Chapter 5 Chapter 2 The modern economy that enters the world of human mind

There is such a plot in the TV series "Towards the Republic". It is said that Yuan Shikai engaged in new policies and foreign affairs in Tianjin at the end of the Qing Dynasty, that is, he introduced various modern industries and new gadgets from abroad at that time, including movies. When the Westernization was almost done, Yuan Shikai invited Empress Dowager Cixi to come to Tianjin for an inspection. Lafayette was very generous, so he came as soon as he said it.Yuan Shikai arranged for people to videotape the whole process of Lafayette's inspection and make it into a movie film, and then invited Lafayette to enter the cinema to watch it.This was the first time Cixi watched a movie, and the first movie she watched was a movie in which she was the protagonist, not to mention how shocked and excited she was.

But when she was excited, Cixi said something thought-provoking to Yuan Shikai. She said: "This thing is good, but it is a picture cake after all. Picture cakes can't satisfy your hunger. Let's make something practical." , not necessarily the original lines) Obviously, Hollywood directors and stars will not agree with the Empress Dowager Cixi's point of view, because they are drawing cakes to satisfy their hunger every day, and the box office revenue of one of their movies can go around the world several times if they are used to buy Wu Dalang's sesame cakes. Under what circumstances can painting cakes satisfy hunger?

That is, when painting cakes can fool others into paying the bill, your painting cakes can be exchanged for countless real cakes.Isn't that what Hollywood movies do?It can be replicated infinitely with almost zero marginal cost, sweeping wealth across the globe. Just look at the performance of the recent hit movie "Avatar" in China. "Avatar" is firmly at the top of the box office in China, and China has become the largest overseas market for "Avatar", with a cumulative box office of 176 million US dollars (about 1.2 billion yuan).The cumulative box office in North America reached 706.9 million US dollars, becoming the first film in history to break through 700 million US dollars at the North American box office.The cumulative global box office of "Avatar" reached 2.481 billion US dollars. (The above data are as of March 1, 2010)

What is the concept of 2.4 billion US dollars?Do you know that the cost of a heavy-duty aircraft carrier (more than 60,000 tons) is about 3.5 billion U.S. dollars, and the formation of a formation (4 frigates, 4 destroyers, 2 anti-submarine ships, 1-2 submarines) is about 3.5 billion U.S. dollars, carrier-based aircraft, It needs about US$3.5 billion, a total of about US$10 billion. That is to say, four movies like "Avatar" can be launched to build a heavy-duty aircraft carrier battle group; About US$ 1.5 billion for carrier-based aircraft, a total of about US$ 5 billion, two "Avatar" can be done; while light aircraft carriers (within 30,000 tons) cost about US$ 500 million, forming a formation of about US$ 700 million, carrier-based aircraft 5 100 million US dollars, a total of 2 billion US dollars or so.It can be seen that the income from an "Avatar" can build a light aircraft carrier battle group.

Another movie "Titanic" directed by "Avatar" more than ten years ago also created a box office myth of 1,835.3 million US dollars. This is the power of the modern entertainment industry. Faced with such facts, can you say that the celebrity entertainment industry is not an important part of the comprehensive national strength of the United States? Statistics show that the annual export value of the entertainment industry has accounted for as much as 1/3 of the total annual export value of the United States for many years!The celebrity entertainment industry has undoubtedly become an extremely important part of the modern economy. Wherever you go, as long as it implements a market economy, there must be prosperity in this form of economy.

In China before the reform and opening up, it can be said that there was no star entertainment industry in the true sense. At that time, everyone worshiped Chairman Mao instead of worshiping stars. At that time, there were only revolutionary movies and model plays. After the reform, the Hong Kong and Taiwan celebrity entertainment industry quickly entered the mainland of China, giving birth to a large-scale star entertainment industry in the mainland overnight, and the film and television songs developed in an all-round way. There are so many local stars and products, their development can be described as magnificent.

What should we think of this modern form of economy? First of all, we must admit its objective existence. Whether you like it or not, it is already an important part of the modern economy, and it will always exist and develop. It will only become more and more prosperous, and it is impossible to decline and die. Because in the era when people are generally satisfied with food and clothing, excess wealth can only be used to meet spiritual needs, and film and television entertainment can never replace people's spiritual needs. The second and more important thing is to recognize what the entertainment industry means to the rich and poor countries of the contemporary world, what it means to a rich country, and what it means to a backward country striving to become a developed country.This is where this book focuses on this form of economy.

