My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 590: Of course we can’t issue Zhibai coins, we need to make it more technologically advanced

When Zhuge Jin heard that Liu Ba was coming to surrender, he was afraid that Liu Bei would be led astray by some shocking strategy, so he quickly put on his clothes and went straight to the mint to sign.

As soon as he stepped into the door of the signing hall, Liu Bei noticed him and stood up from behind the desk to introduce him to Zhuge Jin:

"Ziyu, you have worked hard. You have come just in time. Let me introduce you to Liu Zichu, the famous scholar from Lingling. Brother Jingsheng and I have each tried to recruit him once before. Mr. Zichu was very aloof at first and never accepted the offer. But now he has finally come."

Liu Bei did not have any ill intention in saying this; he was just speaking the truth and making things clear.

After all, Liu Ba had rejected Liu Biao and Liu Bei's invitations to serve twice before. If he didn't make it clear, hiding his suspicion in his heart, that would be bad. It would be better to make it clear and give Liu Ba a chance to explain himself.

Zhuge Jin looked in the direction Liu Bei pointed and saw a skinny middle-aged man with a small triangular goatee, obviously Liu Ba.

Although he looks young and his skin is somewhat shiny, his wrinkles, especially the nasolabial folds, are very deep. You can tell at first glance that he is a man of deep thoughts who thinks carefully about the consequences before doing anything.

When Liu Ba saw Zhuge Jin, he indeed showed a little shame on his face, but he quickly recovered and bowed to him, then explained:

"I am a wild man from Lingling, and I pay my respects to the Prime Minister Zhuge. I am a lazy person by nature, and I am not familiar with military affairs and strategies. In the past, Jingzhou was not settled, and the situation was complicated. When I first lived in Lingling, I was trapped under the rule of Zhang Xian, a pseudo-rebel, and I had to study behind closed doors and encourage myself to study.

Later, the Grand Commandant pacified Jingnan. I thought the governor of Jingzhou was Duke Jingsheng, but Jingnan happened to be under the Grand Commandant's rule. The situation is still unclear, so I have no choice but to continue to refuse visitors.

Liu Ba explained in a few words why he had been sitting idle for the past few years. He portrayed himself as someone who didn't care about military affairs and didn't understand them, and didn't want to make a bet easily when the ownership of Jingzhou was still undecided, so as not to bet on the wrong person.

Although this statement was a bit far-fetched, it made sense. However, with Zhuge Jin's keenness, he easily caught a small loophole in Liu Ba's words, and smiled and teased:

"Oh? From what Zichu said, it seems that he couldn't see clearly who Jingzhou belonged to at the beginning, so 'people from afar were confused and didn't know where to go'. What about now? Could it be that he has seen it clearly?"

Liu Ba hurriedly bowed in a more respectful manner and said, "I heard that Lord Jingsheng is seriously ill. Although he still holds the position of governor of Jingzhou, he is obviously unable to exercise his authority.

In the future, whether it is a smooth transfer of power to Master Liu Qi, or the Jingzhou officials re-nominate a governor to the court, Jingzhou will surely get better development under the rule of the Grand Commandant. If I hesitate any longer, I will be blind. "

Zhuge Jin nodded slightly, indicating that the other party didn't need to be nervous, and that what had passed was over.

In his heart, he also felt a little emotional. Because Zhuge Jin knew that in history, Liu Ba once looked down on Liu Bei. After Liu Bei controlled Jingnan, he ran away and fled to Yizhou, preferring to surrender to Liu Zhang. In the end, Liu Zhang was also conquered by Liu Bei, and Liu Ba was forced to surrender to Liu Bei.

However, Liu Bei's reputation and prestige in this life are obviously not comparable to those in the same period in history.

From this, we can also see that Liu Ba is not as noble as others say. He is just unwilling and unable to follow the weak and build up step by step from the initial stage.

