Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 281 - 212 This Way is Impassable_2

Chapter 281: Chapter 212 This Way is Impassable_2

At that moment, after some reflection, he suddenly realized that interest-free loans were simply not feasible in this era.

Why did Wenchuan insist on setting the interest rate at 20%?

Was it merely to make money for the country?

You see, based on fragments of memory and historical records, Wenchuan had been working at the local level for twenty years, and he had already experimented with the Green Seed Law when he was a county magistrate.

Many said that Wenchuan’s reforms should have started with a pilot program before being rolled out nationwide.

What they didn’t know was that Wenchuan had already conducted a pilot program, and it was extremely successful.

It was precisely because of the pilot project he led as a county magistrate that his reputation soared, allowing him to smoothly enter the central government, receive the emperor’s favor, and initiate reforms.

It could be said that at the beginning of his reforms, he was the man everyone looked to.

Chu Ge had once thought that the 20% interest rate was key to the failure of the Green Seed Law, but upon deeper analysis, he found that Wenchuan’s approach was actually quite profound.

There is a keyword here, "risk management."

Chu Ge naively implemented an interest-free loan, believing that in an ideal state, this could promote agricultural development, protect the interests of farmers, and thereby indirectly increase the country’s tax revenues.

But what if there’s a poor harvest, causing some farmers to be unable to repay their loans?

If just one farmer fails to repay, doesn’t the country lose out?

As a comparison, one might consider the interest rates for private lending.

The interest rates for private lending could reach 100% or even 200%. This is partly because rich merchants and landlords are greedy and see an opportunity to profit, but another reason is the high risk of such loans and the excessive cost of default.

Take the 20% interest rate of the Green Seed Law for example.

Under the most ideal circumstances, if ten farmers took loans and all paid them back, then the government would earn a 20% profit. But what if one or two out of ten couldn’t repay for various reasons? Then the loaning effort was essentially in vain.

In ancient times, the agrarian economy was extremely fragile, almost entirely at the mercy of the weather. When sowing, how could farmers be sure the year would indeed bring favorable weather and rainfall?

If there was a good harvest, all was well; but if the yield fell short, widespread defaults were almost inevitable.

Therefore, the high interest rates of private loans were crucial because of how many people defaulted.

If the interest rates were set too low, losses were almost certain; even if there were no losses, the profit margin was too thin to be worth the hassle for lenders.

If the interest rate for the Green Seed Law was set below 20%, the chances of loss would be very high.

Chu Ge’s interest-free loan scheme was even more troublesome, as the state would suffer a loss as soon as one farmer failed to repay.

He revisited Wenchuan’s previous proposals for the Green Seed Law and found that Wenchuan was aware of risk management.

For example, he stipulated that loan recipients must include both the poor and the rich, with ten people acting as guarantors. The loan amounts were tiered according to each household’s assets. If one farmer failed to repay, the other guarantors were also liable.

The bottom line was to recover the grain along with its interest.

Chu Ge originally thought this was a harsh policy, since its enforcement led to rich households being held jointly liable for the debts of poor households who couldn’t afford their green seed loans, culminating in mass bankruptcy and seizure of assets by officials for the state treasury.

However, after abolishing these risk management measures, he found that the interests of the state were no longer guaranteed.

Moreover, from the perspective of the censorate and the emperor, it was only fitting that Wenchuan, whom Chu Ge portrayed, had been dismissed from his post.

First, you claimed that the new laws were for enriching the state and strengthening the military, but did the country become richer?

The New Green Seedling Law instituted interest-free loans, but the grain that was loaned out could not be recovered and the state became even poorer. Moreover, in the event of a natural disaster, there would not be enough grain for relief.

Secondly, who benefits the most from these interest-free loans?

Since the loans are interest-free, the profit potential is tremendous. For instance, officials could distribute the grain, surreptitiously transferring it to rich households, who in turn could lend it out at high interest rates.

How then can one be sure that this grain accurately reaches the hands of impoverished farmers in such a grassroots organization?

If there is a 20% interest rate, even if the grain lands in the hands of wealthy households, they would still need to find a way to repay that 20%. And with the assurance of ten households, at least the state could be certain it wouldn’t suffer a loss.

But now, some officials and wealthy households collude, lining their own pockets and using the grain from the New Green Seedling Law for lending, inevitably leaving Wenchuan, as played by Chu Ge, to take the blame.

So when the censors accuse him of using the nation’s funds to curry favor and seek personal gain for his clique, they aren’t really wronging him.

Because in the eyes of the populace, he probably does appear as such...

The negative consequences of the reforms naturally fell on the shoulders of the reformer himself.

Once he understood this, Chu Ge also realized why he had been dismissed from office in his first year.

Although he possessed a gift for impassioned rhetoric, speaking articulately and righteously at court, he eventually found that it all amounted to nothing.

Because no matter how many noble principles he espoused, they were simply overshadowed by the brutal reality, reinforcing the image of "great treachery masquerading as loyalty."

As for why the emperor dismissed him in the first year, why Wenchuan’s credibility with the emperor was so devastatingly undermined?

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