The direction of ΔUSD/JPY is stange at this year end.

 

 

Today 31st Dec., 2021, this strange trend still goes on.

The market at this year end is different from usual. JPY has usually been appreciated at each year end. By contrast, JPY is significantly depreciated. TOPIX (The stock market index) has been depreciated during this week although it jumped up a little bit this morning.

I guess the crisis of Softbank, the major Japanese enterprise from 2000s, may have caused this Japanese market downturn. As the astrological aspect has predicted, Japanese socioeconomic situation has really been suppressed from last October to this month.

Well, by means of the aggregate market performance estimation based on the astrological prediction, it may recover gradually from next month and some boost from coming April. Nonetheless, it is still concerned that the distribution of the aggregate economic and financial growth maybe limited to particular industries rather than all.

Therefore, it is predicted that some new business models may emerge and those industries representing the characteristics of Neptune and Pisces (Software, data flow, finance, astrology, etc.) may substantially grow. By contrast, the other industries especially those which have been benefited from the status-quo may still face their business and financial stagnation.

Jupiter has finally started crossing the ascendant of Pisces after Aquarius

 

At 13:10, Jupiter has finally started crossing the ascendant of Pisces after Aquarius. I would like to say "Congratulations!" especially for those endowed with the lights (Sun and Moon) of the fixed signs except for Aquarius and of the water sign. 

 

It has been really hard for those fixed signs from October to just before 13:10 today because both Jupiter and Saturn (Aquarius is its ex own sign) were still crossing the ascendant of Aquarius together. They also formed the square with Uranus crossing the ascendant of Taurus (Uranus's detrimental sign). 

 

Jupiter is now going to form the conjunction with Neptune (Pisces is its own sign) in coming April. As proven in my econometric analysis (http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2021/11/econometrics-meets-astrology-regressing.html), the conjunction of Jupiter and Neptune is positively correlated with the world GDP. Furthermore, because Neptune is crossing the ascendant of its own sign, the effect maybe magnified. Those endowed with the water signs will be significantly more benefited from their conjunction in Pisces (the mutual water sign) because it forms either the conjunction or the triangle. 

 

Regarding the world economy, it is still concerned that the distribution of the aggregate economic and financial growth maybe limited to particular industries rather than all. Saturn (in its ex own sign) and Uranus (Taurus as detrimental = weak economy) still form the square so that the socioeconomically challenging factors will be likely to remain. Therefore, it is predicted that some new business models may emerge and those industries representing the characteristics of Neptune and Pisces (Software, data flow, finance, astrology, etc.) may substantially grow. By contrast, the other industries especially those which have been benefited from the status-quo may still face their business and financial stagnation.

Cooperative Liberalism: The new form of Liberalism from 2020s onward

In order to defend Liberalist philosophy and ethics in the current world socioeconomic environment, we, Liberalists, need to introduce a new form of political ideology.  As stated in the previous blog posts, the laissez-faire policy which Classical Liberalists, Libertarians, and the Objectivists claim for no longer stimulate the free market competition.  

 

1. Equality of the opportunity requires a certain degree of the equality of the outcome

The world economy has already become so complex and bureaucratic and requiring the huge economic scale to compete against each other. Only the economic agents with the significantly high capital investment advantages may survive in the current market economy.  Therefore, the world market in general tends to be almost always the oligopoly while some markets are even in the monopoly or the monopsony. 

In order to encourage the competition, the positive intervention by the public sector is more likely to be required than the past.  In the past, letting all individuals do alone in a natural competition could often stimulated them to form a diverse market competition providing the equality of opportunity.  By contrast, the new entrants in most of fields are struggling to compete without any supports because the capital requirement for joining the market has become too high for market entrants.

Firstly, private banks hardly lend money for new entrants because the risk premium of investing to new ventures is high nowadays.  The already established enterprises and economic agents in one industrial field have already secured their capital required for survival in the market of this industrial field.  On the other hand, small enterprises and individual entrepreneurs need a high level of investments from the others to enable them to survive there.  Private banks prefer lending already established big enterprises and rich entrepreneurs from the other field to lending those ventures and entrepreneurs with little capital.

Secondly, the opportunity of individuals joining market requires a significantly higher skill level than the past.  The education (Not only the higher education but also the job experiences and the transferable skills) for allowing individuals to compete with the already established corporations and the other talented educated individuals from all over the world.  The tertiary education such as college education has become necessity rather than complementary so individuals usually invest their time and income to graduate from a college/university.  Moreover, individual economic agents are expected to have both experiences and skills on the top of studying for their tertiary education.  All in all, the education requirement for surviving in the market competition is so severe that it depends on not only the talent but also the naturally endowed fortune of individuals are mandatory to not only win but also survive there.

Thirdly, the information symmetry for both investment and moral is a big concern. Because the world infrastructure such as transportation links, the information technological networks, and the production optimisation and logistics, there is almost no industry still robustly growing and certain for individuals to gain a profit from by investing them.  Furthermore, while the access to various abundant information resources is highly available nowadays, individuals are often confused with their right decision and the right duty to make. The ethical principle does no longer seem to be universal for all the human individuals to follow so they are often confused to derive their moral decision and ethical practices.  

On the top of these aforementioned situations, the current development of the artificial intelligence (AI) is expelling human individual workers, of not only the blue collar jobs but also the white collar jobs, from their employment. As Yuval Noah Harari described in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st century, human individuals are furthermore divided to the aspiring elites and the non-working useless classes.  In case of this situation, the laissez-fair claimed by Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism is quite likely to let human individuals to lose their life. 

Overall, the positive intervention by the public sector will be all the more demanded by the majority individuals.  The government role will eventually be big to satisfy the greatest sum of individuals' happiness in their life.  The next chapter explains the idea to prop up individuals' liberty and autonomic right while

 2. Big roles of the public sector while promoting individual liberty

As same as Libertarianism, this new form of Liberalism regards highly of the pluralism of freedom of expression, diversity of beliefs, ethnic groups, genders, and any physical and mental trait, cohabiting together. Although the laissez-faire economic policy could encourage such a pluralistic society, the laissez-faire nowadays contains a significantly high risk of impoverish the majority individuals without some degree of the positive intervention.  The paradigm of ethics in politics is dramatically shifting.

