The easiest way to observe a world or a society is to grasp its underlying logic.
Only by understanding the underlying logic of a society can you see how the society works and know what you should do.
What is the underlying logic of a society's operation? is its allocation rule.
Allocation means allocating the resources needed to survive and survive to a group or individual. The most important thing is who will distribute it, and according to what conditions?
Human survival and life need resources, food, sunlight, air, water, housing ......
Food is on the land, water is on rivers and lakes, and trees, bricks and land are needed for the construction of houses.
In ancient times, the most important resource was land.
And land is limited.
So the whole history of mankind is full of bloody killings and brutal enslavement, the purpose of which is to fight for land.
In addition to these natural resources, there are also money, beautiful women, fame, official positions, ......These products of socialization are also scarce resources and objects of human contention.
The winner will establish a set of distribution rules to achieve the distribution of resources among the various ethnic groups and strata of society.
The person who sets the distribution rules will always have the lion's share. But they also have to consider the level of acceptance at all levels, and not act arbitrarily and take all the resources for themselves. In that case, those who do not have access to resources will flip the table and society will fall into turmoil.
Distribution is not only the core of social operation, but also the driving force of social development.
What are the allocation rules?
There are many factors that influence the rules of social distribution, the most critical of which are: force, blood, power, capital, and labor.
In primitive society, distribution is based on force, the strongest occupy the best resources, and the weak are eliminated. This is true both within and between communities.
This is actually the premise and basis of all distribution rules.
During the feudal dynasty, it was mainly distributed according to blood, and the closer it was to the blood of the royal nobles, the more it was distributed.
* After the development of centralization, the bureaucracy arose, and wealth and resources were distributed according to the size of power. The greater the power, the more resources are allocated. The less power there is, the less it is distributed.
In modern times, capital began to rise, and bureaucrats converted the power in their hands into capital, participated in the distribution of social wealth, and capital distribution became the mainstream of society.
However, all allocation rules are determined by a bottom-level rule, which is the meta-rule.
Wu Si mentioned the concept of "meta-rules" in "The Law of Blood Reward", a society in which the most violent people have the final say. It can also be summarized as "whoever has the hardest fist will be the one who says". Whoever has the most power can influence the rules of society and decide the fate of others.
The concept of meta-rules touches on the relationship between life, survival resources, and survival resource allocation rules.
Qin Shi Huang relied on force to destroy the Six Kingdoms, wiped out all the royal families of the Six Kingdoms, robbed them of their land, wealth and women, and ended the history of seven or eight hundred years of princely disputes.
Liu Bang defeated Xiang Yu, forced him to kill himself in Wujiang, and finally established the Han Dynasty, what did he rely on? Or violence. The force under his command surpassed that of Xiang Yu.
The US military's design of a base on the Japanese island of Okinawa is actually tantamount to infringing on Japan's sovereignty, but the United States is so powerful that Japan has no choice but to do so. The G20 summit in 2008 did not approve of the US issuing a large amount of currency, because it would lead to the depreciation of US Treasury bonds in the hands of countries that hold US Treasury bonds, but the US did not heed the G20's call and issued a large number of dollars to survive the financial crisis. As a result, countries with a large number of U.S. Treasury bonds, led by China, suffered significant losses.
The United States has frequently imposed economic sanctions and resorted to force against some countries and organizations. But the whole world still has to deal with it carefully. The most violent has the final say! Subsequently, Wu Si expanded the "meta-rule".
When the ability of several parties in the pattern of interests is similar to each other or even balances each other, there will be a state of "violent equilibrium" between them, in which all parties can interact with each other on an equal footing, and once this equilibrium is broken, there will be hegemony and subordination, enslavement and tribute based on the ability to harm (i.e., violence), and in his subsequent speeches, he called the "violent equilibrium" as the premise of human production activities.
Whoever has overwhelming force has the power to set the rules of distribution.
The book "Distant Savior" is very popular, and the adaptation of "The Way of Heaven" is also very popular. When many people are frustrated, they will always find this book, read and think about it repeatedly, hoping to find a way out of the predicament.
So what exactly is this book about?
In fact, this book reveals the rules of distribution of wealth and resources in a stable society.
Through private placement funds, the UK has earned more than 20 million from China. This way of making money is ostensibly distributed according to work (intelligence).
But in fact, to enter **, you must first have funds, and he raised a large amount of money in Germany to have the conditions to enter **. The core is still allocated according to capital.
Xiao Yawen is the biggest winner, and she has followed **Ying closely from beginning to end. At a critical time, he took out all his savings, bought a stake in Grésh, and became a major shareholder.
What did she sit on the stage?
In the matter of Gregory, **Ying is the one who makes the rules, and if you follow the rules he sets, you can become a winner. If you don't follow his rules, you'll be eliminated.
And Xiao Yawen has always maintained a good relationship with **Ying, and she understands the rules formulated by **Ying, so he got this opportunity.
What about Ouyang Xue? She rose from the bottom of society, from living on the streets to owning her own restaurant, she has done so much along the way.
