In recent years, the population problem has been relatively hot, whether it is because of economic difficulties, difficult to find jobs, population decline, or the so-called demographic dividend, which has attracted widespread attention, and even many people ridiculed the word "human mine", thinking that people are a kind of mineral.
In fact, people are not minerals, but people are the source of wealth is inevitable, throughout the ages, as long as you can afford it, the more the population, the better.
Historically, the most important indicator of our measurement of the prosperity of dynasties and countries is population, the more population, the more prosperous and developed the dynasty, and China has been in a leading position for a long time, until modern times because of the technological ladder gap, resulting in backwardness, and making the wrong population as negative assets.
Why is it said that population is the source of wealth, in the classical political economy - labor values, the key to wealth is commodities, and commodities come from human labor, without people's labor, commodities have no value.
As for the possession of the means of production, it is only the control that can produce commodities through the possession of the means of production, and the possession of the fruits of labor itself, not that the means of production themselves can give birth to commodities and wealth out of thin air.
Take the slave society as an example, the most important means of production is the slave, the slave owner through the direct appropriation of the slave's labor results to obtain wealth, of which the slave is the most important, not other resources such as land, which means that the slave society is to use the most simple and direct means to control the population to obtain wealth.
In feudal society, although it is said that the practice of slave society has been changed and exploitation is more effective, in fact a large number of remnants of slavery are still retained, and the more remnants of slavery are retained, the more organizationally advantageous.
For example, why is China so powerful landlords in the Han Dynasty, because the Han Dynasty is allowed to keep slaves, although the Han Dynasty does not have all the power over slaves, but basically as long as you pay a small price can have the power of life and death, the most typical is that the slave owner executed the slave without any punishment in the law, and the Han Dynasty executed the slave to fine money, of course, the premise is that the government is investigated, until the Tang Dynasty, the slave is reasonable and legal, the cost is very small, although there are still a large number of yeoman farmers and tenants in the society, but the big landlords are a large number of slaves, rather than simply renting out the land。
The same is true in Europe, where the nobles also have absolute power over the serfs below.
In fact, in the so-called feudal era, whether in China or Europe, the slave system and the tenant system existed at the same time, and there was no such situation where slave owners might as well rent out their land and liberate slaves into farmers because of the low labor efficiency of slaves. For example, the powerful people of the Han Dynasty would rather pay taxes to raise a large number of domestic slaves, because slaves can not only farm, but also engage in other affairs, and have the ability to protect the powerful, so when the troubled times come, those who can survive are the heroes who raise domestic slaves.
In addition, in fact, from the point of view of labor efficiency, the efficiency of slaves engaged in planting work and tenants engaged in planting work is not much different, and the so-called labor motivation is very suspicious, and the slave owner can own most of the fruits of the slave's labor, while the landlord has a limited possession of the fruits of the peasants' labor.
Therefore, in order to improve labor efficiency, it is very problematic to change slavery to feudalism, at least at the level of European aristocrats and Chinese landlords, there is no such motivation to do so, but from the perspective of national rulers, there is such motivation, because it is extremely difficult for the state to tax the kind of rich and powerful landlords and big nobles, while it is much easier to tax yeoman farmers or tenant middle peasants, in addition, in large-scale wars, a large number of yeoman soldiers are more convenient for the state to command, and it is much more difficult to command the private soldiers and slaves of the big nobles, and it is easy to be turned against the big nobles if they don't do well。
Therefore, it is not so much a spontaneous choice for a slave society to move into a feudal society, but rather a choice for the rulers of the state, and ordinary slave owners prefer to retain the power of their slave owners.
In fact, it was only in the Song Dynasty that the restriction of slave storage made the powerful more and more declining, and the aristocracy gradually withdrew from the stage, because the aristocracy could hold power and rely on a large number of slaves, and when the slaves disappeared, their power base ceased to exist, so it was not so much that the Huangchao at the end of the Tang Dynasty eliminated the gate lord aristocracy, but that the Song Dynasty banned the storage of slaves and destroyed the foundation of the nobles' long-term existence.
After the Ming Dynasty, although there were still many hereditary nobles, because they could not keep slaves, this kind of nobles could not retain power after a few generations, and could only be used as decorations.
Because talent is the source of wealth, it is forbidden to keep slaves, so that the nobles and the powerful cannot possess people, nor can they keep their wealth forever, and the decline is inevitable in the long run.
That is to say, China can be said to have entered the feudal society as a whole in the Song Dynasty, while Europe has to wait until the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times to enter the real feudal society, which was a semi-slave and semi-feudal society before.
After all, the exploitation of the means of production, in terms of land or capital, in fact, there is not much difference, both through the mastery of the means of production to force the peasants or workers to produce commodities, all commodities in the final analysis can only be realized through people, and can only be sold through people.
So even now, countries with sufficient populations are still considered one of the prerequisites for a strong country, don't look at the vast and sparsely populated Australia and Canada that some people admire, in fact, they are not qualified powers, such as Britain, France and Germany in Europe, Japan and South Korea in Asia, including the United States itself, are all countries with a huge population base.
List of high-quality authors
Why does Russia have problems economically, in addition to geographical and other factors, population is also a big problem, their population is too small for their huge territory, and the territory of Russia is 1 of the United States8 times, and the population is half of the United States, even if many territories of Russia are not suitable for living, but the United States also has many territories that are not suitable for living, normally speaking, the population of Russia and the United States is quite the passing line, and the current population is too small, if according to European standards, it is even more so: Germany has a population of 80 million, and the territory area is less than one-fortieth of Russia.
The same is true for all kinds of small economic organizations, although it does not mean that economic organizations with a large number of people are necessarily strong, but no large company with strength has a very small number of people.
And the long-term organization and training of the population is even more rare, why in ancient China only Zhu Yuanzhang and Liu Bang were born commoners, the other founding emperors were mostly nobles and powerful landlords, not that they have any special talents, but they are strong, with many domestic slaves, and even some people are organized for many years or even generations, and the organization is much stronger. Therefore, once they start their troops, they have a ready-made officer team, and their combat effectiveness is much stronger than that of civilians.
So the real source of wealth is not how much land you have and how much money you have, but how many people you have to support you.