“. . . AND GULLIVER RETURNS”
--In Search of Utopia--
BOOK 3--SMASHWORDS EDITION
MY VISIT TO KINO
by
Lemuel Gulliver XVI as told to Jacqueline Slow
Copyright 2008
ISBN978-0-9823076-0-1
Dear friends—Obviously I wrote this series to be read from Book 1 to the end, but silly me! Readers often begin with what sounds interesting to them. This may leave them unaware of the characters, my friends and I. So let me introduce us. We were boyhood friends, as wild and as close as geese heading south for the winter. But our university educations split us philosophically like a drop of quicksilver hitting the floor. But like those balls of mercury, when brought together, they again become one. As have we.
Ray
became a Catholic priest and moved far to the right of where our
teenage liberalism had bound us. Ray calls himself a
neo-conservative. We think he is a reactionary.
Lee slid to the left of our adolescent leanings, and somewhere along
the line became an atheist. Lee is a lawyer.
Concannon, Con for short, retired from his very
successful business. I guess his business experience moved him a bit
to the right, to conservatism—a conservative just to the right of
the middle.
Then
there’s me. I think I’m pretty much a middle of the roader—except
for my passion to save our planet by reducing our population before
global warming, massive poverty and far-reaching famines decimate our
humanity. Hope this introduction makes our discussions make a bit
more sense.
It took less than ten hours from Los Angeles International Airport to touch down in Jingjing, the capitol of Kino. From what I had remembered as a boy, Kino was a province of China but in the late 90s it had been granted a freedom to experiment with social and political policies and with technology. Its progress has been even more spectacular than that of China, which is so big that changing fast is very difficult. When Kino fails in an experiment it doesn’t affect a billion people, as it did in China under the communist dictators. Kino can move forward more quickly and find solutions to problems that work in a modern and globalized world.
Kino, as a new country, didn’t have to endure the problems that plagued China during the 1900s. There were 40 years of war then 40 years of backward moving communism. But China is now making the progress that is rapidly bringing it to the leadership position of the world. Marco Polo would be proud. It practically owns the United States. The U.S. has bought trillions of dollars worth of Chinese goods and sold only a quarter of that amount to China. So China has been lending so much to the U.S. to keep it afloat that it practically owns New York and California!
China, of course, was a vast agricultural land with a rich cultural heritage, but a population crisis out of control. It had more than a billion people when I left Earth but it halved its yearly population increase. Here in Kino the ‘one child’ policy has been continued and modified. Kino now requires licenses to become parents.
In China the fertility rate has dropped to 1.3 per woman—less that the 2.1 required to replenish the parents and keep its population stable. Kino’s fertility rate is only 1.2. The millions of Chinese peasants of a few decades ago have been reduced as they have been absorbed by death or the cities. The uneducated masses have evolved into a highly educated citizenry which is astute in the ways of business and statesmanship. All this in a brief moment of history. It’s like a cosmic Siegfried and Roy changing a paper tiger into herd of lions at the snap of a finger. As effective as China has been, Kino is far ahead in its progress toward utopia.
Kino has had the opportunity to experiment in a modern “society based” society. That is, the rights of the society as a whole, rather than the rights of the individual citizens, are generally primary. They have also eliminated religion as a political force. A strong central government is in place. It requires the education of the citizens as to why improving the society will have more benefits for the average person than trying to pamper every individual’s desires, which are so often called ‘rights.’ It makes me wonder if these individual ‘rights’, that are generally based on individual selfishness rather than the social good, are at least in part responsible for the over two million prison inmates in my country. The big question is where is the best balance between the desires of individuals and the overall good of one’s society?
I was prepared to ride in a rickshaw from the airport, but my entourage and I were escorted from the jet by Madam Ching, the president of Kino, in a hydrogen powered limousine. There was no driver. The “electronic road grid” guided the car in and out of traffic. As we rode through the capital I was amazed by the cityscape. There were no rickshaws nor street sellers nor beggars. We sped along the elevated concrete freeways past tall steel and glass buildings which, I was told, were commercial enterprises and apartments. These buildings dwarfed those that I had seen many years ago in New York and Chicago. They were taller and broader than those with which I was familiar. But they were far more grand, not because of their immensity, but because of the touches of nature tastefully imbued into their architecture.
One edifice appeared to be that of a tree topped purple mountain, so familiar in the oriental paintings of days gone by. Another featured an immense waterfall cascading down its face. Larger than Niagara, more impressive than Yosemite, the silver falls bounced from level to level in a scene that even Nature couldn’t match. And in the mists of the falls, at every level, the reflected rainbows of a thousand suns. The Sino-simplicity of the Tao in the opulence of modernity—the evolved excellence of the previous millennia of Oriental inspiration.
As we approached the capital building where I was to be greeted at a reception, I marveled at the cleanliness of the city. It was so different from the land I remembered in the America I left behind 20 years ago. And my brief glimpses of California last week did nothing to rinse the memories of the graffiti, the trash on the streets, and even the fear for one's life-- at home, in places of business, and even while driving. The selfish lack of concern by so many of my fellow citizens had soured me on the potentials of science and the hope of technology in delivering a utopian society to us. But here in Jingjing was a city, and perhaps even a whole country, that seemed to be able to rise above the commonplace and to produce caring responsible citizens who were able to enjoy the benefits of human knowledge and to perfect the potentials of humanhood.