She accumulated her initial capital through the restaurant business, and later invested in Gregory and became the majority shareholder of Gregory, realizing the appreciation of her wealth.
This is to make money with money, which is the distribution according to capital mentioned in the distribution rules.
What about Rui Xiaodan? Her income** includes her salary as a police officer, as well as Ouyang Xue's restaurant dividends. There are two types of distribution: distribution according to capital and distribution according to labor.
Her salary income is not worth the dividends that Ouyang Xue gave her restaurant. Her restaurant's dividends may not be as good as the property her parents left her.
So, she is not a person who is short of money. But here, she is not involved in the operation of Gregory, nor is she involved in the distribution.
Feng Shijie is also a winner, in addition to his sincere concern for the villagers of Wangmiao Village, there is also the fact that he has a certain amount of capital, which is also the key to his ability to become a winner in the end.
Ye Xiaoming got nothing, he paid for his labor, but what was the result? but did not get the expected benefits. Because he couldn't see ** Ying's operation method clearly, he jumped out of the car halfway.
On the surface, this is because he is selfish, but in essence, because he only has a little money and he has no capital to take risks, so when he encounters a huge risk, he naturally retreats behind his own safety line. There is nothing wrong with what he did, and there is no reason to blame him.
As for Liu Bing, he is a complete loser, because he has no capital, does not have the qualifications to distribute according to capital, and is unwilling to pay for labor, and finally lost his life because of his greed and stupidity.
The farmers in Wangmiao Village also want to change their fate, so some people go out to work, but because of their low level of education and lack of labor skills, they can't earn money when they go out to work, so they can only return to the countryside and wait for old age to die.
In an industrial-based society, groups that can only do physical strength have no opportunity to participate in the distribution of bulk wealth. They have very little to get to them, so little that they can barely make ends meet.
* When Ying helped Wangmiao Village, he said:
No matter what you do, the market is not an infinite piece of cake. The essence of the myth is the powerful role of killing the rich and helping the poor, which may give rise to two questions: first, whether killing the rich is a destructive exploitation of market resources; The second is to let the person at the bottom of the well take a look at the edge of the well and then fall down, whether it will make him suffer from mental terminal illness.
Therefore, he engaged in killing the rich and helping the poor, and engaged in fire mergers between capital.
The fire between capital in real society is actually more cruel and bottomless than what is written in **. It's just that many times, ordinary people can only see the surface and can't see the underwater.
The villagers of Wangmiao Village, under the design of ** Ying, still found an opportunity to participate in the distribution, but what they could get was also the lowest level of income, exchanging their labor and health for money and income.
Another important factor influencing the distribution rules is cultural attributes.
Regarding cultural attributes, this is what Ying said:
There are three levels of society in perspective: technology, institutions, and culture. From a small person to a country and a nation, any kind of destiny is the product of that cultural attribute in the final analysis. It is the law that a strong culture creates the strong, and a weak culture creates the weak. It can also be understood as the way of heaven, which is not subject to human will. ”
A strong culture is a culture that follows the laws of things, and a weak culture is a culture that relies on the morality of the strong to obtain it, and it is also a culture that expects a savior. The strong culture is called the secret in martial arts, while the weak culture has become a popular breed because it is easy to learn, easy to understand, and easy to use. ”
In the final analysis, the truth of Marxism is that objective laws do not depend on people's will, and what is an objective law is, in the final analysis, it is also a sentence: everything is transferred by time, place, and conditions. ”
Based on this, the article asserts that traditional Chinese culture is a weak culture, which is actually problematic.
Because the most important classic in China, the Book of Changes, begins with the words: Tianxingjian, a gentleman should strive for self-improvement. It is necessary for people to constantly strive for self-improvement and give full play to their subjective initiative. Chinese culture does not believe in ghosts and gods, and does not leave fate to religion, and the concept of self-improvement contained in this culture cannot be summed up by a weak culture.
Therefore, we cannot define the entire traditional culture, but certain cultural phenomena, and those who expect salvation from the Savior and surrender their lives to force majeure factors (fate, God) are the weak cultures. Emphasizing the victory of man over heaven, such as "Heaven is evil." You can still live. If a man does evil, he cannot live", this kind of thinking is a strong culture.
In every culture, there are both weak and strong cultural elements, and categorically defining a culture as a whole as a weak culture or a strong culture is a prejudice, not a correct interpretation.
Different cultural attributes produce different distribution rules.
If a culture is filled with awe and worship of power, then power will control the rules of distribution for a long time, and those who have power will benefit the most from the distribution. If there is a greater worship of capital in a culture, then capital will determine the rules of distribution, and the more capital it has, the more wealth and resources it will distribute.
So, who is the lowest logic of social operation in terms of cultural attributes, meta-rules, and distribution rules?
Obviously, meta-rules determine who makes the distribution rules, and cultural attributes influence the distribution rules at a deeper level.
Therefore, for ordinary people living under the rules of modern society, it is enough to know the meta-rules, because this is not a field that individuals can covet.
The most urgent thing is to understand the rules of distribution, and then to understand the role of cultural attributes in them.