My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 599 is already pretty good!
Why is this happening? ?
Because people—especially adult men—must have something to strive for in a stable social order.

For example, in this era, farmers have to be busy planting crops in spring, summer and autumn, and then stay at home to hibernate in winter;

Merchants have to work year-round, or even travel for several years, just to make a profit as itinerant traders.

Craftsmen also have to hammer and tinker and actively seek out work in order to barely support their families.

So much so that centuries later, a certain regime that strayed far from the original system even came up with a system as outrageous as 'thirty-three taels of silver'.

The logic behind this system was that, at that time, ordinary farming families needed 36 taels of silver per year to cover their basic living expenses and maintain a balance between income and expenditure. The ruling class then used its power to artificially create a fiscal deficit of 3 taels of silver per household per year.

It takes thirty-six taels of silver a year to survive, but even in a bumper harvest, the income of a farming family always mysteriously remains around thirty-three taels of silver.

—Today it's this yamen runner, tomorrow it's that official, they just ask for money as soon as they open their mouths, as if they have some mission, and they want to suppress the annual income of farmers' families to less than thirty-three taels.

Then, the ruling class's goal was achieved.

The family financial deficit of three taels of silver forced the farmers at the bottom of society to devote all the little energy they had left from farming to earn that three taels of silver to fill the family financial gap.

In feudal times, it was undoubtedly very difficult for farmers to earn money outside of farming.

The reason is very simple.

If there were other ways to make money, who would be willing to toil in the fields, generation after generation, just toiling for a living?

Throughout the year, there is spring, summer, autumn farming, and winter hibernation. If you have to say what the off-season for farming is, it's the month or so after the autumn harvest.

If a farmer in that era had the ability to earn three taels of silver in a month or two, why would he continue to be a farmer?

Three or two ounces a month or two, that's more than thirty ounces a year, enough to support the whole family!

Therefore, this is clearly a trap.

Through harsh and subtle means, they artificially create a situation where the lower classes cannot make ends meet;

When income cannot cover expenses, people who are naturally unable to withstand risks, and who have neither the ability to repay nor the aversion to debt, will naturally try every means to lick the hole.

Three ounces is a perfect line.

If the hole is larger than three ounces, then ordinary people may give up and abandon efforts to fill the hole, instead resorting to borrowing money or even selling their land.

If the amount is less than three ounces, then the vast majority of farmers will not be troubled by this small shortfall.

Three ounces is just enough to give ordinary people hope—the hope that as long as they do their best, they can barely fill the hole, while at the same time, they cannot easily achieve their goal.

This is the infamous Thirty-Three Taels of Silver policy in Chinese history.

Why is this policy so infamous?

This policy is implemented in the most unreasonable, unfriendly, and torturous way for the lower classes, allowing the ruling class to achieve their political demand of "giving the people something to do" at minimal—almost zero—cost.

However, Liu Rong had a different opinion about this infamous system.

Is this approach correct?
Of course not.

Any policy that torments or exploits the lower classes is wrong, unsustainable, and unhealthy.

However, after becoming emperor, as a member of the ruling class, and especially as the highest ruler of the Han Dynasty, Liu Rong had to say: the policy of paying thirty-three taels of silver was wrong in its means, not its ends.

Ensuring that young adults have something to do, something to strive for, and something to be tied to does indeed help maintain social harmony and stability.

However, there are many ways to achieve this goal.

For example, the current Han dynasty confines farmers to the fields, artisans to workshops, systematically despises merchants, and sets wartime KPIs for nobles.

Or perhaps in a later, new era, everyone has to study before adulthood, work after graduation, and then get married, have children, support their families, and work hard to pay for cars, houses, and loans.

Although later generations often jokingly say that male employees with families are always easier to manipulate, more likely to submit, and easier to control, in essence, keeping the vast majority of able-bodied men "busy" is an important prerequisite for social harmony and stability.

Because it's really hard to judge a man in his prime.

Just like the joke from later generations said—when three men get together, they randomly generate a genius idea.

When eight or ten men get together, that's Liu Bang and his men from Pei County, Zhu Chongba and his childhood friends from Huaixi.

A hundred or so people gathered together, and in the blink of an eye, they formed Liangshan Marsh.

