The phenomenon of government monopoly has been adopted by emperors of all dynasties in China, so are state monopoly and government intervention avoidable evils or inevitable evils? I was deeply impressed by the theory of "necessary evil" in the book. In the Han Dynasty, the concept of unification began. Under the great unification, people have really enjoyed unlimited welfare, and the migration is more convenient, the market is bigger, and the times are advancing rapidly. However, we have to bear the evil of centralization, and the bureaucratic system is expanding day by day. In order to feed this expanding bureaucratic system, government monopoly resources must exist. But I am also worried about this phenomenon. The government's ability to intervene in the economy still cannot save the economy from inflation or depression, but can only temporarily alleviate its current situation. Although each dynasty faced different problems, they were all dragged down by the financial system. So I still have reservations about the theory of "necessary evil".
It can be said that every dynasty inevitably produces wars, which are fatal to financial expenditure. War will not only delay the farming season, but also cause casualties. Military and politics have always been inseparable. In the process of military conquest, the winners are often those who can mobilize all financial resources to serve the war; In the political conquest, we should mobilize the main resources to serve the political life, establish the system, develop the economy, and let the people live and work in peace and contentment under the new framework, without thinking about returning to the previous system. I don't know why, but it suddenly reminds me of the idiom "Don't think about happiness". A large amount of expenditure in the war is only harmful to the people, but not beneficial. In order to appease the people, the post-war rulers naturally have to give more pensions and guarantees.
The book says that "the view of' socialism' put forward by Sang Hongyang in the era of Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty seems very convincing and has strict logic, but in practice, human beings have tried this ideal for thousands of years, and every experiment will find that government control needs bureaucrats to implement it, and the greater the government power, the greater the capital that bureaucrats can realize. Government officials, relatives and friends of officials, and other types of related households often get rich in the end. In addition, the more the government restricts the economy, the more depressed the private economy will be, and the more people will find that they can only rely on the government to get rich. " It's interesting to see a description. With the increasing scale of funds for government departments to purchase services from social organizations, this "fat meat" will be concerned by "government officials, relatives and friends of officials, and other types of related households", and they will try their best to eat this "fat meat". The most effective way to reduce the consumption of funds by government officials and their associates while increasing social services is to reduce taxes on a large scale and return the right to use money to the people, who will donate it to their own public welfare organizations according to their own wishes and preferences, and then these public welfare organizations will provide professional services for specific people and specific social problems. For "non-profit organizations" whose main source of income is government-purchased services, they are government service providers, which are not much different from a commercial company whose main purpose is to make money.
The author's thinking is quite rigorous, so his words are academic, but they make me feel relaxed in history books. Although it is really boring to talk about fiscal policy, you can still gain something by studying as hard as possible. In fact, the government's means of state-owned enterprise reform and land privatization have been used before, but in different ways, not the same as now. In particular, the author lists Li Jue's reform in the Spring and Autumn Period and Shang Yang's reform in Qin State, so that we can clearly see their effects and benefits. It can be said that the decision-making of rulers in past dynasties, whether it is the policy of rest and recuperation in the early Han Dynasty or the war decision-making in the period of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, is closely related to the finance as the foundation of the country.
The winter vacation just took a look at the fragmented time and wrote down some memorable places. I believe this book is very beneficial to our study.