My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 516 From Point to Surface
Even a famous official like Zhang Shizhi could not avoid falling back into poverty due to his official duties, let alone other ordinary people.

The vast majority of people are forced into a life where they cannot guarantee their livelihood and are simply unable to resist temptation.

Imagine: an official with a salary of 525 dan, with an annual salary of dan, receives dan of millet per month plus coins.
There are seven people in the family, including an old mother, a lovely wife, and three children.

There was enough food, even though there were seven of us. But my sons were still young and their appetites were far less than those of adults.

Even this monthly salary of 525 cents is really too little to make ends meet.

My old mother had backache and leg pain, so she went to the county town's pharmacy to get medicine.

The wife complained that she hadn't smelled any meat in the food for nearly half a month.

What's even more terrible is that as a county clerk at the level of 400 shi, and a figure in the core circle of the county leadership team, he actually has a lot of personal connections;
When the people above you get married or have funerals, you have to go and give gifts;

When the people below you have weddings or funerals, you have to show your support.

During festivals, they would give some wine, meat, cloth and other things to their direct descendants, so that they could continue to promise "I will never treat you unfairly in the future".

The salary has long been insufficient.

Just at this time, a rich man comes to you and asks you to do a favor that is as small as possible.

This favor may be so small that you don’t even have to do anything!
Just don't express any opinions when the county government initiates a discussion about something.

In short: to keep you quiet during a meeting.

Just be quiet for a few hours, and you will gain several years, even ten years or even dozens of years' salary.

Will you agree?

Are you willing to pay the price of 'not speaking for an hour' in exchange for a huge fortune that can greatly improve your family's situation, or even make you no longer have to worry about money?

This is how most officials’ first bout of corruption begins.

——The opportunity to gain huge wealth by doing nothing makes them feel lucky: it should be okay, right?

Just do it this time, and stop once you get the money!
However, when the money was finally delivered to me, I couldn't remember my earlier anxiety and hesitation at all.

Officials only think: If you make money the first time, you can make money the second time!
Isn't the purpose of serving as an official thousands of miles away to get promoted and make money?
I can't control my promotion, but can't I strive for wealth?

...

……

Liu Rong's attitude towards things like this is rather ambiguous.

Because in Liu Rong's view, honest officials in the world can only be rare species and moral models after all.

The vast majority of bureaucrats will become corrupt officials either actively or passively.

Liu Rong has long passed the age of youthful passion when he wanted to bring every corrupt official to justice and become Liu Qingtian.

Today, Liu Rong has two requirements for officials.

First: corruption and bribery. The latter is ignored, but the former is occasionally asked about.

You can accept bribes from other people, such as businessmen, subordinates, colleagues, etc., but it is best not to touch public funds or think about embezzling public funds.

The second is that no matter how greedy you are, no matter how much you take, you must not sacrifice your business skills.

You must do well the tasks assigned to you.

If things go well, I can ignore your corruption and just consider it as you taking away the reward that I was going to give you.

But if the plan fails, there are plenty of ways to punish the person for the crime of corruption.

no way.

When the water is clear, there will be no fish, and when the water is clear, there will be no evil.

Honest officials are like a drop in the ocean, while corrupt officials are like sand washed away by the waves.

People in later generations often say: For older left-over women, their 'old age' is only the smallest problem.

Liu Rong also wanted to say: It is very likely that an upright official may have nothing else to praise except his upright character and his refusal to accept bribes.

In other words, he had no idea how to be an official or how to govern the people. He only knew that he only needed to be an honest official to establish himself.

In comparison, Liu Rong felt more at ease with those ministers who were a little greedy and took a little, but could get things done.

Can you at least get things done?
Liu Rong was the emperor, not the real 'Liu Qingtian'.

Liu Rong cared more about whether things were done well or not, rather than whether the officials under him had embezzled or accepted bribes.

It is no exaggeration to say that if Liu Rong had a system and drew the corrupt official Heshen, he would never think that he was unlucky and drew a bad card.

Again.

For officials, especially those in the feudal era, being untainted by the mud is almost a false proposition.