I walked up the marble steps of the Great Hall, not knowing what to expect from my visit. As I passed through the gigantic bronze gateway, reminiscent of Ghiberti's towering doors of the Duomo’s Baptistry, I mused, as did Michelangelo, that these "were fit to be the Gates of Paradise." While Ghiberti's masterpieces depicted the scenes from the Old Testament, these bronze doors of Kino depicted the age of civilization in both the East and the West. There were the depictions of Lao Tzu and Confucius from the East. There were the portrayals of the pharaohs' cultures. There was homage paid to the achievements of the university at Timbuktu and to the Muslim scholars to its east. There was a history of great philosophers of Greece—Democritus, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. There were panels allotted to Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and yes, even to Mao. Thank God he was given a spot low and close to Hell--as he may have deserved. The architects of splendor were recognized by their products--the Great Wall, the pyramids, the Parthenon, the Rhodes Colossus, the aqueducts of Rome. And there were Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, and of course, the Buddha. It was, indeed, like wandering through the vale of human history. And after having spent the last 20 years studying the annals of our recorded past, it was like a meeting with old friends.
Lucky for me, my language is still the major language of the elite of the world. My hosts were all able to converse with me. However their slang phrases escaped me. I guess that in my twenty years of travel a few new phrases had crept into the language. I had no idea of what was meant when one woman told me that my voyage had "frazzed" her.Or the young man who told me that my return had been a complete "gronsk" for his own education. With the world becoming smaller it was to be expected that slang from one language would invade that of another. But it left me completely "zerked." (Zerked, I found out is a Zuzu word for confused!)
It was not long before we were ushered into the dining area--a marbled hall reminiscent of old King Louie's Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. As the guest of honor I was seated by the President, the Minister of the People, and her husband. There must have been five hundred guests seated at these lace topped tables. The October afternoon sun sparkled from the crystal chandeliers and reflected in the wine goblets at my place. It strained my mind to realize that less than thirty years ago this land was a part of a communist country, where a few Communists ruled millions of peasants tending their rice paddies on the hillsides and in the valleys. In less than four decades these people had risen from a backward farming economy to perhaps the greatest economic power the world has known. How did this happen?
Madam Ching, as the Minister of the People, was the perfect person of whom to inquire about the control of population. Luckily she was eager to answer my queries. Of course she had a few of her own for me. She was interested in the questions of space--what did the planet Venus look like, how does it feel to be weightless, and what did I do to avoid boredom during those twenty years. And I was interested in how her country had come so far in the few short years since I had left. There was no question that the progress of Kino in the last thirty years was of far more import for the human race than was my voyage into space.
GLOBAL POLICIES
While the control of population was fascinating, I wanted to know a bit about the global policies of Kino and China during the last 30 years. I remember that even then, before their technological explosion, China was building militarily. They said that it was to protect themselves, but I wondered. The president informed me that they had not yet had a war and that in Kino they were keeping their armed forces at a minimal level in order to keep the population producing economically and scientifically--because military service is a non-productive, though often essential, appendage to a prosperous economy. Still, she warned, Kino was contemplating a war to stop the air and water pollution of the United States and Europe which was endangering the people and the economy of Kino and the world. The threat had forced the West to rapidly move to cleaning up the global mess that they had spewed on their brothers. The sanctity of nature is too dear to the hearts of the Kinese to let their world be trashed by their trading partners.
While our conversation filled and flooded my mind, the food and beverages flowed and filled my innards. Never having experienced a Kinese banquet, I found the repast to be an Epicurean ecstasy. The first course was a paper wrapped portion of grouse with oriental spices. I ate the whole thing. After thirty years of living on pellets and pills I would eat anything. But that morsel was delicious. To my amazement none of my hosts finished their servings. Next came a crow's nest soup. It sounded horrible but tasted great. I finished my bowl. My hosts each took one or two spoons full. Several courses later I was experiencing my fullness and slowed my intake. I was now following my hosts' example of a single bite per course. By the fortieth course I had not a milliliter of room in my stomach for another fraction of a bite. I would have asked for a doggie bag but we ate him in the 29th course. A hundred courses later the feast was finished. I thought I could not be more miserable--but then the speeches started.
Five hours of speeches droned on about the glory of my return. By the time they asked me to relate some of my experiences I had almost reached senility and practically forgot about my trip. But seriously, my hosts were so gracious and I was so happy to be the honoree at their celebration that I was mesmerized by the occasion. I managed a few words between the projected images of the flight that had been prepared for me by NASA. Shots of my landing on Jupiter seemed to be a highlight for them.
TOUR OF THE AREA
The next day I was privileged to be taken on a grand tour of the city and the surrounding area. The small farms, once tended by the peasants, had expanded into huge agricultural businesses--just as in my country. Much of the farming was hydroponic. Kino’s government did not give farm subsidies as they have in the continental Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and Korea.
Finally over lunch I had a chance to make some comments and ask Madam Ching some questions.
—“I’m
wondering about the economy of Kino. I wanted to see their
laboratories. I wanted to see some manufacturing. I’ve seen some
hydroponic greenhouses but I wanted to see what they were doing. Was
there any thought to providing subsidies to their agribusiness? Madam
Ching answered with a resounding “No.” to that question. She
explained that their approach is to produce things that pay—not to
pay to not produce. They believed that there were several negatives
to state subsidies.. For one, the taxpayers are paying big money to
big farmers to produce things that can be produced much more cheaply
in undeveloped nations. I have heard that Switzerland pays extremely
high subsidies. Why not just open more ski resorts and train the
farmers to teach skiing, or make fondue? The European Union often
pays a half billion euros to wine producers during poor growing years
which seems to be about every other year. Meanwhile 15 to 20% more
wine is being produced in the world than can be sold. Norway pays big
subsidies for farms with only one or two growing seasons out of four.
