VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 47, SECTION 3
The Market’s Scale: No One Fought It Down, People Just Stopped Buying
The first two sections looked at two strengths that push back. One relies on men: bring both ends to the table, each pressing one end. One relies on opening another road: drawing the chessboard big, and that wall lowers on its own. This section looks at the third, which is also the most unfeeling kind. It holds no meetings, seeks no counsel, argues no reason with anyone, nor asks for anyone to lead. It simply grows fewer day by day, and by the time the party involved comes to his senses, the matter has already passed.
One, that film company
In the last century, a company made film for a hundred years. When people around the whole world took photos, mostly they used its goods; its name was printed on that tiny yellow box, from photo studios in big cities all the way to small shops in Chinese county towns.
Its skill was the finest, its factories the largest, and its research workers the most numerous. By craft, by capital, by name, by scale, it lost to no one in anything. What was weightier still, someone under its own roof had built a camera that used no film very early on, with blueprints and samples all sitting there, only no one took it as anything.
What came later, everyone knows. People simply stopped shooting film. First a few, then the many, and later almost everyone. Those tiny yellow boxes stepped down grid by grid from the counters, stepping back first to corners, then to warehouses, until at last there were none.
What must be pointed out clearly here is this: no one issued an order to close it down, no one robbed it, nor was it argued down in any debate. It simply sat in that large, decent room, watching the order slips grow fewer day by day, the numbers on the books growing harder to look at year by year, yet finding not a single person to argue with.
Two, this scale can be commanded by no one
Chapter forty-one counted the five ropes on that boss’s back, among which the second was this very rope: the buyer of his chairs. A line was said back then: this end of the rope is the thinnest, yet also the sturdiest. Thin, because it has no shape: it is not a person, not a yamen, nor a paper document. It is thousands upon thousands of strangers each taking a counsel for their own tiny matters at home or before their own counters, with no one taking counsel with anyone else.
Sturdy, because it can neither be persuaded nor commanded. You can go beg one buyer, invite him to a meal, or yield a bit on the price; you have no way to beg tens of thousands of people, nor any way to make tens of thousands of people change their minds together in the same month. That boss went to talk twice and gave a meal, yet failed to talk it back, the reason being very plain: people said the new shop next door was half a percent cheaper.
It loses no temper, gives you no notice, nor leaves you a chance to give an account. It simply lets the order slips grow fewer day by day. It speaks not a word, nor leaves you a place where you can go to argue. This is where this scale is most unfeeling, and precisely where it holds back the sole ruler best.
Three, it knows no person least, so it holds back the largest one best
This scale bears one strong point that no other strength has: it knows no person at all. It asks not how many tens of years you have worked, nor how hard you labored, nor how many people you fed, nor how loud your name sounds, nor how much hardship you ate back then. That stone in the last section held firm for over a hundred years, and that company earlier worked for a hundred years, both having scales frighteningly large, with the finest people in the world sitting in their rooms. Yet the larger the house, the heavier this scale falls when it comes down.
Why? Because a large house needs many people to buy to stay alive. A small shop is held firm by a few dozen regulars; losing one can still be made up. A large house losing ten percent of its buyers hurts to the bone and marrow; losing thirty percent, it can go on no longer. So this scale by nature pushes against the largest one, and the larger it is, the tighter it pushes.
Chapter forty-three said: a sole ruler is not broken by anyone, but pushed back by the very thing it cannot measure yet insists on measuring. This section is just the plainest shape of that line: it can measure its own skill, its own factories, and its own books, but it cannot measure what tens of millions of people want tomorrow.
Four, yet this scale also has places it cannot reach
Told to here, a fault springs up most easily: raising this scale into an all-powerful thing, saying everything should be handed to it and nothing else matters. This section must hold off this thought. Look again at that forty-year-old weaver. Machine-woven cloth is indeed cheaper, evener, and faster than his; people buying not his cloth did nothing wrong at all, and anyone would buy the same way. This scale did this work fast and true: what was not good, dear, or slow stepped down item by item.
