AI synthetic Touhou fan-art: Youmu and Sanae standing against Tojiko, Futo, and Futo in Touhou 13 ~ Ten Desires - Tool: ChatGPT plus

 

Posted on my pixiv page: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/147796476

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4Htb42KpQzk
NicoNico: https://www.nicovideo.jp/shorts/ss46607508

Lately, I’ve been busy with my main job and have no air conditioning in my room, making it hard to focus on creative work due to my primary research duties. Today, I scanned a rough sketch and finished it using a mix of AI tools. I also made this as an example of creating free AI art with ChatGPT. 

The prompt grew iteratively. Each unsuccessful generation revealed another ambiguity, so I kept adding more precise constraints until the result came close to the composition in my mind. In that sense, the final prompt is almost an archaeological record of my negotiations with the model.

The image is not only my idealised vision of Touhou Project, but also my own philosophical allegory. The three figures above represent hereditary, ritualised authority and the power of tradition. Sanae, as a modern progressive arriving from the twenty-first century, and Youmu, imagined as a solitary and disciplined swordswoman, confront them from below. Together, the two heroines represent different aspects of the player—essentially, different aspects of myself.

The input prompts are as follows: 

Serious cyber incidence: Nico Nico Douga system down

 

The whole system down of Dwango Co,. Ltd. & Kadokawa group is a serious incidence especially in Japanese network. All the websites and the whole network server of Japanese video posting sites Nico Nico Douga (the potential competitor of YouTube) is completely down, and the recovery will take at least 1 month plus. This cyber incidence should be considered as a national cricis of Japan as Nobuhiro Tsuzi, the outsourced agent of the cyber security department of Japanese police, and Hiroyuki Nishimura, one of the initial founders, say. The vulnerability of Japanese server centre and the cyber security is questioned. Also, the shut-down of Nico Nico Douga causes the significant loss of the opportunity for the market competition and the entertainment creators. There are also various resources of BGM and pictures shared among many creators including YouTubers are stored in Nico Nico sites. Mr Tsuzi and Mr Nishimura, one of the initial founders, suspect it will take more and this cyber incidence is considerably serious.

 

Example of a badly performing stock exchange price in TOPIX

This stock exchange price is one of those which are registered in Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) market.

The TOPIX stands for the Tokyo Price Index of this market.

While exchanging the stocks, investors refer to the index of the average stock exchange price of a particular market they belong to such as the TOPIX for this company. 

The passive trading aims at modestly keeping the profit by buying and selling those stocks more or less following the index by referring to the index price.

The active trading aims at aggressively increasing the profit by buying and selling those stocks outperforming the index. 

Those stocks registered in the prime market usually follows the price movement of the index. 

However, since this month, this company's stock price has started deviating from the counterpart of the TOPIX, and it is substantially underperforming. 

The majority passive traders will be very likely to omit this company's stock from their fund portfolio.

It is an opposite phenomenon from what active traders usually expect for unless they expect for the stock price returning to the index. 

 

In addition, we must also focus on the international market. 

The aforementioned price is based on the value based on Japanese Yen (JPY).

This means that the price plunge is much steeper in terms of the international market where they are traded with other than JPY.

 

This is the JPY price index compared to the major other currencies all together.

In this half year, JPY has already been substantially plunging. 

Some high-profile investors have purchased a massive amount of Japanese company stocks while the price dropped as though it were a bargain-sale for them.

In contrast, this particular company stock mentioned here does not seemed to be favoured by these investors.

These high-profile investors' action is so influential that it usually reflects the index performance too. 

Moreover, these investors also carefully refer to the fundamental of companies such as their executives' management skill, the potential of these companies' products, and the expected return of their profit. 

This price depreciation seems to imply the deteriorating fundamentals overall. 

This is why it is important to compare with the market index a particular firm belongs to.

 

The mysterious Japanese macroeconomic factor: The national debt per GDP is 251.93%!

 

... well, Japanese national debt percentage of GDP is over 200%! This is one of the mysterious Japanese macroeconomic factors.

One of the reason is that approximately 90% or more of Japanese national bond holders are Japanese nationals. This is why the government can keep these bond holders even with a substantially low interest rate. The hidden cost of this policy is incurred upon Japanese economy because the government is hardly able to raise the interest rate even during the inflationary period.

 

Furthermore, the value of Japanese national bond is so stable that the capital loss risk is low. Because there is still a regular coupon payment (the income gain) with the low capital loss risk at the moment, the majority private banks in Japan keep holding the national bond as the secure asset. The majority Japanese citizens are so risk-averse that they hardly split their saving to private investment: Then, the private bank simply shift their saving account money to the national bond purchase. Although the coupon payment is not so high, the risk premium is still lower than any private bond for the moment. Their risk-averse personality is one of the strong drive of stabilising the national bond price. 

Nevertheless, it is sceptical to assume this mechanism can keep going on. Japanese economy has been stagnated for multiple decades since the last economic bubble burst in 1990s. Nowadays, Japanese economic indices show that Japanese economic strength is even weaker than before. In addition, the entire macroeconomic strength will keep going down due to the ongoing ageing population combined with the constant substantial population decline.

 

Low-tech firms should rather adopt the public cloud!

Many small and medium companies as well as public institutes of the local authorities tend to be reluctant to adopt an advanced information technological (IT) apparatus such as the public cloud service due to their cost concern as well as their conservative characteristics. They tend to assume that they will not take an advantage of the large scale of economies offered by the public cloud service. However, these firms are actually those which will take a considerably high benefit of using the public cloud service. It is explained with the example of using Amazon Web Service (AWS).

 

The first issue is the version update including the cyber security. The average cost of the version update is heavier for smaller firms so that it is actually more cost efficient to rely on one unified provider. AWS updates their versions of the physical machines as well as the cyber security measures adapted to the latest requirements for the most recent environment for their entire global network. Furthermore, some of the security package, such as AWS Shield, come as the standard package.

 

The second issue is the maintenance of the physical apparatus in their on-premises environment. These small companies and relatively IT illiterate local authorities tend to often neglect properly looking after their on-premises environment and maintaining its durability. Moreover, they tend to be more prone to natural disasters striking their place. All in all, they had rather better locate their electrical data while implementing their cross regional redundancy of the entire database in case of a disaster and a cyber security threat.

 

Regarding their data management, AWS offers various types of database (DB) depending on conditions and usages. Amazon Dynamo DB handles non-structured data with a large volume so that electrifying the information is flexible to query and store. Amazon Aurora is autoscalable across the multi-regions so that the data redundancy is guaranteed in case of various disasters and the access overflow undermining the data-handling capability.

 

If they are worried about moving their data at once, AWS offers the data migration services such as AWS Snowball and AWS Snowmobile (called AWS Snow-family overall). These offer the option of outsourcing the entire data migration from their on-premises to AWS server network. Perhaps, these small and medium companies as well as the local authorities had better migrate the entire data and maybe the entire IT configuration to the public cloud in order to cut their expenditure for their IT staff as well as their physical space and apparatus.

