Stocks (1)
In truth, something akin to the concept of a joint-stock company in its most primitive form had already existed in ancient Rome.
Colonial ventures demanded vast sums of money, so investors were courted, their capital used to push the projects forward, and the profits returned to them chiefly in the form of land, local produce, slaves, and the like.
In particular, the fact that the idea of stocks—paired with the idea of insurance—arose and matured more swiftly in Europe was hardly unrelated to the Europeans’ vigorous struggle for supremacy across the seas and their drive to plant colonies.
For the oceans of that age were uncertainty itself made liquid, and the rewards of exploration were sweet enough to lure men into risking it. Thus they forged insurance against the unknown and founded joint-stock companies to pool capital, then set sail with dreams of reversing their fortunes.
In the East, by contrast, Joseon and Japan lacked the national capacity to sail and explore against the entire world. Ming China, which possessed that capacity, never again ventured onto the open ocean after Zheng He’s great expeditions, and later issued the Haegeumryeong—the Maritime Ban—thereby sealing off the possibility of maritime expansion with its own hand.
Moreover, the East possessed a far stronger centralized character than the West, where king and nobility were bound by mutual contracts between lord and vassal and true centralization was relatively difficult.
Consequently, even when great enterprises were undertaken, the pattern was not one of drawing private capital and investment, but of the state taking the lead while the private sector simply adjusted and assisted.
So when Hwiyeom explained the concept of stocks in this era, even the clever Emperor Sungui could not grasp it at once.
Yet the Emperor was no ordinary man. Listening carefully to Hwiyeom’s explanation, he at last perceived the efficacy of the institutional device called the joint-stock company.
“Hmm. I am not particularly pleased. From the beginning, change in the state has arisen when all the people of the realm respond to and obey the solemn edicts issued by the will of the Son of Heaven—myself.
“What you describe is the people of the realm themselves hunting for material profit, gathering men and money of their own accord to chase gain, bearing the responsibility themselves and creating the profit themselves. Is that not a thing that throws the Way of Governing the State into disorder?”
In truth, had Emperor Sungui heard the concept of the joint-stock company and immediately cried “Hee-hee-hee! That’s brilliant!” and followed along, that would have been the stranger reaction. As Gol Jun-sang had worried, the matter could send no small shock through society, and it could also be read as a challenge to the very notion of statecraft centered on the Son of Heaven.
As the Emperor himself had put it, one could easily brand a man a traitor for saying, “The people need only look in the direction I point and walk. Yet you tell them to choose their own road, put up their own money, and advance? Do you take the Emperor for some limp-legged fool?”
A response of Emperor Sungui’s caliber could therefore be called both moderate and entirely rational.
Hwiyeom, recognizing his own misstep, set about earnestly persuading the Emperor so that he might change his mind.
“Is it not also the Mandate of Heaven, flowing from Your Majesty’s benevolent heart, to open the road for the people to walk?
“When a wise parent raises a child, while the child is young the parent watches every step, making certain there are no stones or mud puddles, and guides the child onto easy ground.
“Yet once the child is grown, the parent does not dictate every path the child must take.
“The parent merely offers a little counsel—caution against walking late at night, advice not to go to inauspicious places, and so on.
“Governing the people is the same. Allowing the people to create their own fragrant mountains and seek roads that benefit the state, while watching to ensure they do not stray onto wrong paths—is that not also one face of shepherding the people?”
Hwiyeom took care never to sound as though he were instructing the Emperor. It was not “You don’t know, so I’ll tell you,” but rather something closer to “If you do it… this… this way, I don’t think it strays all that far from traditional ideals of rule….”
Instead of snapping back “What nonsense is that, you fool?” Emperor Sungui pondered in silence for a long while before speaking again.
“Do you truly believe the people will use this system shrewdly?”
“People are smarter than one thinks. The learned, of course—but even those of little schooling, though their learning is shallow, turn out to be extraordinarily quick when it comes to their own profit and loss.
“If you leave it to them, Your Majesty will be astonished at the bizarre schemes for making money that appear in the world.”
“Is that so?”
The Emperor still looked doubtful, yet Hwiyeom was certain. Why? Because he had already seen the answer sheet called history.
“The side effects will not be trivial.”
“Which is why we would not implement it across the board from the start. First we would limit it to certain fields of enterprise, giving people time to understand what stocks are as a commodity, how investment works, and how stock investment operates.
“Only then would we gradually expand the private sphere. That seems the proper course.”
“And that would be your enterprise, I take it? You mean to rake in money with a rake.”
“I will not deny it.”
“Keh-heh-heh. I like the honesty. But will you be all right? If things proceed as you say, the ministers will claim you coveted profit, beguiled me with wild words, and manipulated state affairs.”
The Emperor’s warning was entirely realistic.
Yet Hwiyeom only grinned, as though he had expected it.
“If I alone make money, that is what will happen. But what if they themselves make great fortunes from it?”
It was only natural: no politician deliberately abolishes a system that profits him.
Even politicians of bitterly opposed parties will close ranks when a common interest appears—that is human nature, is it not?
If the profits of the joint-stock company became the profits of the bureaucrats, attacking Hwiyeom over it would grow difficult.
A few inflexible types, or personal enemies who wanted to crush Hwiyeom regardless of gain, might still strike—but they would at once face the counter-attack of every other minister who stood to benefit.
