Joseph Needham, a famous British double academician, famously asked: "Why did modern science (as we know it since the time of Galileo in the 17th century) take place only in Europe and not in Chinese (or Indian) civilization?" ”
Mao Xuan sighed: "China is a great country with a vast population, a long history and an excellent heritage; However, its economic, political, and cultural development, which has lasted for about three thousand years since the Zhou and Qin dynasties, has been in a state of sluggish development for a long time. ”
Science and technology have developed to today, and the answer given by the big Internet celebrity of artificial intelligence ChatGPT is similar and muddy. Attribute the reasons to: A: Political and social immutability: the cyclical nature of war and turmoil. B: Cultural self-confidence: complacency and self-isolation. C: Economic factors. D: Education system: Education emphasizes traditional culture and etiquette rather than scientific craftsmanship.
Chinese needs to admit that science and technology in modern China have not developed, and although ordinary people in East Asian cultural circles such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea are very hardworking, their quality of life is generally worse than that of people in the United States and Western countries.
Singapore ranks second in average annual working hours: 2,238 hours, China third: 2,174 hours and Japan sixth: 1,723 hours. In Western Europe, there are less than 1,600 hours, and the smallest Germans work an average of 5.2 hours per day and 26 hours a week, which is equivalent to three days a week and four days off. French laborers work four days off and three days off.
Why are Europe and the United States with high welfare, less labor, and especially leisurely and rich?
Let's find the answer in the history of technology!
With the development of science and technology in Europe and the United States, it has always developed very well, with high production efficiency, less labor and high income.
Why can't China and other countries develop science and technology, and why are Singaporeans all model workers, working twice as long as European and American countries?
Find out from history!
Some people say that it was Qin Shi Huang who unified China!
To be precise, it was the Shaanxi and Shanxi people who unified China.
The Shang Dynasty was just a local tribe in the North China Plain, and in 1046 BC King Ji Fa of Zhou Wu set out from Xiqi in Shaanxi to unify the Yellow River Valley and establish the Zhou Dynasty, and Qin Shi Huang set out from Xianyang in Shaanxi to unify northern China in 221 BC. 20 years later, Liu Bang spent only 7 years unifying the world, also from Chang'an, Shaanxi. The Lee Tang Dynasty also continues the same law. New China started from Yan'an, Shaanxi.
This is not a historical accident, but a historical necessity. The Guanzhong Plain is rich, and it can dominate the world and retreat and defend.
But more important is the people who live on this land, their minds.
It is difficult to summarize the character of the people who are regional for more than 2,000 years. It's also easy to make mistakes.
We find an answer from Shang Martingale's Shang Jun book.
The background of the Shang Junshu is: In the last years of the Shang Dynasty, after the authorities overthrew the divine power, there were no gods in the Yellow River Valley, and there were no longer large-scale organized sects. Teaching, this social organization that regulates human behavior. For example, Buddha, cross, and green were born after one or two thousand years. Teach, there is no soil in China.
Solid secular society. Shang Junshu is a historical experience summary of how to organize the people in this secular society.
The Shang Junshu is a summary of the methods of governance during the Shang Martingale period. Whether it is from the hands of Shang Martingale or not, 25,000 words are spilled. There is a lot of experience in large-scale social organization that is scientifically feasible.
Kings will have different preferences, such as Qin Shi Huang giving priority to "tired people" and Liu Bang good law, but successive kings have focused on weak people and strong countries. This is true even today.
From the Qin and Han dynasties, the population base was around 60 million, and by the Song and Ming dynasties, it exceeded 100 million, and reached 400 million at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
In order to organize a large population and regulate human behavior, the core idea in Shang Junshu is how to distribute the fruits of labor, not how to produce more wealth.
If the summary of Qin's administrative experience in the Shang Junshu is summarized, an item is added, such as increasing agricultural production, water conservancy or breeding. Then China's history will change dramatically.
But the continuation of the laws of history, the inertia of the wheel of the times. In the Greater China context, Shang Junshu's ideas are brought into greater play.
Let's start with the 2018 incident of "Zhang Xiaoping's departure that affected the process of manned lunar landing".
Zhang Xiaoping's departure incident that affected China's manned lunar landing
How can Chinese's high technology compete with the United States and break through the technological blockade?
And it is not engineers and technicians who cause this situation, scientists are not valuable.
The core of the large-scale organization of social production relations in Shang Junshu is: the right to distribute the fruits of labor. The specific implementation of weak people and strong countries gives way to officials. Departments control the distribution of the fruits of labor, rather than distributing wealth according to labor contribution.
To this day, this distribution rule is still firmly controlled by the Chinese land. In the wing department.
The essence of the ancient imperial examination: how to dig out the smartest people in society and maintain this set of labor distribution rules for the emperor.
Today, for example, in the science and technology industry, the most basic labor achievements of ordinary workers, engineers and scientists, the salary income is squeezed and deformed by the bureaucracy, and the scientific research results are exploited layer by layer.
A most basic scientific research employee has made a contribution or new discovery, and the project leader should sign the first author, the department director should be the first hero, the institute leader should become the media focus, and the academic hegemony should be inserted. In the end, how hard this grassroots scientific research employee works, he also proposes others to be a wedding dress. If he does enough dowry, he escalates into a ruler in the bureaucracy.
He once again exploited new young scientific grassroots employees, and the historical cycle is endless. The industrious little bee was eaten by the praying mantis, the praying mantis catches the yellow finch, the yellow finch is followed by the eagle, the eagle is eaten by the wolf, and the wolf is finally eaten by the big tiger.
However, the system in Shangjun's book is about to be seriously challenged, and with the advent of the era of artificial intelligence, the direct fruits of labor in a few decades will be increasingly produced by artificial intelligence. Such as driving a car, agricultural labor, highly repetitive work. In other words, the distribution system that has organized society for thousands of years has the potential to become stronger or collapse in the age of artificial intelligence.