Historically, in the year between Cao Cao's attack on Liu Biao and his occupation of northern Jing and his defeat in the Battle of Red Cliffs, Liu Ba eagerly went to see Cao Cao. Cao Cao gave him the task of "recruiting the four counties of southern Jing to surrender", but after the Red Cliffs, the four counties of southern Jing were conquered by Liu Bei, so Liu Ba could not report back and had to enter Shu.

It can be seen that as long as the person with real power is strong enough, Liu Ba would even surrender to Cao Cao, let alone Liu Bei.

After some tug of war between the two sides, the awkward situation of "coming to surrender so late" was resolved.

Liu Bei then got to the point and took the initiative to bring the topic to finance:
"Zi Yu, I came here this time because Zi Chu offered me a plan when he came to Wuchang to pay me a visit the other day. I just wanted to discuss it with you to see if it is feasible. Zi Chu, tell me your idea yourself."

Liu Ba did not hold an official position yet, he was just a guest, so naturally he had to wait for Liu Bei to speak before he could explain. So he spoke in a very humble manner:
"I have long heard that Situ has farsightedness and his ability to govern a country is unparalleled in the world. I am sure that these superficial views of mine will not be accepted by Situ.

I heard that the Grand Commandant was short of copper coins because he had given generous rewards to his ministers, so he urgently needed to increase the mining and minting of coins. So I came up with a plan to solve this problem:
The Taiwei and Si Tu can order the mint in E County to change to minting heavy coins. For example, a new coin weighs ten or twenty old coins, but the value of the coin can be used as a hundred coins. In this way, the same amount of copper can be used to mint coins equivalent to five to ten times the original weight. "

Zhuge Jin was not too surprised to hear this, so the corners of his mouth just twitched slightly, with no other expression.

It was indeed a hundred-yuan note... Liu Ba, ah Liu Ba, he still used this trick.

In history, after Liu Bei entered Sichuan, the idea of using the Zhibai coin was first thought up by Liu Ba. This method is obviously good for making money, but it will also ruin the reputation, that is, it will depreciate the copper coins originally saved by the people and cause inflation.

Of course, the Zhibai coin has gone through many stages of development in history. Later, during the reign of Zhuge Liang, some means were used to stabilize the currency value and purchasing power, but that is a story for another time. The problems of the Zhibai coin have been improved in the later period, but that does not mean that the Zhibai coin did not compete with the people for profits when it was first introduced.

Liu Ba had been worried that Zhuge Jin would directly object, so he spoke very carefully and repeatedly observed Zhuge Jin's expression. After he finished speaking, Zhuge Jin only twitched his mouth slightly, without any other unhappy expression, Liu Ba was slightly relieved.

But how could he know that Zhuge Jin was not surprised at all because he had predicted the strategy he would adopt in advance.

"Si Tu is truly unfathomable. He remained completely calm upon hearing this evil law that, at first glance, competes with the people for profit..." Liu Ba thought to himself, and his understanding of Zhuge Jin's temperament and cultivation increased.

Zhuge Jin just looked at Liu Ba expressionlessly. When Liu Ba felt that he had nothing more to say and stopped talking completely, the scene fell into silence. Zhuge Jin kept him company for a while before slowly speaking:
"Isn't this just competing with the people for profit? What kind of strategy is this? When Wang Mang restored the system and recast the coins, abolishing the old Han coins, didn't the coins get smaller and smaller, and the denominations get bigger and bigger?"

Although the ancients had no common sense of economics, they could still understand the simple concept of "inflation". As long as the denomination of coins was increased, prices would definitely rise, and in the end it would be the same as not minting any coins, except that the old coins that were left behind would become less valuable.

However, the anti-counterfeiting technology of ancient coins was poor, and people who had saved a large amount of old money would definitely not sit and wait for the money to depreciate. In the end, they would melt the old money again and mint new coins.

Of course, ordinary people may not have the technical strength to do this. Only the powerful families with manors and foundries can do this. However, those powerful people will choose to buy back the old coins from the surrounding people at a price slightly higher than the face value of the old copper coins, and then they will mint them uniformly.

