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there are two popular words recently, one is housing pension and the other is selling everything you have. both words have caused widespread discussion in society.

one of the reasons for the controversy is that as a policy language, it is very non-standard. if future generations look up historical data and find that there was a department called the "smashing and selling iron special team" in history, they will laugh at it.

in fact, i know that both measures face problems that need to be solved, and both indicate the intention to solve these problems. however, using the above expression may have the opposite effect.

for example, the issue of housing pensions. the vast majority of china's current residential buildings were built in the past 20 years. due to aging and construction quality issues, how to maintain them and ensure residential safety in the future is indeed a very realistic problem.

as for the "selling off everything", according to relevant documents, the purpose is to resolve the debt problem of local governments by disposing of assets and realizing cash. the heavy debt burden of local governments is well known to everyone, so there is no need to elaborate here. i think the so-called "selling off everything" also shows a determination to solve this problem.

we will put aside the content and right and wrong of these two things for now and only talk about the way they were expressed.

on the surface, housing pension and selling everything you have are both very lifelike, vivid, and down-to-earth language. but if you think about it carefully, such language has a common feature, which is non-standardization.in real life, such language is easy to understand when it is spoken, but once it becomes policy language, it often becomes unclear and even causes misunderstanding.

what is housing pension? who will provide housing pension? do i, a person in my sixties or seventies, have to provide housing pension for more than ten years? then, a series of questions came up: what is the legal basis for this policy? who will pay for it? who will use it? how will it be used? the term "smashing pots and selling iron" may cause more ambiguity. some people joked, why smash the pots and sell them? wouldn't it be more valuable to sell the pots directly?

let me digress a little here.

i recently chatted with an entrepreneur. during the chat, he used the word "frightened" several times. i knew he was talking about the issue of uncertainty. in fact, i have been talking about this issue over the past few years. uncertainty is a very real problem now, and an important reason for this uncertainty is the volatility and ambiguity of policies.

there is a joke recently: the two richest people took turns dumping the stocks, neither of them wanted to be the richest. after dumping the stocks, they found that they were still the richest, but their net worths had shrunk a lot. this is the so-called internal circulation. everyone knows that this refers to pinduoduo and nongfu spring. on august 26, pinduoduo's stock price fell by 28.51%, and its market value evaporated by us$55.37 billion in a single day, equivalent to rmb 394.6 billion, the largest drop since its ipo. on august 28, it was reported that nongfu spring's stock price plummeted by more than 11%.

the sharp drop in these two stocks is worth pondering. although the claim that the two richest men took turns to dump the stocks is a joke, it is obvious that the nearly 30% drop in pinduoduo's stock price in one day is directly related to the cold wind deliberately blown by the management. the direct reason for the drop in nongfu spring's stock price is that its revenue has dropped sharply for the first time. but everyone knows that this drop in revenue is related to the large amount of public opinion attacks and malicious slander against the company and its founder on the internet some time ago.

this seems to be a bit off topic. what does it have to do with the previous discussion? what i want to say is that you should not think that language is a small problem.the language a society uses largely reflects the atmosphere of that society.in recent years, there are more and more harsh words. don't think that using harsh words in life can show your determination to do things. if such harsh words are used too much, it will cause social tension, discomfort and uncertainty.

there are certainly many reasons for the current economic downturn. but no one denies that social psychology is also an important factor among these many reasons. this is what people call the confidence of entrepreneurs and the expectations of the public. the former involves investment, and the latter involves consumption.the most fundamental way to restore or rebuild social confidence is effective rule of law, that is, rules that can be trusted.

one of the reasons why rules fail is that the rules themselves are vague.

modern politics is a standardized and institutionalized politics that must be run on the track of the rule of law. those down-to-earth colloquial "popular sayings" are often unclear in meaning, unclear in reference, and vague in boundaries. such sayings seem to be down-to-earth and close to the masses, but the result can only be to reduce the degree of institutionalization and rule of law in social life. and leave room for arbitrary abuse of power.

therefore, i particularly look forward to such a situation: the beginning of a policy text is: according to the law of the people's republic of china, article and paragraph, this regulation is formulated, and then the content is expressed in standardized language. in this way, the meaning is clear, easy to implement, and people will not misunderstand.

modern social life cannot make the operation of the state closer to the level of daily life language, but must make the operation of social life closer to the level of legal and institutionalized language.