I want to tell you that the significance of the entertainment industry to a country does not lie in entertaining the public, let alone the birth of a group of rich and small stars and directors. Its real significance can only be reflected in the economic exchanges between countries. This is because the entertainment industry itself does not create any value and wealth, on the contrary it consumes huge material wealth. Let’s look at an example. Assuming that Hollywood spends $100 million to make a movie, and then the global box office revenue is $2 billion, from the perspective of GDP accounting, the United States will increase by $1.9 billion.

So, will the world really be richer by $1.9 billion because of this movie? Obviously nonsense, there is no increase in wealth worldwide, but the wealth of people all over the world that existed before the film was made transferred 2 billion dollars to the United States after watching the film, and the wealth of the world has actually evaporated by 100 million U.S. dollars, that is, the 100 million wealth spent by Hollywood to make movies, and the various props (cars, airplanes) that were blown up when making movies, etc. are the loss of wealth worldwide. It can be seen that the so-called output value of the entertainment industry is obtained by transferring the value of other industries. It is worthless in itself, and on the contrary, it destroys a lot of wealth.That is to say, if the entertainment industry is limited within one country, the overall effect of this industry is that part of the wealth is transferred from the hands of everyone to the hands of stars and directors, and the total wealth of society remains unchanged. A certain amount of material wealth within the country will be lost due to filmmaking.

Therefore, if the entertainment industry cannot go abroad, it will be a kind of internal friction for a country, and it will bring a net loss of a country's wealth. The entertainment industry in mainland China basically belongs to the type of tossing around. It is completely surrounded by surrounding Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, and it has no power to parry.Such entertainment industry is the scourge of the country. The entertainment industry has value only when it goes abroad and uses entertainment products such as movies, music, and star brands to sweep the wealth of other countries.