 

There are still many individuals worried about the privacy and the countermeasure against the data leakage. Nevertheless, storing data in their nondurable vulnerable on-premises environment seems to be far riskier than outsourcing the database and the storage to the public cloud vendor. In addition, the scalablity and the redundancy across the regions enable to flexibly link and query the data across various places at any time available. Therefore, it is also expected to improve their administrative efficiency too.

 

My own AWS configuration architectural map

 

The AWS IoT architectural plan for manufacturering companies

 

While working for various manufacturing industry, it is often wondering whether their administrative processes can be more efficient. They had better adopt the internet of things (IoT) and the cloud data management. These manufacturers and their retailers should take an advantage of the currently available public cloud technology as the means of the digital transformation (DX) which national governments frequently put emphasis on nowadays.

 

There are still many manually carried out tasks in a manufacturing business. There are too many repetitive input and output processes which can be reduced by sharing the database via the globally connected public cloud network. Furthermore, by applying the artificial intelligence (AI) and the statistical inferences using the shared database, it will instantly optimise balancing the available supply of production and stock and the demand from the purchase order.

 

Let’s examine the possibility of the IoT tool for the manufacturing industrial DX with reference to Amazon Web Service (AWS), the public cloud infrastructure provider accounting for the largest public cloud market share at 33%. The whole company group across regional and even national borders can share the same Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) and various types of databases such as Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for structured data and Amazon Dynamo DB for non-structured data inside the AWS network. In addition, various advanced technologies for gathering streaming data, big data analysis, and the artificial intelligence (AI) based deep learning are available.

 

Sharing EC2 enables all the members across the borders to access applications and data installed into the shared platform inside the public cloud infrastructure. This prevents the repetitive processes of forwarding data between the departments by logging in from each location. Vendors outside the company group can also directly access the platform within the restriction by the information privacy. Moreover, the risk of causing the security hole of the entire network can be mitigated under the unified cyber security tool and various firewalls already prepared by the AWS instead of expecting all the departments to look after under their own responsibility.

 

Please kindly refer to this architectural map to read the following parts.

 

Amazon Kinesis can collect the real time streaming data from a factory to send this data to the IoT device set. This IoT devices prepared in the public cloud enable to control and monitor the production line and the storage conditions by simultaneously referring to both the external and the internal data timely delivered to the production site. There is also the correlational data-analysis estimating the potential influence over the storage volume and the quality control in advance. Thus, this is expected to prevent some critical supply management errors such as mismatching the recorded data and the actual data.

 

The information related to the product supply is then forwarded to the database. The database also simultaneously collects the purchase order data processed the retail management side. Then, AWS Lambda analyses these simultaneously collected data to send to the AI module called Amazon SageMaker offering the deep-learning analysis of various factors. Instead of allocating the costly human resources for bridging between the production site and the customer side, this automated data-link is expected to instantly match the supply requirements with the timely demand requirements without the conventional time-consuming negotiation.

 

Amazon SageMaker, the AI module, connected with the big data of the business is expected to enable this manufacturing business to optimise both demand and supply simultaneously at an instant pace. The production supply and its logistics can be optimised by referring to the customer demand trends and the exogenous factors influencing the supply quantity and quality.

 

These simultaneous data analyses can instantly offer the timely business management reports by using the database specialising in the graph presentation with some analytic footnotes such as Amazon Neptune and Amazon Redshift. This automated process can eliminate the conventional repetitive manual workloads. Moreover, it helps their management decision process with a fast objective report purely based on the mechanical data analysis because this new reporting system prevents the human bias and errors.

 

Regarding the customer relation, the manufacturer may directly contact to and deal with their customers via their own retailing website which can be directly connected to the entire supply management system equipped with the IoT devices and the big data analytics. They may no longer need their retail specialist agents negotiating between the manufacturer and their customers. All the conventional middle-men jobs are automatically carried out within the entire public cloud architectural mechanism with little humans’ help.

 

This autoscaling mechanism of the public cloud can instantly adjust the customer service costs depending on the real time demand volume. The conventional way relying on the contracted retailers requires to keep paying the agent fee regardless of the sales shortage. Furthermore, this conventional way cannot catch up with the suddenly but temporarily increasing sales volume. The human retailers are unable to be scaled up/down instantly like machines. By contrast, this new system is literally the machine base with the excellent scalability! Therefore, there is neither excess nor shortage of the product supply volume regardless of any demand level on spot.

 

Overall, this public cloud provision is efficient by means of not only time-wise but also cost-wise. It reduces the reliance on humans’ intuition requiring the long-term experience as well as the complex human relationship easily causing some corruption issues.

Anxiety

 Anxiety is haunting me, and also many others, nowadays. In particular, anxieties about the future prospect such as financial anxiety are the crucial problems. Unfortunately, it is certain that the material well-beings of majority individuals will continue declining. In terms of the economic analysis as well as the astrological analysis, the near future outlook looks very gloomy for certain. Thus, the world society will furthermore require us to be stoic rather than being optimistic.

Focusing on the economic analysis, the market multiplier is slowing down despite the continuous remarkably rapid technological growth especially for the information technology. There is a strange dilemma in the labour market: There is a skilled labour shortage while misemployment and unemployment are considered to be high in the labour market. This labour market mismatch combined with the stagnating income and investment distribution flow discourages the social mobility as well as the income gaining opportunity of individuals wishing to improve their lifestyle.

Focusing on the astrological analysis, the world will be in the recession by 2024. Currently, Uranus is crossing the ascendant of Taurus, the detrimental sign of Uranus, until 2024 as well as forming the square aspect with Saturn crossing Aquarius, the own sign of Saturn for these years. This infers that the socioeconomic stagnation is really severe at least until 2025. Furthermore, Pluto is going to start crossing the ascendant of Aquarius for 18 years from 2023 onward. Aquarius represents equality of outcome and justice as well as individual freedom under restriction and some degree of traditionalism. Aquarius is forming the hard aspect with Taurus (Economy), Leo (Political Power), and Scorpio (Intimate relationship) so that the socio-economy will shift from the centralised active globalist form to the decentralised less active form.

Considering these two analyses, it will be wise to become stoic to keep our lifestyle as humble and cost-efficient as much as possible than aspiring to expect for a lucrative lifestyle in the coming age. Stoic ethics may become worth off to refer to as our life instruction guidance then. The modernity characterised with the intensive Yang (bright) element is ending so that the Ying (shadow) element is being intensified as the reaction. Instead of wanting more, we are more required to wanting less from now on. We must accept various pains as they are instead of regretting for them. We also must accept the fact that the capability of solving problems for all of us are limited by means of our physical strength, social status, and external environments. Therefore, there are various things outside our own responsibility so that it is important to excuse for our inability.