Our society now needs a positive intervention to allow them cohabiting without fear of losing their income and means of living.  The majority of individuals can be easily impoverished by losing their job or the stagnation of their income growth due to the aspect mentioned in the aforementioned chapter.  Offering a high degree of liberty and autonomous right, the new paradigm claims for allowing individuals without merely judging them by means of the industrial and commercial productivity.  

The new form of liberalism insists on a high provision of public goods and services whose welfare gain is shared among all the civic individuals. The shared economy is growing so that the demand of public goods and services is becoming notably significant. Furthermore, the flexible and inexpensive access to well-managed public goods and services may reduce individuals to cut their living costs so that it allows individuals and institutes including business enterprises to spare their income. 

There is another reason why the public sector is becoming all the more important. Majority of individuals nowadays tend to lose their traditional communities such as family and company.  There are many individuals having lost their interesting in marriage and these family members are becoming more individualistic than family oriented. The companies administration model nowadays are becoming more capital intensive than the labour intensive.  In order to compensate for their loss of their traditional community, the public sector is going to function as their substitute community looking after individuals. 

To enable the public sector to provide individual citizens with public goods and services with a high quality accessible level, the sufficient tax revenue is inevitably essential. This is what many supporters of the Classical Liberalism, Libertarianism, and the Objectivism because it enforces involuntarily sacrifice their income/property. However, in order to provide the majority of civic individuals with their liberty and right to live, it requires to forfeit some degree of economic liberty at the minimum optimum level avoiding too high taxation to hinder economy. 

This public management policy sounds like socialism.  Yes, this new form of Liberalism is admitted to be a part of Socialism although it is prevented from turning to be a radical form of socialism.  The radical forms of socialism such as Communism and State-Socialism excessively penalise the high income earners by accusing the market economy.  By contrast, this new form of Liberalism still aspires to maintain the robustly growing market economy combined with the optimum positive planning by the public sector.  In another word, it allows the high income earners to contribute back to their community of individuals having enabled them to earn their high income to thank their belonging economy and society.

The biggest concern of allowing such a significantly major role of the public sector such as government is the possible violation of their authority.  In many socialist nations with an obsolete socialist political stance, the power of government encourages their corruption with their violation of their public management authority.  In order to discourage their power violation, the public sectors such as government have to be constantly monitored and moderated through their citizens' view.  Many welfare state nations in Europe put their countermeasures against this authority violations, they maintain a high degree of the freedom of expression, the guarantee of individuals' autonomic right by questioning any authorities, and the freedom of media coverages which whistle-blow their public sector bodies.

 

3. Importance of the Progressive Tax and the Public Sector Provision

This new form of Liberalism regards highly of individual liberty and each individual's autonomous right as same as Classical Liberals, Libertarians, and the Objectivists.  At the same time, it regards highly of the cohabitation of unique individuals living in society so that individuals are encouraged to cooperate together at the same time. 

For example, in order to develop their convenient life style, the public sector growth is typically demanded. It satisfies each individual own egoistic interest even after sacrificing their tax contribution by splitting some share of their income. 

The tax should be progressively taxed due to the degree of the negative effect on individuals' utility varying across their income level.  The utility declining rate of the lower income individuals is significantly higher than the higher income counterparts.  Therefore, in order to increase the total sum of their utility, the progressiveness of the taxation is crucially important. 

There is a claim that the progressive tax may encourage the high income earners escaping from where they contribute to the public sector finance.  However, another study shows that the tax rate change is more likely to affect the lower income earners than the higher income earners.  The background aspect is that the high income earners gain benefit from taking their geographic advantage of their residence while the lower income earners merely exchange their own physical labour with their income.  

Even though the high income earners pay a high share of taxation, they can benefit from the safe and culturally well-off environment where the public sectors are eager to prop up such an environment.  In addition, the high public investment toward the public education will increase the abundant supply of the human capital which individual citizens may produce a high income together by sharing the benefit of these public goods and services in this region.  This place may become attractive for rich private investors to invest for their high return.  All in all, the overall return of paying the high tax for the higher income earners will be high enough to cover their cost. 

For the low income earners, it is important for them to access their fair opportunity for growing their income to satisfy their utility.  Sharing the public goods and services is necessary for them to save their income as well as to encourage their accesses to education, public transportations, high security, and information resources. 

In addition, it might be also important to provide enough lump-sum state benefits especially for the deprived individuals.  The old Liberalists often claimed for the meritocracy where all individuals compete to achieve with their own efforts and skills with a minimum support.  By contrast, because the income gap is widened and the access to the competition is limited far more than the past, a certain degree of the equality in outcome is all the more unavoidable to achieve the equality in opportunity. 

4. Cooperative Liberalism: Reformist rather than Revolutionary

This new form of Liberalism encourages individuals to cooperate to establish the environment for their liberal life style satisfying the greatest sum of individuals' happiness as well as offering the safety and the opportunity for the least fortunate member. Therefore, it is called Cooperative Liberalism. 

Cooperative Liberalism  is not a collectivism such as state-socialism and communism: It still retains the market economy, private property right, and financial industries' capital market operations.  It still retains the philosophy of Liberal Economism which regards highly of liberal rewards for each individual's contribution and merit to another individual or the whole market.

This policy actually preserves the market economy just with some positive intervention into it instead of replacing it with another by revolution.  The degree of the intervention is tuned depending on each situation. Instead of establishing a rigid socioeconomic political system based on the perfectionist philosophy, it admits the imperfection of economy and society of the world. 

The vector direction of Cooperative Liberalism is resemblance to Anarchism which defies both the excess government autocratic intervention and the big corporations' monopoly and exploitation.  As same as Anarchism, Cooperative Liberalism attempts to protect individuals' autonomous right, oppose unethical laws and orders established by both government autocrats and corporate tycoons, and individuals' voluntary cooperation within their spontaneously unified community.

