Doomsday Code

Chapter 456 Old and New

After cheering, Chen Cheng asked Xiao Dun to bring a few people with him back to the village where these people lived.

At the same time, Huidun also called the unlucky webmaster.

At dawn, the group finally returned to the old man's village after crossing mountains and rivers.

Although the village is not big, the security here is very strict, especially the configuration of wooden fences and checkpoints. Although they are all skinny children with pale faces, their distribution is as familiar as that of veterans who have fought many battles.

Seeing this, the old man who was called by Huidun to follow him also told Huidun the reason.

"This tax is too heavy. In the past, the nobles could still obtain wealth through wars, but now there are no wars. The nobles want to make ends meet, so they can only increase our taxes."

"After paying the tax, we don't have enough food left, so it's easy for bloodshed to break out between neighboring villages."

Looking at those children with skinny limbs and bulging bellies, Chen Cheng knew that they were hungry and the edema was obviously caused by malnutrition.

"Have you ever thought about delaying or evading taxes?"

Chen Cheng asked this question in front of Huidun, and as a member of the ruling class, Huidun was not a cruel and extravagant person.

Otherwise, given the rapid development of Huidun City before, he would not have used his own money to subsidize the development of Huidun City.

The old man looked at Huidun beside him, then smiled bitterly and said:

"How would you know? If you don't pay taxes or pay too little, the noble master will immediately exclude you from his rule, and all of us in the village will become barbarians without household registration."

When he said this, fear and anger appeared on the old man's face.

"You didn't see it, sir. Just a few days ago, a village several dozen miles away from us didn't pay its taxes in full. Their village chief went to the city to beg you, sir, hoping to postpone the payment until next year.

But when he came back, the people in his village had become savages, and those damn slave-hunting teams immediately rushed into the village."

At this point, the old man who had experienced many battles and seen many fights on the battlefield couldn't help but shed tears.

After hearing the old man's explanation, Chen Cheng felt his chest suddenly blocked and the anger in his heart rushed to his forehead.

What he hated most in his life were those guys who treated humans as animals, especially those slave-catching teams.

Xiao Dun and others were also shocked by this. How could this be the aristocracy that ruled a place? This was simply a disgrace to them.

How could he know that for a marquis like his family, their economic source naturally did not depend on the income from the territory and land, so they could be tolerant to others.

Chen Cheng looked at Huidun beside him. Although Huidun was angry, he also wanted to rush into the city and kill those beasts.

But the fact is that he can't and has no power to do so now.

Because the beast did nothing wrong according to the laws of the Kingdom.

The relationship between the common people and the nobles is one of personal dependence. Their role is to provide taxes and soldiers to the rulers, and what the ruling class needs to do is to maintain this supply relationship.

So once the taxes are reduced, this will disrupt the supply relationship, so the nobles have reason to exclude them.

Without the protection of the nobles, their freedom of life and death would naturally not be in their own hands in this cannibalistic world.

When Chen Cheng saw Huidun shaking his head, he knew that this was the fact.

He was not annoyed by such supply relations, because absolute equality for all was impossible to achieve until productivity exceeded the limits of human desires.

The ruling class always exists.

What annoyed him was that this supply relationship had clearly exceeded the threshold, but those greedy guys only knew how to take.

This made Chen Cheng even more disgusted with these guys.

When the villagers saw the old man and his companions coming back, all the elderly, the weak, women and children who stayed behind came out to greet them.

Although the children on guard wanted to go up and ask if anyone had brought back food, in the end they did not leave their posts.

Chen Cheng suppressed his anger towards those ugly and stupid nobles and looked at the children on the sentry post. At this moment, he had a few more thoughts in his mind.

He called Huidun aside and said:

"Do you have any ideas?"

Chen Cheng asked.

Hui Dun looked at the old, weak, women and children who were concerned about the safety of their husbands and children, and sighed:

"All I can do now is to provide them with some food assistance and see if I can find them a job."

Huidun said this from the perspective of people's livelihood.

However, Chen Cheng sneered and said with a stern look:

"You are undoubtedly pushing them into a dead end, and at the same time you are digging a big hole for yourself."

"Given the temperament of those greedy guys, I could guess their reaction without much thought.

You are just relying on your status to exploit these people, and at the same time encouraging them to ask you for more."

"And if someone dies or something, he will blame it on you, the nosy person, and in the end you will be caught between a rock and a hard place."

As soon as Huidun heard this, he knew that this would definitely happen. He then asked:

"Then what do you say we should do? Do you want me to ignore them?"

“No, those beasts are just relying on their life dependence, so it’s simple.

From now on they are your enemies. What you need is not these greedy beasts, but population.

So we can just let the village refuse to pay taxes, and then let that idiot cancel their membership, and then we can just move them all to Huidun City."

Chen Cheng's plan was extremely cruel.

This is digging up the roots of these nobles.

When Huidun heard his plan and thought about it for a moment, he felt a chill down his spine.

But what Chen Cheng said was not wrong. If he ascended to the throne in the future, he would not need these greedy guys who were like beasts.

It can be said that Huidun already had a tendency to betray the traditional aristocratic class at this time.

The reason for this is that Chen Cheng used economy and capital to transform him, making him understand that the most valuable thing in the world is people.

The operation of economic capital requires human participation, whether it is a noble or a wealthy person or a common beggar.

They are all indispensable entities in economic circulation.

Therefore, at this time, Huidun's vision of wealth changed from the treasury of the old aristocracy to the circulation of wealth among people in society.

The rise of concepts such as so-called human equality in modern society is due to the expansion and development of capital.

In the perception of capital, wealth is not cold bricks of gold, nor is it banknotes that can be easily torn into pieces.

Wealth is generated through social circulation and the transaction of goods.

So this brings up a few concepts, production and supply and demand.

People with wealth control production and then sell the various goods produced, which requires a demand market.

The sales and use of products both require human participation, so people become the top priority.

In order to get people involved in economic circulation, they must have surplus wealth.

The old personal dependence relationship between slaves was obviously a stumbling block to this system, so the slave liberation movement, human rights movement, etc. arose at this time.

This is the role of capital in promoting social progress.