. These all belong to design planning and rely on experience and knowledge.The process of digging the ground with a hoe is the specific execution, which requires physical strength.

Even under coolies, such as anti-sacks.What method to use to resist, whether tools can be used, what tools to use, and what route to take are all design and planning, and the process of resisting movement is the specific implementation.

This kind of design and planning in a broad sense is usually invisible, and its actual effect cannot be evaluated. After all, nobles and bureaucrats usually do not consider specific affairs.

The aristocrats can only see the representative implement those things-who looks stronger, who can work overtime, who is more obedient, and who demands less.

Then, they will use the logic of individual target quantification to evaluate the output of each person.

After all, farming in this era is mostly individual labor, and teamwork is almost non-existent.

And if it is quantified by a single goal, the disadvantage of the elderly is even more obvious-because of their lack of physical strength, they cannot keep up in the actual implementation process.

Therefore, most of the time, when people evaluate an aristocratic territory, they look at how many young and old people there are in the territory... The elderly will basically be regarded as a burden.

Even in modern times, most capitalists always only want young and strong young people who can work overtime for a long time, and old guys who are a little old and can't afford it will be abandoned.

However, the experience of the elderly combined with the physical strength of the young and strong is the most reliable way of working, and it is also the basic meaning of subdividing work content and teamwork.

It's just that even in modern times, there are still a large number of silly companies that don't understand this most basic truth-especially some Internet companies.

The lord's group responsibility system was soon fully accepted - this is actually a compulsory policy, those who don't fit in will not be able to get the land, and must accept it.

The young people may not understand, but none of them dare to complain, after all, the lord here is the sky, he has the final say.

But soon, this seemingly simple policy worked.

Those old guys who claimed to have 'never had a good life' made Mai Xiangling fully move at an extremely fast speed.

It's not because they work so quickly, but because they keep young people from making detours.

These old guys really didn't expect Mai Xiangling to be treated so well, to have food and things to do, and to treat them as the same as the young and old, so they burst out with unimaginable enthusiasm.

When you really show respect to people, people will return it to you—especially someone who is otherwise desperate.

In addition, when Morgan and Sir Roland moved them here, they planted a seed of kindness.

Now this kindness has been passed on.

The old people almost forgot to eat and sleep to devote themselves to the construction of Maixiangling. They not only spared no effort to instruct the younger generation how to do things, but even took the initiative to do the work.

This makes the young and middle-aged people have to work overtime - it can't be that everyone in a group is working, but they don't do anything, right?
I can't afford to lose this person!
And it is very likely that they will be beaten... This is the common interest of a group!
Seeing that all the people in the territory moved, Li Ang ordered again that each group of cultivated land must be connected together to form a farm, but there is no upper limit on the amount of reclamation—anyway, the area between Maixiangling and White Hart Castle is all wasteland. Just go to enclosure!
There is only one rule - if you get the seeds, you must plant them. If the amount of seeds does not match the land, all the staff will be expelled from Maixiang collar.

This free land reclamation policy requires a large number of grassroots managers. In order to manage these production groups, the lord has used all the non-commissioned officers.

There are about a hundred non-commissioned officers in the territory, and they even learned a little culture.

Li Ang assigned all the farmers to the non-commissioned officers, and each non-commissioned officer was divided into groups.

These non-commissioned officers will all be given a farm and serve as leaders of the people under their command.

And the four senior non-commissioned officers will become the middle-level managers- Eric the dog is going to manage the transport team, and there are only four senior non-commissioned officers in the territory.

But there is no master-slave or employment relationship between them, but a corporate management-employee relationship—that is to say, the lord has established four agricultural departments, and each department has more than [-] production teams.

The loyalty of these hundreds of non-commissioned officers to the lord is unquestionable. It can even be said that every soldier wearing the griffon coat of arms looks at the lord like his own father, and they will carry out whatever Li Ang says. In the end - they have shares.

It is a common practice in modern enterprises to allocate shares to core employees and let them manage ordinary employees.

This kind of operation also seems to be in line with the enfeoffment logic of this era, just like enforcing the territories and territories for several knights, and then the knights let their attendants manage some farmers.

Precisely because it looks similar, it is easy to accept.

After all, those incomprehensible operating methods are not suitable for this era.

But the actual logic of this set of operations is completely different from that of the enfeoffment system. The non-commissioned officers only have the right to manage the people, but not to control them.

Those non-commissioned officers are not the owners of the land, they are also the citizens themselves, and they also want to farm the land when necessary.

Of course, they were the ones who came forward when collecting taxes, but all of them would be sent to the lord's treasury.

Li Ang does not plan to divide the land in the core territory, and he wants to maintain unified management in the area around Mai Xiang.

