Living a Little More Quietly

Living a little more quietly

Survival first and economic prosperity second.
Due mainly to global warming, we are in danger of extinction, I guess.

Summary:
1. Wrong priority setting such as economic prosperity first.
2. Overlooking fundamental economic premises.
3. Violation of fundamental economic premises.
4. Dysfunctioning world economy.
5. My proposal – Zero Economic Growth Model.
6. To be honest, I do not have an answer but we can make a difference.

Background:
Environment has been changed and we have reached to a critical point in my opinion.
Mother Nature, Earth has caught a cold and it has a fever now, which is global warming. Mother Nature has start sending us troops such as bigger Hurricane, Swine virus, etc.

These are just a beginning and more will come unless we stop global warming.
We need to stop growth of our consumption.

Which is more important, either our life or raising living standards?

A. Current Issues.

1. Wrong priority setting:
I tend to believe that we are placing highest priority on economic growth right now, which is not appropriate anymore in my opinion.

War has already started between Mother Nature and Human Beings and Laissez - Faire will definitely work in a very painfully way.

Majority of us will not be able to survive in drastically changing environment due to global warming, which will become a survival of the fittest.

2. Overlooking fundamental economic premises.

Laissez – Faire, current economic system is designed only for peaceful conditions. It is not suitable for emergency or war-like situations such as now.

What kind of system do we use during a war, military system, right?

Do we have freedom in military system? Not very much.

Anyway, we should set the highest priority on survival, which means sacrifice economic development for the sake of preventing global warming, in my opinion.

3. Violation of fundamental economic premises

A. Violation of perfect information flow – Skewed information flow.
Due mainly to computerization and advanced technique such as securitization, risk information can be easily hidden.

Unless we have access to electronic data base and we can run analyzing software, it is next to impossible to detect hidden risk factor, which created a huge advantage to small number of groups and people such as fund managers and electronic herds.

Therefore, information flow is perfect only for these people and not for the majority of people.

This is equivalent to insiders’ information and this will create distorted results.

Fund managers and electronic herds always win and the rest always lose.

B. Monopoly in global market:
There exists monopolistic condition in current economic market.

4. Dysfunctioning world economy.

Majority of Wealth is concentrated on small number of people and entities.

This wealth concentration makes market dysfunction due mainly to stagnant flow of money in my opinion. Money stays in haves without circulating to have-nots, which makes economic market dysfunction and this is the violation of one of fundamental economic premises.

Redistribution of wealth might be necessary through charging higher inheritance tax, for example.

B. My proposal Zero Economic Growth Model:

-Control economy through budgeting.
This is nothing new. Most corporations control business activities through budgeting.

In my opinion, Governments can control economic growth through providing guidelines to corporate budgeting such as zero-growth of economy.

For example, governments may want to place Environment Protection taxes for growth of more than 5%.

For example, Governments could place the same percentage of Environment Protection Tax (EP Tax) on economic growth, for 10% growth 10% EP tax, for 20% growth 20% of EP tax.

This EP tax should be used only for Environment Protection purposes only such as planting trees and buying lands for preservation of nature etc.

6. To be honest, I do not have an answer.

My proposal is too big to be realized in a short period of time.

To be realistic, I propose grass-root activities such as growing vegetables in our backyards or balcony.

I have grown spinach and it was very easy to grow but it did not taste good at all. It tasted like green grass and thus I decided to let it grow and let the Nature takes care of it.

Recently I have planted cucumber and it is growing. It is interesting and enjoyable to see it grow.

It is great to plant vegetables because it helps to slow down global warming, makes you healthier, and seeds are very inexpensive such as 1$ for a hundred seeds or so.

We tend to breathe in friendly bacteria while cultivating soils, which is good for your health.

In addition, if we grow vegetables without using any chemicals, those vegetables are healthier for you to eat.

Let’s start planting vegetables since you have nothing to lose.

We have about 6.7 billion people on this planet right now.

If everyone plants 10 vegetables on balcony, we will have 67 billion vegetables, which must consume a lot of CO2, I suppose.

Although this is an insignificant effort, when the number gets large enough, it will have an influential power.

If you plant trees, that is even better.

Yes, we can make a difference!

Thank you very much for reading.

Best regards,

Hiroshi Morita