Chapter 3425 Choice

Under the chaotic times, there was the enclosure movement, where landlords and gentry annexed land, built fortresses, and then waited for the arrival of the next era. The era of fortresses may need to last for one or two hundred years.

At this time, enemies from the north and south will continue to invade, causing the chaos to intensify. Why did the Five Barbarians invade China during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties? In fact, it was because the Jin Dynasty was not united internally. All the clans closed themselves off and built a large number of fortresses, not caring about others at all. In this case, it is natural to take advantage of the situation.

There was also the era of Temujin, when Xixia, Jin, Liao, and Song fought each other, and Temujin finally reaped the benefits. Of course, the Yuan Dynasty was also internally unstable later, and Zhu Yuanzhang picked up the leak. There was also a mess in Europe, and the United States finally picked the fruits with a smile.

Once everyone is on their own, the power of a fortress is not enough to defeat foreign enemies. This is naturally the best time for foreign enemies to invade.

But it is impossible to unite people in a crisis, after all, the crisis itself is caused by disunity. If we can unite to deal with the crisis, the crisis will not be a crisis.

It is because of the lack of unity that the crisis is a crisis.

Even though they knew the threat from Temujin, Xixia, Liao, Jin, and Song still had to fight each other. There was no other way. They had no money to fight Temujin, but they had money to fight others. Each country was under great pressure, so they knew that Temujin was the most dangerous, but Temujin was a distant enemy, and the lack of money was the enemy in front of them.

As a result, they fought and fought, but they didn't get any money, their energy continued to weaken, and they were finally killed by Temujin.

History is always like this. No matter how powerful a force is, once the people's hearts are scattered, it will experience shocks. No country can avoid it, but if it can experience shocks, its cohesion will naturally increase.

Of course, most civilizations cannot experience shocks, and they will be scattered like flowers. But this is also good, one whale falls and all things come to life.

When Alexander died, the country split into several forces. When Temujin died, the country also split into several khanates. Ancient Rome coexisted in the East and the West, and then the East and West Rome continued to split. When the sun never sets, the empire rose from more than 60 countries to 200 countries.

When a whale falls, all things come to life. A behemoth cannot withstand the shock and dies, and naturally a large number of new forces will be born.

So what is shock? That is, when social resources are extremely low and social contradictions are extremely high, can everyone find a way to overcome the difficulties. In other words, can we rebound from the bottom and have the ability to revive. Can we unite the scattered teams again and become great again.

Duran looked at the fortresses that were built one after another, and said that even superpowers could not unite everyone: "Sure enough, we still owe too much money. The money earned by superpowers is not enough to pay the interest. Financial leverage is so terrible."

A ten-dollar item was blown up to ten thousand yuan. When the truth was revealed, the situation was simply not enough to maintain.

"Asset capitalization is to find a way to sell a ten-dollar item for a hundred yuan. At first, it was through plundering and making up the difference. Then it started through industrial production to process the ten-dollar item into a hundred-dollar item. Finally, through financial leverage, the item was blown up to a hundred-dollar item. Industrial production is the way to sustainable development. Use technology to decompose the ten-dollar item, reprocess it, and turn it into a new commodity to meet new needs." Duran is very supportive of industry to promote productivity, but it's a pity that the old industrial countries all played with finance in the end.

Duran thinks it's not that they are stupid, but that they have no other choice. The old empires all play the game of capital enfeoffment, and they must pay attention to control. Enfeoffment is limited and cannot be expanded all the time, otherwise it will be easily shaken.

Just like once the Zhou emperor enfeoffed too much, he could not control it. So enfeoffment is okay, but it must be controllable.

But people's control is definitely limited, and so is a country's control. In the final analysis, the comprehensive strength of a country is the sum of its labor and resource conversion capabilities. The population is limited, the factories are limited, and the area under control is also limited.

And the cost of control will continue to increase.

In order to maintain control, financialization is necessary. Industrialization is to turn a ten-dollar item into a hundred, but the maintenance cost is already one thousand. Then it can only be financialized, and the ten-dollar item is blown into ten thousand to pay for the cost of one thousand.

In fact, this is an overdraft. If someone takes over, it's fine. If no one takes over, it's borrowing money to pay the cost. And the more money you borrow, the more you can't let people know that you have no money, otherwise you have to pay it back.

In order to maintain their status in the altar, they have to do this. If they don't do this, they would have collapsed long ago. Therefore, the financial institutions of the empire can be said to be the saviors. Without them, the industry alone cannot maintain its position in the altar.

The operating costs are too high, and the money earned by the industry cannot pay for it at all. In the end, the money earned by the industry is not enough to cover the cost. In the financial era, the cost is even higher. The money earned by the industry can only pay the interest, and cannot repay the principal at all.

So even if black technology such as the No. 5 potion is developed, the money earned is far from enough to pay the operating costs.

"So control is two-way. Small countries are controlled, but big countries also pay the cost." Duran said that control is indeed easy to use, but the cost is not low. No one has enough money to control others forever.

Financial leverage is an inevitable choice for control, otherwise there is not so much money.

Small countries know that they are being controlled, why don't they resist? Of course, it's because they have money. The nobles of small countries make money through trade, and they also have to face choices. Do they use the money to develop the country and shake their position, or invest the money to make more money for themselves?

Then they will definitely choose to make more money for themselves, and will not use it for investment. So the small country sends the money to the financial leverage of the big country, and if they are lucky, they can make a lot of money. Of course, investment has risks, and there will definitely be losses. It doesn’t matter if it loses money, just pass the cost on to the people at home, and then curse the evil of the mysterious big country in the East.

A mysterious country said that it was shot at. You can’t curse the United States because you still hope to continue to make money, so you can only curse a country that has a different system from your own and has little to do with you.

The nobles of small countries send the money they earn to the United States and play leverage. This is also the reason why the financial game of the United States can continue. But the cost of financial games will still get higher and higher, because the United States needs to maintain its invincible appearance in order to make people believe that its finance is invincible, and everyone has confidence. But to be invincible in the world, you need to control the world, so the cost must be high.

"Making money is just the beginning. After making money, how to choose money is a big problem. No one wants money to depreciate, so money is either used for speculation, investment, or land acquisition to transform into assets. Investment is impossible, because investment may shake the status of the nobles. Speculation is a good choice, and land acquisition is inevitable." How to prevent your money from depreciating is a problem that rich people have faced since ancient times.

Investment is definitely not the best choice, because investing in new industries may cause new nobles to replace the old nobles at any time, and they will definitely not be so stupid.

Speculation is a good choice, not to mention land acquisition. Speculation has gains and losses, and land has ups and downs. But if speculation fails, it will not shake its dominant position. The land price will drop, but land is the foundation of everything, and there is no problem in protecting the principal.

Since there is a demand for speculation, there is naturally a market for financial leverage, from Lu Buwei's speculative support for Ying Zheng's father, to the tulip bubble, and then to the later financial leverage. The speculative market will never disappear.

As for annexing land, all the capital has turned into land. Although the money in society is circulating, inflation will become more and more serious because the output of land has not changed and resources have not increased.

The real social value is investment, infrastructure, education, factories, medical care, etc., to cultivate more labor and improve resource conversion capabilities.

Then there is no need to control the world, because it cannot be controlled, just do trade in peace and stability.