Friday 10 April 2015

True Story of what's going on in Japan by Fukushima Evacuee

This video was uploaded late October 2013, and we have shared it recently in Facebook again.  Nothing has changed about the endless deception by the Government and the nuclear industry.


Your country might be slightly better than ours in many ways, but when it comes to politics involving nuclear power plants, most governments are not much different.  Neither are the mainstream media.  If people outside Japan were any smarter, Tokyo would not have been nominated for the venue of 2020 Olympics.

Here's copy of script (English subtitles):
http://ameblo.jp/kitakyu-mamoru/entry-11615553186.html
“Miko”, evacuee from Iwaki City, Fukushima:
I evacuated voluntarily from my hometown Iwaki City to Kitakyushu City last January because of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster on March 11.
Today I’d like to talk about what I saw, experienced and felt during the 9 months up to my move to Kitakyushu, as well as my current situation.
I lived in Iwaki City, 42 kilometers from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
I taught piano lessons and my husband worked as a municipal employee. With our 2 children and my students, we were living happily.
After 3/11 our life changed completely.
 
The northern part of Iwaki City was within the 30 kilometer radius, but the mayor created the term “harmful rumor”and the radiation exclusion zone was extended to our area. 
The radiation level, which was at 0.05 microsieverts per hour before the accident, rose to 23 microsieverts. That’s 460 times [the normal level]. 
Professor Shunichi Yamashita of Nagasaki University launched a mass campaign stating that it was safe up to 100 millisieverts, and this was accepted widely by the television, newspaper, radio, schools and in lectures. At the time, schools considered it safe to engage in outdoor activities even though the radiation level was at 0.5 microsieverts, 10 times that of the normal value. 
Since 100 millisieverts was regarded as ‘safe,’ school lunches were initially prepared from local produce(1 month after the accident). We worked hard to collect signatures to cancel the ‘local production for local consumption’ rule immediately. It wasn’t until the second academic term, though, that the board of education recognized the freedom to refuse school lunches. In other words, those who trusted the ‘safety principle’ continued to let their children eat school lunches. It was useless trying to reason with the school or teachers. 
The outdoor radiation level isn’t consistent. Ten centimeters apart, and itcan vary by 2~3 microsieverts or 5 microsieverts, which are 46 times and 100 times that of the everyday level.
What I couldn’t understand was the fact that the municipal employees and school teachers did nothing to protect the children from radiation exposure.

Now, let me talk about the time when the nuclear power plant exploded.
Our home suffered minimal damage from the 3/11 earthquake itself. But we had no running water in Iwaki City for 20 days. My children and I lined up for two hours the following day to get our supply from the water distribution truck.
 
The first explosion happened on March 12. The data we saw later measured 23 microsieverts, 460 times that of the normal level. 
There were no local public announcements warning us to stay indoors, and we remained outside for 2 whole hours,unaware of the explosion. 
We were told that Japan was safe, but blood tests have shown that my two children and I have thyroid problems, and my son has a 5-millimeter pustule. 
News reports now say that thyroid cancer is a lifestyle-related disease. If we develop cancer, I suspect we’ll be told that it’s a result of negligence and the government will not admit that it has anything to do with radiation exposure. 

Thursday 9 April 2015

Michael Ende (Momo) and Silvio Gesell and alternative Money System

Glad to find this video (originally a Japanese NHK program in 1996) with English narration and English subtitles (when German or Japanese spoken).  Please just watch this and think what money really is.  I will explain more (add text here) later.  If you haven't heard of aging money, this would be a real eye-opener.