Sum up, the anxiety will never seem to disappear because the drastic lifestyle change will certainly take place in the near future. The antidote against this anxiety may be being stoic enough to keep our lifestyle humble and cost efficient as well as not bearing the full responsibility so that it is important to rely on the public support. Hence, we had better simply accept that it cannot be helped so much.

... Japan 日本 !

I have been criticising Japan since the beginning of this site establishment. This criticism of Japan is based on both the objective social scientific analyses as well as the subjective perspective based on my own life experiences. However, I have recently realised that the characteristics of Japan strongly and repeatedly accused seem to be originated from the political establishment explained in the recorded history. 

The Tenno regime has formed the totalitarian characteristics. This has based the highly stratified social structure transforming the majority citizens' personality to be subservient to their authority. The intensively cohesive social norms and values are definitely the derivatives of this stratified social structure. 

Even during the Shogunate periods from the 12th to the 19th century, this cohesive social structure thrived despite the relatively weaker influence of the aristocratic central authority. Yet, the subservient personality of the Japanese mass was hardly discouraged so that their loyalty to any authority was strong regardless of Tenno or Shogun. Perhaps, this unchangeable subservient personality was derived from the Japanese geographical isolation in the world where the enlightenment from the outside hardly reached there. 

Since the 19th century, Japan has adopted the Western style modern governance and capitalist economy. Some elites Japanese have successfully been enlightened to become progressive thinkers attempting to transform Japan to the modern nation state deserving the majority citizens. Nevertheless, the underlying characteristics and personality of Japanese people subservient to their authority has never changed. 

Even though some enlightenment ideal has been introduced, the true enlightenment for emancipating majority Japanese individuals from their superstitious loyalty and servile personality has hey never been achieved. This is the fundamental cause of perpetuating the political and social corruption hurting the Japanese majority mass as a suicidal attitude of themselves. It seems to have required much more fundamentally drastic reform in Japan to enlighten them.

There has been criticism by the social anthropological theory of this socially pathological trait is rooted in the establishment stage of the authoritarian figure shown in the recorded history. The original Japanese civilisation identity was originally related to the Shintoist shamanism which followed the tranquil communitarian paganism promoting more egalitarian and mutualist social norms and values.

There is certainly an attractive element in Japan and Japanese humans and their civilisation which has been retained since the prehistorical period. The prehistorical ancient Shintoist shamanism and pagan practices had brought up Japanese individuals as highly spirited enough to compassionately cohabit with neighbouring individuals and natural environments. Their virtuous characteristics such as diligence and humbleness must have been born out of this period. 

The authoritarian establishment introduced in the early historical record destroyed that prehistorical sacred pagan Japan. The social anthropological theory claims that the peaceful pagan tradition of the Japanese civilisation has been hijacked by the authoritarian oppressors. The subservient personality of the Japanese mass must be formed by that oppressive structuralist regime forcing the excess centralisation of politics and the unconditional subservience of the Japanese mass to these oppressive rulers. 

The Japanese indigenous individuals were conquered by the few numbers of arrogant nobles heavily influenced by the oppressive authoritarian totalitarianism. These oppressors hijacked Shinto by replacing the original peaceful egalitarian paganism with the oppressive authoritarian counterpart. Its indoctrination has imprinted the servile and intolerant personality into the Japanese mass. 

In order to overcome from the current distressful social crises, it is the time for Japan and Japanese to reincarnate the sacred spiritual prehistorical Japan! It is not worth to give up this attempt to fight back against the oppressive status-quo exploiting individuals with the millennium long indoctrination!

The alternative required for replacing the current dysfunctional world socioeconomics

The current entire world is a full of mess. This should be no longer called the functional order.  This is the disorder perpetuating various social diseases and social exclusion of majority individuals.  In terms of economic, political, and sociological perspectives, this world socioeconomic situation is undoubtedly dysfunctional enough to need an alternative replacing the current socioeconomic structure. Please kindly read the linked articles:

Economic issues:

Domination by Corporatism,The New Totalitarian

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2017/04/domination-by-corporatismthe-new.html

Monopoly of Corporatism Expands in Present Day Capitalism: Average Cost shifts Rightward

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2018/03/monopoly-of-corporatism-expands-in.html 

Let's be sceptical about Corporate Capitalism!

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/06/lets-revolt-against-corporate-capitalism.html

The current market economy is monopolised by the elite corporate tycoons. Even though the status-quo claims for the equality of opportunity to compete under meritocratic ethics, the income distribution mechanism has already become too asymmetric to merely rely on the labour market competition. Therefore, some degree of the equality of outcome for all the individual is required to accomplish the equality of opportunity more than ever.

Political issues:

Democracy of the modern world under challenge

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/07/democracy-of-modern-world-under.html

The Good Communism: Anarch-Syndicalism

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-good-communism-anarch-syndicalism.html

The Japanese Anarchist Communism

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-japanese-anarchist-communism.html

Crypto currencies based on the Block-chain technology e.g., BItcoin and the P2P networking are like Stirnerism in economy and finance!
http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/06/crypto-currencies-based-on-block-chain.html

 

The decision making process is centralised more than ever. The nation state government no longer deserve their individual citizens. Not only the authoritarian political structure but also the counterpart called the Liberal-Democracy put priority on the interests of the few number of the politically powerful peers not allowing to reflect the opinion of the majority individuals.  By referring to the P2P (Peer To Peer) system, it might be far more effective to install the spontaneous order based on the multiple interactions of individuals without any centralised structure. The spirit of the participation will encourage these autonomous individuals to voluntarily improve their living standard by taking advantage of the remarkably developed information technology. 

Social issues:

Suicide and Community

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2021/11/suicide-and-community.html

Tolerating Uselessness

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/05/tolerating-uselessness.html

Manifesto Spiritual Libertarian - the Libertarian for the coming age of Ying 陰

http://art-blue-liberalism.blogspot.com/2022/06/manifesto-spiritual-libertarian.html

The polarisation between the ruling class and the useless class rises in the society of the entire world. Those who are not "conforming" of producing the enough productivity fulfilling the interests of the ruling class are often socially excluded. As the factors of production demand individuals with conforming skills and talents more and more, more individuals tend to be labelled as "useless". so that their meaning of living is taken away and eventually falling into the state of the Anomie (normlessness). It is the time to rebel against the fixed norms and values imposed by the ruling class to emancipate individuals and their spirit to imagine and eventually form the new alternative liberating the autonomous individuals!

The Possiblility of the Deposit Blockage in Japan

Do you remember that I said "Japan will face the hyper inflation in the future"? Well, this statement is becoming more real than ever nowadays. The actually high inflation which the government and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) seem to manipulate to make the announced inflation rate lower than. 

The high price inflation together with the substantially low central bank interest rate, the Japanese Yen (JPY) value has steadily been plunging since the first quarter of this year 2022 in the Foreign Exchange (FX) market.  This will eventually depreciates the value of the Japanese sovereign bonds (government debts) in the international financial market. 