Because, although the global release of a film brings about a net loss of wealth on a global scale, it is a huge profit for the country that makes the film: it consumes far more resources to make the film than less than what it received at the box office. Therefore, the meaning of the celebrity entertainment industry for the prosperity of a contemporary country is that it must become a tool to sweep the wealth of other countries, if not, at least it must be able to resist the invasion of the entertainment industry of other countries.I will discuss this logic a lot later, so I will stop for now. "Everything we do is motivated by sexual desire and vanity" "Sexual desire and vanity are the driving force", these two sentences are not my nonsense, but the great prophets of mankind said, the former is Flo Ead's famous quote, the latter was said by the great philosopher Hume. In the operation of the economy, what is derived from vanity? It is conspicuous consumption, and thus a whole set of industries that produce "honor" and sell "honor". In layman's terms, it is an industry that produces commodities to satisfy face.This kind of commodity has a special name in economics called conspicuous commodity. People buy it not to use it, but to attract the attention of others, and to achieve satisfaction through the envy and jealousy of others. Conspicuous consumption is a kind of spiritual consumption of narcissism.How important is this economy? Professor Luo Weidong of Zhejiang University devoted his whole life to the study of Adam Smith. He got a conclusion from this book: Without vanity, there will be no economic growth, and conspicuous consumption is the driving force of economic growth.Because the instinctive consumption of food, clothing, housing and transportation can only be simple repetition, and there will be no increment. If you eat two bowls of rice today, you will be full, and you will eat two bowls of rice tomorrow. Only when you regard eating as a kind of showing off, can you spend more, and you can eat well. At this time, eating is not for filling your stomach and gaining tongue sensory enjoyment, but for vanity and dignity . All accomplished economic masters will pay attention to this economic form. More than 100 years ago, economist Marshall's masterpiece was published. The third part of the book particularly emphasized people's pursuit of the desire for pride. He discussed in detail the relationship between the desire for pride and economic activities. "The want of clothing, which arises from the changes of nature, varies with climate and season, and varies a little with the nature of man's occupation. But in clothing customary desires prevail over natural desires. " The so-called desire for pride is vanity. Marshall further said that "as a man's wealth increases, his food and drink become more varied and expensive; but his appetite is limited by nature, and when his expenditure on food reaches luxury The time wasted, he satisfies the desire for hospitality and ostentation more often than he indulges his own sense organs. This brings us to what Senior said: that the desire for variety, strong as it is, has nothing to do with superiority. desires are feeble in comparison.” From this passage, we can see that Marshall has discovered that the "desire for superiority" occupies a dominant position among the many desires that determine people's consumption activities: It's weak in comparison."When a man's money reaches a certain level, he spends most of his money on vanity and gratification: "When his expenditure on food reaches the level of extravagance and waste, the gratification of hospitality and the desire for display is more important than indulgence. His own sensory organs, more times." However, the real master of studying the vanity economy is the founder of institutional economics and American economist Thorstein B Veblen (1857-1929). His pioneering work "Theory of the Leisure Class" is a book devoted to the study of The Works of Conspicuous Consumption.Veblen believed that human beings have two instincts: one is discriminatory psychology and vanity instinct; the other is homework instinct.There are two social systems in human society: one is the system of production technology that meets the needs of human material life; the other is the system of private property or money relations that satisfies the vanity instinct of human beings.The former is based on the working instinct, the latter on the vanity instinct.Based on this understanding, he established a new economics: institutional economics. Veblen clearly echoed Freud and Hume. Veblen clearly told us that human economic activities are mainly driven by vanity. In the pre-industrial era, people strived to become a leisure class (that is, a class that does not participate in productive labor), and showed off their leisure by hiring more or less servants, so as to gain a sense of dignity as a superior person. Satisfaction, this is called conspicuous leisure; in the era of commodity economy and market economy after industrialization, everyone’s goal is to finally be able to consume conspicuously. The difference from the general public, forming a contrast between noble and humble) to find the value of life. Veblen's research on conspicuous consumption is very superb and extensive, and I cannot describe too much due to space limitations.What I want to tell you is that in modern society, the economic industries derived from vanity have developed rapidly. Most of these industries have brand image as their basic feature, or directly produce intangible honorary goods, or take a certain material form of goods as their core. The "honor carrier" provides rich and varied "honor enjoyment" to consumers who are "thirsty for glory". The so-called honor goods refer to goods that can meet the needs of human honor. The honor industry in reality can be divided into two categories: The first category: mainstream honor industry. Economic forms that can be seen everywhere in modern society, such as luxury goods economy, brand clothing industry, and beauty industry, are all classified as mainstream honor industries. The mainstream honor industry mainly refers to such industries that mainly satisfy the honor of human beings. Most of the products in these industries also have their practical uses, but their main function is to bring honor to people. When you buy a blouse worth 2,000 yuan in the "Armani" specialty store, and then you can buy a piece of clothing with the same quality and appearance for 100 yuan in the clothing wholesale market, you spend more for the former. 