Even in later generations, the nighttime conversations of passionate young men in college dormitories would begin with lust, culminate in discussions about international affairs, and ultimately conclude with the statement: "This world shouldn't be like this."

Therefore, whether it was the Han Dynasty or the later feudal era, every dynasty and every ruling class was actually trying their best to create constraints for the vast majority of men.

For example, land and farming; for example, workshops and crafts.
For example, the social responsibilities of wives and children, the elderly and young children—and even the social responsibilities of respecting elders and raising offspring—are essentially about 'finding things for men to do'.

If you don't cause her trouble, then she'll cause trouble for you.

Of course;
Such measures of 'finding things for men to do' were not really necessary in the Han Dynasty at that time.

Because in this era, resources were still scarce and the population was not large enough.

To say that the Han dynasty is currently sparsely populated with vast territory is absolutely accurate.

Vast tracts of land remain uncultivated and unutilized. The areas of Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi are still undeveloped, and the Lingnan region is riddled with swamps and miasma.

To put it bluntly, men in this era don't need the ruling class to find things for them to do; they are already so burdened by the pressure of survival that they can't lift their heads or stay idle.

The only exception was the nobility.

Unlike farmers who need to cultivate the land, artisans who need to manufacture, merchants who need to trade, and officials who need to work, nobles were a truly idle and unambitious group.

Especially the nobles of the Han Dynasty today, they want money, they want to establish their own fiefdoms and taxes, which are passed down through generations, and they also have a bunch of shady ways to make money.
Those who desire power are part of the ruling class of the country, able to participate in the twice-monthly New Year's Day celebrations, and even express their opinions on matters of national policy, receiving sufficient attention and a voice.

Having money and power, all inherited, seemed to leave these nobles with only one lifestyle to choose from: living off their wealth.

They've already been granted titles and honors, they're already sharing the fate of the nation, why are they still risking their lives?
Our ancestors risked their lives to secure a few thousand households of fiefdom for their descendants. Even if you risk your life, what can you achieve? At most, you'll spend most of your life working to increase the fiefdom left by your ancestors by a few hundred more households.

As for going to the battlefield to make meritorious contributions, that's utter nonsense.

To achieve great things on the battlefield requires the awareness that "even if you die, you're still just a worthless life," as well as the courage to move forward without any worries about the future, and even without any attachment to the world or one's current situation!

To put it bluntly, it's like the barefoot aren't afraid of those wearing shoes;

It's like the soft fear the hard, the hard fear the ruthless, the ruthless fear the stubborn, and the stubborn fear the reckless.

To achieve something truly remarkable on the battlefield, requiring real swords and spears, is no small feat; it requires risking one's life.
Instead, it is the group of people on one side who are willing to risk their lives, and the group on the other side who are willing to risk their lives, who fight desperately, and in the end, only a few or even one person wins, and that can be considered as 'making a name for oneself'.

The rest of the people can only become the material for the saying, "One general's success is built on the bones of ten thousand."

As for nobles and marquises—let alone risking their lives, even if you asked them to throw away their money and their shame, they would hesitate for a long time, weighing the pros and cons.

The more you have, the more hesitant and cautious you become.

When you become a Marquis of Merit in the Han Dynasty, and one of the people with the highest power and status in this era that no one other than the royal family can achieve, let alone risk your life on the battlefield—even going out to eat requires you to think carefully about whether you have offended anyone recently, or whether you have any enemies from your ancestors who might poison you to death.

The richer a person is, the more they cherish their life; this is the reason why.

Once you understand these points, it becomes easier to comprehend why Liu Rong allowed, and even secretly encouraged, meritorious nobles to meet wartime KPIs in order to ensure the complete inheritance of their titles and fiefs.

The nobility must be encouraged to have aspirations;
We can't let the nobles be preoccupied with lust and pleasure; we need to give them a sense of urgency and a goal.

In this era, apart from wartime KPIs, there was really no other legitimate and effective way to motivate the nobles and marquises.

Apart from the nobility, Liu Rong didn't need to worry about any other groups.

Farmers are busy planting crops and digging for food in the soil;

Businessmen are busy making money, and incidentally they are despised by the entire society—including themselves.
The artisan community is already scarce. Whether they are highly skilled or not, they are always extremely busy, and most of them live on the edge of subsistence.

