Which is cheaper, lawyer or alcohol?

　　When it comes to contracts and favors, thinking about the operation of the commercial society after the integration of China and the West, it feels like a topic worth talking about.

　　The contract is rooted in marine civilization, and human feelings originate from agricultural civilization.

　　Athens, Greece, the birthplace of Western civilization, is restricted by geographical environment. The people are mostly composed of proletarians such as merchants, fishermen, pirates, and wanderers. Without land means no scruples or constraints, and the entire society is in turmoil. In order to survive the entire society, in the bloody storm of thousands of years, marine civilization had to develop a game rule that must be abide by by the whole people - contracts, to restrain behavior and avoid excessive internal friction and the demise of civilization.

　　Gradually, the contract became an important part of Western civilization, and even contracts were signed with God and Satan.

　　Agricultural civilization is completely different. Due to agricultural technical means, early agricultural production activities must be completed by collective forces. Collectivism is the law of survival of the entire civilization. In collective work, it is normal for you to help me and I to help you. It is impossible for me to use your hoe to sign a contract, and you drink my water and make a contract. Such collective labor is completely impossible.

　　Over time, human feelings have become an important feature of agricultural civilization. Many things even do not require legal participation. They can be accomplished just because of human feelings and just because I believe in you.

　　There is no distinction between contracts and favors.

　　Since modern civilization originated from Western civilization, the main operating logic and three views of thinking of the entire world are formulated by Western society. We inevitably believe that the Western contract spirit is high-end and fashionable, and the Chinese human relationship society is old and old.

　　This is a big mistake.

　　A complete human relationship society will cause great disasters, and China has told the world with its own painful lessons. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, moral ruled the country and human feelings were supreme. As a result, pseudo-Taoism was rampant. Human feelings, which were originally intended to help each other, instead, oppressed human nature and harmed the same clan every day. In that cannibalistic society, we have long been thrown into the garbage dump of history.

　　But is a complete contract society a paradise on earth? Everything is explained clearly, and it is good to use a contract. It seems that the dispute is perfectly resolved, but the Tao is one foot higher than the demon is one foot higher. The law is lagging, and the contract is lagging, and he will never keep up with the occurrence of evil deeds.

　　Killing is wrong. We should prohibit killing people. Theft is wrong. We should prohibit stealing. Rape is wrong. We should prohibit rape, but is that enough?

　　It's wrong to brush orders.

　　It's wrong to speculate in real estate.

　　It's wrong to pyramid schemes.

　　Bribery is wrong.

　　False advertising is wrong.

　　It is wrong to maliciously speculate on the stock market.

　　Power-money transactions are wrong.

　　But can the law keep up with these more hidden and more technically improper profit-making methods? Can contracts be bound?

　　The final result is that there are more and more legal provisions, so that ordinary people cannot understand them without seeking help from professional lawyers. The contract is becoming more and more complicated, and any omission may be lost. Will such a society really be better to develop to the end?

　　In "Les Miserables", Javey, who believes in a firm and legally supreme world, chose to jump into the river and end his life full of martyrdom.

　　In the Batman trilogy, Nolan constructs a hell on earth where laws are used by criminals and civilians cannot be protected. At this time, did the contract work?

　　More importantly, countless historical evidences have proved that the so-called Western civilization that believes in the spirit of contract will only abide by contracts that are beneficial to itself and formulate contracts that are biased towards itself when facing real interests. The contract is just a rubber stamp that can be played with by the strong.

　　I do not believe in the omnipotence theory of contract, and I also hate moral supremacy.

　　Simply leaning towards contracts or favors is not the attitude that a healthy society should have.

　　A simple example is that modern business society pursues Western business negotiations and despises China's wine table culture. But the reality is not that simple. Merchants are profit-seeking creatures. They are not traitors. As long as they can make money, they dare not do anything.

　　But contracts cannot be perfect, and commercial contracts will always have loopholes to be exploited. In order to avoid losses, modern business society needs to maintain a group of professional lawyers to prevent plotting and patching. Chinese people rely on friendships that are drunk at the table to eliminate those loopholes. With favors, we will not simply have bad ideas, because if our reputation is bad, we will be excluded from the entire circle.

　　If loopholes are considered as a necessary expenditure for commercial activities, it is hard to say which one is more cost-effective, based on the income and effort.

　　I do not believe in the omnipotence theory of contract, and I also hate moral supremacy.

　　The basis of contract is law, and the basis of human relationships is morality. There are loopholes in the law, and morality is also not impeccable. Even when the world is declining, the shamelessness of "morality" breaks through the bottom line even more, because morality is naturally without logic, and morality is naturally easy to be exploited by ambitious people. Didn’t Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, which was not mainstream in the Song Dynasty, castrated China for hundreds of years because it was favored by the rulers of the Ming and Qing dynasties? Treat officials as slaves and people as grass, but they are still loyal to the emperor. Starving to death is small and losing integrity is big. Isn’t these weird things just because of morality?

　　The reason why Chairman Mao cracked down on local tyrants and evil gentry was because they kidnapped the vast number of farmers with morality. Local sages are nonsense. When local sages appear as a group, it is impossible to ensure that most people have sufficient moral standards. The ultimate result is that local sages use more confusing morality and the Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism of the new era to gain personal gain.

　　Back to the initial topic, whether it is contract or favor, they are all important parts of a healthy society. For example, contract is the bone, which supports the skeleton of society, and human feelings are blood, making society energetic.

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