Chapter 7085 No choice

Chapter 7085 No choice
Let's not even talk about those completely anthropomorphic guys. Just take Zhou Yu for example. Chen Xi, as the provider of technology, resources, manpower, and even the entire means of production, only took 100%. Zhou Yu, who had no means of production at all, was able to take 100%!
Under these circumstances, for Chen Xi to realize that there were some problems with his quantitative analysis? What a joke! How could he possibly realize that?
Not only would Chen Xi not recognize him, but even those who work for Chen Xi wouldn't recognize him. Now, if you randomly pick a young person from any of Chen Xi's factories and mines, they will continuously praise the wages and benefits Chen Xi is currently paying.

There was no way around it; Chen Xi was truly giving, he really kept his word, and he genuinely lifted this group of people out of abject poverty to a point where they could eat and drink their fill and have meat several times a month.

As for being a little tired?
Farming is tiring these days. This job is quite demanding, but at least you're not exposed to the wind and sun, which is already a privilege. Otherwise, if Yi Ji were crazy to bring the Yanzhou agricultural and food issue to the forefront, wouldn't it be because farmers really envy factory workers?

Therefore, to this day, Chen Xi has not realized that he actually made a cognitive error in his quantitative assessment of state-owned factories and mines.

Well, it can't really be called a mistake. It's the kind of mistake that you can't find the answer to no matter who you ask. Because if you're going to blame someone, you have to attribute it to the progress of the times. It's simply a more efficient way of development and a more efficient way of accumulating wealth, which directly destroyed the old system.

However, there is one point that Chen Xi cannot deny: after entering this system, people become more tired. But this kind of tiredness is different from the struggle for basic necessities like food, drink, and excretion. Instead, it is because the so-called ineffective social interaction is systematically eliminated, making communication and free time scarcer. This is because you are fixed in a certain position and become a link in the whole system, and you can no longer do those meaningless things as freely as before.

Although it was common to go hungry in the past, there was a lot of meaningless time available to us. And for humans, the time spent daydreaming is very important. Doing nothing and thinking about nothing is very effective in relieving stress that comes from nowhere.

Besides the efficient allocation of resources in the market economy and the explosive development of social division of labor and technological innovation, Chen Xi's liberation of productivity mainly involved eliminating the meaningless time that originally belonged to normal people's lives, making this time fulfilling, giving them work to do, and enabling them to obtain the compensation they deserve.

On the surface, this is a win-win situation, but in reality, it's important to understand that all of a nation's wealth does not come from the nation itself. Or, to put it more realistically, the nation as a political entity does not produce wealth; every penny it distributes comes from every worker.

The longer workers work, the more profit they generate per unit of time, and the greater the theoretical upper limit of wealth that a country can acquire.

Only by understanding this can we continue the discussion—Chen Xi's endless wealth comes from here, but the wealth that Chen Xi harvested has been redistributed correctly, further boosting the country's development and the people's development.

So overall it's a win-win situation, but at its core, Chen Xi is neither a god of wealth nor an economic master. He didn't carry out any so-called tax reform; he simply squeezed more people into effective labor and then extracted more profits.

Essentially, Chen Xi's strategy revolves around increasing the population, bringing more people into the workforce, optimizing and allocating the market structure more effectively, and implementing a relatively detailed and efficient social division of labor along with a small amount of technological innovation.

Indeed, truly high-quality technological innovations are actually few in number, although this is partly due to practical reasons that prevent us from engaging in radical innovation.

Therefore, considering the current situation, Chen Xi's approach mainly involves more people and longer working hours. In addition, Chen Xi himself can directly point out the direction, so there is no need to waste too many resources. Instead, it is the simplest, most direct, and most effective way to move forward along this seemingly low-level route!

However, what's interesting is that this simple and crude method is the most effective and satisfies everyone the most. After all, low-level routes will inevitably attract a large number of people, and in this day and age, labor-intensive industries are not only not a bad thing, but a good thing!
Therefore, even though there were certain quantitative errors, everyone in this era still believed that Chen Xi's plan was absolutely the most correct one, because looking ahead, they could see skeletons exposed in the wilderness, and this era was just a little tired, but then all the problems of food, clothing and daily necessities were solved.

Even a wise man like Chen Ji, who still has a conscience, believes that what Chen Xi is promoting is undoubtedly correct. This system, which can function, has lifted everyone out of poverty and brought the ideal of a harmonious society—where "the elderly are cared for until their end, the able-bodied are employed, the young are nurtured, the widowed, orphaned, lonely, disabled, and sick are all provided for, and men have their roles and women have their homes"—into reality. This is a moral principle that no one can refute.

After all, every era has its own political correctness. In feudal times, the greatest political correctness was to ensure that everyone had enough to eat and that everyone had something to do. This was the most basic political correctness, and no one could achieve this in the past. It could only be written and described in the ideal of a utopian society. But Chen Xi actually accomplished it.