1900 yuan, just to get the honor of the brand - 1900/2000=91% is the honor component of "Armani". The same method can be used to calculate the honor component of luxury goods: maybe you only need to spend 500 yuan, and you can order clothing in a tailor shop that is comparable in material level to a brand suit priced at 100,000 yuan. Then, the honor component of a brand suit It is 99500/100000=99.5%. It can be seen that the honor component of luxury goods is close to 100%, and its practical meaning is that luxury goods are purely commodities that satisfy vanity. The mainstream honor industry can be subdivided into three levels: Advanced honor economy—mainly refers to the luxury economy. This type of economy is a natural monopoly industry. The creation of a luxury brand often requires more than a century of historical struggle and multi-party efforts. Huge cost input is only a necessary condition but not sufficient. Strong economic strength alone may not be able to create a luxury brand. Most luxury brands in the world have excellent "royal blood" and extraordinary high-end manufacturing technology. The threshold of the luxury industry is high enough to establish its monopoly characteristics.The high honor economy has the highest honor, and its honor will not be lost in the historical development. Maintaining high honor and high price for a long time is the essential feature of this type of economy. Branded fashion industry - this type of industry must also be based on brands, but its brand "honor gold content" is a level lower than that of luxury goods. It does not have the highest honor of luxury goods, nor can it be maintained for a long time like luxury goods High honor, but with the characteristics of diminishing utility of honor. The branded clothing industry is a typical example of this type of industry. Anyone who has a little knowledge of the market knows a fact: clothing in brand stores always goes through a process of decreasing prices: the price is very high when it first goes on the market, and as time goes by, it will continue to decline. Discounted, and finally cleared at a price level slightly higher than ordinary clothing.Behind the hidden price decline is the diminishing effect of honor: as time goes by, as the density of fashionable things in the crowd expands, their ability to meet people's honor needs is getting lower and lower, which determines that merchants must continue to lower prices to ensure sales. This will be described in more depth later on. "Transformation" honor industry—for example, the beauty economy belongs to this type of representative industry. The above two types of honor products have a common feature, that is, the products directly bring honor to consumers, and the products themselves are directly used to show off, or in other words, consumption Consumers mainly obtain satisfaction through the brand and high price of the product itself, but this is not the case in the beauty industry. For example, when people buy high-end skin care products, consumers do not show off the product itself, but beautify their appearance through skin care products. , The beautified appearance makes consumers get more compliments in daily life.It can be seen that beauty products need to be transformed into the beauty of consumers in order to bring consumers honor. It is for this reason that such honor products are transformed into honor products to reflect the difference from other honor economies. The second category: "pan honor economy". Because "selling" honors can always bring excess profits, under the temptation of profits, many industries in the modern economy tend to be honored, and the honor economy is penetrating into many industries at an extremely fast speed, many of which are not originally honors. The economical ones have honor elements to varying degrees. On the other hand, these industries maintain the characteristics of practicality while possessing honor. Therefore, such industries should not be classified as mainstream honor industries. You might as well Call it the "Pan Honors Economy." There are many examples of this kind of economy in reality. For example, the servant-like trend of waiters in the catering industry is becoming more and more obvious. The fundamental purpose of servant-like waiters is to make customers feel honorable psychologically, not to provide high-quality services. How much physical pleasure can it bring to customers. So from the perspective of international economic exchanges, what kind of important relationship does the honor industry have for the rise and fall of a country?In the later part of this book, I will tell you that luxury goods and international brands have actually become extremely important means for the "new imperialism" to exploit other countries.The efficiency of this kind of exploitation is far greater than the imperialist method of robbing 100 years ago. International brands are the life-and-death magic weapon for developed countries to maintain prosperity. For a country like China, which is becoming prosperous and powerful, the establishment of a certain number of truly international brands is also a necessary condition. In a word, there is no China without international brands. Really rise. It is a pity that we are faced with an extremely tragic reality: 30 years of reform and opening up, we have not built a real world brand. Italians have a bad habit, and this bad habit is two weapons, one is cell phone and the other is cigarettes. Moreover, the two weapons are often used together, whether on campus or in the streets, this scene abounds. Italian mobile phone charges are extremely expensive, but it still cannot stop Italian women from using it as a ostentatious prop; the beauty of smoking is that the moment the bus arrives, it is decisive and chic. In Italy, the way strange women communicate is to respect each other's cigarettes.If you are addicted to cigarettes, you will inevitably have a hoarse voice.Whether hoarseness is a desired state or an inevitable fault is not easy to judge.But one thing is certain, the hoarseness makes the wild beauty of Italian women more unbridled.With this voice alone, this woman has the power to fly an arrow, as if it would break your bones and make you unable to move.This vice of the Italians is actually due to a kind of vanity. People who first arrive in Italy often have a sense of inferiority, because compared with the locals, their clothes are unavoidably shabby and crude.If you go to the streets of Milan, the similar feeling will become stronger. In the fashion capitals of the world, there's no reason why it shouldn't feel that way. Italian money, though, is pretty much all you can see from head to toe with the naked eye. No matter how wronged the Italians are, they cannot be wronged by their appearance. Also, most Italians