From: [email protected]
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/japans-economic-stagnation-is-crea ting-a-nation-of-lost-youths/19580780/ This is scary, and sadly it is not unlike the way the USA is heading. However, as an optimist I can see that Japan is poised to lead the way to a viable solution, which we in the USA can emulate this time around. It would be a nice role-reversal for them to repay a 50 year old favor (of re-industrializing their economy, which we first ravaged of course). The biggest international lie and fiasco of all times is so-called the "free trade" myth, which we in the USA brought into existence primarily to "spread the wealth" to an impoverished post-war world - and it did work for that. Permit me to rant-on about this for a while, as it is entirely overlooked as a political agenda of anyone. Japan was a prime early beneficiary of free trade, and they later reciprocated to allow the rest of Asia to industrialize. But the limit of international wealth redistribution (via this particular method) has been reached, and we must now find viable alternatives. But first we must eliminate this colossal impediment to progress - and ditch free trade altogether - in order to maintain our place. Enough is enough. We do not need to continue this level of generosity. I expect Japan to do this shortly. Call it "isolationism" if you must - who cares what label is put on it. Free trade is not free and never was anything more than a way to bring the rest of the world out of poverty - which methodology was then quickly bastardized by the mega-financiers (like Goldman Sachs), to maximize their own profits by creating an illusions of efficiency (via currency manipulation), and to prolong the myth by providing temporarily cheap goods in place of lost factory jobs. We have a window of opportunity to change this idiotic structural deficiency, however, so it is not inevitable that we sink to the depth of "grass-eaters" - but alas it will probably take more political will-power than any group here can muster. Japan owes us a favor, and this could be it. Honda to the rescue (to be explained). In my opinion (warped and idealistic as it may be) - this structural change in eliminating a myth must involve a returning to a neo-industrial society, where we make a clean break with the past and to actually dump China, Europe and Japan as trading partners !! and instead we reindustrialize America, using robotics. This will be painful at first. Under the new rules of trade, we are not really isolated - so any foreign country can invest freely here in factories to produce goods they design - but they will no longer be allowed to import goods made elsewhere. Yes, it will mean the end of dirt cheap consumer goods, but it will also mean the end of layoffs, the end of the wild swings in the business cycle, the end of Mac-jobs, and the end of despair for middle class youth who have no real future. Well-paid neo-industrial workers will be able to afford higher priced US made goods. And they will not be confined to a life of drudgery either. We can force capitalism to make an important new place for them. The new paradigm for a factory job, and there can be tens of millions of this type of job - will be to own, maintain, and supervise a handful of industrial robots 24/7. We can give every worker a personal stake in this by forcing business to give equity stakes to workers as the ONLY permitted owner of robotics. This will be an "on-call" job and will require a specialized but NOT high-tech re-education. The skill level will be approximately that of video game enthusiast or machinist - and much of the "work" can be done at home by LAN or smart-phone, with occasional real visits to the factory for hands-on maintenance. Farm, mining and some service jobs will be similar. The entire economy will shift to robotics, but not necessarily because they are really needed to save money - but because they are desirable in the long term for social goals of full and meaningful work to human robo-tenders. This will cost more at first - but not as much as a needless war, for instance. And in a decade it will be much cheaper. Free trade is a lure that always turns against the importer - when the currency degrades, which is inevitable and as the dollar continues to do, and that is the "hidden cost "that is going to kill us if we do not ditch the present system now. But the one necessary prime rule that avoids conglomerate control at this level - is that NO non-human entity, including corporations will be allowed to own robots (to ensure human employment to the robo-tenders). Businesses must contract out for robotic labor, and the new unions will be the trade co-ops that operate as middle-men in the three-way process between business - neo-worker - and lender. These trade co-ops can be run by the neo-Lawyers, a group which will be forced out of their present work by new laws demanding arbitration for every disagreement :) For instance, the "new GM" can produce cars at an assembly plant, but instead of hiring 5000 hourly workers through a union, they would hire 1000 robot owners through the new kind of trade cooperative. These 1000 will each have 5-10 robots that work 24/7 and the factory can produce three times the normal level of automobiles. Yes, GM is already robotized at one level, so this only a progression to a certain type of factory-replacement robot. You may have seen an early prototype called Asimo: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1210345008392050115# Our technology level for implementation of this is not quite there in 2010, but in a few years it will be there. Perhaps Japan will initially lead the way and show us how to pull this off from a top-down structural perspective. With political will-power and robotics technology, we can eliminate the myth of free-trade in a decade and return to a level of wealth not seen here since the sixties and seventies. which is about the time Honda started sending over well-made cheap motor-cycles. Jones