But I guess they need the farmers’ tractors in the winter to plow
the snow away from the roads—so they don’t want the farmers going
into the information technology businesses.
“In the U.S., the last I heard, the over 20 billion dollars a year of subsidies is nearly 25% of the total farm income. While it reduces the need for the products of the farmers in poorer nations, it keeps the major agri-businessmen in new tractors which they park next to their mansions. Did the cotton farmers really need that $3 billion to produce a product that can be produced more cheaply elsewhere? How many businesses are guaranteed a profit rain or shine? With a good crop farmers make a profit. With a bad crop Uncle Sam fills your piggy bank. And we certainly need farm subsidies for tobacco farmers. Without them the cardiologists and oncologists would need federal subsidies for not having enough pitiful patients lining their waiting rooms.
“The U.S. even pays dead farmers not to farm. A few years ago reporters found that over a billion dollars had been paid to dead farmers because the Department of Agriculture hadn’t done the required investigations. One had been dead for over thirty years. So I guess that we are one better than the Scandinavians, we have welfare from cradle to well beyond the grave!
“Perhaps the farm subsidies will end in about ten years as some have suggested but there are a bunch of millionaires who may object. I understand that among the farmers getting a large percent of the 50 plus billion dollars a year are the Queen of England and Ted Turner. God knows they need the money!
“The subsidies are essential to keep poor countries poor. They allow the farmers in the developed countries to undersell farmers whose countries can’t afford to subsidize them. Developing countries argue that government support for US and EU farmers enables them to offload produce at artificially low prices, often below the cost of production. Obviously this means unfair competition for poor producers. So the taxpayers may get back part of their taxes in cheaper steaks or strawberries.
“World cotton prices have never been lower but American cotton
farmers earn nearly twice as much for their crops because of the
subsidies. And the subsidies have been increased because of the
falling prices. America’s twenty thousand cotton farmers average
$5.000 a day each in subsidies. Because of the money in subsidies,
more cotton is being raised, even though it isn’t needed. Meanwhile
sub-Saharan African countries are losing hundreds of millions of
dollars a year in lost cotton income.Is this free enterprise a work?
Is this the object of globalization?
“The richest of the royalty
pick up their share. Queen Elizabeth received well over a million
dollars a year, Prince Charles nearly half a million. Other royals
receive hefty subsidies for farms that they have inherited from their
royal forebears. But the royalty of the rich also pick up their
share. The richest man in the UK picks up about a half million
dollars from the British tax payers while Ted Turner and David
Rockefeller were also reported to be plowing their fields in their
designer jeans.
“In the United States if you own land that was once farmed you can generally get a government handout. About $200,000,000 a year goes to people who don’t farm. Some make nearly a half a
million dollars a year for owning land that was once farmed. Using laws that were originally aimed at eliminating farm subsidies, the amount of money now paid out is higher than when it was given for farming. The amount is now high enough that large land owners who rented farmland are evicting their renters because they can make more money by not farming or renting. So tenant farmers have lost their jobs. In Texas rice farming has decreased by 60% under the new laws. But property owners can turn an extra profit by using their land for non-farming activities such as growing timber or grazing cattle. Much of this is because the federal government’s definition of farming does not require that one actually farms. Sounds like Humpty Dumpty’s view that a word means what I want it to mean.
“What started in the Depression era as a subsidy to help farmers survive, now hands out $25 billion to farmers and non-farmers even during profitable farming years. The amount spent is far more than is spent on welfare payments. As often happens, temporary or transitional payments often become permanent. There have been other effects also. Farmland prices have increased because they carry the guaranteed government payments with them. Because the non-farmed land is assessed as farmland, the local tax base is reduced so the rich owners pay much less in property taxes. It is so profitable to not farm that real farming is decreasing.
“The realities of politics in a democratic-republic is that to get the necessary votes for a measure you may have to take into consideration special interest groups like farmers, unions or businesses. There is also the political consideration to make a state become beholden to the political party that gives it the most money. So you wouldn’t expect politicians to let this sacred cow go un-milked. Consequently a large number of gentlemen farmers line up at the same taxpayer feed trough. If you think that this only happens in the West, just check out Japan’s generosity to dairy farmers. It’s nearly three times as generous as Uncle Sam!
“When President Bush asked for $120 billion to continue the war in Iraq, Democrats added $3.7 billion to the bill for their pork barrel interests. Representative Bishop from Georgia, a member of the Appropriations Committee, inserted $74 million to cover storage costs for peanuts. Peanut growers had contributed over $35,000 to his campaigns. Representative Farr of California added a $25 million subsidy for spinach growers who hadn’t protected their crops from the e coli bacterium which was a problem for consumers. They therefore lost money. The growers had donated over $30,000 to his campaigns. And so it goes in our republic, where lobbyists tilt the wheels of progress so that the governmental financial cart always follows the road to the casa de cash.
“As you might imagine, being a citizen of the “real” world, it’s the big guys that rake in most of the dough. But then they are the bigger contributors to the political races. We’re talking about tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the major players in agribusiness. The big guys get about 80% of all of the subsidies. I’ve rambled on, but I wanted to set the stage of your approach to farming.”