The major holders of Japanese sovereign bonds are the BoJ and the major private banks in Japan. When the bond value goes down, the portfolio of these Japanese private banks will be depreciated. Combining the poor business performance of Japanese banks with the JPY value plunge, the havoc of their depositors attempting to withdraw their JPY amount from their saving account. 

Following this logics, it is quite plausible that the deposit blockage will be likely to take place. This is why some economists have already forecasted the considerable Japanese economic downfall as well as the reasonably high possibility of these banks blocking these saving account from their money withdrawal.  

Perhaps, they might not block their customers' account but may face bankruptcy, the recapitalisation by government, or furthermore annexations to a bigger private bank. This infers the risk of relying on saving income in the JPY saving account and holding the assets with their value based on JPY in the near future. The real value of JPY is steadily falling so it is wise to start splitting the risk from now on. 

Japan The End (Friendly investment advice)

 Many immigrant workers are now leaving Japan because of the current income decline on the top of the excessively hard-working environment. As a matter of fact, Thai wage is so higher than Japanese counterpart that it is not beneficial for these South-Eastern Asians to pay various high costs for their relocation to Japan. This phenomenon represents the end of Japan as an economic power house.

As having mentioned by means of the astrological analysis, Japan will be transformed to be something like the one in the Edo period during the coming two decades. This means that Japan will be furthermore socio-economically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. The currently ongoing phenomenon caused by the economic power decline can be see as the prelude of the end of Japan!

As having mentioned several times, the Japanese government are reluctant to implement any countermeasure against Japan's socio-economic collapse at all. Well, this is also the responsibility of Japanese nationals electing the same incompetent government perpetuating the multiple decade long recession. These Japanese national citizens are also reluctant to rationally evaluate their own political actions.

It is obvious that Japan will shift to the further decline of its economic and cultural initiative in the world. Because of the declining fertility rate and the reluctance of both the government and the general public for investment to education, the human capital development will be considerably slowed down.This will lead to the further productivity plunging. 

 Moreover, the current Japanese situation also deteriorates its best advantage of seducing consumption and investment which is the service industry. Japan used to be a popular foreign tourist destination because of its once high service quality of its hospitality businesses. By contrast, the declining motivation of Japanese citizens for their daily life as well as business has started to be discouraged.

Only the tradition left in Japan is its highly bureaucratic culture. These Japanese citizens are still loyal to their bureaucratic order even with its notorious inflexibility. The quality of their consistency in office works, factory lines, and corruption prevention in both private and public sector administration will remain as its little left virtue. However, it guarantees that Japan will become a more boring and inflexible place to live for majority autonomic individuals due to the very tight margin of deviation from its rigid social norms and values.

The level of creativity is dropping down in Japan. As seen in the current trend of the subcultural products such as its animation and gaming industries, the brand-new products attracting audiences with a fresh impression is slumping. Instead, most of the well sold products are those of the remakes of the old series whose original ones were created last century. 

Then, it is ostensible to recognise that Japan is not a feasible place to invest your precious financial resources even it has recently become cheaper to buy the assets there due to the current Japanese Yen (JPY) depreciation. The aggregate productivity of Japan will plunge furthermore especially due to the human capital decline. 

The best option to purchase the Japanese assets will be investing to only those which are merged or annexed to the multinational firm. The foreign executives are much more competent to replace the irrational endogenous policies and mentalities of Japanese firms. In addition, majority Japanese are subservient to their authorities regardless of their ethnic origin so that they follow the reformed management policies implemented by these multinational shareholders. Combining the rational management by foreign executives and shareholders and the loyal labour-force is an attractive characteristic for investors.

Only the legitimate and productive purpose of living in Japan for foreigners is having a Japanese significant other i.e., a spouse, a loving partner, a concubine, etc. Japanese tend to have their day-dreaming nostalgic image in foreign worlds and often seek the foreign DNA of these individuals coming from abroad. Therefore, even under the socioeconomic deprivation, living in Japan for these foreigners with a Japanese significant other might enjoy their stay in Japan because their significant other and her/his family and relatives will protect you somehow even in a socioeconomic hardship. 

Overall, it is already Japan the end, and its beginning has already taken place. There will be no such once a major economic superpower nation state called Japan: The remaining there is the empty shell of its unproductive inflexible bureaucratic structure and the hopeless mobs simply as the remnants of this ethnicity barely nesting this archipelago. Because of the coming decades of the macroeconomic winter, the aggregate investment volume in the world is likely to fall so that there will not be enough investment flowing into Japan. Nobody will not notice Japan's existence, the remote edge of the world which only the few will show their interest in the existence of, any more.

The Unlimited Capital Growth Model

 Is there any enough for the capital investment? Many tend to assume there is a cap on the economic development when the capital quantity exceeds a certain proportion to the labour quantity because it simply becomes too much for the scale of this economy. The problem is that this assumption is often used as an excuse for government and banks for neglecting their responsibility of slowing the economy. It is important to evaluate whether there is a certain limit of economic development or there is an unlimited potential for economic development.

As a matter of fact, the developing countries have succeeded in emerging with a remarkably high production growth significantly faster than the developed countries. It is ostensible that these developing countries lack the physical capital required for improving their living standard which is visible to decide where the future capital investment is necessary. Therefore, there is always a motivation for citizens and foreign asset management firms to expect a high growth potential to invest there. 

By contrast, the developed countries look already sufficient with the physical capital. The recession is often understood as the sign of excess supply of the production compared to its demand and the maximum capacity of the economic development. Therefore, it is often judged as a good opportunity to cut down the unnecessary capital invested to economy even through individual citizens suffer from the depression caused by their income growth stagnation and job loss. 

There are three macroeconomic theories of the productivity growth model, the Neoclassical economic exogenous growth model based on the fixed production of physical capital and labour, the endogenous growth model based on the human capital development, and the growth model of the New Economic Geography (NEG) economics. There is an innovative model combining the exogenous growth model and the endogenous growth model together as shown in the graph. The NEG economic growth model involves the demand side effect on the top of the supply-side effect explained in this article so that it is complex enough to need another separate article to explain. (Please kindly read already posted articles in this blog)

The productivity growth based on the labour and the physical capital is dependent on the exogenous factor such as the technological growth and the outside investments. The government do not need a complex analysis of finding their need of expenditure for the public work projects because their lack of physical stuff is visible. The private banks tend to be willing to voluntarily invest there because their investment return for the filling physical capital shortage. The productivity growth speed is faster at the low capital ratio to the human labour counterpart while it gradually diminishes as it is reaching towards the certain optimum proportion of the physical capital investment required for the human habitant population.