Apart from the official craftsmen employed by the Imperial Treasury, the vast majority of folk craftsmen could not easily support their families through their skills.

As for officials—the bureaucratic system that every era dreads, fearing they'll become idle or inefficient—is also not something Liu Rong needs to worry about.

The reason is somewhat frustrating.

—In this era, scholars are extremely scarce, and officials are even scarcer.

The scarcity of scholars has reached the point where "being able to write is enough to become an official without any conditions" and "being literate is enough to become an official without any conditions."

It is no exaggeration to say that in the Han Dynasty today, the number of scholars is even less than the number of officials!
If you count on your fingers, the Han dynasty had more than 5 million households and more than 30 million people, but the number of scholars was no more than 100,000, which was about three per thousand of the total population.

Of the remaining 99.7%, at least 99% are completely illiterate, unable to recognize a single word.

In contrast, the number of officials—in the current Han Dynasty—is as high as tens of thousands.

Nearly half of the annual agricultural tax revenue from the Prime Minister's office was used to pay salaries to these officials.

There were tens of thousands of officials with official ranks, and the number of clerks without official ranks was many times greater.

Therefore, the relationship between scholars and officials in the Han Dynasty at that time formed a stark contrast with that of later generations.

In later generations, officials and clerks were definitely scholars, but scholars were not necessarily able to become officials or clerks.

To become an official or clerk, scholars in the later market faced fierce competition, with hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands vying for a single position.

Even in other feudal dynasties thousands of years later, after the rise of the imperial examination system, scholars who wanted to change their fate through the examination still faced extremely fierce competition.

The selection process for the lowest level of the imperial examinations, from children to scholars, was often one in a hundred.
The selection process for scholars to pass the imperial examinations was extremely competitive, with only one in a hundred, or even one in several hundred, being chosen.

This comprehensive selection process, from the lowest level of the imperial examinations to the highest level of the imperial examinations, resulted in an astonishingly high acceptance rate of one in ten thousand!

The next level, the Jinshi, was even more difficult—thousands of Juren (successful candidates in the provincial examinations) from all over the country took the exams, but only a few dozen could become Jinshi in each subject.

Therefore, people in later generations often say that the top scholar in the feudal era was much more valuable than the top university in the modern era.

After all, only one top scholar in the imperial examinations could be produced every three years, but hundreds of students could be admitted to universities every year.

In other words, whether it was in other feudal dynasties after the imperial examination system truly took off thousands of years later, or in the new era of later generations, the selection of officials was always based on careful selection from among scholars.

However, in the current Han Dynasty, this condition is completely unavailable.

Carefully selected?
It's good enough that there are scholars here!

It's good enough that he's a scholar!
Being able to write and recognize characters is already quite good!

What more bike do you want?

Even if all the scholars of this era were recruited to serve as officials and clerks for the Han dynasty, it still wouldn't be enough!
Furthermore, not all scholars are suited to be officials—in fact, not all of them are capable of being officials.

There were already few scholars, and after removing the bookworms who had become stupid from studying and the shut-ins who only knew how to read books but were completely unable to integrate into society, the number of scholars and prospective officials that the Han dynasty could reserve was naturally even smaller.

Therefore, with no other choice, the Han dynasty had to shift its focus from the 'too few to count' group of scholars to other groups that were barely usable.

For example, a filial son can be recommended for official positions—after all, he is a filial person with good moral character, so appointing him to an official position means that even if he makes mistakes, at least it was out of good intentions.

For example, a skilled farmer can become an official through his expertise in farming—at least he is a skilled farmer, and no matter how ignorant he may be, he can at least lead the people under his jurisdiction to farm properly, so that they can't even fail to collect agricultural taxes.

Even more so, demobilized military officers are also a possibility.

—After all, he came from the battlefield, so he has some courage and sense of responsibility.

As for whether it's easy to use or whether it's even usable?
Liu Rong could only say: What else can we do?
People are starving to death, who cares if it tastes good or has any nutrition?

If it can be stuffed into your stomach, provides a feeling of fullness, and is unlikely to kill you, then it's already pretty good!

(End of this chapter)