Moreover, in the special context of the times, whether one is greedy or not, or whether one is contaminated by the mud or not, is not even that important.

Therefore, Liu Rong has always turned a blind eye to the "bribery" of the bureaucratic group and the prevailing trend of bribery in the Han Dynasty, and has never taken any targeted action so far.

——Because in Liu Rong's view, although the bureaucratic system of the Han Dynasty has been severely eroded in terms of financial convenience, it still maintains a considerable degree of combat effectiveness in other aspects.

Such a group of 'capable' officials - officials who can show off their abilities and use them to their satisfaction - are corrupt?
Hi……

Anyway, it is impossible to investigate and catch all the culprits. It is really not worth wasting manpower and resources to fight corruption.

Just assume that they are a little too "conscious" and take away their own labor remuneration and project bonuses.

Furthermore, since the founding of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty has been extremely short of talents, especially bureaucrats and reserve bureaucrats.

There are not many people holding official positions!

This forced the successive emperors of the Han Dynasty to bring all the special talents they could think of, such as filial and honest people and hard-working farmers, into the system to serve as officials.

There are not enough officials to begin with, and if we wish we could just conjure up tens of thousands of scholars and reserve cadres from nowhere, how can we fight corruption and further reduce the already stretched number of officials?
So, after all the various things, they can be summed up in one sentence.

——Liu Rong’s attitude towards corruption among officials under him is ambiguous, but he also has a relatively clear bottom line.

You can accept bribes, but don’t embezzle;
While you make money, don't forget to do my job well.

If you do it well, the money you earn is the reward you deserve.

Not done?
Hey!
The Han Dynasty today is not completely incapable of punishing corrupt officials.

Even though he was reluctant to send the already scarce bureaucrats to jail for corruption, Liu Rong also didn't mind killing a chicken to scare the monkeys.

The most crucial point among these is the difference between embezzlement and bribery.

Bribery and corruption, as the name suggests, are about embezzling state-owned property and taking it for one's own benefit.

The latter is accepting private benefits from individuals or groups.

The most core difference between the two is that the former, that is, corruption, is likely to be embezzlement of special funds for some important matter or some major event of the country.

It is like in later times, when a transfer of funds for building a subway line was embezzled by officials, a few more low-quality bricks would be used in the project. The same is true in the Han Dynasty today.

Corruption in counties and prefectures may be the result of embezzlement of funds for canal management and road maintenance, or the withholding of salaries of non-staff members and minor officials without rank.

Obviously, this is going to go wrong.

On the contrary, the harm caused by bribery and corruption is undoubtedly much smaller.

If you give it to me quietly and privately with our mutual consent, the impact will be relatively less bad and the scope of impact will be extremely small.

Furthermore, in the Han Dynasty today, bribery is almost impossible to occur between officials, but only between officials and businessmen.

The reason is very simple: in the Han Dynasty today, officials generally do not have the power to appoint and dismiss personnel.

A county governor with a rank of 2,000 dan also cannot decide who should be the county magistrate with a rank of 600 dan.

Even if there is a candidate, he must first be reported to the court in Chang'an, and then reviewed and judged by the former Chief Censor, now the Grand Chancellor, before he can be finally appointed.

Officials do not have the power to appoint and dismiss, and cannot decide the promotion or transfer of another official. Naturally, there is no soil for bribery between officials.

On the contrary, businessmen or local tyrants would spend huge sums of money to bribe county officials in order to get the local officials to turn a blind eye.

You think this behavior has no impact?
Naturally not.

Merchants and powerful people bribed local officials obviously not in order to make them turn a blind eye to their special habits.

It is precisely because they want to bully the common people that they first offer bribes to shut the mouths of local officials.

As the saying goes, those who take from others are obliged to return the favor, and those who eat from others are the most obliged to return

If you accept bribes, then don't talk about being a "parent official" or "governing the people".

But you'd say it has a big impact, right?
Not really.

After all, in the Han Dynasty, there is still a long sword called the "Tomb City System" hanging over the heads of every wealthy merchant and powerful person.

If a local official disagrees with you or even dislikes you for a moment and says that you will be added to the list of people to be relocated to the mausoleum town, including your entire family's name, you will not get angry at all.

