If ＂involution＂ cannot be overcome, can China’s economy have hope？

This article is from WeChat official account:Internet and entertainment thieves (ID: TMT Phantom), Author: Pei Pei, head of the bandit group, title map from: vision china

This week, three messages appeared repeatedly in my circle of friends, which were repeatedly reprinted and brushed by many friends. They got me lost in thought.

The first is the report that Huawei Ren Zhengfei praised Hebei’s "Hengshui Model". This is not news. It is not a day or two for Huawei to appreciate and learn Hengshui at the organizational and cultural level.

The second is that it is rumored that Taobao/Tmall will gradually realize the P8 level rejuvenation, with all employees under 35 years old. To tell the truth, I don’t quite believe this is true, because there is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, many people in my circle of friends believe and applaud that "younger cadres" is the secret of the long-lasting Internet companies.

The third is the revision of the law on the protection of minors, introducing online game time management. The details are still unclear, and the implementation method is also unclear. However, most people in my circle of friends still support it and think that children should be in charge of playing games. This legislation is still light.

Do the above three news/old news have anything in common? I thought of the ominous noun: "involution"

"involution"(Involution)The use of the term in the field of economics was first seen in 1963 when American scholars studied the irrigated agriculture in Java Island, and was widely used to describe rice farming in the south of China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In short, the process of "agricultural involution" in Jiangnan area is:

1. Because of the large population and small land, technological innovation can’t keep up with population growth, farmers in Jiangnan have to adopt the strategy of "increasing labor input per unit area and increasing yield per unit area".

2. In order to increase labor input, all the elderly and children in the south of the Yangtze River have been put into rice farming, and the labor intensity of agricultural production has reached the first place in the world.

3. Because the monetary cost of labor for the elderly and children is zero.(Intra-family settlement)The efficiency of family agriculture is much higher than that of specialized employee farms, which leads to the collapse of the natural economy in Jiangnan area and the scale of agricultural production has never been realized.

4. Since the natural economy can’t be disintegrated, there will be no surplus labor to supply the emerging handicraft industry, large handicraft workshops can’t be popularized, and industrial production, like agriculture, is bound in the family environment of "men plowing and women weaving".

5. In the above-mentioned "labor-intensive+natural economy" cycle, the value of unit labor force has not improved, the income of workers has not increased for a long time, and the consumption capacity is low, which cannot stimulate the emergence of new consumption forms.

6. Therefore, in this environment, it is neither possible to break out the industrial revolution nor to have a real "capitalist bud". As you can imagine, without the modern globalization system, the Jiangnan region will sink down from generation to generation in this endless cycle.

(The word involution is annoying when you hear it. )

In short, involution is the process of improving agricultural yield and total output by simply and rudely expanding labor input under the condition that land resources and technical conditions remain unchanged. This is a process of diminishing marginal effect-the same piece of land, with twice the labor force, is likely to produce only 1.5 times the grain. This is another process to curb innovation-people focus on squeezing the labor force and working time within the family, no longer actively seek technological innovation and innovation in production relations, and always repeat themselves at a low level.

Let me put it out: "Hengshui mode" is a typical involution. No matter how many people are recruited in Hengzhong and how high the enrollment rate is, the enrollment quota allocated by 211/985 University to Hebei Province remains unchanged. The enrollment quota of all kinds of colleges and universities in Hebei is basically unchanged. No matter how powerful Hengzhong is, it is only encroaching on the resources for further studies elsewhere in Hebei, prompting top students from all over the country to flock to Hengshui. Even those students who stay in the local area, inspired by the "Hengshui spirit", live a dark high school life by studying hard day and night. Accurately speaking, for all students in Hebei, "Hengshui mode" is not only useless but also harmful-it prevents students from accumulating extracurricular knowledge and cultivating hobbies, and it also makes famous universities have the stereotype that "Hebei candidates are exam machines".

The "involution of education" caused by the "Hengshui model" even spread to the other side of the ocean. All Chinese parents in Silicon Valley are desperately guiding their children to take the road of science Olympics, and all kinds of math cram schools for Chinese are almost full at the beginning. The reason is simple: it is often difficult for the children of the first generation of Chinese immigrants to have the personal connections, social activities and hobbies of white children, and it is difficult to compare sports with black children; It’s more immediate to think about it, or to engage in the Olympics. As a result, Chinese students’ scores in mathematics and science are getting higher and higher, and they are becoming hopeless nerds in the eyes of university admissions officers, and teenagers’ lives are becoming increasingly unhappy … That’s about it. I know there will be a bully to spray me desperately.

Real scientific research is done by talented teenagers/girls, so how can we make efforts to do scientific research? )

"Time management of minor online games" is also a typical involution. Before the implementation of this law, the play time of minors was controlled by themselves and their parents, which was essentially a self-discipline behavior with the family as the unit: in a family with well-educated parents and harmonious parent-child relationship and high maturity of children, the probability of children indulging in games was low, and vice versa, forming a positive cycle of self. Assuming that the law is strictly enforced, the playing time of all minors will be shortened.(or at least no growth)The entertainment utility gained through games has declined. The question is, will the number of students enrolled in the university increase because the purpose of studying is to enter the university?