At the same time, unlike Anarchism, Cooperative Liberalism still relies on government and bureaucrats' rational authorities for the public good and service provision and encourages the private enterprises' profit maximisation as long as individuals' liberty is protected and encouraged.  These institutes will be allowed exist while individuals are allowed to question these authorities against their power violation. 

All in all, Cooperative Liberalism is distinguished from Classical Liberalism (including Libertarianism and the Objectivism) as well as the majority socialism. The closest allies are Social-Democracy (Majority ardent socialists call "Friendlier version of capitalism" and Anarchism (by means of its vector direction; not its vector magnitude).  Cooperative Liberalism attempts to secure and encourage individuals' liberty in terms of the new socioeconomic paradigm of the current and the near future world.

My graphs of socio-economic policy created in 2004-05 found while searching my old albums

 

 

I created these graphs of socioeconomic policy when I just started studying in Scottish university.  Since communicating with my Anarch-socialist/communist friends in Edinburgh and the member of the student union in the university, I have started to realise that the multi-dimensional analysis is needed to analyse politics as well as economics and sociology.  The impression and the culture shock were so big that my artistic inspiration stimulated me to create such simple but impressive graphs at the time period even before I started this blog (from 2006). 

Econometrics meets Astrology: Regressing the world GDP on the aspects of Jupiter and Neptune

In the European astrology, the aspects of Jupiter and Neptune denote the economic/financial prosperity.  Since I started the European astrology, I have become keen to test if the astrological chart can actually be interpreted by econometrical analysis because these aspects are based on the numerical values of these aspects' angles.  

The combination of Jupiter (expansion and growth) and Neptune (ambiguity and liquidity) represents the financial fortune of individuals, companies, and each different time transit.  It is believed that it is a bubble aspect when these two planets form the soft aspects such as the conjunction 0 degree (while it simultaneously induces the hard), the triangle 120 degree, and the sextile 60 degree. On the other hand, it is a broke/crisis aspect when these two planets form the hard aspects such as the opposition 180 degree and the square 90 degree (and also the conjunction simultaneously).  

Then, the following 3 explanatory variables generated by the trigonometric function are created: 

1. The most complex indicator showing a higher value when the aspect angle is close to the soft aspect while a lower value when the aspect angle is close to the hard aspect.  

This could not catch up the positive effect of the zero degree. But, instead of making the valuable excessively complex, the 3rd explanatory variable represents the positive effect of the zero degree angle (Conjunction). 

2. Just a modulus of the sine of the radians representing the effect of the square 90 degree aspect.  The negative effect of another hard aspect angle 180 degree angle (Opposition) is shown by the following 3rd explanatory variable.

3.  The most simple cosine of the radians indicating the highest value at the zero degree angle (Conjunction) and the lowest value at the 180 degree angle (Opposition).

Therefore, the equation for the ordinary least squares (OLS) becomes as the displayed one. 

The coefficient of B1 is expected to be positive, B2 is negative, and B3 is mildly positive.

The result is amazing!  The coefficients of these explanatory variables have turned up to be what expected to be! 

These significances cannot expected to be so strong and the model in general looks rough because this statistical analysis based on a rough and extraordinarily big picture such as a transit aspect of the world GDP in a single chart. 

In order to expect to create a stronger model with stronger significance levels, it requires more precise pictures of the target objects such as the more complex aspects, each individual regional aspects', etc.  

Nevertheless, this can be said to be a big achievement for an econometrician and an astrologist because this analysis actually indicates such a rough estimator as the astrological aspect is able to estimate the world economic outlook to the certain extend! 

Data references:

• The aspect angle of Jupiter and Neptune: 葉月綾乃の占星術ブログ
• The world total GDP: worldometre

* You may download the excel file basing this analysis by clicking here.*

Suicide and Community

 

Unfortunately, the suicide rate has notably increased. Individuals' mental breakdown has been perpetuated by the fear of the isolation from and the meaninglessness of living in the current society.  This downfall has inspired to re-think about some sociological studies which may derive the answer for why a suicidal ideation tends to strike us so often.

This reason seems to be caused by not only the temporary effect of the pandemic but also the permanent effect of the world social environment transition. The current post-industrial modern society of the technologically advanced globalised world has already created the root cause of the rising suicide rate; the ongoing socio-economic depression caused by the pandemic has just perpetuated the social illness demonstrated by the rising suicide rate. 

 

Emile Durkheim explained about the four types of suicide caused by the two elements of society, the integration level and the regulation level.  When either of two becomes either excess or lacking, individuals living in their society are more likely to be prone to their social illness inducing their suicide attempt.  The excess social integration among individuals may encourage to the altruistic suicide while lacking their integration may lead an individual to the (irrational) egoistic suicide.  The excess societal regulation based on social norms may result in the fatalistic suicide whereas the excessively deregulated society with little shared norms and values among individuals may induce the anomic suicide. 

The typical examples of the altruistic suicide is a suicide attack committed by the former imperial Japanese soldiers in the World War II and the extremist Islamic suicide bombers.  This suicide occurs when individuals are excessively loyal to their belief and/or their figurehead leader and attached to the whole member individuals living in their community.  In such a situation, their love of community tends to be too strong to sustain their life as an individual. 

The industrial revolution has caused a strong transition of individuals' society.  Since the industrial revolution, individuals have started moving to a place employing them away from their homeland. Their mobility of changing their living place has become far more frequent than the pre-industrial counterpart.  It has become rare for individuals living in a community with little or no new comers so that their communities and their neighbours living there are no longer permanent. Their feeling of belonging to one community with familiar neighbours has been depreciated since then. 

In such an industrialised society, individuals are often less caring about their neighbours because they are often complete strangers for their own life and their too busy for their own life to care about the others.  By losing their integration among individuals, they often suffer from loneliness and meaninglessness as their neighbours no longer care about each individuals. When their feeling of loneliness and meaninglessness exceeds their patience, they are prone to commit the suicide due to their loss of interests in living any longer which Durkheim called the egoistic suicide.