Yet once it finished this work, it walked away, leaving the matters that followed unheeded. What that weaver is to do next, how his child's tuition for this semester is paid, and what he eats for that half-year while learning a new craft at forty—this scale answers not a single word, nor can it answer, for these few matters were never within its range of measurement to begin with.
So this scale can push back what is not good, but it cannot carry a person through when he cannot go on. Chapter forty-three spoke of that collapse of capital rule: asking only whether a thing pays, those who fall first are precisely that half who do not pay. To catch him relies on those three hands counted in chapter forty-two: the one at home being fastest yet most limited; the one in society knowing him not, knowing only that he fell into the gap; and one that is slowest, yet able to send him back under the scale that measures work. This scale is one hand of check and balance, not the whole.
A finer misunderstanding must also be guarded against here: choosing not to buy is not something everyone can use. To be able not to buy, one must first be able to afford the other. If a person has only one place to buy rice, he can only buy even if that rice shop raises the price; if a person's money this month is enough only to buy the cheapest kind, he bears no room to choose. So whether this road opens depends not only on whether there are many shops, but also on whether a person holds a bit of room in his hand. That line from the first semester becomes active for the fourth time here: formal freedom is his right to say no; substantive freedom is his capital to say no.
Five, three strengths joined together are three sides of the same thing
Placing the three strengths of these three sections side by side to see, one will see that they are actually three sides of the same thing. The first is that a person can still speak: two thousand one hundred years ago in that fight, both sides spoke their words to the very end, neither won all, and the measure landed firm. The second is that a person can still make another thing: someone pressed carbon into the same thing in a furnace, and that wall lowered on its own. The third is that a person can still choose not to buy: tens of millions of people each taking a counsel, even the one with the largest house could hold no longer.
Speaking, making another thing, and choosing not to buy. These three joined together are precisely the larger form of those three set in chapter forty-four: words can be reasoned out is that a person can still speak; the books can be seen is that a person knows what else to make and whether to buy; a person can walk away is that a person can still choose not to buy and set up another stall.
So check and balance, at the end, relies not on the wisdom of any single person, nor on how thoroughly a paper document is written. It relies on keeping all three roads open. With all three open, nothing can grow into a sole ruler, for the strength that pushes back comes at any time; with all three blocked tight, nothing can push it back, and it grows as high as it wishes.
This layer also explains why the three sections of this chapter are placed together: they are not three methods, but three roads. And whether these three roads can stay open depends on whether the four scales each do their own work well.
These three roads bear one more common ground: none of them asks for an exceptionally wise person sitting on top. The road of speaking relies on both ends willing to finish their words; the road of making another thing relies on someone willing to try by the furnace for ten-plus years; the road of choosing not to buy relies on tens of millions of people each taking a counsel for themselves. Not one road waits for a sage to come forth and preside, nor is any supported by anyone's wisdom. This point matters greatly: anything that relies on an exceptionally good person to turn will not last, for good men cannot be guaranteed generation by generation.
Six, what this section sets firm, and the close of this chapter
What this section sets firm is one line: no one fought it down, people just stopped buying; this scale knows no person, so it holds back the largest one best. Yet it can push back what is not good, but cannot carry a person through when he cannot go on. Bringing the three sections of this chapter together: check and balance is not who wins, but that no one can win all; a wall built up can be filled away, and what fills it is not curses, but someone truly making another thing; and the most unfeeling scale by nature pushes against the one with the largest house. The three joined together are these three roads: speaking, making another thing, and choosing not to buy.
Chapter forty-three set a line: nothing can grow into a sole ruler to the end; it is not forbidden, but cannot hold. This chapter adds the second half: the strength that makes it unable to hold comes from these three roads; with the roads open, the failure comes a bit faster; with the roads blocked, the failure may take tens of years to wait, and through those tens of years, many a person's whole life passes away.
The four commons joined with check and balance bring the great middle section of this master map together here. The next chapter raises the eye a notch higher, to see what kind of upper structure is pushed out as these four run down below.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.