What is the village where the fishermen live?
Hello. I'm Mike, a lawyer living in Hong Kong.
Last time I wrote a story about a fisherman and a consultant. (This is a completely original story. For the sake of the story, the setting is Japan and the season is summer.
Oh dear. The fisherman muttered to the consultant.
"Why don't you come over and have dinner with us?"
"I'm glad to hear that. I'll take your word for it and feel free to drop by."
The fisherman put his catch in a box and walked off, followed slowly by the consultant. The fisherman then walked towards a small meeting place just opposite the pier. There was a fish tank at the entrance with fish swimming in it, and at the back was a restaurant. He went in, said a few words and came out with some of his catch in the fish tank.
As you leave the pier, you are surrounded by well-kept rice fields. After a short walk up the gentle slope between the fields, several old houses with beautiful tiled roofs appear on the side of the road. The fisherman went into one of them. The consultant followed him. We were shown into a large dining room with an island kitchen, which was a calm antique modern space. It is moderately air-conditioning.
In the kitchen, the wife has already started to prepare the meal. Two children are playing in the garden. Then a young man appears on the porch.
"'Hello, ma'am. I picked this in the field this morning, I'll leave you some."
"Thank you. Just in time. Why don't you come and have dinner with us?"
"You're sure? I'm sorry to bother you."
The meal was thus a lively affair for six people. The fishermen sautéed the fish and made a steamed vegetable salad with the vegetables we had been given. There was also rice with bamboo shoots, miso soup and boiled vegetables. The young man brought a lot of vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, okura, etc., but they were all crooked, uneven in size or had insect bites.
"We don't use pesticides on our food. It doesn't matter if it's a bit crooked, or if there are insects on it, you can get them off by washing it. We make our own miso and grow our own rice. Every spring we get enough bamboo shoots to last us a year in the mountains behind our house, so we eat bamboo shoots all year round."
The young man who brought the vegetables was a young artist who lived in the house next door. After a leisurely meal, the consultant was invited by the artist to see the house next door. It was an old house of the same construction as a fisherman's house and he had taken down the partitions and was using it as his studio. There are many of his studies in the house.
"I'm just starting out, but this is where I'm based. I'm just starting out, but I use this place as a base for my creative work and it's convenient for me to exhibit my work at different festivals. Here I don't have to worry about food, shelter or anything else. Even when I'm sick. It's also very stimulating because you meet so many different people. Some are musicians, others are professors who teach philosophy or the universe. Maybe I'll even find a patron."
Back at the fisherman's house, the children of the neighbourhood are gathered around an old lady. They seemed to be chatting happily, but if you listened carefully you could see that the lady was telling the children about the local history. It seems to be something that happened here during the Warring States period. The fisherman sometimes intervenes from behind, and the conversation continues. It is like a comic story and the children enjoy listening to it.
The fisherman decided to have a little siesta, so the consultant decided to take a walk around the village. He is a bit curious about the village.
The pleasant scenery invites you to wander along the path between the fields. The rice fields are full of ears of rice, and next to them the grapes will soon be ready for harvest. The path between the fields is well-kept, and a small waterwheel is turning in the canal beside it. I look up and see a beautiful blue sky. It's the kind of place a consultant would want to live in if he were a millionaire.
When I was walking along the path between the baby steps, an elderly lady was working in the field. When I greeted her, she smiled, took a break from her work and started talking.
"Oh, hello there. You don't look familiar. Where have you come from? It's a nice place, take your time. He gave me a cucumber. All the people who live here know each other, so if someone comes who doesn't know you, you can easily recognize him. It's like a child being brought up by the whole village."
"Does this field belong to my aunt?"
"No, the fields and paddy fields here belong to everyone in the village. We take it in turns to take care of the fields. It's like a community event. So we share the produce with everyone in the village. It's natural for us to grow and share within the village.
"But not all of us work in the fields, do we?"
"Everyone who works for the village is the same. The doctor treats the villagers and the teacher teaches the children. The doctor treats the villagers, the teacher teaches the children and I am in charge of growing the vegetables for the villagers to eat. So vegetables, medicine and education are free."
"'Does that mean the village has good benefits?
"Not exactly. What we mean by 'village' is a community run by the villagers. The village is not funded by a governmental body, but by the villagers who are members of the community, who each provide their own labour, which is enjoyed by the whole community. Food, medical care and education are the bare necessities of life, right? That's why they don't sell or buy them for money. It's like a big family that helps each other. We believe that the minimum necessities of life are socially important capital that is shared by all villagers and should not be owned by individuals. The same goes for the mountains, the rice fields, the fields and the clean air. The same goes for roads, beaches, water and electricity. Have you seen the waterwheels in the canals? That's a small hydro-electric system that is managed and used by everyone. Also the hospital, the school, the art and the culture. So in this village we don't need to pay to use the fields, the hospital, the electricity, the water, the roads. It's called "local production for local consumption" or "self-sufficiency". Anyway, we have everything we need to live culturally in this village."
"I still don't know what's going on. But you need money to live, don't you?"
"The individual villagers have a normal economic life. If you sell a TV, you get paid. It's not common property. If we have extra rice or vegetables from the common property, we sell them to tourists, or we ship them outside the village for sale. So as soon as you treat it as a marketable commodity, whether inside or outside the village, it has a price and it is traded. Even in the village there is trade. But in the world, everything is traded on the market, so vegetables are converted into money, just like television. That's why in this village we have a system where vegetables are shared among the members of the village. As long as they are in the community, they can't be sold on the market. Of course, there are businesses in the village that sell vegetables and fish as products. But the village doesn't want to make a profit from them and turn them into a big industry. It's enough to pay for the maintenance of the common capital. In the first place, once we have caught enough fish for our own consumption and for our disaster reserves, we don't catch any more, so we can only sell a limited amount. It's also better for the environment."
"Aren't you interested in making money?"
"Capitalist money-making? Well, some of us do make money. Outside the village. Sometimes you hear about young people from the village who have made it in the city. That's fine. But to do that you have to work for 10 or 20 years without a second thought. That's no time for yourself. If I were you, I'd spend that time doing my own research, doing what I love. The same goes for the people here. We don't work much. We have a lot of time to study economics, mathematics, science, to develop new technologies, to get together and discuss philosophy. As Steve Jobs would say. I'm an economist. I'm actually an economist. I still teach at the university from time to time. I'm here every night with my neighbours, drinking and discussing economics. Why don't you come and live here? We can discuss the rest there."
I was getting a bit confused, so the consultant said goodbye and left the lady economist. The sun was already setting and it was beginning to get dark, so I went to the fisherman's house to say a few words of thanks before heading back to the hotel. The fisherman and his wife were just going out with their clothes on. We went to the fisherman's house to say thank you.
"Thank you very much. I'm going home now. Where to by the way?"
"There's an open-air concert on the beach. "There's going to be an open-air concert on the beach, organised by a group of Parisian opera singers who stay here every summer. Afterwards I'm going to have a drink and talk politics with my friends, as usual."
The consultant returns to the hotel with a look of disappointment on his face. If we live like this, our companies will not do well. There will be no economic growth and GDP will be stagnant. It's absolutely ridiculous. We're in a climate crisis now, so we need to find companies that can develop new technologies and put together research. The SDGs are also an important consideration as it is about impact investing. Muttering these words, I set to work on the investor report that I had to finish by the end of the week.
Well, we'll see you next time.