—“As
in all countries, when sufficient food is raised, other economic,
artistic, and philosophic activities can commence. An agricultural
surplus is the essential for every true civilization. As in the West,
our machinery and robots now do the work that the peasant and the
water buffalo used to do. So we don’t offer farm subsidies. The
farmers produce food and our free market economy sets the prices. We
pay more in our markets than you do, but our total cost for food is
less because our taxes don’t subsidize the food production. This is
a very different approach than yours. Forty percent of the EU’s
budget, $75 billion, goes to food subsidies. Why not just charge the
consumers for their food and reduce their taxes? Our food prices are
up, as are yours, as more farm land is used for biofuels and
fertilizer and transportation costs are up.”
THE HISTORY OF CHINA
Madam Ching was particularly proud of China’s rich and tumultuous history. She gushed, in an uncharacteristically Western pronouncement that:
“Long before the great teachers Lao Tzu and Confucius, long before Agamemnon attacked Troy, long before Abraham and Sarah—China is. As with every living organism, there are ups and downs, fits and starts, ebbs and flows. China was victimized throughout the Twentieth Century. No nation in history has risen from the bottom to the top as quickly as has China. It’s getting it right. And as former party leader Deng Xiaoping said ‘to get right is glorious.’
“It’s not to the top yet but it has shed the anchor of the teeming rabble through its population foresight, and it has risen to the surface. Everyone knows there are problems. There is a big gap between rich and poor. Civil liberties are barely surfacing. One party rule has many drawbacks. But the strong central government has made some good decisions, which outnumber its errors. It is unquestionably moving forward at a speed no other large country can match.”
I needed to find out more about China and how Kino fit in to the futuristic expanding puzzle. As I evaluated and internalized Madam Ching’s words I remember that when I was in elementary school I was aware of the fact that China had a population out of control with a subsistence economy not able to keep up with the expanding population. The nuns continually reminded us of ‘the poor starving children of China.’ I also knew that 20 years before I had left on my voyage that the country had begun a plan to limit every family to only one child.Deng Xiaoping was in charge in 1980 when the one child policy was initiated. Amid much grumbling, that plan had been effected and the population began to level off. In 2006 the decision was made to continue the policy.
It is projected that by 2050 China’s economy will be the biggest in the world. It is currently growing 3 times faster than that of the USA. It is growing at nearly 10% per year. It has had to overcome its banking and educational problems in order to become a truly great economy—and it has done these rapidly. Its currency increases in value. Its educational system is growing effectively. And the president wanted me to know that Kino was helping to show China the way.
The drop in China’s population has been unequaled in a peacetime world. While some countries have been nearly annihilated by the ravages of revolution or war, by the devastation of pandemic diseases such as the Black Death and the AIDS virus, or by the painful and pitiful deaths due to famine--a state directed peacetime drop in population such as I have seen here in Kino, and is evident in China, has no modern historical equivalent.
While the warriors of ancient Sparta may have challenged their newborns to test the elements on the barren hillside, thereby allowing for only the strongest to survive, no other example comes to mind in which a society's population has been so radically controlled
And so Kino, along with China, is on its way to being one of the great civilizations of history. And all because it chose to limit its population and allow for the maximal development of its citizens and its other natural resources. Their position is that it is not so important to reflect on the past but to control the future. This they are doing.
The area encompassing modern China has been active for over 5000 years. But since it was unified in 221 B.C., the supposedly unified country has been plagued by warring areas. The Communists put a stop to this by unifying the country, killing the protestors, developing economic plans and looking for solutions that would fit it into the technological world as it became more globally involved.
With the speed of communication in the world during the last thirty years it is difficult to hide the truth from the people. Whether it was the inefficiency of Soviet economic policies, the desire for a better life by the Chinese or the realities of the ill-conceived war in Iraq for the Americans and British—it doesn’t take long for the truth to be known. The ruling group whether Communists, Democrats, Tories, Republicans or Labour has to adjust to the realities of the world and the realistic possibilities for the people. So if the rulers want to stay in power, they must adjust or bust.
The Chinese Communists did this. While keeping a tight thumb on dissent, they opened their vast pool of labor to the capitalists. They allowed some religion, but made certain that Beijing, not Rome, Tibet or America, was in control. So the Communist government became an advocate of capitalism to survive. It may sound strange but even the young capitalists are members of the Communist Party. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, as long as it works.
ECONOMICS
China’s income gap provokes some alarm. Under Mao the Communist government took the land and property of the rich so that incomes could be leveled under state control. But while state run businesses are losing money the allowed capitalism is making great amounts of money. As is generally true, state run businesses tend to be inefficient. The profit motive and the real chance of business failure keep the private entrepreneurs on their toes. It reminds me of a state run shoe factory in the Soviet Union that exceeded its quota in shoe manufacture, but all the shoes were for left feet. Would a capitalist have allowed this to happen?
So soon the top 20% of the population made 50% of the money. Fifteen years ago the bottom 20% of the population made about 5% of the money. Today the minimum wages have increased that considerably. The lowest economic groups are no longer earning at a Third World rate of a dollar a day. They are out of the poverty levels and they are moving up the economic ladder quickly. More need for workers combined with more jobs has driven wages way up. This, then, has driven the price of their exports up.
