Venn Diagram: Han&Roman Collapses

Prevent the Han from Collapsing

If I could travel back in time to the Han empire, I would go back to the Former Han period during the first century B.C.E.  I would when the social and economic tensions were rising.  At this time period there were distinct differences between the rich and the poor.  The poor were really bitter and the rich were enjoying themselves.  Part of the reason why there were social distinctions was because of the land distribution.  Since land was unevenly distributed and many families had to give themselves to slavery in order to pay debts, I would attack that problem.  The first thing I would do is get an army and get all the rich people to listen to me and scare them if they do not. Then I would congregate all the poor people and make sure they know I'm going to help them by giving them some land.  After that, I will redistribute the land for each family.  I would take all of the land of the large estates and evenly give each family of farmers the same amount of land. Then I would also make sure that each family has some sort of insurance. There is no way each family would be able to produce the same amount of food or enough because of a number of factors against them.  The insurance is to protect families from the effects of these factors like famines and droughts since those seemed to be a major problem.  In order for the insurance to work, I would tax the families based on income.  The taxes would be based off of each families' income, like rich people or families with better harvests pay more and poor people or families with not as adequate harvests pay less.  That way money can accumulate for the insurance and poor families are not required to pay as much as a rich family.  It does sound pretty unfair as the rich would be paying more but it is a somewhat communistic idea as everyone is supposed to be looking out for each other with this insurance plan.  In order to execute this plan, I would make sure everyone in the empire knows what will happen and explain the insurance plan. Once everyone understands, I would give it a solid six months for all the land distribution to be completed.  Then I would hire military soldiers to keep everyone in check.  But if people didn't listen to me, they would probably suffer from consequences like losing their land.