Obviously, the enrollment of any university in China will not increase because of the introduction of "time management of online games for minors". As a whole, the entertainment utility of minors has declined, but the utility of further education has not improved. Some people will argue that learning is not only for further study, but also for learning a lot of scientific and cultural knowledge, thus benefiting for life. I have to point out that if a child doesn’t want to learn, he has countless ways to desert. If you ban games, he will watch plays; No drama, he read novels; When novels are forbidden, he chats with friends; If chatting is forbidden, he will be in a daze … You can’t ban staring blankly. If you don’t solve the fundamental problem and only do superficial articles, what you get is involution.

As for the "rejuvenation of cadres in Internet companies", it is a huge driving force for involution, just like the "996 working system" that caused widespread controversy. Not to mention the internet industry, in the "old school" industry such as finance, there are also serious phenomena of unlimited overtime and premature aging. In investment institutions, researchers over 40 years old are rare, and management over 50 years old is rare. Karoshi is by no means a legend in the horizon. I know more than one case of karoshi after 80s, because more people suffer from terminal illness after working overtime for a long time. Funny is that some people think this is a comparative advantage of China’s economy! A well-known investment institution(I won’t call the name)It is claimed that entrepreneurs in China are generally more desperate and desperate than their counterparts in Silicon Valley, so China’s technological innovation will definitely defeat the United States.

Uh…

I have always felt that "struggling to force culture" is a particularly abnormal culture. )

Let me continue to spread it out: the culture of "struggle force" hanging over the internet, finance and emerging industries in China is actually left over by Americans at the end of the 19th century, and Americans have deeply realized that the culture of "struggle force" is not desirable-not only morally desirable, but also unable to achieve sustainable development in reality.

Japan on the other side of the East China Sea and South Korea on the other side of the Yellow Sea were also popular for a while in the late 20th century. Because they didn’t pull out in time, they all evolved into irreversible involution.

A week ago, some investors asked me, "Will China develop into an important market for console games and 3A games?" I replied categorically: "No!" The other party asked in confusion, "What if the policy encourages and the technical level keeps up?" I said, "That’s impossible. The average working hours in the United States are 34 hours a week. What about China? I don’t think it will be less than 45-50 hours. The working hours of the middle class will only be higher. Every week, 996 people go home, take a shower and go to bed tired, playing 3A games? Or do you think that those students who have no independent consumption ability can buy 3A games? "

Incidentally, some investors seriously criticized me a few years ago: "You shouldn’t watch movies every week. Investment analysts are not qualified to watch movies, and should spend every hour watching company financial reports and research reports! " My answer is: "Are you crazy? It’s none of your business if I watch a movie?" If the ideal of "struggling to force investors" comes true, every hard-working professional should not watch movies; I can’t even go to the movies, let alone play games, watch cartoons and go out for an outing. In such a beautiful new world of involution, will there be consumption? Perhaps the only consumption is takeaway+online shopping? Moreover, online shopping can only buy necessities such as food and clothing, and can’t "play with things."

Accurately speaking, when involution progresses to a certain extent, there will be no demand for education and housing. Working overtime and on business trips every day, where can I have the heart to make people? Home is just a place to sleep. What kind of housing should we upgrade? Of course, in this involution world, it is not known what Maotai will do. Maybe you can still sell a bottle for 10 thousand? The question is who will drink it?

(Unless the time machine is invented, "involution" is almost irreversible. )

Don’t get me wrong, "involution" involves not only overtime work, but also work safety. Frankly speaking, if in a society, professionals over the age of 35 or 40 are in a precarious state and may be eliminated at any time, then it is impossible to have truly stable high-end consumer demand.

The life span of modern human beings is getting longer and longer, and being eliminated at the age of 40 means spending the next 40 years helpless-this horrible atmosphere is enough to curb anyone’s consumption demand. Only the self-media and knowledge payment platform with "selling anxiety" will make a sum of money. As for the new generation of young people? It seems that it can rise faster, but when it really climbs to a high position, most of them are over 30 years old; It’s only a few years since I was eliminated. Are you going to be laid off and re-employed, or are you going home to sell sweet potatoes? What, you mean to travel to Europe and buy a timeshare villa? It doesn’t exist!

In the United States, not only console games, 3A games are a big industry, outdoor sports.(including equipment and services)It is also a big industry, even garden landscape.(Building a lawn in the backyard, planting trees, etc.)It is also a big industry. In the involution of China’s "middle class" society, few people are really good at playing outdoors; Even if you can afford a big house, few people have time to take care of flowers and plants. Of course, according to the mainstream view of my circle of friends, we don’t need to develop those flashy industries, we just need to develop high-tech technologies that "determine national luck" such as cloud computing, big data, AI, Internet of Things and blockchain.

However, I still want to ask-who will ultimately consume all this? Isn’t the most fundamental demand of all economies consumption? Insufficient marginal propensity to consume, isn’t it the chief culprit of economic stagnation and even economic crisis? What applications are you going to make of cloud computing, big data and AI, and which families will spend it on which occasions?

After all, many people don’t say with one voice: games are harmful to children, movies are best not to waste time watching, adults have no time for entertainment, 996 is a blessing, hard work is the foundation, and modern consumer culture is nothing more than a plaything. So what do we spend so much time, learn so much knowledge and study so many advanced technologies for?

Is it because when the three-body people attack us, they can die with more dignity?

This article is from WeChat official account:Internet and entertainment thieves (ID: TMT Phantom), Author: Pei Pei, head of the bandit group