The Chinese yuppies are following the American way of pursuing money and the things it can bring—less free time but more material accouterments. The rich have a huge amount of money to spend on such things as French perfume, designer clothes, and high tech computers. The young children of prosperous Chinese have been spoiled by the unlimited supply of money from their rich fathers. Just like in the US, it often happens that when a person hasn’t earned something he doesn’t appreciate it and he stays an emotionally selfish person. There is no sense of responsibility. This runs exactly counter to the rules Confucius found to be necessary for an orderly society. Without a sense of order and some feeling of duty and responsibility you have anarchy, not society. Madam Ching informed me that in Kino they work to insure that the valuable traditions of the past are honored and adhered to. Of course those that are counter to developing a cooperating democracy we minimize or forget.
In the late 90s in China the entrepreneurial types often pirated clothes, music, films. They had decided to beat free enterprise at its own game. The government looked the other way as long as it didn’t cost them anything. Motorola taught them how to make phones, then some Chinese made them cheaper and took many of the markets. This has led to foreign firms keeping their research away from the natives. So the Chinese had to become part of the established world economy. If you want to partake in the spoils of globalization, you had better follow the rules of the ‘globalizers.’ And they don’t take kindly to patent or copyright infringements.
But most Chinese are relatively poor—some extremely poor. This has forced many young girls into prostitution—because it is harder for women to find and keep jobs than it is for men. This has forged questions of values—the self centered values of the West are conflicting with the societal values espoused by the earlier Communists and the traditional societal values of Confucius. What should be the principles of fairness and justice for their society. Should there be the economic equality that Marx desired? But such equality has only been found in the monasteries and convents of the Christians and Buddhists.
--“In
the West, laws and unions have given the workers more money, but the
Communist government has not yet done this. First there must be work,
then there must be more benefits from that work. In Kino we have had
the financial blessings of China and have increased the real wages,
including retirement and health care benefits. China will follow us
after its first goal of full employment is met.
“Of course the workers want more and faster benefits from their labor. But the evolution of economic benefits must come from the top down. The Soviet Union tried a more equalitarian distribution of wages. It didn’t work.
“We were able to speed up the process here in Kino because of the extra money given us and the fact that our labor force was more intellectual. Hand labor and factory labor is just not that valuable when there are plenty of hands available to do the work. Realistically there is a quality of labor that has to be recognized. A person with a vision, who has the necessary knowledge and a work ethic, is more valuable than someone who can merely clean up a hotel room. Just about anyone can do that. But how many people have the expertise to design a fuel-efficient auto engine or develop a Microsoft or a Google? In Western free enterprise a person’s vision and ability is honored financially. When such concepts are developed, the financial rewards will either trickle or flood down. People who are academically prepared and have shown that they can perform will be in great demand. Some of the rewards are financial, others are in acquiring status, and still others in job satisfaction. We think that each of these potential rewards is worth pursuing. Seeking rewards just because you are a human being does not fit in our system. You must be a valuable part of the system—making contributions.
“Mao’s vision tended to work to put things on a more equal footing. In Kino we believe that real equality of opportunity must start with effective parenting, this is followed by equal educational opportunity which is available without charge throughout one’s lifetime. Then we expect the person to produce, as a researcher, policeman, teacher, business person, et cetera. And when a person is producing effectively that real progress must be rewarded.
“Our societal fundamentals are somewhat similar to the ideas of Ashley Montagu and Sigmund Freud who said that to be a useful citizen a person must be able to love and work. The love input begins with choosing parents who are able to love. We continue children’s nurturing in schools by following your American pattern of teaching children to take turns. They must realize that each person is important at an early age. Then the schools teach the responsibility to be productive. And, of course, the major effort of the schools is the help to develop the tools that civilization has found to be essential, along with the knowledge and skills necessary to compete and produce in this modern ever-changing world. So our education system emphasizes logical development through studying philosophy and logic. We study and practice physical activity as part of the general knowledge of mental and physical health. We study the psychological and social sciences, particularly history. And we study mathematics and the natural sciences. Academic achievement is recognized and rewarded.
“We emphasize honesty as essential in a society based on social values. Criminal behavior is severely punished. Organized crime that is so evident in many countries has not gained a foothold here.
Petty crime is also severely punished. So we attack dishonesty through both punishment and through social disapproval. An apprehended criminal fears the shunning of the society. We guard against the anti-social groups that might applaud crime, such as your youth gangs and mafias.
“One of our biggest problems was in making government workers honest. Graft seems to be a way of life in most societies, especially the traditionally poorer states. It is still prevalent in China, but has been wiped out here. We are now rated with Finland as the most graft-free countries.”
It was evident that people had moved to where manufacturing could be accomplished. This had already started before my voyage, and businesses of the West had flocked to Kino to take advantage of their relatively low wages and their high quality products. The strong work ethic of the Kinese, stimulated by the opportunity for monetary rewards had catapulted their economy which sped like a spaceship to a level never before seen in the history of business.
While much of the technological know-how was learned or bought from the United States and Western Europe, the post-socialist Kinese left here to learn at the great universities of the world, today the many great universities are here. Cutting edge research in medicine, genetics, engineering and even the humanities have made the universities of Kino the envy of every other country. And probably its greatest academic achievement is that it has only one law school, and, just as in the U.S., it seldom attracts top students. Legal cases are decided primarily through computer programs. Since there is no monetary incentive to sue rich companies it is not done. It is the job of the government to legislate away problem industries. Accident and divorce settlements, harassment charges, contract issues and employment problems are all programmed into the computers that evaluate the application of laws for the society. The legal system is based on the simpler Napoleonic law which is based on the actual statutes rather than on the Common Law that has given Englishmen and Americans so many ways to get around the statutes enacted by their legislatures.
