Lina woke up from the soft big bed in a daze. She pushed away the quilt, got up with difficulty, and sat on the bed. Then she straightened her clothes and walked to the door.
A maid who had been waiting at the door for a long time took her to the bathroom to tidy up and handed her a book.
"Vian Sir said I would give you this book."
Lina sprinkled a handful of water on his face to clear his mind, and then took the book from the maid.
After the maid delivered the book, she turned around and left, while Lina stared at the book in her hand.
The book itself is a hardcover book with a thick cover. Judging from the age of the book, it seems that it has been read many times.
Lina actually doesn't have the habit of reading. She likes to look up the information she wants on the Internet. At most, she uses E-Paper Book to protect her eyes.
But she also knew that there was a lot of knowledge in this world that was only recorded in books.
Her eyes rested on the title on the cover of the book,
"What does this world rely on to "distribute" wealth?"
The author of the book is Joseph Thur, and it was published ten years ago.
She opened the book and read quietly.
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The book is not thick and the content is not complicated. The whole book uses various easy-to-understand examples to tell the same problem.
That is, what does this world rely on to distribute wealth?
The author first puts forward a point of view, that is, many people believe that hard work will be rewarded. The more you work, the more you will get. This world distributes wealth according to the amount of things done.
But then, the author raised a new question. Since work will be rewarded, and the longer you work, the more rewards you will receive, then why do workers in factories who work twelve hours a day often live in poverty?
Then the author begins to explain his point of view step by step.
On a small scale, in a workshop, a factory, or an enterprise, people distribute wealth according to the amount of work they do. People who work more hours, do more things, put in more hard work, and produce more results get higher wages than others.
On a large scale, involving the entire Federation, all classes and all groups of people, the priority distribution rule for the entire world is to distribute according to "wealth".
That is, people with more wealth are allocated more wealth, and people with less wealth are more plundered by people with more wealth.
People with more wealth can get the wealth "tributed" by people with less wealth out of thin air without doing anything.
As a result, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.
The author uses one word to summarize the wealth taken away from the poor, and that is "interest."
Before describing his own theory, the author first described the research results he obtained from ancient materials before Great Cataclysm.
In this world, there were not all kinds of Exotic Beast, and the overall environment was not yet developed. People relied on the land for their livelihood. At that time, the most important resource for mankind was the land.
With the development of society and land annexation, there will be some people who own a lot of land and some people who have lost their land for some reasons.
People without land borrow land from landowners for farming, and give part of the harvested food to the owner of the land as a fee for borrowing the land. This is "land rent" (tenancy).
The author gives a new definition of "land rent" here, that is, "interest on land" - the "interest" that landowners can collect just because they own the land and rent it out without performing any labor.
Here, the author assumes the most extreme situation, that is, there are only two people in the whole process, the landowner who owns the land, and the tenant who rents the land.
The tenants did all the work and harvested the grain, but the landlord did nothing but took away part of the grain that belonged to the tenants.
Here, labor is not the only basis for distribution, there is another basis, and that is land.
The land here actually represents "resources".
People with more resources will naturally rely on renting out resources and "take away" part of the labor results of people without resources.
In the beginning, this kind of "interest on land" was controlled, and landlords would not ask tenants to pay high "interest" without restraint.
Because if the rent of this landlord increases, the tenants can go to other landlords with cheaper rents to borrow land, and the entire market will form a dynamic balance.
Of course, the landlords are a community of interests, and they will gradually and spontaneously form alliances.
As time goes by, more and more land begins to belong to the same landlord, or the same landlord faction. Under such circumstances, tenants lose more and more choice. "Land interest", that is, the pricing power of rent is completely controlled by the landlord.
And these landlords will continue to increase rents, "take" more fruits of labor from tenants, accumulate more resources for themselves, and buy more land.
Until the remaining fruits of labor of the tenants are not enough to support themselves and they are forced to a dead end, or some natural disasters cause the tenants to enter a dead end early, eventually leading to the collapse and re-establishment of the entire system.
The author of this book also emphasizes here that this knowledge was found by him from fragmented materials and is not complete. In fact, the influencing factors are diverse.
Then the author compares this knowledge before Great Cataclysm with the current situation of Federation.
He believes that the current Federation is no different from the ancient stage of the world before Great Cataclysm. It is just that the key resource that determines the distribution of labor results has changed from "land" to a broader "wealth".
People who own a house can get a "house interest" from the tenants without doing any work.
Financial companies, without any or very little labor, can obtain "interest on funds" from those who lend them money that far exceeds the value of their labor.
The labor paid by the factory owner is actually much less than the labor paid by the factory employees, but because he owns the factory and owns various production machinery in the factory, he can "take away" part of the fruits of labor produced by all the workers in the entire factory. This is the "factory interest."
Therefore, the richer a person is and owns more real estate, factories, investments, and loans, the more he can rely on various "interests" and "take away" the fruits of people's labor, and his wealth will increase.
As for poor workers, because their labor surplus has been "taken away", most of the remaining fruits of their labor are spent on survival needs, and they are unable to form effective wealth accumulation. If they charge "interest" from others, they will become even more poor.
Eventually the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The descendants of the rich can more easily obtain "interest" from others and become rich on the basis of their ancestors. However, because the poor have no accumulation, they will fall into the same predicament as their ancestors when the fruits of their labor were taken away, and they will not be able to accumulate enough wealth.
This is the fundamental rule of "wealth" distribution in this world.
Priority is given to distribution according to wealth. Those with more wealth take the "interest" of their wealth, while the remaining people are distributed according to labor to a certain extent.
At the end of the book, the author also stated that there are still many errors and omissions in his research results. Many places covered in the book use ideal models. There are also various other intervening factors in the operation of a complete society. The content of this book cannot fully represent the way the world operates.
He is still collecting more information to enrich his research.
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Lina closed the book and before she knew it, she had walked to the living room downstairs.
She felt that her mind was blank and she had never been exposed to relevant knowledge in her past life.
She had never seen these arguments and books on any website or forum.
She felt that a New World door was opening in front of her.
"Have you finished reading?"
A voice sounded in her ears.