VOLUME V, CHAPTER 10
Scarcity in the Abstract, the Roads of the Weak, the Limit of Reform
The chapter before this dug land, the most solid line. This chapter walks on toward the abstract. It opens the three more hidden scarcities of position, relationship, and culture, then turns around to stand on the side of the weak and see which roads lie under his feet, and last it looks at a group standing inside the frame who want to change the law, the reformers, and why time after time they cannot change it all the way through.
The first section is the examinations, marriage, and learning. Position is framed by the examinations, relationship by marriage, culture by schooling and by fact together. The more abstract the scarcity, the finer its robe and the harder its holding alone is to see through. This is the twenty-ninth layer.
The second section stands with the weak and sets out the three roads before him, to accept, to resist, to step outside, three positions with no higher or lower, all of them tradeable, none of them able to move the great frame of output falling short. This is the thirtieth layer.
The third section looks at the reformers. Shang Yang, whose law lived on after he died. Wang Anshi, whose law was scrapped while he still lived. Zhang Juzheng, whose law died with him. Three fates on one line. The reformer is himself one of the strong, and after the reform the strong still write the law, only a different set of them. This is the thirty-first layer.
These three sections build from the twenty-ninth layer to the thirty-first, and set out all three heads plainly, the strong holding alone, the weak responding, the limit of reform. By the end of this chapter a dead knot has shown itself in the open. Move nothing in output and the scarcity stays, and however the weak walk and however the reformer reforms, there is no way out. How that knot is untied this volume only sets down, it does not untie, leaving it to the later volume on saving people. The stance has not shifted. It lays out the positions and leaves the judgment to you.
Contents
Section One. The Strong Write Law to Hold It Alone, the Examinations, Marriage, Learning.
Section Two. The Three Roads Before the Weak, Accept, Resist, Step Outside.
Section Three. Why Reform of the Law Is Never Complete.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.