From this story, maybe you will suddenly understand something? See through what?
It is said that in ancient times, in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, there was a person surnamed Tan Lan in the Chu Kingdom, named Tan Lan, who was very rich and powerful, opened a number of large charcoal factories, and began to sell his charcoal very cheaply, even lower than the cost price, resulting in most of his peers being difficult to maintain and close down, and finally Tan Lan's charcoal factory was dominant, and monopolized the entire Chu state charcoal industry, and then Tan Lan began to gradually increase the price of charcoal, and later the price of charcoal doubled several times.
The price of charcoal is too high, many people can not afford to burn, they are not buying charcoal, they use low-priced, even non-cost firewood as fuel, so that tanlan charcoal plant charcoal sales have declined significantly. In order to sell his charcoal to everyone and earn more wealth, Tan Lan thought about it day and night, hollowed out his mind, and racked his brains to plan.
In the first step, Tan Lan first spent a lot of money, hired several people of insight who were highly respected in chu at that time, and spoke with weight, so that these people of insight wrote articles and spoke out, denouncing the firewood and grass fuel that people usually use, making a fire to cook and heat up will produce soot, affect the air, cause people to get sick, unsafe, easy to cause fires, and at the same time advocate the use of charcoal as fuel will not produce smoke and dust, very healthy. There are many benefits such as no open flame and very safe, and these people of insight look at the heavy reward and do their best to speak and write.
In the second step, Tan Lan also made a lot of money through layers of relations, and made several trusted ministers around the King of Chu, so that these loyal ministers of the royal family borrowed the discourse of those people of insight in the Chu State on burning firewood and grass to produce smoke and dust, affect the air, and cause great harm, and spoke to the King of Chu, implying that the King of Chu had better issue a decree prohibiting people from using firewood that would smoke and using charcoal that would not smoke. At that time, the king of Chu was suffering from a certain disease, and the trusted minister took the opportunity to tell the king of Chu that the disease suffered by the king of Chu might be because people usually burned firewood and grass to smoke, as long as people were forbidden to burn firewood, the illness of the king of Chu might get better.
Sure enough, it didn't take long for the King of Chu to issue a decree to the whole Chu state, prohibiting people from using firewood to burn firewood, and whoever burned firewood would be fined silver, and if he did not comply with the law, those who committed serious circumstances would be arrested and imprisoned.
In the face of the new ban promulgated by the King of Chu and the strict implementation of the officials, the people of the Chu State had no choice but to buy charcoal for cooking and heating as fuel, the sales volume of the Tanlan Charcoal Factory increased in an instant, the output also doubled, the kiln where the charcoal was fired was always thick smoke rolling in both day and night, the kiln smoke could be smelled from dozens of miles away, and a lot of silver earned from the sale of charcoal was continuously flowing into Tan Lan's vault. The Chu royal family and the chu king's close ministers used the best quality charcoal that Tan Lan paid tribute to for free.
There were many poor people who could not afford to buy charcoal, so they burned charcoal in the mountains and forests themselves, but they were reported to the government by Tan Lan, and the officials of the King of Chu confiscated, fined, and even arrested and imprisoned them for having incomplete procedures, operating without a license, burning charcoal illegally, or burning inferior charcoal.
