By
Benjamin Fulford
February 1, 2015
When I first came to
Japan in 1980 I was amazed to see fish swimming in the rivers in downtown
Tokyo. Japan of the 1980’s was by many standards the most advanced nation on
earth. By 1985, after decades of sizzling economic growth, they had the highest
per capita income on earth, the lowest gap between the rich and poor in any
developed nation and a very healthy natural environment. They also were the
greatest creditor nation on earth, having supplied cars, electronics and other
goodies to the rest of the planet often in exchange for IOUs.
One of the reasons I
chose to go to university in Japan was to study the system that had made this
miracle possible. This is how it worked. Japan’s government was run by a
combination of highly talented bureaucrats, industrialists and politicians with
deep roots in their local constituencies. They presided over a system that was
a combination of central planning, free market capitalism and
socialism.
At the apex of the
system was an organization known as the Economic Planning Agency. It was run by
a group of about 30 members of the bureaucratic, industrial, academic and
political ruling elite. They would come up with a 5 year plan for the country.
Politicians would explain in detail what their voters desired. Bureaucrats
would explain exactly how much money there was available to
realistically meet their desires. Industrialists would explain what could be
profitably done to contribute to the plan. The country as a whole also had a
mission: to overtake and surpass the West.
The system was not
like the central planning of Stalinist economies, where even such thing as the
amount of toothpaste was centrally planned, because it was based on market
forces.
The plan might, for example, call for doubling the amount of roads, sewers and port facilities over a 5 year period, and would allocate the money for this. However, it was private companies who bid for the actual work. Furthermore, companies were free to carry out their own independent activities regardless of the bigger plan.
The only countries
that had systems arguably as good as the old Japanese system were the
Scandinavian countries, Germany and Canada.
In 1985 the US
government set out to destroy this system out of what I can only describe
jealousy and fear of being over-taken. George Bush Sr., then vice-president,
ordered Japan to dismantle this system and hand economic control over to
American oligarchs (gangsters). When the Japanese refused, they shot down Japan
airlines flight 123 on August 12, 1985. On September 22nd, 1985, Japan signed
the Plaza Accord that signaled the beginning of the systematic destruction of
the Japanese economic system. Since then, Japan’s economy has been looted to
the tune of about $5 trillion by American and European gangster oligarchs.
The system that
created the Japanese miracle was by no means perfect. One flaw was the system
of forced early retirement of low paid bureaucrats. This meant that
bureaucrats, instead of thinking of the greater good of their country, had an
interest in carrying favor with the companies they regulated in exchange for
cushy, post-early retirement jobs. The other problem was the system of lifetime
employment. While this did create employee loyalty to firms, it was also a
feudal system that made it almost impossible for people to change jobs. The
political system was also radically biased in favor of rural citizens and
against urban residents.
Singapore, to this
day, has a better system, where bureaucrats are not forced to retire early and
get paid as much as their private sector counter-parts. That is why Singapore
keeps sizzling along to this day.
In any case, China’s
Deng Xiaoping carefully studied the Japanese and Singaporean systems and
adopted them to China. That is one of the main reasons for China’s long
economic boom.
The West would do well
to create its own, improved version of this system. That is why I have been
proposing creating a future planning agency. This is different from the White
Dragon Society, which strongly insists on ending poverty, stopping
environmental destruction and expanding earth life exponentially into the
universe. This is simply a personal proposal, based on 30 years’ experience as
a geopolitical journalist.
The future planning
agency I propose would have an initial funding of $7 trillion. That is the
amount of money the Japanese have legitimately earned since World War 2. It is
based on cars, electronics and other real things sent to the rest of the world.
This is different from gold carefully hoarded in caves over the
millennia by Asian dynastic families or fantastical numbers put in computers by
Western Bankers. It is based on actual production.
The future planning
agency would exist in harmony with existing institutions and not replace them.
It would recruit some of the best brains from all over the world in the fields
of government, business, academia etc. Their job would be to study and make
real the wishes of the people of the planet, as expressed through the internet
and opinion surveys.
Here are some possible
examples of what such an agency could accomplish. First, it would accept bids
and plans for a massive campaign to turn the deserts green. Many competing
plans would be allowed to go ahead and those that succeeded would be copied and
improved upon. Such an effort could double the amount of land now available for
agriculture and nature preserves.
In the case of the
oceans, the agency could hire the navies of the world to stop the unsustainable
over-fishing that is destroying the ocean eco-systems. Within 5 years it should
be possible to increase the amount of fish 10 fold. Feeding the ocean with
nutrients may make it possible to further increase this 100 fold.
Another project it
could oversee would be to make sure every child on earth is well fed and well
educated. Human brains are the most under-utilized resource on the planet.
Allowing all those young minds to reach their full potential would unleash
wonders we cannot even imagine at present.
These are just ideas meant to form a starting point for a debate about what sort of system we could create to allow us to successfully navigate into the future. It is not a final plan. Nor is it a plan for a single central world government. Many competing corporations, governments, charities, foundations, etc. could all work in harmony with the future planning agency.
In any case, let us
look at what we now have in the West. The system of unfettered capitalism is
based on the “profit motive” which is a nice way of saying human greed. It has
created a black hole sucking up all the world’s resources and wealth into the
hands of a tiny, rapacious elite. They spend the world’s savings on a military
industrial complex meant to preserve their power.
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