Apart from the aforementioned suicide caused by either of the two different extreme societal integration issues, the most notable factor to analyse the current rising suicide rate is the regulation issues.  The regulation mentioned here is neither economic nor political, it is purely a regulations on social factors such as norms and values individuals follow.  

In the past, both the pre-industrial communitarian society and the early modern industrialised society, various fatalities were burdened on individuals.  They were fated to sacrifice their energy and time to work to gain their means of living.  They were often prone to various fatal diseases in either a technologically little advanced pastoral community or a high polluted industrial zone. 

Furthermore, individuals were more highly bounded by rigid norms and values in their belonging institutes in the past than nowadays.  Their traditional communities and their working environments used to exist in a longer term than nowadays.  So, in order to conduct them to fulfil the interests of their belonging group, the unified codes of conduct were essential to produce their desiring outcomes together.

By contrast, because the businesses and the public managements are shifting toward more capital intensive and of their institutes' structure are frequently modified in order to adjust them to their rapidly changing socio-economic fashions and trends. Therefore, individuals are more prone to losing a job and in a frequent need of relocating themselves to another working environment even in a global scale. 

In such an environment, the permanent norms and values seldom remain existing to conduct individuals to live.  There is no longer a form of social conduct telling individuals what to do.  In another word, these individuals now have to self-regulate themselves without being relying on either the others or their belonging institutes such as companies, governments, and religious organizations.  Durkheim predicted that more individuals would suffer from normlessness and lacking values encouraging them to live because of this rapid transition of the societies in the whole world in the future from his time.  

Karl Marx predicted that majority individuals, the proletariat, would unify them together to establish a socially minded economic and political system. However, unlike Marx predicted, individuals nowadays are far less likely to unite together to cooperate to reform their society.  Instead, the majority individuals nowadays hardly cling to any unified value to believe in to achieve their unified goal such as Marxist social revolution. 

Durkheim called social illness individuals suffer due to lacking regulations by a code of conduct and unified values "Anomie".  Anomie caused by the aforementioned normlessness and valueless is represented on one extreme side of the regulation axis.   When individuals lose their guidances of life such as social norms and their meanings of life such as social values, the syndrome of Anomie often create various social and psychological problems and even induces them to commit suicide.

Ferdinand Tönnies was also one of the remarkable sociologists pointing out the change in social characteristics.  He claimed that human individuals' society was gradually shifting from Gemeinschaft (The traditional community based society) to Gesellschaft (The modern individualistic society). He referred to these two types of society for explaining how the form of the social contract among individuals vary depending on their social structure. 

The former society puts priority on preserving the existence and the interests of a community, the group of individuals sustaining their common living environment, over each individual's existence and interests.  Over there, individuals form their social contracts by means of their emotional whim and the spontaneously established order such as a customary law.  These individuals help each other quite often in order to keep their kinship with each other like forming a big family and believe in and strictly unified norms and values.  

These members of the communities are afraid of changes in their living environment so they are often deeply suspicious about new ideas or new comers threatening the permanence of the characteristics of their familiar living environment.  Individuals are not so free to act and think with their own will although the strong sense of belonging prevents them from the negative phycological illness caused by loneliness and meaninglessness.

The latter society put priority on individual responsibility for their self-preservation as a condition for providing them with their unique individuality and each individual's merit stimulating the development of the whole society.  Over there, social contracts among individuals are formal and often clearly defined in order to keep their mutual agreement rational and transparent.  This society provides with the equal treatments of individuals under the law so that their agreements must be formal and clearly defined.  

The existence of communities is considered to be transient to allow flexible mobilities of individuals and resources to encourage innovations with a robust development pace.  Individuals are seldom emotionally attached to the others so they are less likely to voluntarily help their neighbours because their neighbours are often complete strangers for them.  It provides individuals with freedom in a wide range of their life without being restrained by solid norms and values.  Nevertheless, it also means that they have to find their own meaning of existence even by struggling with it.  

 

In the current globalised world, the characteristics of many regions of the world are becoming more identical to each other under a unified objective of increasing the material productivity level with flexible foreign trades across their borders.  Because of the massive material benefits brought by adapting to the global capitalism, more and more countries adapt themselves to the formal and individualistic social contracts.  This trend has induced them to transform their traditional communitarian society, so-called Gemeinschaft , to the world-standard business-like modern society, so-called Gesellschaft .

The recent world wide information technological development has also accelerated the trend shifting their society from the traditional communitarian society to the post-industrial modern society.  The post-industrial modern society has provided people living in any part of the world with their access to the abundance of technologies and creating wealth which includes their access to medical treatments curing them from fatal diseases and the most advanced intellectual knowledge. Therefore, this trend certainly has beneficial advantages.

However, the non-negligible problem is a rise of phycological illnesses including suicide which are seemingly caused by lack of integration with the others as well as loneliness and meaninglessness in their life.  Only the material productivity growth and the convenience derived from it are seemingly emphasised far more than each individual's psychological and social problem.  

Some individuals feel being left alone when these individuals cannot meet with what the current market demands even after making their best efforts.  Because the pace of societal changes is so fast that the socioeconomic gap between different individuals can be widened furthermore.  Then, these left away from the trend, because of being detected as the useless, may face losing opportunity to work for enough income sustaining their cultural living standard.  At this stage, even in order to provide all individuals with the equality of opportunity, a certain level of the positive intervention in their outcome to diversify the resources will be a necessary condition.

In addition to their economic needs, their social needs are also crucially important.  Some politicians just claims to provide these left alone individuals marginalised as the useless with the state benefits such as providing all individual citizens with the universal basic income.  Nonetheless, this does not solve the problem of providing them with the meaning of life as well as saving them from loneliness.  When the progress of the current societal change moves forward without taking this psychological social aspect into consideration, there is a high risk of the emerging negative reactions to the current socioeconomic structure.  

 

All in all, regardless of a plain freedom of actions and thoughts and the prevention of bad living conditions causing a fatal death, the newly arising suicide rate and the other social disorder are derived from a newly arising social problem of the post-industrial modern society.  Even with an abundance of material resources, it is neither easy nor simple to solve this psychological and social illnesses.  Unless this is solved, various forms of negative reactional insurgences threatening the peace and the stability of the world may arise.  Furthermore, it is simply regrettable to see many people committing suicide despite the progress of the world as a while.  None should be left alone from gaining the benefit of the world development.  