How can a group of people who can't even reach this level of correctness discuss this with Chen Xi?

Therefore, the closer one is to Confucianism, the more one will agree with the correctness of this set of ideas and directions. However, everything must be done in moderation. In Chen Ji's view, Chen Xi's moderation has some problems!
Chen Xi's current situation has almost consumed all the time of the aristocratic sons. Although every aristocratic son is working hard to build their own country and is full of enthusiasm because of this construction, if this enthusiasm continues to burn, Chen Ji cannot find historical references. However, his experience and knowledge do not think this is a good thing. What's worse, Chen Ji cannot find a point of attack.

The lack of points of attack is not important; what is important is that Chen Ji at least clearly realized from these events that Chen Xi did not truly stand behind the Han aristocratic family.

The claim that Chen Xi stands behind the Han aristocratic family and that he supports the Han aristocratic family is purely self-aggrandizement by the Han aristocratic family. To be realistic, based on what Chen Ji currently understands, Chen Xi is simply making the most of what he has given to the Han aristocratic family because the Han aristocratic family happens to be the largest intellectual and talent pool of this era.

Chen Xi was willing to give the Han family a helping hand only because there was no other family worthy of his support. Ordinary commoners? They couldn't even read a single character. What could Chen Xi do?
It's not that being literate necessarily makes one better than being illiterate. Rather, the most practical point is that Chen Xi is promoting industrialization, and the foundation of industrialization is standardization. Literacy is actually a fundamental support for the operation of the industrial system, technological iteration, and the improvement of production efficiency, rather than simply being able to read and write. Even though Chen Xi is currently in the most basic stage of transitioning from handicrafts to mechanical industries, many jobs still require literacy.

Putting everything else aside, any normal person should understand the benefits of literacy in improving production efficiency and facilitating overall management. To put it bluntly, if you are illiterate, just learning new technologies would be a nightmare.

One of the key reasons why Chen Xi didn't push for new technologies was the extremely low literacy rate. Surely no one is unaware of how illiterate workers learn new technologies. They can only rely on memorization and imitation. Not to mention the length of the learning cycle, the changes in operating procedures brought about by later technological advancements would directly cost most illiterate workers their lives.

For literate workers, all they need to do is hang the rules and regulations on the wall and watch them operate. Generally speaking, as long as a skilled worker guides them once or twice, and they are careful afterward, they will not make mistakes. Even if the operating procedure is changed, as long as someone guides them once or twice and there are warning signs, they can continue working.

What was the illiteracy rate like in the Han Dynasty during the third century?

Yes, Xin Xianying's palace novels are very famous, and it is said that they sold throughout the entire Han Dynasty. However, even the best-selling volume only sold tens of thousands of copies, because the number of scholars was only so small.

The Chen family has a lot to say about how many scholars there are in the world. When Chen Xi was curious, he asked Chen Ji about it. Chen Ji said that if you multiply the number of people who came to mourn his father's death by three, that would be about the same. When Chen Shi died, there were more than 30,000 people who came to mourn him. Multiplying that by three would be around 100,000. Of course, that's just the number of scholars. Based on the relationship between literacy and reading, multiplying that by five would be about the same. In other words, that's about how many literate people there are in the world.

In this situation, even if Chen Xi had ideas, what could he do? He could only make the best use of people's talents and resources. Although aristocratic families were not good things, they were still something, right?
Therefore, Chen Xi had to stand behind the aristocratic families, because there weren't that many cattle and horses to use when standing behind other things. So even though Chen Xi knew that the Han aristocratic families were all scoundrels, and many of them were probably not even human, Chen Xi still needed to win them over.

Even though Chen Xi knew perfectly well that these scholars educated by aristocratic families of the old era would inevitably bear some traces of their ancestors and inherit some of their feudal and outdated ideas, Chen Xi still needed to use these people.

Even now, Chen Xi is well aware that even the younger generation educated by truly virtuous individuals like Wang Lie and Guan Ning at the Imperial Academy still retain some traces of their aristocratic families. But can Chen Xi not use them? No, Chen Xi not only cannot not use them, but must also give them great importance.

Chen Xi knew all too well that no matter how much you washed in this mud and sand, you would never become clean. You could only choose those who didn't look so dirty as your subordinates. After all, no matter how bad they were, at least they could do some work and get things done.

Education is such a thing after all. Everything that the older generation has encountered and received will inevitably be passed on to the younger generation. What's worse is that those ideas that don't seem wrong but are clearly not quite right will also be passed on naturally as people get used to them.

Chen Xi actually knew very well how to gradually eliminate these things, but Chen Xi had neither the time nor the manpower. Fighting for the right to education is actually fighting for the right to speak in the future. Whose books to study and whose scriptures to recite are actually inheriting whose traditions.