Zhuge Jin pointed out the fundamental problem of Zhibai coins in one sentence, and Liu Ba naturally had to respond.

However, Liu Ba seemed to be well prepared this time. Perhaps he already knew the reputation and strength of the Zhuge brothers, and did not dare to fight an unprepared and uncertain battle. Before coming, Liu Ba had repeatedly deduced. Faced with doubts, Liu Ba sincerely analyzed: "Situ really hit the nail on the head about the disadvantages of this method. If we only use less copper to cast large coins, we are indeed exploiting the people at the beginning, especially exploiting the families who have accumulated a lot of copper coins.

However, there are other ways to stabilize prices in the future. I heard that the Grand Commandant has arranged for Zhuge Lingjun to expand the production of Shujin in Shuzhong and start weaving. Since ancient times, silk and brocade can also be used as the price of barter.

When the Han Dynasty was managing the Western Regions, starting with Zhang Qian and Ban Dingyuan, the imperial court was short of money, so silk was transported to Yumen Pass in large quantities, and the troops stationed in the Western Regions used the silk to buy food, meat and military supplies from the local Hu people. In the future, if the Taiwei really implements the Zhibai Daqian, as long as the imperial court backs it up and allows the Daqian to be exchanged for Shu brocade or other in-demand goods, the currency price will naturally be stabilized, so as not to exploit the people. "

In his remarks, Liu Ba also cited some historical evidence, including how the garrisons in the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty solved the problem of shortage of money, food and military supplies.

Everyone at that time knew the inside story - the so-called "Silk Road" in later generations was actually mainly the Han Dynasty transporting silk to the Western Regions as military expenses, and then slowly spending it, and then circulating it westward one station at a time. Basically, for each single transaction, the delivery distance of silk would not exceed 500 kilometers, but after repeated accumulation, it reached Rome.

It was not until the Tang Dynasty that the Silk Road developed to the point where caravans could transport silk directly to Byzantium. Even so, the vast majority of silk purchased by Byzantium was imitations of Persian brocade and taffeta from West Asian countries closer to Byzantium. The silk originally produced in the Tang Dynasty accounted for only 10% of Byzantium's total imports at most.

Because there was historical experience from the Western Region military expenditure plan of the Han Dynasty to draw on, it was not difficult for Liu Ba, who was well-versed in history and had a wide range of knowledge, to think of using Shu brocade to anchor the purchasing power of the new version of the big money.

After listening to Liu Ba's suggestion, Zhuge Jin was able to solve a mystery: It turned out that he had already thought of this anchoring method or had the initial form of this idea as early as Liu Ba's time. However, Liu Ba died early in history, so this method was not used when he was alive. It was not until Zhuge Liang came to power that he gradually completed it.

It is estimated that he also pretended to be innocent and harvested a wave of money when the situation was critical, and when the floating wealth was almost harvested, he would make a promise to accept it and stabilize the long-term credit bottom line. After all, in history, when Liu Ba first proposed the Zhibai money, Liu Bei had just entered Chengdu, and then the Battle of Hanzhong broke out. The battle in Yizhou was so fierce that "men fought and women transported goods". If he didn't act ruthlessly, he probably wouldn't have survived that wave.

In this life, probably because the situation was different, Liu Bei's army was not stretched to that extent, and Liu Ba also knew that the original Zhibaiqian plan was too ridiculous, so he revealed his backup plan right from the start.

Using a hard currency to anchor the value of credit currency, like the "petrodollar", is definitely helpful in solving inflation and credit currency depreciation.

After all, Zhuge Jin had a wealth of economic knowledge, and he could understand these principles in an instant.

However, due to his caution and understanding of history, he still disagreed with Liu Ba's idea. He felt that the other party was oversimplifying the problem and needed further improvement.

Therefore, in the expectant eyes of Liu Bei and Liu Ba, Zhuge Jin still gave a decisive negative opinion: "My lord, I think this method cannot be used, or at least it needs to be significantly optimized and completely changed before it can be used."