Useless

"You are useless!" is the typical curse for ostracising an individual from company, school, or even family in the modern society.  It is wondering when they started using such a word useless.  It seems to have been used since the age of modernity where individuals started ostensibly categorising and classifying individual human-beings and target objectives and establishing a solid social order with rigorous ideologies and principles.  

Of course, these characteristics of the modern society are necessary to bring an order and a clear objective for individuals to live in such a chaotic universe.  Nonetheless, these characteristics have become intensive enough to expand the social class division and various conflicts.  This intensity has imbalanced the Yin-Yang by introducing the intense brightness (Yang) characteristics, which also simultaneously created the strong shadow (Yin) haunting behind this intensive Yang from the 18th century to nowadays. 

The modern society dominated by Yang norms and value puts emphasis on the conformity fulfilling their intensive objective.  This conformity classifies individuals into usefulness owing to their objective standard.  Then, individuals not conforming with the standard are labelled and ostracised as useless.  

The modern society, especially after the industrial revolution, has achieved many materialistic goodnesses which are characterised as Yang while leaving the environmental and spiritual goodness behind.  It is not to defy its characteristics of Yang, which are necessary for humans, their cultural development, and knowing and their world.  The key is the balance which seems to have been imbalanced in particular in 19th and 20th century when various catastrophic wars took place.  

The rapid industrialisation of the modern society, characterised as Yang, have been too strong to follow the natural flow.  It is as though swimming against the steam.  This intensity has caused both the environmental damage and the social divisions.  They are progressing while destroying at the same time.  

 

The story of "The last standing tree" in Taoism by Laozi / Lao Tze is very inspiring.  This last standing tree is worshipped for its longevity as a holy site. This tree could survive long because lumberjacks saw its form is too distorted so it was too useless to cut off for using as a resource. 

This story tells us that there is a virtue found in uselessness.  When someone accuses the other as useless, it is simply the matter of where this individual belongs to.  There ought to be right timing and place any individual can be settled in so that each individual has their own merit of existence. 

The modern world puts so much priority of the Yang side that it forsakes the Yin side. Even the Stoic of the Western philosophy insists on helpful/useful for the community. By contrast, this Eastern philosophy is really original and revolutionary enough to encourage every individual living in this world!

The Taoist teaching of life is encouraging for all individuals living in this world. Individuals allow the natural flow of their daily life without either excess aspiration or anxiety. Then, they may eventually find out their way of life satisfying them in a relaxed atmosphere.  

Of course, individuals have to challenge and strive for what they want to obtain or fulfil with their active spirit, Yang.  At the same time, their passive spirit, Yin, is also important to avoid unnecessary conflict, exhaustion for pursing more than necessary, and labelling someone or someone by losing their flexibility.

  

In the Western world, there is an equally inspiring philosopher, Michel Foucault, pointing out of the intense conformity required by the modern society.  Foucault accused of enforced conformity under rigorous social order in the modern society where individuals are classified as though they were the industrial products.  

Foucault mentioned the medieval feudalist society as the counterpart of the modern society in his book "History of Madness".  In the medieval feudalist society, madness is treated as an acceptable characteristics of individuals unlike the modern society ostracising it as an deviant not-conforming with their standard. Not only the madness but also various strange characteristics were tolerated in the medieval age; in particular the renaissance period where the culture of uniqueness was the colourful uniqueness. 

It is not to romanticise the medieval feudalism where the social hierarchy is rigid and strict and the material living standard was far worse than the ancient time period: The medieval sanitary standard was very poor where illness and short life expectancy were the inevitable trends.  

Nevertheless, the medieval age could abolish the slavery introduced in the ancient age so that the peasants, the majority subordinate class then, could enjoyed their social freedom higher than the slavery and a poor stratum of the ancient civilians.  For example, the medieval peasants could enjoy their surplus of agricultural products especially during a good harvest.

Furthermore, regardless of their poor material living standard, the medieval peasants could be seen as socially freer than the modern industrial workers (Including the office workers and some intellectuals such as teachers and doctors).  The medieval peasants had shorter working hours than the modern industrial workers so then spared time and energy for cultural activities in their local community.  

The life of the medieval peasants was very short compared to the nowadays standard.  However, they and their communities had enough capability to welcome various unique characteristics of human individuals' traits not restraint from the artificial social standard. No one was seen as useless because they enjoyed something unique coming out of their short live life.  In another word, the balance of Yin-Yang seemed to be naturally maintained (although someone may argue that the Yin aspect could have been too strong for some medieval societies). 

Yuval Noah Harari indicated his future forecasts in his books that explain humans in the future will be divided between the upper class and the newly created lower social class called the useless class especially in the post AI revolution society.  Even though the new world will bring furthermore convenience with the advanced technology with a fast growing pace, the social division of individuals will be widened. 

Only the chosen individuals with the most updated skill-set with an even higher conformity level than now can be employable and able to thrive as the active social class.  By contrast, the other individuals who lack the skill set demanded by the production requirement and the societal standard will struggle to be employed/useful.  There will be a big division of individuals between those who are able to aspire to be well-recognised by the society and those who are unable to work hard enough to be recognised by the society.

The "useless" will be no longer a minority while the social dysfunction caused the anomie (losing something to follow in their life) will be even more severe.  Those individuals labelled individuals will be more prone to severe mental illnesses such as suicidal ideation, and committing crime or any other socially undesirable acts.  It is now urging to provide them with the meaning of their life.  

Because the aggregate productivity of the world will grow furthermore, the new diversification of its distribution should be introduced to save these individuals from their loss in their life.  The current societies of this world tend to excessively focus on the instant usefulness, the active side of individuals' characteristic represented as Yang.  By contrast, it is a time to remember that there are virtues in the passive side of individuals which will be beneficial in the longer term or in more comprehensive perspectives.