THE SOCIETY OF KINO—CONTRASTED WITH CHINA
The president reminded me that “Confucius said that the essentials of good government are sufficient food, sufficient armament and the confidence of the people. It is the confidence of the people that is primary. ‘Rotten wood may not be carved, nor can a wall be plastered with manure.’(1)I wondered where are Kino and China in terms of coping with today’s economic and ethical problems? Madam Ching filled me in saying that:
--“There
have been some benefits from globalization. There certainly is more
money in our country. As the Chinese population becomes richer it
buys more cars and oil, more electronics products, uses more water,
pollutes more air and does all of the same negative things that the
advanced economies of the U.S., Japan, Korea and Europe do. When the
Chinese people have as many cars per capita as they do in the U.S.A.
it will require 80 million barrels of oil per day to run them. But
the world production of oil is only 64 million barrels a day and th0e
available reserves are not increasing. There is a finite supply of
oil.
“The low economic end of the Chinese society, and even people higher up the money mountain often turn to drugs for solace. Many youth have become heroine addicts. Heroin addiction in many parts of the country help in fueling the AIDS crisis. Over 20 million are now infected through freer sex and contaminated needles.
“Drugs have been a long term problem in China with opium apparently being brought to us in the 7th and 8th centuries by the Arabs, then by the British in the 18th Century, there has been a long history of opiate use. And the government has always fought bitterly against it. We lost the opium wars to the British so were forced to allow opium imports. Under the Communists drug use took a big drop. But now there is some money to buy oneself out of unhappiness and powerlessness, so the false hope of psychoactive chemicals has reappeared, particularly among the young. The Chinese government has executed a number or drug dealers and importers, but the problem persists.
“In Kino we have had little problem with psychoactive drugs. Part of the education required for parent licensing deals with drug education. Why people use them. How to see the symptoms of drug use. And mainly how to be loving parents. We think that is the major key—loving children and educating them. We believe that if children feel good about themselves as children and youth they won’t have the need to escape their reality. Then if we educate them about the many negative consequences of drug use, they will not have the inclination to experiment.
“We also have mandatory blood tests throughout the year in schools and work places. We test primarily for diseases and drug use. We want to catch any potential problem for an individual and for the society while it is in its infancy. It is much more difficult to solve a mature addiction or a pandemic disease.
“In Kino the social inequities found in China have been largely eliminated. Women and men have equal opportunities for education, jobs and pay. There is therefore no need for aborting female fetuses.
“There is still the official need to keep population controlled. While population reduction would have been undesirable in an agricultural country, it is highly desirable in a developing technological country. With fewer people a greater percentage of the youth can be highly educated. Automated factories produced more goods which resulted in more money for the relatively fewer people in our society. As the per capita income grew the standards of living became increasingly higher.
“It was not long before we had surpassed both China and your country, where your national debt has engulfed your "huddled masses" while you taxed your workers to pay for the non-producers. Kino has blended the ethical concerns and the industriousness of our Chinese traditions with a free thinking scientific method that it applied to directing our society. While we have some democratic tendencies, enough to keep the people happy by thinking that they are in control, we also have a strong central government which has the power to enforce traditional ethical beliefs as laws and to develop the necessary societal directions which, while sometimes suppressing what you call freedoms, assured a better life for the future of our citizens and their children.
“In Kino the government annually determines how many babies are needed for that year. We then issue that many licenses to the highest qualified potential parents. We sometimes allow for more licenses than we actually need, especially if particularly effective parents apply. Generally, though, we want to reduce our population.
“As other developed countries have found, as women move up the economic ladder they often choose their vocation to the exclusion of having children. For some, being a brain surgeon or a senator, far outweighs the expected joys of parenthood—and it certainly reduces the responsibilities. For those who want both we have inexpensive child care or we can split jobs so that the child’s caretaker, whether it be the father or the mother, can do both. Once the child is in school most of the problems are over—assuming that the parent works a normal 7 to 9 hour day.
“Being an effective parent is essential to having intelligent and mentally stable citizens. So we assign a monetary value to caretaking and factor that into the state’s cost of progressing socially and economically.
“China was an innovator millennia ago. But as the centuries passed the burden of overpopulation and wars brought it to a subsistence economy. Communism held back the natural intelligence and industriousness of the Chinese people. It moved toward superpower status only at the turn of this millennium. Still with a billion people it was difficult to get into gear. The central government therefore cut our province loose from our parent country so we were free to experiment and prosper, hoping that we could find a better and quicker way for the whole country of China to move.”
--
“Madam Ching, while my main concern is your population control
strategy, I’d like to know some more about other areas of the
economic and social aspects of your country and how they compare and
contrast with both China and the West. Let’s start with health. As
a former professor of health education I am certainly interested in
this area.”
HEALTH CONCERNS
--
“We have looked at some of China’s problems, and problems from
the rest of the world and tried to eliminate them. For example, China
has 320 million smokers. 90% of adult males smoke. That’s about
twice the world’s rate. Smoking now accounts for one in 8 deaths in
China but will rise to 1 in 3 by 2050 if the current trends continue.
In China this has significantly increased health care costs. Nearly
60% of doctors smoke, most people still don’t know the risks of
lung and other cancers or the major killer from smoking-- heart
disease. It is true that the antioxidants in green tea seem to reduce
some of the negative effects of smoking. So we may not have quite as
many problems from smoking as you do in the West.