Therefore, in most cases, wealthy merchants and powerful people will not go too far.

- Spend some money to bribe local officials, and at the same time provide them with good food and drink and serve them servilely to avoid being put on the list of people to be relocated to the mausoleum town.

As for how he treated the people, he had to be a little more restrained in order to avoid being used as a target by county and county officials.

As for this bribe, the money seems to have been given, but also seems not to have been given - as if it had been given.

Unless someone saw them, no one would even dare to believe that this servile and cautious wealthy businessman and powerful person actually gave money to this selfless and righteous official.

It is not difficult to see from this that, at least in the Han Dynasty today, bribery and corruption have not yet become the true private transactions of later generations.

More often than not, it is more like a means of giving gifts and exchanging what you have.

It's like two officials who have never met or known each other, but are serving in the same place.

Even if they have never met each other or even can't call each other's name, when one of them has a birthday, the other's birthday present will always be delivered on time.

The gift is not important.

It is also unimportant whether the two are familiar with each other or know each other.

What is important is the attitude of being willing to make friends - or at least not wanting to make enemies.

But in comparison, the harm caused by corruption is more than a hundred or eighty levels higher.

This is obviously all too familiar to later generations.

——The shoddy construction projects and Commissioner Smith are all major harmful factors caused by corruption.

For corrupt officials, the most important thing about a path is that it is cheap.

And it looks expensive, but it is actually cheap.

As for Commissioner Smith, there is no need to mention it - a bag of screws costs 90,000 dollars, and a sheep costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have completely disregarded their eating manners and have no dignity left.

It is obvious that corruption harms and infringes upon national interests and even national security.

This time, it is really difficult to judge whether the local officials were accepting bribes or engaging in corruption.

Based on the supply of the slave Luan Da, his master colluded with the government to tamper with the "nationality" information in the slave records. By tampering with the Han slaves as "foreigners" in the slave records, the slave owners were able to evade higher slave taxes.

So, it seems there is nothing wrong with you saying that local officials accepted bribes.

——If the slave owners had not given benefits, how could the local officials help and tamper with the local slave status?

But if you say that he was just accepting bribes and didn't engage in corruption at all, that doesn't seem quite right.

After all, this incident ultimately resulted in the country's loss of slave tax revenue and damage to national interests.

Of course, whether it is corruption or bribery, whether to punish and how to punish is naturally up to the emperor Liu Rong.

On ordinary days, when the officials under him were a little greedy and took a little, Liu Rongshang would just turn a blind eye, thinking that it was "not easy to live in Chang'an" for the officials under him.

But this time, such a big thing happened - even before Liu Rong formulated the policy, these idiots had already formulated countermeasures.

This is not simply an economic issue such as embezzlement and bribery.

This is openly opposing Emperor Liu Rong. It is a matter of political stance and principle!
If he couldn't even understand this and couldn't deal with these idiots, Liu Rong would have been unworthy of being the Emperor of Han for all these years.

They are just a few stupid officials, so it is not difficult to deal with them.

However, it was unexpected that after this case, public opinion quickly spread from point to surface - with this case as the center, it quickly spread and gave rise to countless topics and discussions.

For example, there is a mismatch between officials’ salary income and the cost of living;

For example, there is a lack of a monitoring system for officials, and low moral standards among officials that do not match their self-esteem;

For example, the mutual supervision and inspection system between local counties is still a problem, and the possibility of its implementation...

And so on and so forth.

It was like finding an opportunity, or like a breakthrough in one's spiritual channel - a "slavery" case triggered a wide-ranging discussion in the bureaucratic system.

Liu Rong was happy to see this happen.

But as the discussion became more in-depth and intense, Liu Rong finally realized that something was wrong.

——The whole world is talking about the bureaucracy, but the bureaucracy itself is remaining silent?
This is obviously not normal.

Or rather, it’s patently untrue.

Therefore, in order to listen to the voices of the "bureaucrats" and verify his guess, Liu Rong specially held an outdoor banquet in Shanglin Garden.

Those attending the meeting were mainly ministers and important officials in the court.

(End of this chapter)