Even there are some individuals who are seen as completely useless by the society's mainstream definitely have a virtue, a mean of their existence, and a right to be happy.  This is really an arrogant attempt to label someone with a derogatory term in terms of the artificial standard which is against the natural flow of this universe.  Any existence naturally exits in a nature of this universe.  

 

All in all, it is the time to recall the aforementioned philosophical elements while expecting the technological growth.  It is the key to pay enough attention to both the active elements Yang and the passive elements Yin. For example, a balance between order (Yang) and tolerance (Yin) is a significant factor for accomplishing a healthy robust growth of economy and social order. This wisdom is a measure responding to social and spiritual illnesses anticipated to haunt nowadays onward. Then, the robust progress with minimum destructions can be expected. 

Marx and Keynes

 

There tends to be a confusing fusion between political philosophy and economics. Both can be combined to create one solidified social scientific theory although they are meant to be distinguished from each other as an independent academic subject. The former is a general art subject which is frequently based on normative statements including individuals' belief and subjective expectations on what they desire and hope. By contrast, the latter is a more scientific subject based on positive statements which are objective and fact-based as well as precise, descriptive, and clearly measurable.

the subject of economics itself has its own unique political/ethical principle, which is to increase the wealth of individuals which can be accomplished by maximising the physical productivity level of individuals and their communities. This objective of increasing the wealth through the productivity maximisation aims at making individuals living in the world happy while keeping their living environment sustainable.

This implies maximising the sum of individuals' pleasures while minimising the sum of individuals' pains while securing the cultural and humane living standard of all individuals including the least fortunate member of their communities. By means of this regard, the true successors of (the classical/mainstream) economics ought to be only the two streams, Marxian economics and Keynesian economics (The modern mainstream economics).

The basis of logic of Marxian economics purely refers to the classical economics while attempting to diversify the income distribution by altering the whole economic and political infrastructure to retrieve the power monopolised by the minority ruling class to deserve the majority class of individuals. In addition, Marxian theory condemns the market economy where individuals trade their goods and services with their free will with little or no cohesive political control because the powerful ruling class elites easily leverages to exploit the rest majority. Then, it also puts emphasis on the intense political philosophical theory of the majority individuals' revolution against the powerful ruling class as the complementary to this economic theory.

On the other hand, Keynesian economics added macro economic perspectives of economics on the top of the micro perspectives of economics covered by the classical economics. Rather than altering the infrastructure claimed by Marxian theory, Keynesian theory suggests reforming the existing system while remaining the market economy which enables individuals to voluntarily optimise their distribution and desire. It attempts to gradually adjust the flow by providing the market participants with incentives of diversifying their income distribution without suppressing free will of all individuals.



When it deviates from this fundamental ethical principle of economics, it does not fulfil the condition to be an appropriate subject of economics. Of course, economics involves processes on the way to achieve its principle. It needs to research to maximise the financial profit of a particular individual or corporation. It should be considered as a means of the process inside the whole system of economics rather than the end itself.

Hayekian theory attractive as well as useful as a political philosophy using economic policies for those small government adovocates against any tendency inducing a totalitarian state. However, the statement used in Hayek' publications is often normative unlike mainstream economics. It also ignores macroeconomics rather than offering a substituting theory. The example is that the business cycle is believed to be stabilised without any intervention in a modern economy by ignoring the phenomenon that the business cycle instability is perpetuated by neglecting an implementation of a macroeconomic policy.

The monetarists such as Friedman and Fisher is not so different from Keynesian economics that both Monetarists and Keynesians agree with each other for needing macroeconomic policy interventions according to the business cycle condition. They frequently disagree with each other for the degree of this intervention and which macroeconomic policy tools are more effective than the others. Perhaps, the notable difference between them is their view on individuals' rationality: Keynesians are more sceptical about the rationality of individuals who are often prone to various irrational exuberance whereas Monetarists claim for rational expectation in individuals' economic activities. All in all, Monetarist theory can be seen as a derivation of Keynesian rather than a detached one.

At the time of Adam Smith establishing the new academic subject called economics, the market liberalisation inducing the intervention into the market was meaningful to fulfil the aforementioned ethical objective. The contemporary United Kingdom was dominated by mercantilism holding an excess market control by a limited number of oligarchy, which disrupted the economic growth as a whole and suppressed majority individuals' income gain and happiness. Therefore, the free market movement was considered as the reasonable weapon to fight against this negative intervention policy to the aforementioned ethical principle.

Moreover, that contemporary world economy was less complex than nowadays so that the contingent effect of the business cycle instability among regions was insignificant compared to the world economy from the 20th century onward. At contemporary market, the competition level was so high that there were enough rooms for potential developments in all over the fields. Then, freer market induced the freer individuals and more opportunities for economic agents to compete so that both the economic stagnation and the price inflation could be mitigated just by freeing the market.

By contrast, since the 20th century, both the power influence of big corporations and the contingency effects of regional economies to the world economy have expanded. The monopolistic power of these corporate tycoons take advantage of their economy of scale which only a handful of economic agents may duplicate to compete against.. Almost all the economic activities of individuals and their communities are furthermore interrelated to each other nowadays than the past, and the scale of economic activities have come too big to be self-corrected to stabilise their business cycles. 

 

There is a severe obstacle for unifying these two big schools of economics Marxian and Keynesian into one. Some Keynesians from the political left wing have approached Marxists to integrate together to establish a new economic theory deserving the majority of individuals in this world. However, Marxists have staunchly rejected Keynesians' offer because of their resistance against the modern mainstream economics which is still based on the market oriented theoretical principle.

These is a strong fundamental dogma which Marxists have never compromised in. This is their belief in the invincible value of labour. Marxism condemns the market economy because they insist that it will never be able to scale the appropriate reward for the value of labour of the majority working class individuals because the market economy is manipulated by those owning the means of production, the elite capitalist class individuals. Because of the asymmetric power balance of these two classes, there is no fair equilibrium state derived from the market economy according to Marxism.