“However in Kino we have very high taxes on tobacco and we require a license to use tobacco products. The terms of that license are that smoking related problems will not be covered by the national health insurance. So the various cancers that are tobacco related, such as lung and mouth cancers, emphysema, high cholesterol or high blood pressure related heart problems are not covered by the regular state supplied insurance. But people can purchase additional insurance for smoking related diseases. Of course it is quite expensive.
“We begin our tobacco, alcohol and other drug education programs in the first year of school. We also have television ads against smoking and we do not allow actors to smoke on screen for TV or movie programs. Any film that shows a person smoking is not allowed in our country. Film producers know this so they either cut or re-do the scenes with tobacco in them. We are a large market for films so we command respect and compliance by the film producers.
“In our education we also show the moral decadence of smoking and how it is a harmful, but simple, way for people to soothe their inferiority complexes. Just look at the way your advertising is geared to being important, sensual and powerful. Whether it is the macho Marlboro man or the successful woman in the Virginia Slims ads, tobacco advertising is geared to showing that you can be better than you are just by lighting up. But no sense spending time on the psychology behind it because I know you will go much more in depth into motivations when you talk with Chuck Chan in Singaling.
“Suffice to say that no intelligent person would ever smoke, unless somehow earlier addicted. After all, tobacco addiction is rated as the most difficult or the second most difficult drug from which to withdraw. The difficulty stems to a large degree from the fact that while most drugs give either an upper or a downer effect, tobacco gives both. It stimulates like adrenaline and it calms by acting like the calming neurotransmitter acetylcholine. So when you withdraw from the drug you have both the crashing effect of an upper drug like cocaine or methamphetamine and the hyper-excitability of a heroin type downer. Of course the withdrawals are not nearly as severe as withdrawing from cocaine or heroin, but they occur together so you have dual and opposite nervous system reactions simultaneously.
“A new international study confirms that exposure to cigarette smoke before and after birth impairs the lung function of the child. Parental smoking remains a serious public health issue after the birth of the child also. Therefore smoking automatically eliminates one from obtaining a license to parent in Kino. It is not only the lung function that is affected, but a large percentage of attention deficit disorders seem to be smoking related.
“There are over a hundred chemicals in tobacco smoke. One of the most harmful is carbon monoxide which, as you know, makes the blood less efficient by cutting down on oxygen transportation. This can potentially reduce the optimal development of all body organs.
“While the negative effects of smoking on an infant begin during pregnancy, the negative effects continue for the child or adult while living with the smoker. The smoking by an expectant mother is a highly negative factor for the infant, but the second hand smoke of an expectant father begins its damage to the unborn infant due to the effects of carbon monoxide and other tobacco chemicals. That second hand smoke from the father or mother continues to be a negative for the child. For that reason smoking is not allowed in a household if parents are to be licensed to have a child.”
“It seems that the developing body may be susceptible to different toxins at different stages of development. In animal studies, alcohol damages an embryo within the first 4 days of life. As you know alcohol can kill nerve cells in adults, so you can imagine what it can do to a developing embryo or fetus. It and other drug use are also related to faulty nervous system development and to related neurological problems. So alcohol use is forbidden for licensed parents beginning a month before they can attempt to conceive.
“Our bodies are susceptible to so many toxins. For example the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs that come from smoke like tobacco smoke, wood burning and barbequing smoke and the meat b0arbequed can harm both adults and children. The combination of genetic and environmental problems are responsible for a large number of children’s physical and mental problems, so we try to reduce the potential problems through licensing responsible people to have children.”
--“How
is your health care handled?”
--
“Our health insurance follows the long standing Chinese principle
of paying the doctor when you are well but not when you are sick. So
our health insurance payments go to the doctors monthly. Those health
insurance costs are paid by the people. Every family pays a part.
There are discounts for regular effective exercising. Exercise
attendance is monitored by the various sport and fitness clubs, or
for those who want to exercise alone, like bike riders or surfers, by
heart monitor records that are downloaded in people’s computers and
sent daily to the National Health Registry. Factors such as
overweight, cholesterol and other blood measurements are submitted by
the doctors after a person’s annual physical exam.
“We recognize that regular exercise is more important for one’s health than are many drugs and operations. And weight control is essential too. Just look at the heart disease and diabetes rates between our two countries. Our people are trim and active, yours are often obese media mongrels reclining with their trusted companion, the TV’s remote control. Of course we have never been addicted to fats as you people have, so we haven’t had to go on reduced fat diets. With our traditional Asian diet we were already there.
“Just a few preventive life style changes could reduce your health care bills by 30 to 40%.Your own research shows that half of your deaths were attributed to preventable exposures or behaviors. (2) We see your citizens as looking for pills, gadgets and operations to fill all your mental and physical health needs. Whether it’s plastic surgery, psychiatry or pep pills, you search for a better self through science—not self-discipline. That goes against the basic tenets for our people. We believe that we should be0 responsible for ourselves as much as is humanly possible.
“In our society we believe that people should be responsible for themselves and pay for what they need. So while we have nationalized health insurance we don’t have socialized medicine in which every person is entitled to care just because he is human. We believe that he must be a responsible human. You can imagine that we keep the national actuaries busy sorting out the increased and decreased risks for every health problem and ascertaining the increased or decreased costs for every individual for every condition. But our 30 years of in depth studying of health and disease gives us the largest continuous study of a population. We’ve taken your Framingham Study and expanded it by a factor of thousands.” Of course since smoking is estimated to kill a billion people this century, maybe it should be encouraged—at least in other countries.”
