Urban ecology (Sociology) -- Japan; Urban renewal -- Japan
It is quite true that, after a certain point, one needs no more
agricultural products since stuffing oneself full might bring
about digestive disorders. An excess of other products will not
bring about indigestion, and as long as one has a place to put
them, it is possible to have many in order to feed one's vanity.
It is the market principle that takes advantage of this one weak
point of agriculture.
The market principle -- another way of expressing this is
"business." For example, the price of eggs is not decided as a
result of competitive selling on the market; in actuality, a few
market big shots make the decision after seeing how many and what
kind of eggs are being shipped into the market at Tokyo. Local
prices are based upon the price in Tokyo, so when Tokyo gets a
lot of eggs, the price in other places is low even if there are
not enough eggs. Therefore the market principle is a business
technique, the art of wheeling and dealing.
Back a hundred or so years ago, this was a tea-producing region.
Every year at tea-picking time the broker would visit the
farmers. "This year the price of tea is higher than ever. Give it
everything you've got, and pick every last leaf."
Joyful at the news, the farmers would work their hardest,
squeezing every last bit out of their tea fields. The broker,
watching for the moment when the tea was ready, would run
breathlessly to the farmers with a telegram in hand: "This is
terrible! I've just received a telegram from Yokohama -- the
price for new tea has fallen to rock bottom!" Thus it was the
simplest thing for the merchant to use business technique to
deceive the farmers.
Thus the merchants, waving the golden banner of "market
principle," used the necessity and preservability of agricultural
products to their own advantage. We must not fall for such
tricks. Food is none other than that which supports life. Even if
the harvest brings in more than is needed, the food that ends up
in the stomachs of the idlers must have, as that which supports
their lives, a very great value. If, Mr. Ibuka, agriculture has
only 1/1,500th the productive capacity of industry, then
agricultural produce must have 1,500 times the value of
industrial products, right? This is the true market principle,
and the just appropriation of value. A proper deal would exchange
1,500 transistor radios at
30,000 each for one bag of rice.
Thus the market principle is a tricky scheme whereby the
merchants do the same with the essential portion of agricultural
produce (i.e., that which goes into the bellies of the idlers) as
they do with the excess -- they cause the price to hit rock
bottom. In Nature, where there is no such scheming, there is also
no market principle. No matter how many zebras there are, if all
it takes is one to fill the belly of a lion, the lion will find
infinite value in that one zebra.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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