Therefore, Marxism insists on the alternative economic model which positively plans to provide all the individuals with their fair rewards according to their value of existence. In history, one big experiment of Marxism established the central governmental planning by the working class representatives. These old Marxists believed that the command economy centrally planned by the autocratic government functions to deserve for all individuals when the guardians representing the hope of the majority individuals take over instead of the old ruling class oppressors.

Nevertheless, these guardians became the new ruling class exploiting the rest others with a higher oppressive intensity than the capitalist class regime. The critical failure of this old Marxism is the lack of free spontaneous interactions of individuals' trades, other activities, and freedom of speech and will. Even though there is an asymmetric power balance of individuals' bargaining power, the majority of individuals still hold some freedom to protest in the market economy. By contrast, the old Marxism underestimates the changing mid of individuals once starting to hold the control power of the autocratic government commanding a centrally planned economy.

New factions of Marxism propose some other alternative without a forcible command-ship of both economy and politics for redistributing resources. At the same time, the problem of Marxian claim for radical redistribution is not only about their command planning but also the nature of resource scarcity with the infinite human desires in the real world. Marxian aspiration of redistribution might be feasible to accomplish in the post scarcity world enabling all individuals to be satisfied with what they have already obtained and are able to access. By contrast, the problem of scarcity is still extremely hard to solve nowadays.

 

 

There is a phenomenon called the prisoner's dilemma, theorised by a mathematical economist John Nash, which indicates that the best equilibrium point can be the least achievable state while the point deriving an undesirable outcome is far more likely to occur when more than one of individuals interact. For example, if there are two individuals and two resources existing where these two individuals cannot communicate to cooperate together and both individuals are rational in the sense of maximising their own gain.

The best case scenario is that both individuals cooperate together to share the resources. At the same time, if one betrays the others, this individual betraying the other maximises the gains while the other loses out. This converse situation happens when the other betrays this individual instead. Due to the fear of the possibility of losing out, they are likely to betray the others for not only their own gain but also their fear of losing out. In consequence, both betray each other despite not only their consequential aggregate loss but also their haunting resentment against each other.

In the natural human world, when someone takes a control over their political and social structure for the sake of diversifying the economy, it ends up with betraying the other due to both their own short term selfish desire and fear and distrust of the others. This is something many Marxists repent for the failure of the old Marxism in practice based on the command economy conducted by the autocracy ruled by the guardians. Perhaps, Marxian economics should be applied without relying on the command economics, and should not be implemented as only one dogma like a religion. Marxian theory may prevail after transforming it to be more flexibly adapted to the real life analysis without worshipping it as the religious dogma like many Marxist believers tend to do.


At the same time, the prisoner's dilemma is a non-negligible phenomenon in not only the command economy fully controlling the distribution but also the market economy without any positive correction for sake of ethics and sustainability. Both John Maynard Keynes and John Nash realised this problem of the market economy without a positive planning. In particular, when the economy of scale for each industry grows and the system interference becomes more complex, the market becomes less trustable to self-correct its own business cycle.

When an economy is in a bubble (economic growth overheat inducing a sudden economic burst at some point), all economic agents should start restricting both consumption and investment to calm the excess growth to maintain the sustainability. At the same time, there is a chance of gaining a substantially high profit by not restricting their activities while the others lose out for not doing it. This factor discourages the others to calm their market activities down due to both their fear of losing out and desire of securing their profit. This eventually perpetuates this economic bubble of the market which eventually induces both the environmental catastrophe and the sudden market collapse.

When an economy is in a recession, at least more than a half of economic agents in this market should become more confident to reactivate their spending and investment activities in order to stimulate the economy. At the same time, most of them are unsure that how many of the others are confident enough to reactivate their activities and nobody knows exactly when and how their economy can recover. At the time of recession, many of individuals from privileged, average, relatively mediocre, and unfortunate backgrounds are unconfident and in despair because the whole macro level atmosphere is in a downturn mode. If only less than a half of individuals in the market become active in consumption and investment more than the others, they unfortunately lose out more than the others because of the stagnated market multiplier. Then, most of economic agents postpone reactivating them despite their reluctance perpetuates the recession which will eventually leads to the depression.


Marx and Keynes came to the different theoretical conclusion while both seemed to aspire for an identical goal. Marx accused the market base economy which he called capitalism and claimed for the revolution completely altering the economic system as the infrastructure of politics and social orders. Keynes also accused the market base economy but not willing to replace it with another while claiming for the reformation of it.

Even Marx admitted that the transformation to capitalism from an older social structure such as feudalism was a necessary process of the evolution of humans and the world in the past. The mistake of Marx was describing the historical evolutional step is discrete (not gradual) with a conduct of radical and often violent revolutionary transformation. By contrast, the transformation of human' life and their surrounding environment seems to be more gradually evolving than what Marx described. Keynes admitted that what Marx called capitalism has advantages for not only the ruling elites but also the rest majority despite the aforementioned disadvantage.

Up to several centuries ago, Marx's view of the world and societal evolution which were discrete, sudden, and often violent was true. By contrast, the pace of the world and societal evolution nowadays are so fast and diverse that there is no longer a discrete historical point of change across times, places, and human-individuals. This is not saying what Marx aspired was wrong. Even Jean Paul Sartre, being converted to a self-proclaimed Marxist in his later carrier, pointed out that Marx's theoretical work of economics was incomplete meanwhile he was attracted to what Marx attempted to establish.

The most remarkable success of Keynes is providing economics with the flexibility. Instead of sticking to a dogma, economic theories can be flexibly modified to gradually reform it fitting in with the most feasible and optimum state at each time period with various experiments without a risky drastic alteration. Those who accuse Keynes often ignore how much Keynes thought highly of the flexibility because these accusers tend to falsely equate Keynesian theory to a dogmatic one as the old Marxism. Keynes himself actually said "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”".

 

 

 

 

Why Public Cloud?

 

As mentioned in the previously posted article, the public cloud service has become popular among considerably many banks and companies and unavoidably influential enough to worry the Bank of England and the other regulatory bodies of the UK and the EU. Whereas they admit the accessibility and convenience of these public cloud services, these European authorities are worried about sharing their core information of their national economies with these foreign 3rd parties.