MEDICAL COSTS IN THE U.S.
--“I
like your ideas Madam President. But in my country the medical costs
increase throughout life and through retirement. Doctors’ fees are
up, hospital costs are up, prescription drugs costs are up.“
--“Don’t
your lawyers have a part in this?”
--“Yes,
a big part. When they sue an effective doctor, whether they win or
lose, malpractice insurance rates go up. Naturally this has to be
reflected in the doctor’s cost of doing business. Then because of
the fear of legal actions doctors order every possible test for a
condition. This can then be used as a defense should a patient sue.
These costs are then reflected in the medical fees paid by the
patient, by the insurance company or by the state or the national
health insurance coverages. Many medical malpractice cases never get
to court. They are settled out of court because the defending lawyers
have no idea as to what a jury will award. And by settling the lawyer
gets his 30 to 40% easily. Juries don’t always concern themselves
with the facts. But that can be expected because people are more
psychological than logical. So if a lawyer is an effective
psychologist, the jury can be worked to think in terms of sympathy
for the plaintiff rather than justice and can award an undeserving
victim millions in your legal lottery.
“If the doctor had a jury of his peers, all with M.D. degrees, more cases would go to court and the suing lawyers would find that such suits were not profitable for them to pursue. But since juries are generally made up of poorer citizens, often with minimal educations, the lawyers know they can get settlements based on appeals to emotions. In our court system emotional appeals usually trump the facts. And for lawyers it is about winning and making money—not justice. Do you have such legal problems in Kino?”
KINO’S LEGAL APPROACH
--“No.
We use a computerized legal approach. It does the analysis of facts
computed against the laws. We don’t have lawyers making 35 to 40%
contingency fees on any settlement. It keeps our medical bills down.
And it keeps the awards in all lawsuits fair.”
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
--“In
America there’s another factor that keeps our medical costs up.
American consumers pay a good part of the research costs of new
drugs. When pharmaceutical companies bid for a whole country, as they
do in countries with socialized medicine, they come in with low
prices. As a result drugs cost less in most other countries. If you
compare the cost of identical drugs in the U.S. with the costs in
Mexico, Spain, Greece or any other country, you find the U.S. is much
higher.”
--“In
Kino we don’t have much of a pharmaceutical industry here so we
must rely on other countries to develop and test their drugs. We
believe that we should share in that development cost as part of the
drug expense. But we don’t want to share in the marketing costs. In
your country the doctors’ offices may have more drug company
representatives in their waiting rooms than they have patients. To
the degree that they are informing doctors, we think that is OK. But
to the degree that they are influe0ncing doctors to use equal or
inferior drugs, we think that is uncalled for.
“We also have a rule that we will not accept research articles from doctors who are accepting money from drug companies. Our medical journals accept only untainted research. We do allow the pharmaceutical companies to cooperate on drug reports for each disease condition. However, the research they present must be unbiased. If we find untruthful statements in a report, that company’s drugs are not allowed to be sold in our country for five years. The reports vary with disease. So if the report is on prostate cancer, all drug companies are invited to submit their drug information regarding prevention and cure. Our panel of experts thoroughly examines all of the research used to back up the claims. We pay the expert panel for their time. The report is then available to any of our physicians who request it. We don’t allow media advertising by pharmaceutical companies in which they attempt to influence the potential patients. We let the medical experts, not the patients, determine the need for a drug.
“Just look at the ridiculous way your government handled the Medicare drug bill a few years ago. Many low income people who had been getting their drugs free from the pharmaceutical companies were prohibited from doing so. They had to make additional payments into the national coffers for drugs and the drug companies were guaranteed top dollar on the sales because the law specifically prohibited Medicare from bargaining with them for lower prices. Yet all other countries and some U.S. agencies, like the Veterans Health Administration and the Defense Department were doing just that.
“We want to be fair to the pharmaceutical companies, but we’re not going to play Daddy Warbucks to their Orphan Annie! A major difference between our country and yours is that we look out for the good of the whole society first, then we consider the desires of the citizens. We don’t allow lobbyists to influence our decisions.
DEMOCRACY AND----WESTERN STYLE TEENAGERS-DRUGS, CLOTHES, SEX
“China has been effective economically and is moving slowly towards a Western style of thinking, which many call democracy. Unhappily the worst aspects of your democracy—the self centered aspect—are the first things that attract people’s attention. It allowed the young in China to emulate their Western cousins—p0eroxided California blonds, rave parties, gratuitous uncaring and unprotected sex, and the selfishness that accompanies the promise of freedom. But self-centeredness is not the essential of democracy. It is instead the basis for a lack of responsibility—for license! It is pure democracy to vote your self centered interests. But this is a far cry from the visions of an enlightened democracy for all the people. Whether we look at the ancient Athenians’ democracy only for the male citizens, or the thinkers of the Enlightenment who envisioned a broader seat of power, they wanted a political power of educated, wise and socially conscious citizens. Wise political philosophers expected that the electorate’s decisions would evolve heavenward, lifting the population with them. But as psychologists might well have predicted, selfishness is more likely to be the immediate goal of those who can’t see past today. Self interest is expected, but enlightened self interest should be the goal.
Download this book for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-24 show above.)