VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 19, SECTION 1
The Market, the Iteration of Technology, the Team, the First Three Chains
The last chapter of last semester nailed down a layer of meaning: the one who takes the constraint is the slave, the one who lays the constraint is the master, the slaveholder is a slave too, the higher the position, the more the constraints. That line has been heard and understood, yet most likely it has only been set on that slaveholder who could not cook. This chapter carries it into today, onto the person seated in the innermost office. What this chapter sets out is five chains, and this section sets out the first three.
One. Stand the picture up first
Stand a person up in your heart first. He is the boss of a company, a company he built with his own hands, built over twenty years, the plant is his, the machines are his, the money on the books is his, and at one word from him the positions of several hundred people move. Seen from far off, this is the freest person on the whole floor.
Hold the rule of this volume: the far-off look does not count, one must walk close and look, look down into what is under him. So walk close. The first thing he does each morning on waking is not to eat, it is to look at a string of numbers, and at night when he cannot sleep, what turns in his head is the same string of numbers. Ask one line: the person who can decide the positions of several hundred at one word, he himself is decided by what?
Two. The first chain, the market
The first chain is the market. Look first at a most plain thing: that money on his books, can it sit unmoved? It cannot. Money left unmoved begins to shrink, the money that buys a machine this year cannot afford one three years on, and money left unmoved is not safety, it is a slow leaking away. So he must put the money out, and to put it out is to pass the gate of the market.
See this position clear: it is not that he wants to put the money out, it is that he cannot not. Last semester spoke of that line of Sima Qian’s: to be rich is the temper of human nature, unlearned yet wanted by all, the chasing of gain is instinct, is the work of the position, not wickedness. Today that line takes a second half: for the person standing in this position, the chasing of gain is not merely a want, it is a must, and the moment he stops, the thing in his hand begins to rot. The ancestors saw this matter earlier than anyone.
The sun at noon then declines, the moon at the full then eclipses, runs the line in the Book of Changes, in the hexagram Feng. The sun reaches dead center, and what comes next is the westering, the moon rounds to full, and what comes next is the waning. The person standing at the highest place is the first to feel that downward pull, and he cannot stop, for to stop is to decline, is to be eclipsed.
Three. The second chain, the iteration of technology
The second chain is fiercer, and when it comes, it is a whole trade gone to zero. Look at a thing the fathers’ generation all used: film. In those years, a family going out to play would buy a roll of film, load it into the camera, and there were only thirty-six frames in all, each shot taken with great care, and once shot, sent to the developing shop, and after a wait of some days, a stack of photographs carried back.
Look how many people stood on this chain: the plant that made the film, the plant that made the cameras, the plant that made the developing machines, the developing shops one after another down the street, and the masters in those shops who tended the machines. For decades this was a steady trade, a thick hide. And then the taking of photographs was moved into a single pane of glass.
It is not that these factories did anything wrong. Their machines were still as good, the masters’ craft still as sure, the books kept clean, and yet that trade was gone. Remember this layer: the chain of technological iteration does not punish the one who did wrong, it carries the whole table away.
Four. The third chain, the team
The third chain we just saw the other face of, in the last chapter. The last chapter spoke of Cook Ding, of Zi Qing, of the person called the hired emperor, and said: scarce enough, the position turns over. That was the picture seen from the worker’s side, and now change to the other side, and look from his.
In this company of his, the ones who can truly hold up the work are only a few: the one whose skill is hardest, the one with the surest eye for the product, the one the customers will deal with and no other. On the doors of these few he cannot not knock, to the terms they put he cannot not listen, and when they want to leave he must sit through the night for a way to keep them.
Think one layer deeper. Those few most crucial people, he raised himself, he spent ten years turning a novice into a Cook Ding, and once raised, that person has a card in his hand. This is the deepest place of this chain: he must raise people to scarcity, or the company does not live, yet once a person is scarce, the position begins to turn. He cannot not raise them, and what he raises comes to constrain him, and this chain he beat out link by link with his own hands.
Five. Three chains, one thing in common
The first three set out, stop, and look at the thing they hold in common. The market, he cannot stop. Technology, he cannot block. The team, he cannot do without. Notice, in these three, not one is a bad person out to harm him.
The market is not malicious, it is only that rule. Technology is not malicious, it only walks forward. Those few who would leave are not malicious either, they have only walked to their own scarcity. Three chains, and what they lock is one and the same thing: he does not have a single day when he may let go. This is the meaning of that line from last semester: the one who takes the constraint is the slave. He takes the constraint of the market, takes the constraint of technology, takes the constraint of the very people he raised, and in these three positions, he is the slave.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section set out three chains. The first, the market, the money cannot stop, and stopped it rots, the sun at noon then declines, the moon at the full then eclipses, the person at the high place is the first to feel that downward pull. The second, the iteration of technology, it does not punish the one who did wrong, it carries the whole table away. The third, the team, he must raise people to scarcity for the company to live, and once a person is scarce the position begins to turn, and that chain he beat out link by link himself.
These three chains lock his daytime. And the remaining two lock his nights. One is the money he borrowed, borrowed and to be repaid, repaid on time, a help when times are good, and the moment times turn bad, it bites back. The other is heavier, and fewer speak of it: the thing he saved a whole life to gather must at the last be handed out, handed to a son or daughter, and that son or daughter may not be able to catch it at all. The next section sets out these two.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.