will lie to relatives and friends that they are away on vacation, but they are actually hiding at home.They stuffed the refrigerator with food and drinks, adjusted the temperature of the air conditioner properly, turned on the telephone recording, and lowered the blinds... as if they really went on vacation. In order to know the places they pretend to be going to and the local shops and restaurants very well, they read a lot of materials, and they also make up some anecdotes of "personal experience", and send postcards to relatives and friends, making the recipients envious .These liars are not able to enjoy the holidays like everyone else due to financial constraints or other reasons.But out of vanity and unwillingness to show weakness in front of others, he adopted this method of falsification. Ye Chuhua’s note: From this point of view, the vanity economy in Italy has already accounted for a considerable proportion. There, it seems that all the consumption behaviors of people come from vanity desires, including things like using mobile phones and smoking. It is done out of vanity.What's more serious is that Italians seem to spend all their money on vanity satisfaction: "Italian money is almost all you can see with the naked eye from head to toe."Therefore, it can be considered that the Italians have entered a distinctive economic era: the vanity economy era. After writing here, I want to summarize.Having said so much, I just want to tell you one thing: We are already in an economic era that has entered the human spiritual world. In this era, the economy that satisfies the spiritual needs of human beings is dominant and the leader. Its proportion in the total economic volume of a country is proportional to the degree of development of the country. The more developed the country, the more economical it is. Spirit. This is a very simple truth. Didn’t the ancient Chinese say it: When you are full of warmth and lust, you know your shame when you have enough food and clothing, and you know etiquette when you have enough food and clothing.After food and clothing, is to pursue a higher level of spiritual needs. We can also move out the need hierarchy theory to demonstrate it.The hierarchy of needs theory was proposed by American humanist psychologist Maslow (Maslow, 1954).According to the theory, people's needs can be divided into the following seven levels from low to high: ① Physiological needs. ② Security requirements. ③ Belonging and love needs. ④ needs for respect. ⑤ Cognitive needs. ⑥Aesthetic needs. ⑦The need for self-actualization.It can be seen that the physiological needs of human beings belong to the lowest level of needs. The theory holds that the generation of needs at each level must be based on the satisfaction of lower-level needs.For example, if a person can't even fill his stomach, he can't pursue aesthetic enjoyment.Everyone pursues according to these seven levels of needs, from low to high. From an economic point of view, the limiting condition of this pursuit is the income level of a person. With the increase of income, people will pursue higher-level needs, first of all, to meet physiological needs, to solve food and clothing, to have no worries about food and clothing, and then to have a desire for knowledge and aesthetics, and then to pursue dignity and conspicuous consumption . For an individual, the higher his income, the greater the proportion of spiritual consumption in all his consumption; similarly, for a country, the richer the country, the greater the proportion of its spiritual industry. The bigger the world, the tertiary industry dominated by the service industry can be roughly regarded as an industry that meets spiritual needs. We know that its proportion is more than 70% in developed countries, and as high as 80% in the United States. As I said in the introduction to this article, the watershed between the old and the new era of human economy is the realization of industrialization, the completion of industrialization and the large-scale increase in productivity, leading to an unprecedented state for mankind: anyone in an industrialized country, he The income obtained through work has a large surplus after satisfying food and clothing, and these surpluses eventually become consumption needs in pursuit of spiritual satisfaction. In other words, such an era is an economic era of popular pursuit of spiritual satisfaction. It is precisely because of this that the spiritual economy will form a huge scale and become the dominant force of the modern economy. It is also worth studying it from the perspective of the relationship between the prosperity and strength of the country. . It should be noted that in the pre-industrial era, the fruits of labor of the vast majority of people in any society were only enough to support their families. Conspicuous consumption and other types of spiritual consumption were the patents of a very small number of leisure classes.The spiritual economy at this stage obviously has not become the dominant economy of a country, nor will it have a close and important relationship with the prosperity of a country. Developed countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan have already entered an economic form in which food and clothing are worry-free and the general public pursues spiritual satisfaction, and China is also developing towards that form at an extremely fast speed. This change in China is mainly due to the 30 years of reform and opening up. brought. In these years, we can see that China's spiritual economy has grown from nothing to blossoming everywhere, penetrating into every hole. Film and television entertainment industry, cultural and creative industry, tourism economy, pet economy, conspicuous economy, financial speculation industry and even gambling industry, etc., have formed a considerable scale, and their proportion is increasing day by day. In the life of Chinese people, these aspects spending is also increasing. In today's world and China, not only these economic forms that purely satisfy spiritual needs continue to develop, but also this level of economy has almost penetrated into many products and industries that are not originally spiritual. You can find that, Every industry and every product today has more or less some kind of spiritual component.For example, any kind of product should pay attention to the packaging. When you buy it, at least don’t let it lose your face, and don’t let people look sloppy. Therefore, we are living in an era of spiritual economy, an economic era that enters the spiritual world of human beings. In this new economic era, we must start from the heart to discuss the contemporary theory of the wealth of nations.