I mentioned Gesell's money in mail to Ilan, and he replied as follows:

Chiho 
I had never heard of Gesell money. Reading on it in Wikipedia, it states the following: 
"Taking selfishness into account, Gesell called for free, fair business competition with equal chances for all. This included the removal of all legal and inherited privilegesEveryone should rely only on his personal abilities in order to make a living. In the "natural economic order" which he aimed for, the most talented people would have the highest income, without distortion by interest and rent charges."In theory, one can have system where there is no inheritance (i.e., inheritance tax = 100%). However, having no rent, no interest, is more complicated. 
  1. Suppose I am really good at making widgets, but it erodes my body. At the age of 40, I will need to retire. Am I allowed to save for retirement? If so, can I invest my savings, in, say, property? Can I then rent out the property? 
  1. Suppose I am really good at making widgets, which require a lot of input material, and therefore very expensive for someone else to buy. Is the purchaser of the widget forbidden from borrowing to finance the widget?  What are the purchaser's financing options? 
Having a prohibition on interest is theoretically possible (e.g., Islam) but forbidding rent, that never occurred to me. It is very near Marxism of eliminating capital. Adam Smith said there are three factors of production: land, capital (machines), and labour. I think Gesell requires having only one factor of production: human labour. Gesell might allow also land: each person is given a patch at birth. But what about the capital? Who will a factory when no one can finance the purchase of a factory?

Ilan's questions were partly answered by John Maynard Keynes in the General Theory.  Gesell's theory had some flaws, and needed some amendment for realizing the idea.

I will quote the related part of the Keynes' literature from this site with many thanks:

John Maynard Keynes

GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT,
MONEY AND INTEREST


BOOK VI


Chapter 23

NOTES ON MERCANTILISM, THE USURY LAWS, STAMPED MONEY AND THEORIES OF UNDER-CONSUMPTION

[...]

VI

It is convenient to mention at this point the strange, unduly neglected prophet Silvio Gesell (1862-1930), whose work contains flashes of deep insight and who only just failed to reach down to the essence of the matter. In the post-war years his devotees bombarded me with copies of his works; yet, owing to certain palpable defects in the argument, I entirely failed to discover their merit. As is often the case with imperfectly analysed intuitions, their significance only became apparent after I had reached my own conclusions in my own way. Meanwhile, like other academic economists, I treated his profoundly original strivings as being no better than those of a crank. Since few of the readers of this book are likely to be well acquainted with the significance of Gesell, I will give to him what would be otherwise a disproportionate space. Gesell was a successful German [175] merchant in Buenos Aires who was led to the study of monetary problems by the crisis of the late 'eighties, which was especially violent in the Argentine, his first work, Die Reformation im Münzwesen als Brücke zum socialen Staat, being published in Buenos Aires in 1891. His fundamental ideas on money were published in Buenos Aires in the same year under the title Nervus rerum, and many books and pamphlets followed until he retired to Switzerland in 1906 as a man of some means, able to devote the last decades of his life to the two most delightful occupations open to those who do not have to earn their living, authorship and experimental farming.

The first section of his standard work was published in 1906 at Les Hauts Geneveys, Switzerland, under the title 'Die Verwirklichung des Rechtes auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag', and the second section in 1911 at Berlin under the title 'Die neue Lehre vom Zins'. The two together were published in Berlin and in Switzerland during the war (1916) and reached a sixth edition during his lifetime under the title 'Die natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung durch Freiland und Freigeld', the English version (translated by Mr Philip Pye) being called "The Natural Economic Order". In April 1919 Gesell joined the short-lived Soviet cabinet of Bavaria as their Minister of Finance, being subsequently tried by court-martial. The last decade of his life was spent in Berlin and Switzerland and devoted to propaganda. Gesell, drawing to himself the semi-religious fervour which had formerly centred round Henry George, became the revered prophet of a cult with many thousand disciples throughout the world. The first international convention of the Swiss and German Freiland-Freigeld Bund and similar organisations from many countries was held in Basle in 1923. Since his death in 1930 much of the peculiar type of fervour which doctrines such as his are capable of exciting has been diverted to other (in my opinion less eminent) prophets. Dr Buchi is the leader of the movement in England, but its literature seems to be distributed from San Antonio, Texas, its main strength lying to-day in the United States, where Professor Irving Fisher, alone amongst academic economists, has recognised its significance. In spite of the prophetic trappings with which his devotees have decorated him, Gesell's main book is written in cool, scientific language; though it is suffused throughout by a more passionate, a more emotional devotion to social justice than some think decent in a scientist. The part which derives from Henry George [176], though doubtless an important source of the movement's strength, is of altogether secondary interest. The purpose of the book as a whole may be described as the establishment of an anti-Marxian socialism, a reaction against laissez-faire built on theoretical foundations totally unlike those of Marx in being based on a repudiation instead of on an acceptance of the classical hypotheses, and on an unfettering of competition instead of its abolition. I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx. The preface to "The Natural Economic Order" will indicate to the reader, if he will refer to it, the moral quality of Gesell. The answer to Marxism is, I think, to be found along the lines of this preface.

