 The last phrase represents the rationale behind Shang Yang’s model of state formation. If radical restructuring of society was legitimate in the past, so it is in the present. In the current situation, when the people are “knowledgeable,” a powerful state, which is able to coerce its subjects, is the only viable solution. The Book of Lord Shang (but not Han Feizi) allowed for the possibility that in the future the need for excessive reliance on coercion would end and a milder, morality-driven political structure would evolve, but these utopian digressions are of minor importance in the text (Pines 2013a). What matters is the bottom line: radical reforms were inevitable in the past; and they are inevitable in the present.