When I first came to Japan in 1980 I
was amazed to see fish swimming in the rivers in downtown Tokyo.
Japan of the 1980’s was by many
standards the most advanced nation on earth.
By 1985, after decades of sizzling
economic growth, they had the highest per capita income on earth, the lowest
gap between the rich and poor in any developed nation and a very healthy
natural environment.
They also were the greatest creditor
nation on earth, having supplied cars, electronics and other goodies to the
rest of the planet often in exchange for IOUs.
One of the reasons I chose to go to
university in Japan was to study the system that had made this miracle
possible.
This is how it worked. Japan’s
government was run by a combination of highly talented bureaucrats,
industrialists and politicians with deep roots in their local constituencies.
They presided over a system that was
a combination of central planning, free market capitalism and socialism.
At the apex of the system was an
organization known as the Economic Planning Agency.
It was run by a group of about 30
members of the bureaucratic, industrial, academic and political ruling elite.
They would come up with a 5 year
plan for the country.
Politicians would explain in detail
what their voters desired.
Bureaucrats would explain exactly
how much money there was available to realistically meet their desires.
Industrialists would explain what
could be profitably done to contribute to the plan.
The country as a whole also had a
mission: to overtake and surpass the West.
The system was not like the central
planning of Stalinist economies, where even such thing as the amount of
toothpaste was centrally planned, because it was based on market forces.
The plan might, for example, call for doubling the amount of roads, sewers and port facilities over a 5 year period, and would allocate the money for this.
However, it was private companies
who bid for the actual work.
Furthermore, companies were free to
carry out their own independent activities regardless of the bigger plan.
The only countries that had systems
arguably as good as the old Japanese system were the Scandinavian countries,
Germany and Canada.
In 1985 the US government set out to
destroy this system out of what I can only describe jealousy and fear of being
over-taken.
George Bush Sr., then
vice-president, ordered Japan to dismantle this system and hand economic
control over to American oligarchs (gangsters).
When the Japanese refused, they shot
down Japan airlines flight 123 on August 12, 1985.
On September 22nd, 1985, Japan
signed the Plaza Accord that signaled the beginning of the systematic
destruction of the Japanese economic system.
Since then, Japan’s economy has been
looted to the tune of about $5 trillion by American and European gangster
oligarchs.
The system that created the Japanese
miracle was by no means perfect.
One flaw was the system of forced
early retirement of low paid bureaucrats.
This meant that bureaucrats, instead
of thinking of the greater good of their country, had an interest in currying favor
with the companies they regulated in exchange for cushy, post-early retirement
jobs.
The other problem was the system of
lifetime employment.
While this did create employee
loyalty to firms, it was also a feudal system that made it almost impossible
for people to change jobs.
The political system was also
radically biased in favor of rural citizens and against urban residents.
Singapore, to this day, has a better
system, where bureaucrats are not forced to retire early and get paid as much
as their private sector counter-parts.
That is why Singapore keeps sizzling
along to this day.
In any case, China’s Deng Xiaoping
carefully studied the Japanese and Singaporean systems and adopted them to
China.
That is one of the main reasons for
China’s long economic boom.
The West would do well to create its
own, improved version of this system.
That is why I have been proposing
creating a future planning agency.
This is different from the White
Dragon Society, which strongly insists on ending poverty, stopping
environmental destruction and expanding earth life exponentially into the
universe.
This is simply a personal proposal,
based on 30 years’ experience as a geopolitical journalist.
The future planning agency I propose
would have an initial funding of $7 trillion.
That is the amount of money the
Japanese have legitimately earned since World War 2.
It is based on cars, electronics and
other real things sent to the rest of the world.
This is different from gold
carefully hoarded in caves over the millennia by Asian dynastic families or
fantastical numbers put in computers by Western Bankers.
It is based on actual production.
The future planning agency would
exist in harmony with existing institutions and not replace them.
It would recruit some of the best
brains from all over the world in the fields of government, business, academia
etc.
Their job would be to study and make
real the wishes of the people of the planet, as expressed through the internet
and opinion surveys.
Here are some possible examples of
what such an agency could accomplish.
First, it would accept bids and
plans for a massive campaign to turn the deserts green.
Many competing plans would be
allowed to go ahead and those that succeeded would be copied and improved upon.
Such an effort could double the
amount of land now available for agriculture and nature preserves.
In the case of the oceans, the
agency could hire the navies of the world to stop the unsustainable
over-fishing that is destroying the ocean eco-systems.
Within 5 years it should be possible
to increase the amount of fish 10 fold.
Feeding the ocean with nutrients may
make it possible to further increase this 100 fold.
Another project it could oversee
would be to make sure every child on earth is well fed and well educated.
Human brains are the most
under-utilized resource on the planet.
Allowing all those young minds to
reach their full potential would unleash wonders we cannot even imagine at
present.
These are just ideas meant to form a starting point for a debate about what sort of system we could create to allow us to successfully navigate into the future.
It is not a final plan.
Nor is it a plan for a single
central world government.
Many competing corporations,
governments, charities, foundations, etc. could all work in harmony with the
future planning agency.
In any case, let us look at what we
now have in the West.
The system of unfettered capitalism
is based on the “profit motive” which is a nice way of saying human greed.
It has created a black hole sucking
up all the world’s resources and wealth into the hands of a tiny, rapacious
elite.
They spend the world’s savings on a
military industrial complex meant to preserve their power.
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