Liu Bei had seen Zhuge Jin's foresight for many years and had absolute trust in him. So when Zhuge Jin said he couldn't use him, Liu Bei didn't hesitate and directly expressed his opinion:
"What Ziyu said must have a reason. Let's put this method on hold and talk about how to optimize it. When Zichu returns, he must also consider the pros and cons again."

In contrast, Liu Ba was a little unwilling to give up, and still insisted on asking: "Situ's wisdom is beyond the reach of ordinary people like us. But I still hope that Situ can solve my doubts for me."

Zhuge Jin opened his folding fan and shook it a few times, then said calmly, "Using the government's credit to guarantee that big money can be used to buy brocade and ironware at a sufficient price, or even only allowing big money to be used to buy brocade and ironware, can certainly ensure that big money is accepted by the world.

However, what if hostile princes or powerful people participated in counterfeiting big money? At that time, wouldn't they use one-fifth of the copper to forge a counterfeit coin with the purchasing power of big money? Twenty coins of copper were melted into a 100-yuan coin to buy Shu brocade equivalent to the value of 100 coins. How much loss would the court have to bear?

Your method is too superficial. You haven't even thought about how to prevent counterfeiting or crack down on it. Once implemented, it will inevitably cause chaos."

In just a few words, Zhuge Jin clearly explained the loopholes and limitations of the historical policy of combining Zhibai coins with "Shu brocade hard currency binding".

Yes, in history, Liu Ba came up with a trick, which Zhuge Liang later optimized, and it actually worked well. But that actually also had a component of luck, and it had to be combined with a specific historical background.

The most important element of luck here was that when the Wei and Wu families heard that Ji Han had developed the Zhibai coin, they thought it was indeed a powerful tool for plundering, and then they followed suit, and even did it more exaggeratedly than Ji Han.

The "Daquan Dangqian" minted later in history by Sun Quan of the Eastern Wu Dynasty was said to be equivalent to one thousand Wuzhu coins, but its weight was not even heavier than the old Wuzhu, which was the original weight of one coin - Liu Bei's early Zhibai coins were at least equivalent to the weight of five to ten coins.

The State of Wei also did something similar, but not as shameless as Sun Quan.

In this situation, the three parties became competing to see who was worse. Zhuge Liang took out the hard currency of "Shu Brocade Zhibai" as an acceptance, which naturally had an effect.

Moreover, because the Three Kingdoms established their own national names and reign titles, no one forged other countries' currencies for the sake of legitimacy. The official copper coins they minted all had their own reign titles, so the Zhibai coins of the Ji Han Dynasty were not impacted by foreign counterfeit coins.

After all, in the eyes of feudal emperors, making money is a trivial matter, and the scale of foreign trade is only so small. There is no need to lose their prestige and legitimacy in order to make a little profit in foreign trade.

If you easily mint counterfeit currency of another country, people who know about it will know that you are trying to take advantage of others.

People who don’t know might think that you are respecting the neighboring country as the legitimate one and using their reign title.

However, if this situation were to happen in the future when there was no longer any consideration of legitimacy, the party that issued fictitious coins without taking measures to prevent counterfeiting would definitely be crushed by the enemy's counterfeit coins.

For example, during World War II, the Deutsche Bank did not consider legitimacy. They used professional means to directly counterfeit British pounds and spent a large amount of them.

At that time, the Japanese pirates also counterfeited the legal currency on a large scale, trying to overthrow China. However, the legal currency had been over-issued at that time, so the amount of currency counterfeited by the Japanese pirates did not cause any trouble.

Zhuge Jin knew so many lessons from later generations, so of course he knew how to plug all these loopholes.

The idea of Zhibai coins can be used, but we cannot simply issue Zhibai coins mechanically.

You have to make a special anti-counterfeit coin so that other princes can't simply forge it with the materials. There must be a technical threshold.

(End of this chapter)