By contrast, the human individuals are not the mere labouring workforce working with the fixed manual for operating the physical capital such as machineries, auto-mobiles, and offices. These human labour workforces are actually the human capital contributing to the furthermore productivity growth on the top of the physical capital. Economy is composed of not only physical goods produced by the hardware i.e. the physical capital but also the complex value-added goods and various services provided by humans such as catering, computer engineering, consulting, and sales. Knowledge and experience are strongly tied up with their productivity levels and contingent to the other human workers to copy. Moreover, the combination of existing products to invest a new product is infinite. 

In particular nowadays, the ability level of taking an advantage of the information technology (IT) is a notably significant factor for improving the productivity level. For example, the IT service products such as the software and the cloud services are made of the computer programming codes. Their production efficiency cannot be measured by the classical economic model because it is highly dependent on a human individual's skill and experience. Furthermore, the manufacturing businesses are shifting towards the internet of things (IoT) so that the IT becomes the key of optimising the production processes with the programmed automation and the production flow optimisation. Therefore, knowledge and experience of each human individual has become the critical factor of the production growth.

With comparison to the emerging phase of the economic growth backed up by the physical capital growth, the productivity growth based on the human capital growth is slow. On the other hand, the counterpart with a certain limit to the productivity growth. The key factor of accelerating the human capital growth model is the education level because human individuals need a certain level of intelligence and adaptability to obtain new knowledge and experience. 

The return from investing to education takes long to capture while there is little or no short-term financial gain. This is why private banks are reluctant to invest there. This is why it requires the public sector investment to stimulate the educational development. Furthermore, adult individuals had better have the access to the safety net while leaving a job for joining the future education or a job training for a certain period. Otherwise, the currently ongoing socioeconomic problem will be considerably challenging. 

Employers should not underestimate the contribution potential of employees. Many employers still tend to treat their employees as expendable and replaceable as the simple labour force by ignoring their potential to become the human capital. Their knowledge and skills gained through their job experience are precious enough to be a long-term asset of this firm. Their human resource management should consider their payment for their employees as not only the wage cost but also the investment to the human capital.

In conclusion, considering the unlimited productivity growth potential, there needs to be a continuous stimulus to an economy to solve the socioeconomic problem. The income stagnation as well as the employment issues including both unemployment and misemployment because of the perpetuated economic growth stagnation in many developed countries. Hence, individual citizens should not be fooled by the excuse of their negligence perpetuating the socioeconomic problems.

The Japanese Anarchist Communism

The current world socioeconomic situation is still gloomy. In particular, the socioeconomic situation of Japan is indeed depressing. On the top of the multiple decades of the income growth stagnation, the current stagflation (output stagnation + price inflation) perpetuated by the Japanese Yen (JPY) depreciation in the foreign currency exchange deteriorates individual citizens' daily life. The growing mental illness issues as well as the rising suicide rate are worrying as the sign of the moral and social crisis. Is it the problem of Japan itself? Or is it different from how Japan originally was? In the past, there was a political theory introduced as the antithesis of adopting the modern Western industrialisation and materialist ethics to Japan. So, let's evaluate.

In Japan, there were some politicians who were advocated to Anarchist Communist before the World War 2 (WW2). Even though this policy was not put into practice in real, this political movement was influential to the various contemporary rebellious political factions against the contemporary Western capitalist imperialism. This influence is non-negligible for explaining the spiritualism of the contemporary status quo Touseiha administration during the WW2 despite their different political characteristics.

A former Japanese government bureaucrat 柳田国男 (Kunio Yanagida) was inspired by an Anarchist Communist philosopher Kropotkin whereas he was a strong Japanese nationalist at the same time. Yanagida had a unique attitude towards the issue of the Japanese monarchy Tenno system. He attempted to restore the pre-modern traditional Tenno system linked to the original Shinto shamanism while criticising the current modern monarchism strongly tied up with the modern nation state and its modern state capitalism. His own plan was to establish an Anarchist Communist state of Japan based on the decentralised pastoralist environment where all the autonomous individual habitants mutually cohabit together with their own free will.

Yanagida was sceptical about adopting the modernisation to Japan because its nation state and capitalism seemed to have deteriorated Japan and her citizens despite its promise for improving their lifestyle with the materialistic development. The modern nation state capitalism not only prioritise those elites living in the top structure but also discourages the voluntary contributions of individuals and their community aiding individuals together. The free trade which the modern capitalism insists on interrupts an autocratic individual living in their own unique lifestyle by imposing the instant materialist seduction. This seduction to the instant materialistic pleasure has undermined the peaceful pastoralist environment providing individual habitants with the humble but well-secured lifestyle.

The theory of Gaia explains that the centre pole of the world energy flow has already been shifting from London, the U.K. to Awaji Island, Japan (Known as the sacred birthplace of Japanese civilisation blessed by the divine pair of Izanami, the Goddess of creation, and Izanagi, the God of creation, in Shinto mythology). This implies that the political and spiritual domination is shifting from Anglo-Saxon regime to Japanese counterpart. Majority spiritualists describe that this is the drastic shift from the materialistic masculine 陽 (Yang) element to the spiritualist feminine 陰 (Ying) element. This may induce the decay of the modern industrialist characteristic of the modern Japan as well as the reincarnation of the mystic shamanistic matriarchy of the ancient Shinto-ist Japan.

By means of understanding this theory of Gaia, it can be worth off to re-evaluate the Anarchist Communism explained by Yanagida. The material prosperity will be lost furthermore due to Japan's further insolation from the global economic network caused by Japan's loss of its economic initiative. On the other hand, Japan will start focusing more on the non-material beings such as the local community network and the spiritual well beings. The interesting factor nowadays is that the number of Japanese citizens practising some spiritual rituals as their daily habit such as chanting mantra and playing Yoga is increasing. This phenomenon seems to gradually initiate the spiritualist pastoralism introduced by Yanagida.

The totalitarian state communism based on the nation state statism backed up by the orthodox Marxism is an obsolete rebellion countering the modern industrialism and the capitalist ideology. The orthodox Marxism contains an intensive Yang element which is the cohesive paternalistic autocracy inducing a high risk of provoking a war and other excess conflicts. Therefore, this intensive Yang characteristic will not be accepted by the world shifting to more Ying characteristics.

The idea of Communism should not be monopolised by the orthodox Marxists; There is a variety of Communism which actually challenges against the orthodox Marxian style and is compatible with Liberalism. There have been various new political philosophical movements of challenging the combination of capitalism and modern nation state government. Michel Foucault was a remarkable philosopher accusing the oppressive characteristics of the entire modernity. 

Foucault's philosophy is often criticised as an anachronistic because he seemed to romanticise the pre-modern feudalist society to a certain extend. Yet, his theory clarifies how the emerging modernity with its nation state and capitalism has deteriorated individuality of autonomous individuals by forcing the conformity to the ruling class interests and the entire monstrous mechanism of the modern nation state. His idea was to respect each unique characteristic of individuals not undermined by an institutionalised socioeconomic structure, and his policy is often introduced as the postmodern Anarch-Syndicalism. 