Therefore, the most correct way of education is for Chen Xi to spend time compiling a set of correct teaching materials, then teach them from childhood to adulthood, and then let these people spread them, gradually erasing the traces left by the Han aristocratic families in education during this era.

However, Chen Xi couldn't do it. Not to mention the time required to compile teaching materials, even if Chen Xi had a model, it wouldn't be something that could be done in a short time to make teaching materials that were truly precise and conveyed his ideas. As for parent-child education and then cultivating a group of educators who would inherit his ideas, to be honest, that would take far too much time.

Moreover, if they truly inherited Chen Xi's ideas and could see things and the world from Chen Xi's perspective, then Chen Xi himself would feel it was a waste to put them down in the education sector. After all, this is the third century. If they have learned to this level, wouldn't it be better to use them as high-ranking officials or governors to help him manage the country, or even just to optimize the bureaucratic system?

After all, education isn't the only thing in this world with problems; there are so many things that have problems!

Therefore, this matter was unsolvable. Chen Xi could only keep a cold face and continue to use the personnel and manpower of the Han family to educate the people of the world. As for what could be said to be a change, it was probably the teaching materials that Chen Xi and Cai Yan worked hard to compile, which could indeed regulate the thinking of some of the educators sent by the Han family to educate the people.

Of course, this is the limit. Chen Xi doesn't have any better way to do better. After all, this is the general background of the times. If he wanted to take another route, it would take too much time on his own. Therefore, compromise became inevitable.

However, the compromise that Chen Xi considered was actually quite rare in the eyes of wise men like Chen Ji. These top sages of the previous era lived in a time when even the emperor couldn't do anything about them; they truly shared the world with the emperor.

Now, Chen Xi's so-called compromises often involve the Han family kowtowing to him, and Chen Xi, unable to bear it, agrees, saying, "Fine, this matter doesn't have too serious an impact. I agree, but this won't happen again."

Is this considered a compromise?

In Chen Xi's view, this was indeed a compromise on his part.

But in the eyes of the Han family, I have already kowtowed, and this is something I earned through my own merit!
This is really speechless. Okay, actually, Zhou Yu sometimes thinks the same way. Zhou Yu also feels that he earned it through his own abilities. Chen Zichuan didn't say anything, so what are you guys saying?

Well, this is what's happening at Zhou Yu's residence. Zhou Yu has met his group of multi-headed monsters from Jiangnan. Just as Zhou Yu thought, even if he didn't inform them, they should already know about such a big event. And not only should they know, but they should also rush over to ask what happened after seeing him return!
Therefore, Zhou Yu did not send his guards to break down the door, but stayed at home to wait. Then, in the middle of the night, the powerful families of Jiangdong arrived one after another.

More importantly, contrary to Zhou Yu's expectations, the Jiangdong aristocratic families probably felt that they were not qualified to face Zhou Yu alone. Therefore, they preferred to wait outside Zhou Yu's house for a while until most people arrived before entering together, rather than entering one by one as Zhou Yu had imagined in his moment of impulsiveness.

However, this situation was not beyond Zhou Yu's expectations. After all, having been in Jiangdong for so many years, Zhou Yu knew very well what the Jiangdong aristocratic families were like. They were very united when faced with threats and needed to unite against external forces, such as when launching a defensive counterattack.

However, if there is no external threat, this group of people will start fighting amongst themselves, and may even kill their own teammates. In short, they are completely inhuman.

"I thought you weren't coming," Zhou Yu said with a mocking tone as he sat in the main seat and watched the Jiangdong aristocratic families file in as dawn broke. He had originally thought that the group would all arrive last night, but they had chosen to brave the snow and wait outside Zhou Yu's house until everyone had arrived before coming in together, rather than facing him alone.

However, following this line of thought, Zhou Yu realized that he seemed to be playing the role of the biggest enemy of the Jiangdong aristocratic families again. But thinking about it, it didn't matter. The biggest enemy is the biggest enemy. What's so great about it? Isn't that what he has always been doing in Jiangdong?

"Greetings, Commander." Upon hearing this, the group felt somewhat awkward. After all, who knew what Zhou Yu's mindset would be after attending the banquet at Zhaoyang Palace? Perhaps he would want to skin them alive, right? So they had to wait for everyone to arrive. That way, even if they were to be punished, they could share the burden and the pressure wouldn't be so great. Therefore, upon hearing this, all the heads of the Jiangdong aristocratic families stood up and bowed, appearing to advance and retreat together.

That's right. Even Zhuge Jin, Pang Tong, and others who were just coasting along did the same thing. There was no other way. Sometimes Zhou Yu was indeed a bit too human-like. In this situation, it was better to stick together. After all, everyone heard the joke yesterday—Guan Yu and Zhang Fei carried Zhou Yu out of Zhaoyang Palace and then threw him out of the palace. After that, Zhou Yu left the palace. This was a matter of life and death!
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