Gesell's specific contribution to the theory of money and interest is as follows. In the first place, he distinguishes clearly between the rate of interest and the marginal efficiency of capital, and he argues that it is the rate of interest which sets a limit to the rate of growth of real capital. Next, he points out that the rate of interest is a purely monetary phenomenon and that the peculiarity of money, from which flows the significance of the money rate of interest, lies in the fact that its ownership as a means of storing wealth involves the holder in negligible carrying charges, and that forms of wealth, such as stocks of commodities which do involve carrying charges, in fact yield a return because of the standard set by money. He cites the comparative stability of the rate of interest throughout the ages as evidence that it cannot depend on purely physical characters, inasmuch as the variation of the latter from one epoch to another must have been incalculably greater than the observed changes in the rate of interest; i.e. (in my terminology) the rate of interest, which depends on constant psychological characters, has remained stable, whilst the widely fluctuating characters, which primarily determine the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital, have determined not the rate of interest but the rate at which the (more or less) given rate of interest allows the stock of real capital to grow. But there is a great defect in Gesell's theory. He shows how it is only the existence of a rate of money interest which allows a yield to be obtained from lending out stocks of commodities. His dialogue between Robinson Crusoe and a stranger [177] is a most excellent economic parable - as good as anything of the kind that has been written - to demonstrate this point. But, having given the reason why the money-rate of interest unlike most commodity rates of interest cannot be negative, he altogether overlooks the need of an explanation why the money-rate of interest is positive, and he fails to explain why the money-rate of interest is not governed (as the classical school maintains) by the standard set by the yield on productive capital. This is because the notion of liquidity-preference had escaped him. He has constructed only half a theory of the rate of interest.

The incompleteness of his theory is doubtless the explanation of his work having suffered neglect at the hands of the academic world. Nevertheless he had carried his theory far enough to lead him to a practical recommendation, which may carry with it the essence of what is needed, though it is not feasible in the form in which he proposed it. He argues that the growth of real capital is held back by the money-rate of interest, and that if this brake were removed the growth of real capital would be, in the modern world, so rapid that a zero money-rate of interest would probably be justified, not indeed forthwith, but within a comparatively short period of time. Thus the prime necessity is to reduce the money-rate of interest, and this, he pointed out, can be effected by causing money to incur carrying-costs just like other stocks of barren goods. This led him to the famous prescription of 'stamped' money, with which his name is chiefly associated and which has received the blessing of Professor Irving Fisher.

According to this proposal currency notes (though it would clearly need to apply as well to some forms at least of bank-money) would only retain their value by being stamped each month, like an insurance card, with stamps purchased at a post office. The cost of the stamps could, of course, be fixed at any appropriate figure. According to my theory it should be roughly equal to the excess of the money-rate of interest (apart from the stamps) over the marginal efficiency of capital corresponding to a rate of new investment compatible with full employment. The actual charge suggested by Gesell was 1 per mil. per week, equivalent to 5.2 per cent per annum. This would be too high in existing conditions, but the correct figure, which would have to be changed from time to time, could only be reached by trial and error.

The idea behind stamped money is sound. It is, indeed, possible that means might be found to apply it in practice on a modest scale. But there are many difficulties which Gesell did not face. In particular, he was unaware that money was not unique in having a liquidity-premium attached to it, but differed only in degree from many other articles, deriving its importance from having a greater liquidity-premium than any other article. Thus if currency notes were to be deprived of their liquidity-premium by the stamping system, a long series of substitutes would step into their shoes - bank-money, debts at call, foreign money, jewellery and the precious metals generally, and so forth. As I have mentioned above, there have been times when it was probably the craving for the ownership of land, independently of its yield, which served to keep up the rate of interest; - though under Gesell's system this possibility would have been eliminated by land nationalisation.