After all, the prevailing logic of enfeoffment of knights in Pendor Continent is that once the territory is sealed off, even the superior lord has no right to manage the matters in the territory of the knights under him.

That is full authorization.

This is caused by the knight culture of Pendor Continent - knights are force, and the great lord needs to monopolize force by wooing knights, and the power of knights in the territory is already very high.

After the establishment of the Pendor Kingdom, the birth of various knight orders gave the knights a new backer other than the lord.

The original knight order was more like an alliance, an alliance of warriors who belonged to the knight class and shared common beliefs.

Due to the common belief, under this alliance, the knights will put aside the struggle between the superior lords, and cooperate with each other to improve the status of the entire class.

This will cause conflicts between noble lords and knights.

In fact, the continental policy of not allowing any knights to enter the aristocratic territory is also due to the conflict between the great lords and the knights.

This is the contradiction caused by the monopoly of force.

High-ranking nobles want to monopolize force, but force groups like the Knights are not necessarily willing to obey, because they may have different beliefs, and maybe half of the members support political opponents.

Then the nobles are naturally very worried. After all, the internal power of the knight order has increased, and it has turned from force to politics, overwhelming high-ranking nobles.

Therefore, the establishment of the knight order is strictly restricted, and has always been strictly controlled by various countries.

Therefore, in order to win over the knights under them, the aristocratic lords gradually delegated power, allowing the knights to taste the power belonging to the aristocratic class, and using privileges to offset the knights' inclination to belief or hobbies.

This kind of decentralization made the knights' land a completely independent territory. The knights gradually became the emperors of their own lands and formed legal principles. The knights also became real nobles.

The privileges of the earth emperor are indeed very attractive. Since then, few knights have turned their backs on the nobles.If there is a conflict between the knights and their lord, most knights will choose to obey their lord.

This soil emperor model can easily lead to some evil things, such as brutal abuse and oppression of civilians; such as various rapes and looting; such as Rainier's assholes of burning and looting his own village.

That's why Li Ang didn't want to divide up Mai Xiangling's land, lest there be such a thing as two worlds in one place.

Instead of waiting to make amends after causing bad consequences, it is better not to open this hole in the first place.

Unless it is an enclave like Fletcher's that is not next to the core territory, it really needs the knights to manage it independently.

The assignment of personnel did not take too much time, and everyone cooperated very well.

Then, with each 'department' and 'production group' as a unit, the lord started the internal competition mode.

As a well-known unscrupulous entrepreneur in the Pandor Continent, the lord directly turned the matter of land reclamation into a quantitative competition like a sales team...

The North Star indicator, which is the core indicator, is of course the quarterly effective income...

But the current short-term indicator is the land reclamation area.

Since almost all the citizens are proletarians, the lord immediately opened the agricultural loan.

This is not a loan, but a loan of food and seeds.

That is to say, each production group is registered on a household basis, and they go to the warehouse to collect grain and seeds every day, and keep accounts, but they have to pay back the money after harvesting.

Simply put, this is cost consumption.

After all, the core indicator is the effective profit, not the total output—it is the profit after all costs are deducted.

Among the four departments, the top one has doubled the dividends of the management, and the residents only need to pay [-]% of the tax, and they are exempted from repaying agricultural loans.

In the departments at the bottom of the ranking, the management dividends are gone, and the residents have to pay [-]% of the tax, and they have to repay the agricultural loans with interest (double).

There is also competition between groups, the top three groups, the non-commissioned officers in charge of management will get a heavy reward equivalent to capturing the flag, and the leaders can be awarded shares of Maixiang International!

As for the groups with the worst grades...the whole group received the 'lazy man' sign and hung it on their farm.The team leader temporarily loses all the benefits of being a non-commissioned officer, and the members of the team will be responsible for all kinds of hard work in the territory during the slack period, until the shame can be washed away with performance in the future.

Isn't the enthusiasm mobilized...

Moreover, the lord used this method to easily cover up his core purpose - the actual owner of all the fields is still Li Ang himself. He did not grant the farm to anyone, but let them cultivate and obtain the output of the land.

How can the means of production be handed over directly to employees?

In the entire territory, only the first [-] acres of land belonged entirely to the first group of members, with title deeds.

This is a benefit for the old employees-these old employees are today's non-commissioned officers.

That is to say, the Mettenheim people, the crossbowmen, and most of the first batch of people, the number is over a hundred.

As start-up members, these people have experienced many dangers with him, so naturally they have to be treated differently.

Li Ang didn't plan to make a big pot of rice. Although he has a high reputation in the territory now, it may be feasible to create a commune model, but the big pot of rice is not suitable for future development, so he used a commercial model.

(End of this chapter)