Perhaps, this postmodern Anarchist Communism introduced by Michel Foucault might emerge in the future Japan when the aforementioned energy power pole-shift from the Anglo-Saxon Yang to the Japanese Ying is completed. It will be the ideology combination of Foucault and Yanagida to establish a postmodern mutualist socio-economy if it is realised. This will be a synthesis of the pastoral communitarian cooperative virtue and the postmodern individualistic enlightenment challenging against the paternalistic authoritarianism of the modern nation state and capitalism. 

All in all, if Communism rises to counter Capitalism, this might be predicted to be in Japan by referring to both the political science and the theory of Gaia. Perhaps, the current suffering of Japan might be the birth-pang for transforming the current modern nation state capitalist Japan into the new alternative such as this pastoral mutual cooperative state of Anarchist Communist kind.

The Good Communism: Anarch-Syndicalism

The word Communism tends to be often prejudicially quoted as a synonym of authoritarianism/totalitarianism based on a nation state government administration. The authoritarian characteristics of the orthodox Marxian doctrine often represents the socialism aspiring to evolve to communism eventually. Then, the word communism is often seen as the enemy of Liberalism promoting individuals' liberty and autonomic right. However, there is another form of communism defying the existence of one single state authority commanding economy, the means of resource distribution, and society (the interaction of individual citizens), which is compatible with Liberalism. 

 

The United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) was the former suzerain nation of the socialist nations following the orthodox Marxist doctrine advocating for the socioeconomic evolution towards communism. The USSR no longer exists while there are still remaining remnants of the nations which still retain the Soviet style socialism. These remnants are controversial because many of them seem to have abandoned their original political principle. Furthermore, the main point of this essay is to affirm that the orthodox Marxism is not only the political philosophy supporting communism.

Some Asian socialist states ruled by a Communist/Marxian-socialist party seem to have diverted from the direction of their original communist ideal. They have actually adopted the intense capitalist practices while they self-proclaim to maintain their Marxist principle as their excuse to prop up their one-party dictatorship. Therefore, their characteristics are actually opposing to the communist ideal aspiring for the egalitarian socioeconomic state.

Cuba might be only one socialist nation maintaining the orthodox Marxian style communism in a legitimate way. It still keeps the state ownership based economy as well as the diverse distribution of resources securing their reasonable standard of living. At the same time, Cuban government implements the Soviet style autocratic paternalism to cohesively unify her individual citizens under the oppressive one-party authoritarianism suppressing individual liberty. This is the factor that the orthodox Marxism is not compatible with Liberalism.

By contrast, there is another form of communism called Anarch-Syndicalism  which aspires to establish the egalitarian socio-economy without an autocratic paternalism such as the orthodox Marxian proletariat dictatorship. Its economy and political administration are run by cooperative unions of individuals which are spontaneously formed by individuals' voluntary cooperation without a cohesive force of any authoritarian organisation. Therefore, it relies on each autonomic individual citizen to manage their own political administration with their free will free from authoritarian oppressions. 

This is a anarchist political philosophy defying the existence of nation state government, the cohesive institutionalised authoritarian organisation. This is a radical socialist political philosophy defying not only the oligarchy by the capitalist class elites manipulating socio-economy but also the monetary market economy demanding an intense conformity for all individual citizens as the means of production. This is a libertarian political philosophy promoting equal treatments to all individuals regardless of their gender, ethnic, and physical characteristic origins inside this mutualist community avoiding any stratified institutional administration. 

Anarch-Syndicalism is perhaps only one anarchism having been practised in real through the history. The Second Spanish Republic centred in Catalonia in the early 20th century was the innovative state adopting the Anarch-Syndicalist system for economy as well as political administration. Even though it lost the Spanish civil war then, it can be said to be reasonably successful enough to maintain the state under such an administration sufficient enough to continue fighting back. 

Their participatory economy, where various business decision-making processes of one firm are democratically managed by its trade union members, was successful enough to maintain the productivity required to fight against their opposing force. Because their profit was returned to each individual worker participating their production, the motivation of their daily business activities as well as their contribution to the entire commune was high enough to fight back against their opposing force. This can be compared to the direct democratic state of the ancient Athens where individual citizens were so proud of themselves as its non-expendable core-members of their state that they had such a strong voluntary spirit to keep fighting in a war.

In Japan, there were some politicians who were advocated to Anarch-Syndicalism before the World War 2 (WW2). Even though this policy was not put into practice in real, this political movement was influential to the various contemporary rebellious political factions against the contemporary Western capitalist imperialism. This influence is non-negligible for explaining the spiritualism of the contemporary status quo Touseiha administration during the WW2 despite their different political characteristics.

A former Japanese government bureaucrat Kunio Yanagida was inspired by an anarchist communist philosopher Kropotkin whereas he was a strong Japanese nationalist at the same time. Mr. Yanagida had a unique attitude towards the issue of the Japanese monarchy Tenno system. He attempted to restore the pre-modern traditional Tenno system linked to the original Shinto shamanism while criticising the current modern monarchism strongly tied up with the modern nation state and its modern state capitalism. His own plan was to establish an Anarch-Syndicalist state of Japan based on the decentralised pastoralist environment where all the autonomous individual habitants mutually cohabit together with their own free will.

The idea of Communism should not be monopolised by the orthodox Marxists; There is a variety of Communism which actually challenges against the orthodox Marxian style and is compatible with Liberalism. There have been various new political philosophical movements of challenging the combination of capitalism and modern nation state government. Michel Foucault was a remarkable philosopher accusing the oppressive characteristics of the entire modernity. 

Foucault's philosophy is often criticised as an anachronistic because he seemed to romanticise the pre-modern feudalist society to a certain extend. Yet, his theory clarifies how the emerging modernity with its nation state and capitalism has deteriorated individuality of autonomous individuals by forcing the conformity to the ruling class interests and the entire monstrous mechanism of the modern nation state. His idea was to respect each unique characteristic of individuals not undermined by an institutionalised socioeconomic structure, and his policy is often introduced as the postmodern Anarch-Syndicalism. 

In conclusion, Communism itself is not a bad idea as long as its form is compatible with Liberalism such as Anarch-Syndicalism. For the time being, capitalism with its monetary based market economy prevails as a popular socio-economy. Nevertheless, it is always worth off to brainstorm to evaluate any other future socio-economic alternative. Hence, Anarch-Syndicalism as a good form of Communism can be a good candidate.

Democracy of the modern world under challenge

 "Liberal Democracy V.S. Authoritarian" is a hotly debated topic especially while China and Russia involving their peer alliance non-democratic nations intensively interfere in various foreign affairs nowadays. In the meantime, both the words "Democracy" and "Liberal" are frankly quoted as the counterpart nations of these authoritarian nations ruled by an iron fist of one party or any other autocratic figure. Therefore, it is suspicious to define whether or not these so-called Liberal Democratic nations are truly liberal as well as democratic as what these original words' definition implies.