“You would throw away the chance to make great money yourself and share it with the ministers so that you all ride in the same boat? Then no matter how hard you work, you will gain little and merely do others a favor.”
To satisfy the ministers, Hwiyeom could not simply keep most of the profit and toss them a charitable scrap. At least half the shares would have to be pried away for the arrangement to work.
Yet he could not begin that way from the outset.
People who did not even know what a stock was would hardly rush to buy simply because someone said, “Hey, this is good—pay money and take some.”
Still less if the business belonged to a detestable upstart who had suddenly appeared in the Beijing court and caught the Emperor’s eye.
“…Well then, let us try it this way.”
After much discussion with Hwiyeom, Emperor Sungui refined the idea so that the ministers would find it easier to accept.
Hwiyeom, for all his experience in business and politics, admitted that his grasp of the people and the politics of this era was inferior to the Emperor’s, and he raised a thumb in admiration.
A few days later, Hwiyeom was formally summoned to the Forbidden City for an official audience concerning the events of the war.
Ministers of the anti-Sichuan Dang Family faction—such as those of the military Pi Clan—clamored that the occasion should not be a mere inquiry but a full imperial interrogation of a criminal who had dared conceal the production and quantity of dangerous weapons. Emperor Sungui refused to accept that framing.
“As for the powder weapons, they are the same as those already presented to Us. What was intended for presentation was simply stationed on the border after We detected the barbarians’ restless movements. In that process a report was submitted through the Chief Inspector of the Dongchang, so how can any other intent be suspected?
“The claim that poison weapons were concealed is nothing but a frame-up. From of old, the lands of Bashu and the southern Man have been thick with tropical forests, strange flowers, and venomous snakes and insects; those who live there have always been more familiar with poison than men of the Central Plains.
“Moreover the Sichuan Dang Family has long been renowned throughout the Central Plains martial world for its mastery of such poisons. Exactly what, then, is supposed to have been hidden?
“Or does the Minister of War know something We do not? Do you possess proof that every poison of the Sichuan Dang Family is known to you, and that the chlorine-poison weapons and mustard-poison weapons used this time were newly developed and never reported?”
Powder weapons—yes, the Emperor Himself had already permitted them.
Poison weapons—they claim these were things that already existed, so why insist they were developed in secret? Got any evidence?
Of course there was no evidence.
Of course evidence was not strictly necessary. If the ministers had risen together, they might still have used public opinion to contradict the Emperor’s words and drive the Dang Family into a corner. Just as it was hard to produce clear proof that something had been done, it was equally hard to produce clear proof that it had not.
The problem was that supporting fire arrived to prevent any such move.
As expected, the Sama Clan opened fire first.
“The secrets of poison are the exclusive heritage of the Sichuan Dang Family alone. If we make an issue of them, the ignorant may begin to fear that even the martial arts of the so-called wild men of the jianghu will next be called into question.
“Even lowly merchants will risk their lives to keep their trade secrets from being laid bare. How much more so the men of the jianghu, who stake their lives on a single blade?”
Pi Jae-hyeon retorted at once to Sama Seung’s words.
“If the wild men of the jianghu dare resist His Majesty’s imperial command, We need only rebuke them severely and fell them with a single stroke. Why should We take fright at the rebellion of such ruffians and fail to display the Emperor’s majesty? The Vice Minister of Revenue would do well to mind his tongue.”
Pi Jae-hyeon’s sweeping dismissal of every martial family as mere ruffians drew an immediate counter from Yang Hyeok-jun, a high official of the Beijing Yang Clan—one of the Nine Great Noble Families and long at odds with the military Pi Clan—and commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard.
“From of old it has been said that one does not strip the armor of a victorious general, nor nitpick the petty faults of a man who has rendered meritorious service.
“If one examines the matter, the Sichuan Dang Family fought so desperately with such poisons and weapons out of the purest loyalty to defend His Majesty’s territory. As a result they displayed the Empire’s majesty against those lawless barbarians. To make an issue of it and rebuke them is like boiling the fine hound that caught the thief merely because its barking startled one from sleep—an action to be avoided.”
No one present failed to catch the real meaning: To put it bluntly, your military bungled the job so thoroughly that a private militia had to step in and stop a foreign invasion—and now you want to pick a fight over it? Are you out of your mind?
Pi Jae-hyeon’s face turned the red of a ripe persimmon, and stifled coughs of laughter rose here and there.
Jegal Jin, head of the Jegal Clan and Vice Minister of Rites, added gently:
“I know the Minister of War’s words spring from true loyalty. Yet it is human nature to hide whatever weighs on the heart. Had the Sichuan Dang Family truly harbored other designs, they would not have unleashed such weapons and poisons to suppress foreign enemies; they would have hidden behind the regular army and relied upon it.
“My lord, do not so readily doubt the loyalty of the wild men of the jianghu.”
Though phrased as soothing words, Jegal Jin’s speech was in the end a defense of the Sichuan Dang Family and of the jianghu. Hwiyeom tilted his head in mild puzzlement.
The Jegal Clan is giving supporting fire?
Yet Jegal Jin behaved as though he had merely said what needed saying, and did not so much as glance in Hwiyeom’s direction.
With the atmosphere thus transformed, no one raised the issue again, and the matter ended anticlimactically.
And the next topic of discussion was precisely the one Hwiyeom and Emperor Sungui had spoken of earlier: the establishment of joint-stock companies.