Even with their non-disclosure agreement (NDA), the property right of these information data has been no longer exclusive since it is agreed to execute and store them in devices owned by a 3rd party, and these 3rd party service providers are only a handful of the foreign private enterprises nowadays. The European central banks, governments, and other regulatory bodies are thus anxious about the phenomenon that private banks and companies in their nations rely on these foreign public cloud services all the more nowadays.

Well, whenever a brand new technology emerges, these tends to always be a certain degree of an anxiety reaction to it. The public cloud service can be compared to the utility companies supplying electric power from their power plant having emerged since the early 1900s. (Ref. Investopedia, 1st May, 2020) Before these utility companies were established, each individual firm needed to prepare for, maintain, and update their own on-premise power generator while the majority switched to relying the electric power supply from a specialised utility company due to its accessibility and convenience owing to its big scale merit.

※ The following shows the architectural icons and the configuration examples by referring to the imaginary world public cloud architectural design instead of the real world one in order to avoid both the copyright violation and the favouritism to a particular private corporation.

 

As a matter of fact, it is really advantageous for economic agents to increase their share of using the public cloud for their computer based operations and data storage. The public cloud providers bear responsibility for the durability of their infrastructure (servers, storages, and networks) often together with their platform (O/S, middleware, and Runtime) as well as updating their cyber security of them (The platform security depends on the service types, and the users are responsible for the security of applications and data unless using the software as a service (SaaS)). By outsourcing the cyber security update and the maintenance of the infrastructure, possibly with the platform, economic agents can spare more of their time and effort for their daily operations and various projects.

 

In addition to the aforementioned advantage in time saving by outsourcing maintenance and security updates, the scale merit of the public cloud is a remarkable advantage. This scale merit is the most critical key to optimise the net benefit of using the public cloud. Because of using the physical infrastructure, possibly together with the platform, already prepared in the outsourced data centre, the configuration and its redundancy process are agile and flexible.

The most symbolic function of the public cloud is the scalability of instances launched on servers. ]The on-premise server which is statistically set up to serve for a specific purpose e.g. data base server, mail server, web server, etc. Then, the users have to pay the fixed cost for equipping and maintaining these physically present devices. 

 

 

 On the other hand, the public cloud launches an instance of various types on a server and dynamically increase and decreases the number of servers while also switching the instance types depending on the user's demand at each period. The scalability of the server-instances enables the users to convert their fixed cost of preparing their server usage to the variable cost. In another word, by switching from their on-premise server to this scalable instance (the virtual server in the cloud is often called "instance" in short) they can switch their payment to a pay-per-usage model which avoids paying for unused computer capacities thanks to these scalable server instances in agile and flexible configuration.

In terms of the capacity control, it does not require users to estimate the capacity to use in advance because the public cloud service automatically scales it to match the supplies capacity with the demanded capacity every scheduled period. In terms of the on-premise environment, it is extremely costly and environmentally unfeasible to increase and decrease server machines and replaces their inside instances every short period (hourly and daily). By contrast, the cloud computing offers such an elasticity enabling flexibility to dynamically increase and decrease the number of instances. 

 

On the other hand, the public cloud launches an instance of various types on a server and dynamically increase and decreases the number of servers while also switching the instance types depending on the user's demand at each period. The scalability of the server-instances enables the users to convert their fixed cost of preparing their server usage to the variable cost. In another word, by switching from their on-premise server to this scalable instance (the virtual server in the cloud is often called "instance" in short) they can switch their payment to a pay-per-usage model which avoids paying for unused computer capacities thanks to these scalable server instances in agile and flexible configuration.

In terms of the capacity control, it does not require users to estimate the capacity to use in advance because the public cloud service automatically scales it to match the supplies capacity with the demanded capacity every scheduled period. In terms of the on-premise environment, it is extremely costly and environmentally unfeasible to increase and decrease server machines and replaces their inside instances every short period (hourly and daily). By contrast, the cloud computing offers such an elasticity enabling flexibility to dynamically increase and decrease the number of instances.

 

This is the example of the configuration based on the simple idea. This example tends to be seen in such as a simple relatively small internet shopping site purely operated via the web.  Majority of functions are located in the virtual private cloud (VPC). The VPC is designed for protecting these programmes from the outside access as though forming the private cloud limiting the outside access.  The load balancing function represented by Symmetric Loader distributes the access loads to Scalable Instances (Redundancy is implemented).  

 

Then, the data of transaction, etc. are gathered in Vertically Scalable Database, most notably installing SQL. Then, the gathered data in Vertically Scalable Database are sent to one Scalable Instance specially assigned for an analysis.  

 

Storage Bucket outside the VPC stores the analysis data from this Scalable Instances and the logs of all the programmes' activities. 

 

The access going out of the VPC requires to set up the point where the connection ends there.  The edge of the VPC is equipped with the gateway connecting between the VPC and outside which is represented by Edge Portal here.

This example is more complex.  This model combines the public cloud with the on-premise configuration.  Like a gaming company, there is always a certain amount of a fixed volume of the loads whilst the total volume is very fluctuating over time periods.  

This type of company tends to manage their staff ID access managements and remain their core functions within their on-premise environment. It needs to directly connect the on-premise environment and the public cloud environment to frequently forward and connect their information, data, etc. between them.  Then, there is Straight Access between the on-premise environment and the public cloud environment.

 

There is the domain name service (DNS) is allocated in order to transform to manage the domains and the IP addresses among these access connections.  The DNS also has a function of balancing the loads between the available paths.  

There is a newly introduced database server represented as Horizontally Scalable Database, most notably NoSQL database.  This database is used for more qualitative data which are not relational like what Vertically Scalable Database which handling more quantitative relational data. 

 

Overall, the public cloud services are really passionate to study and image to use in a real business field, and it will certainly keep growing enough to become non-negligible to mention while discussing about economics and other forms of social science. Even in politics, the controversy on this emerging technology will be a hot topic.  This blog project is going to furthermore focus on the present states and the possible and feasible development of the public cloud from now on.