The point to be critically evaluated here is that almost all those nations are administrated under indirect democracy which selects the limited number of representatives controlling over the political affairs. Perhaps, Switzerland might be only the democratic nation involving the majority citizens actively participating in their political affairs nowadays. Politics of the other "democratic" nations is handled by the chosen elites called politicians self-proclaiming to represent the majority citizens. However, it is often questionable to define as truly representing the majority individual citizens. 

Technically, these citizens are entitled to cast their vote to select these politicians as their representatives. Nevertheless, in reality, indirect democracy hardly represents the majority citizens. In particular, those with the constituency based electoral system seldom represents their majority citizens proportional to their population. Even by adopting the proportional representation to their electoral system, it is still difficult to satisfy elected politicians proportionally representing the citizens. Politicians may manipulate their fellow citizens for their own favour rather than what these citizens really need and want. Politicians often form their factional group which selects opinions matching with this group interest while excluding each individual's own will. 

At the same time, it is also critical to evaluate that democracy does not always imply fulfilling individual liberty. There is a risk that some institutionalised citizens from their own peer group to marginalise the other individual citizens for their favour propped up by their peer pressure as same as the aforementioned politicians. In order to secure liberty for each autonomous individual's sovereign, it may require an invincible ethical principle promoting their decision-making process as a guideline while enabling politics to represent their opinion. This sounds like a religion, but this should be the morally neutral principle not favouring any particular religious organisation. 

The modern complex institutional structure demands the centralised bureaucracy requiring the elites highly trained with a complex skill as well as the friendly connection and apprenticeship with the elders of this established structure to administrate the entire politics. Therefore, this inevitably needs to select those specialising in political organisational skills and connections with their factional peer groups whereas the rest majority are often ostracised from these influential peer groups. The true nature of the modern indirect democracy is much closer to that aristocracy or oligarchy rather than what democracy really means. All in all, the modern indirect democracy tends to be diverting from what both democracy and liberalism attempt to accomplish.

Nowadays, instead of relying on the centralised political organisation such as nation state government, it will be more efficient to adopt a decentralised administration system propped up with the spontaneous interferences among individuals as as the peer-to-peer (P2P) system. Due to the current remarkable information technological (IT) development, it is more possible to organise the decision-making process at each non-scheduled scattered time period than the past relying on the congregations of representatives gathered at a scheduled time. It is really questionable to insist on the need of replying on the representation by politicians and bureaucrats nowadays. 

Both (the modern indirect) democracy and authoritarian can be obsolete already. Each individual will be able to directly reflect their opinion over the networks of where they want to reflect it upon The furthermore developed IT will help sorting out individuals' opinions and efficiently optimising resource-distribution plans. It will even no longer require a political congregation of direct democracy seen in the ancient Athens because each political decision-making is processed at each spontaneous time, place, and occasion by means of its need and want. This new ideal is a combination of anarchism by individuals and technocracy by the IT resources. 

The new alternative to religion will emerge to fulfil the ideal of liberalising each individual in the world. As all the individuals are connected to each other across the borders more than ever, their spontaneous interactions will bring up the shared objectives and guidelines not bound to their distinctive traditional religious, ethical, and social norms and values. As Aristotle said, human being are naturally social, the naturally derived spontaneous interactions of human individuals will induce them to voluntarily create their own minimum required guidelines and rules necessary to prevent them from unnecessary conflicts and miscommunications. Then, even without a paternalistic intervention, they will find their own optimum method of forming consensus through their own try and error. 

Sum up, describing the modern indirect democratic nations as "Liberal Democratic" is questionable. These indirect democratic nations are not quite identical to the true characteristic of what the word "Liberal Democracy" should be derived from. The border splitting individuals out itself is already an obsolete element disrupting the true liberal democracy spontaneously formed among individuals. Hence, the dispute over "Liberal Democracy" and authoritarian is not essential to consider accomplishing the true ideal of liberal democracy in general.

To divert Stagflation, the conservative macroeconomic measure prevails

 

The whole world is struggling with Stagflation which is derived from the combination of two words, stagnation (of the output) and (the price) inflation. This is also called the bad price inflation by all the economic theoretical perspectives regardless of their controversiality of defining the inflation effect on economy. The lacking aggregate supply repressing economy causes both the cost push for the suppliers and the real income depreciation of consumers and investors. This is the macroeconomic phenomenon nobody welcomes.

The last major Stagflation in the past took place in 1970s when the oil price shot up while the dependency of the major economies on the oil was already substantially high. At that time, many economists especially from the self-proclaimed liberal side or the left-leaning side supported to increase the aggregate demand. Their assumption supported the Philips curve theory assuming that the price inflation rate and the unemployment rate are negatively correlated to each other. Their main reasons are the inflations lowers the real wage of employees (i.e., the cost of employers to hire), and also stimulates the entire market economic activities. Then, they suggested that the perpetuation of the inflation was more tolerate-able than the perpetuation of the declining output.

These pro-inflationary economists expect that the inflation of both the demand push (good) and the supply short (bad) stimulates the market economy with a high incentive of consumption, investment, and production supply. Then, this stimulated market multiplier is anticipated to increase the output growth which offsets all the negative effects of the inflation. Therefore, instead of controlling the inflation, they tolerated the ongoingly rising inflation by overestimating the positive effects while underestimating the negative effects of leaving the high inflation at the contemporary time period. This is why they advised the contemporary government to inject more money instead of tightening it.

Nevertheless, in reality, the negative effects of the price inflation such as increasing  suppliers' costs and depreciating the real income of citizens were more significant than their assumed positive effects. The inflation has rather discouraged the production motivation of suppliers because of the surging cost prices. The incentive of consumers' consumption expenditure and asset investment was hardly stimulated. These citizens rather suffered from the lack of reasonable employment opportunity and the depreciation of their real income taking account of their living cost. The excess money backed up by the government expenditure flowing into the contemporary economy did not seem to have improved the quality of the contemporary socioeconomic environments.

This is the time that the anti-inflationary conservative economic theorists, most notably Monetarists, emerged as the counter-revolutionary against these self-proclaimed liberals and the left leaning economists. They claimed for the extermination of the price inflation even by incurring the negative output gap (slowing or penalising an economic production level) in the short run. Their conservative measure against the inflation was detested by many contemporary citizens whereas it succeeded in stimulating the macroeconomic performance deserving these citizens in consequence later.

First of all, the interest rate must rise for suppressing the excess flow of money even as well as preventing the real interest rate from being substantially low. Secondly, they are highly sceptical about the positive effects of the price inflation such as the incentive for suppliers supplying more and the motivation of investors and consumers purchasing more. Instead, they insist on the bad side effects of the perpetuated inflation rather than the temporary shrinking output level.

