Before this, the gentry class of the Ming Dynasty basically relied on the many fields in their families to support themselves. The fields were fixed assets. Although the output from the end of the year was very limited, everyone had no debts.
On the contrary, with development, the gentry class has more and more land. Slowly, in many places, the land of the entire county may belong to a few gentry families.
In such a situation, what they have to do is very simple. One is to continue to support the children of the family in studying, take the imperial examinations and become officials, and then continue the glory of the family.
The other is to continuously annex more land, because only by mastering more land can we collect more rent and the family can control more wealth.
Under such a model, land is the most important thing and the core asset. When everyone has money, they use it to buy land or bury their money in the ground.
But now with the rapid development of capitalism and colonialism, everyone has seen another way to get rich quickly.
That means setting up factories, trading houses, colonizing overseas, etc. Among them, especially setting up factories does not require much land, but it requires a large amount of capital investment.
With the start of the machine, money flowed in like running water. In a very short period of time, the emerging capitalists surpassed the previous gentry class, surpassed their accumulation for generations, and quickly became the richest people in the Ming Dynasty.
The emerging capitalists are expanding aggressively. Although they are very rich, they still continue to borrow money from banks and use the borrowed money to rapidly expand more factories and involve more industries.
Wealth is like a snowball, rolling rapidly and becoming larger and larger. The gap between the traditional gentry class and them quickly widens and becomes wider and wider.
At the same time, with the Ming Dynasty¡¯s external expansion, a large amount of territory was incorporated into the Ming Dynasty, and the population of the Ming Dynasty immigrated overseas and outside the customs, which intensified the collapse of the traditional gentry class.
The land in their hands is gradually uncultivated, and the grain handed over by tenants is becoming less and less valuable. Because the grain output in overseas and other areas has begun to grow explosively under the mechanized farming model, the price of grain has gradually dropped.
The traditional family tradition of farming and reading has gradually declined and cannot adapt to this new era, which in disguise has promoted the gentry class to gradually move closer and develop towards the capitalists.
More and more people, whether they are capitalists or traditional gentry and bureaucrats, are slowly integrating into the new social development, opening factories, setting up commercial banks, and colonizing overseas.
They no longer save a little money as they did before, burying it in the ground and using it later. Instead, like the capitalists, they start to expand crazily. What will they do if they don¡¯t have money?
Loans, loans from the First Bank of Ming Dynasty are absolutely very cheap in this era. You must know that private lending has always been a nine-year-old loan, which is still conscientious.
The interest rates on loans at Daming First Bank are even lower, with annual interest rates less than 10%. What capitalists like most is bank loans, with low interest rates. In this era of rapid development of capitalism and the industrial revolution.
Once you get the money, you can make money quickly and repay the loan casually.
Who would bury money in the ground like a fool?
¡°At least it has to be deposited in the bank. How many points of interest will it earn this year?
Watching others build factories with money from the bank and quickly turn from poor to rich, even the most conservative people can't help but follow suit.
After I tasted the first bite of the cheese of capitalism and the industrial revolution, I simply couldn¡¯t stop. More and more loans were taken, and factories and commercial banks became bigger and bigger. Invisibly, just like the enterprises of later generations, liabilities and cash Flow has become the most important thing.
Once a certain link is broken, a seemingly huge industry may collapse in the blink of an eye.
At this moment, the same is true for the industries of these old-school officials.
They originally just saw a lot of benefits and wanted to rely on their power to redivide the cake and get more shares, hoping to catch up from behind.
But he never thought that his family¡¯s seemingly huge industry would actually have such a fragile side. It would be completely destroyed by the First Bank of Ming Dynasty, and it would suddenly collapse.
Soon, the conservative faction sent a signal of submission to the hard-working faction, and did not mention the return of oil, gold mines, etc. to the imperial government.
If we mention this matter again, people may die. None of the gold mine owners, silver mine owners, and oil field owners here in Huangjinzhou are good people.??They naturally have no one to take over.
The conservative officials could only watch. Even though members of their own family had sold off almost all their assets, they still could not collect enough funds. They could only watch as the bank transferred their family's assets to the bank. The factories, oil fields, businesses, land, gold mines, etc. were confiscated.
Almost overnight, each of these old-school officials went bankrupt, like a featherless rooster. The huge wealth accumulated by the family for generations disappeared in the blink of an eye, and they could only watch others enjoy the good things. But my family can eat bran-thick vegetables.
Even the women in the family, all of them were originally glamorous and wealthy, but now, all of them have sold their gold and silver jewelry and can¡¯t even leave the house. It¡¯s really embarrassing