Chapter 31: Li Zhen's Worries What happened at Pier No. 8 spread throughout Lingnan in just three days, and spread throughout the world in half a month, and even Li Shimin, who was far away in Goguryeo, knew the news, and a month later, the news had spread throughout East Asia.
For a while, the world was in an uproar and there were many discussions.
The people just envy King Yue for being a little god of wealth, this ability to make money is indeed extraordinary, just built a few ships, and can make so much money, but there is no other idea - anyway, if you want to go to sea, you must have a big ship, they are a group of mud legs, where can they have money to buy a big ship?
Even if it is fundraising, it will be more than 1,000 households, and the risk of going to sea is too great, which is too impractical.
But those merchants don't think so—it's only a thousand, and they can afford it, even if those small merchants can't take out so much for a while, it's still okay to find a few people to get together and buy a ship.
And not to mention those big businessmen, they are not short of money at all, they are short of money, that is, there is a lack of money, and now Li Zhen has found such a rich business for them, if they want to say that they are not moved, it is simply impossible - Marx said well, from the day of the birth of capital, every pore is dripping with blood and filth, if there is 30 percent profit, people will be active, if there is 50 percent, people will do their best, if there is 100 percent, people will trample on all laws.
If there were 300 percent, people would dare to gamble with their lives, even at the risk of going to the gallows.
Triple the profit can make them ignore any obstacles, and now it is dozens of times the profit......
Who cares if you are the territory of the king of Yue?
According to the information obtained by Li Zhen, several large chambers of commerce in Datang have begun to mobilize funds and are ready to buy big ships to go to sea - if King Yue does not announce the route, won't we explore it ourselves?
Li Zhen didn't care about this, if the route was so easy to explore, so many people would not die in the Age of Discovery.
What's more, the entire shipyard that Datang can build sea ships is in your own hands, even if you have money, if I don't sell the ship, what can you do?
Do you want to swim over?
As for the rebuilding of the shipyard from now on, of course, there is no problem, the problem is that in order to build the Yue ship and board the ship, even with Li Zhen's financial resources, it took several years, and almost all the shipbuilding experts in the whole world were raided.
Those chambers of commerce build their own shipyards, not only have to train their own talents, but also need to spend a lot of time, and when their shipyards are built, I am afraid that Li Zhen here has already completed the exploration of the South Sea.
In fact, Li Zhen was not as confident as he was on the outside that day, and he was actually in a state of entanglement about the opening of the Luzon shipping route - of course, he didn't feel sorry for the interests of the Luzon Islands, he really knew the situation of the world too well from later generations, Luzon is rich in resources, but if you want to say that it ranks in the world, Luzon may not even be in the top ten.
To put it bluntly, Luzon is just an archipelago, and even if it is big, how big can it be?
Can it be bigger than Siberia?
Can it be bigger than Australia?
Is it bigger than Africa?
Is it bigger than the Americas?
Not to mention these continents, there are many places in the archipelago that are much richer than Luzon.
Borneo (Kalimantan).
Jinzhou (Sumatra).
Java.
Bali. …… To put it mildly, compared to these resource-rich places, Luzon is a piece of?
So Li Zhen is not entangled in the interests of Luzon, what he is entangled in is - what will be the consequences of Luzon's opening up.
According to his plan, after Luzon opened up, the first people to eat meat would definitely be the large chambers of commerce, and they would plunder nearly half of the profits of Luzon.
And among the remaining fifty percent, forty percent is occupied by Li Zhen and the imperial court, and only one percent of the soup is what those small chambers of commerce and retail investors can eat.
But to be honest, Li Zhen didn't want to support those large chambers of commerce.
Originally, the scale of these chambers of commerce was large enough, and if they were allowed to eat half of Luzon, their principal would be doubled, and in the end, they would definitely develop into one consortium after another—just like the monopoly consortiums in later generations.
These consortia have a lot of money, and they will not be satisfied with the current situation, and will try to improve their status, and the best way to improve their status is to use money to support their spokesmen in the court......
Then Li Zhen's most fearful place came.
The consortium controls the imperial court, the emperor is overthrown, the throne is in vain, and the whole country eventually becomes an arena of capital wrestling, and for its own interests, it can sell everything in the country - just like those countries controlled by the consortium in later generations, the president is elected by themselves, and they are their spokesmen, and the whole country is completely reduced to the plaything of the consortium, and there is no longer a trace of autonomy.
Compared with the family, the consortium is even more terrible, because everything in the consortium will be based on interests, and their greed for interests is more naked, not like the family, at least they will put on a skin of benevolence and morality, but the consortium will be much more red fruit, and even for the sake of interests, it is not impossible to start a war (at least World War I and World War II, it is because the consortium behind those countries is doing things).
But when Li Zhen told her doubts to a few henchmen, what she got was their laughter.
"Sir, uncle, why are you laughing?"
"Hahaha......"
Eldest Sun Wuji laughed for a while, and said: "Your Highness, the world knows that you have a long-term vision, who would have thought that you would also be confused." ” "What do you mean by what Uncle says?"
Cen Wenwen saw that Li Zhen really couldn't figure it out, and said with a smile: "Your Highness, your problem may exist, but in fact, there is no need to worry too much.
It is human nature for the world to pursue profits, and how can it be stopped?
But you forgot one problem, that is, if Datang really goes according to your plan, our court itself will be the most powerful consortium in the world. ” "It's like Your Highness, your Chamber of Commerce, which has almost monopolized the manufacturing of weapons, iron and steel smelting, mineral mining, tea frying, seafood processing, spice production, and glass smelting in Datang...... and other industries, and the imperial court itself also had monopolies in many industries such as white paper production and book printing.
There are many other industries that are not monopolies, but they are all involved - Your Highness, tell me yourself, as long as these industries are always in our hands, we can control more than half of the world's economy, and what can others do to surpass us?
” "......"
Li Zhen thoughtfully.