 Nowadays, the US government and the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) as well as the European central banks are aware of this lesson in the past so that they decided to raise the interest rate and tighten the money supply even by slowing the economy down further with still hunting socioeconomic sufferings from the pandemic. What the current US government under the Democratic party administration is imposing some unnecessary regulations on business activities in spite of the still stagnant world economy, which seems to be rather irrelevant to suppressing the inflation. Therefore, the current US policy of the interest rate as well as the quantitative tightening are something not to blame for the current stagnant performance of the US economic policy.

On the other hand, the current Japanese government performance under this currently ongoing Stagflation is notably poor. They are reluctant to raise the interest rate even with both the surging price inflation and the Japanese Yen (JPY) value depreciation in the foreign exchange. The reason of both the current government and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) rejecting the interest rate rise has been explained in another article so please kindly find it to read. In addition, they still keep their loose money supply as favouring their peer corporations while the majority Japanese citizens are suffering from the income shortage in their daily life. 

The other suspicious phenomenon is that the opposition parties present no effective policy against the current stagnation. In Japan, no party promises to raise the interest rate at all whereas their manifesting policies are only the temporary countermeasure against this ongoing Stagflation such as tax cut. Even if tax cut may offsets the real income depreciation by sparing the disposable income, the steadily increasing price level caused by the surging costs of both domestic suppliers and imports will depreciate their income furthermore in the middle run. Moreover, investors are less likely to split their extra income gained from tax cut to invest it into their domestic capital market because the currently ongoing currency depreciation is steadily reducing the assets value in the domestic market.

In the meantime, Japanese politicians should be concentrated on tackling Stagflation at first for the time being. The interest rate rise as well as the quantitative tightening are supposed to be implemented.  In particular, the money supply to those corporations of the government peer group must be tightened because it seems to be excess and unnecessary under the current macroeconomic environment. Otherwise, the damage which Japan and its majority citizens will suffer will be even more severe soon. Their real income depreciation will keep steadily impoverishing the majority Japanese citizens.

In conclusion, the pragmatic policy implementation is the key to solve the suddenly emerging problem by referring to the past example of solving it. At the time of Stagflation in particular, the conservative measure is worth implementing even through not supporting the conservative policies in general.

Let's be sceptical about Corporate Capitalism!

 

The current world socio-economic situation can be expressed by the quote of Friedrich Nietzsche "God is dead." as the invisible hand of God explained by Adam Smith no longer corrects the distribution flow of labour and capital in the spontaneous order of the laissez-faire market. The gravestone of its death is created out of the current gigantic economies of scale for the majority of existing industries. Moreover, the courage of individual economic agents is undermined in front of the staunch fortress fortified with allows and spikes of high skill-set requirements and the massive wall of the barriers to the market entrant imposed by bureaucracy and regulations protecting the corporate tycoons dominating their strong hold. 

The current form of the market economy is oligopolistic where a few numbers of elite oligarchies secure their dominance. This is because that they can take an advantage of their huge economies of scale basing their factors of production which enables them to drastically expand their quantity and brand name of their products superior to those smaller rivals. Although their offering goods and services with their high quality and fast speed are beneficial for the majority individuals to enjoy, the market entry for any new entrant to compete with these already established corporations has become significantly more discouraged than the past. In another word, the world socio-economy basing these individuals' life is then more dependent on these corporate oligarchies staying in the market for a long term. 

The social mobility of individuals nowadays is more discouraged than a few decades ago because there is a huge gap between those who are fortunate enough to obtain the skill-sets required by the market and the others not fortunate enough. Each individual's own competence, effort, and motivation are no longer enough to outperform in the current market competition because it requires the significantly higher financial and time costs to secure their competitive advantage than the past. It is not only the matter of material well-beings but also the accessible information available in their living community determine their fortune of acquiring their initiative. Therefore, it requires the public management to offer a certain degree of the equality in outcome to accomplish the equality in opportunity. 

The good old days of the laissez-faire free market capitalism are gone. Instead, the more static socioeconomic political form of the corporate capitalism has come. Rather than the free-minded courageous individual economic agents, the already established aristocrats called corporate shareholders and government bureaucrats secure their dominance. Majority individuals now belong to one big institute of either corporation or government. Even small/medium sized business owners are working under the subcontract with either a bigger corporation or government. The profit share of these corporations is heavily distributed to major shareholders and corporate executives instead of rewarding majority individual workforce members propping up the daily business activities. Therefore, the priority on rewording the merit of individual workforces tends to be undermined under the current socio-economic structure.

It sounds like being a big government advocate by claiming for more positive public interventions. However, its attempt is to avoid the excess centralisation of the capital flows monopolised by corporatist oligarchies and the unfair heavy regulations imposed by government bureaucrats protecting their interest. Without this intervention, the government will become even bigger under the influence of these corporate oligarchies as their political influence is overwhelming the others with relatively less advantages. This should be the intervention to decentralise the whole socio-economic structure to encourage more healthy and fair competitions which the laissez-faire capitalism of the good old days used to promote. 

What the big government advocates such as the orthodox Marxists should be criticised is their excess centralisation of the means of production. Even though they have an originally good will of deserving the majority, it often fails to deserve the majority because this centralised political system put higher priority on deserving those elite bureaucrats at first. This failure of the centralised means of production takes place under the current corporatist capitalism due to its excessively centralised flow of the capital. 

As John Maynard Keynes affirmed, the reform of optimising the balance of private and public sector with the positive intervention to the market with a right harmony is the key to enable the free as well as the fair market economy to survive. Yet, the Keynesian policy also contains the risk of failing into the paternalism by the central government conducting the intervention. Then, it will be necessary to spread the policy decision makings out to much smaller scale such as local authorities and cooperatives. 

The power weight of the public corporations over the private corporation is way more excess than the past. The dominance of the investors/shareholders of these public corporations induces the asymmetric distribution of their profit share which undermines the contribution by the majority individual workforces. The initiative attracting these investors is necessary whilst the distribution weight of the profit share provision is overweighted onto them nowadays. In order to appreciate the contribution by these majority individuals providing the actual workforces, their reward should be derived from not only the labour costs but also some pies from the profit share.

It should also take reviving small and medium sized enterprises into consideration. The oligopoly of the major private banks perpetuates the public corporations' dominance over the private corporations of small and medium sized businesses. This is another reason to shift the economic and political power to the local authority and cooperative which are able to monitor the business performance of their local enterprises as they are located close to each other. Instead of merely relying on the major private banks, rending and legal support from the local authority and cooperative should be more available. The initiative of expanding the decentralised public sector is to encourage more private businesses of not only the big public corporations but also the multiple numbers of the private corporations. 

All in all, it is the time to be sceptical about the big government of the market monopoly! Majority individuals need to capture the power by empowering the decentralised public managements to counter the centralised public body by the puppet government of these corporatist aristocrats. The grass-root political lobbying must take place to capture the socio-economic freedom of majority individuals!!