70 years on - where would the world be without Hirohito

Thanks to Japanese graduate Ben Bensai for appreciation of Norman Macrae

Finding miracles – Norman Macrae

Posted in Economics, Japan, Publishing ¶ Leave a reply

The Economist’s anonymity policy makes it somewhat difficult for individual journalists to rise to fame. It’s thus not surprising that the death of Norman Macrae in 2010 did not create more widespread coverage given that he spent his entire career with the weekly paper. With Macrae, though, the world lost one of its most formidable journalists that had a very special connection to Japan.

For other under 30s who would like to join us  please write me chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk
Dear Ben: Thank you for your article on my father Norman Macrae. Dad was one of the last alumni of Keynes. If you have read the last chapter of Keynes General Theory you will know that Keynsians believe "increasingly only economists rule the world" ie their rules lock in exponentially most of what will be possible for youth out of particular places.

help translate sino-english world record book of jibs creators- context

World Record Book of Job Creation

Part 1 Innovative System Views of Economists

Part 2 Mapping Top 100 World Record Job Creators  (E-s) (W-N)

 by friends at http://normanmacrae.ning.com

Part 1

1943-68 Chapter 1 Economist: western history is dismal, god bless worldwide girls and boys

Chapter 2 68 -72 Future journalism must be optimistic whilst realizing how inequiatable Industrial Revolution’s Era had been

 Chapter 1

During his last days as a teenager navigating Royal Airforce Planes over modernday Bangladeshand Myanmar,  dad Norman Macrae didn’t know he would be one of the lucky ones.

In the 15 years after worldwar 2 , Norman

Studied at Cambridge where he was one of the last to be tutored in Keynes general system of monetary theory – design systems to end poverty and celebrate youth’s better livelihoods out of every community

Married the daughter of the Mumbai chief justice who spent 25 years mediating the peaceful resistance of Mahama Gandhi before Sir Kenneth’s last job : writing up te legalese of India’sIndependence

Celebrated that the America-led allies didn’t make the mistake of world war 1 reparation of punishing the beaten peoples. Both West Germany and Japan were given a fair chance to redevelop theor peoples and lands peacefully and economically which they took.

Norman did worry about Russia’s future control of Eastern Europe. His father was a British consul so he had been a child in Moscow’s British embassy while Stalin exterminated peoples. So Norman was glad to be the only journalist at Messina celebrating the peaceful conception of te European Union. But he was soon to rue how the idea of free markets for small entrepreneurs was soon turned into the bureaucratic opposite.

Norman also worried about national health and pension plans which were clearly ponzi schemes launched by old 1950s politicians that would one day disadvantage most of Europe's youth once the population bubbles moved from youth to elderly. 

LOOK EAST YOUNG GIRL

This was part of the reason why he took great jpy in discovering around 1960 that his old enemy Japan had developed a new economic  model. Here was the way out of the empire trap that had designed world trade around zero-sum games in which the empire gained and the colonized lost. Quality systems (which the Japanese learnt from the American electrical engineer Deming) and applied especially in civil engineering such a s bullet trains and electronic calculators (the pathway to computing and space) offered win-win markets to multiply world trade round. Soon the chinese diaspora was mapping the east’s superports with the result that adfer usa japan became the second largest financial network and chinese diaspora the third

Norman narvelled that Kennedy could set several thousands brains and computer networks on a successful race to the moon. But for Norman the significance of this achievement was what would happen next back on earth. Norman declared in 1968 the challenge that became his lifelong exploration – what will happen to children of the 21^st century with 2015 destined to be spending over 1000 times more on the technolpgies of connectivity. (Normans back of he envelope artithemn – moores law of doubling every 7 years of spend on the technology from 1946 to 2015)

Norman knew enough about local to global system designs to know that the 21^st C would come of age spinning either the best of times or the worst of times. What sustainability goals would need to be collaborated around with as much positive human energy as the moon race

Some world record job creators to follow up from chapter 1

E90 Akio Morita, E91 Taiichi Ohno, E92 Eiji Toyoda

W90 Deming and E99 Hirohito,  W91 Macarthur, W92 Beate Sirota Gordon,  W10 Prince Charles typifying Japan’s leap beyond colonised models of world trade

E99 Gandhi and W99 Kennedy – leaders who changed the west’s goals but gave their lives to the process. Additionally W98 Maria Montesorri without whom Gandhi’s education revolution and village schooling would not have planted something wonderful in the mess that was collapsing British Empires.

W97 Keynes, W96 Einstein and W95 Von Neumann all of whom advocated system designs that arre bottom up and open not top-down and bordered.

Adam Smith W94 , James Wilson W93, W92 Walter Bagehot on whose design rules the first 100 years of The Economist was based. See The Economist autobiography of its own centenary in 1943.

Chapter 2 68 -72 Future journalism must be optimistic whilst realizing how inequitable Industrial Revolution’s Era had been\

While the two decades after world war 2 so the rapid ending of many European empires, the way industrial revolution had become one of extracting carbon fuels so that some nations could get bigger and bigger had continued. The opportunity to innovate during tIR had been very unevenly distributed. While some humans were racing to the moon. Almost half of the world’s people still had no access to electricity grods at the time of moon landing

In parallel to the race to the moon at least 3 earth-changing happenings emerged in the decade up to 1972:

Latin America debated what sort of catholicism it most believed in and decided on values that represent the Franciscan branch – in general this respects those faith leaders who come and live with the more; this was translated into the education philosophy of action learning with the poor advanced by Barzila Paulo Freire.

The Chinese were deciding being a closed society behind a great wall wasn’t the future. This once great civilization was stirring with over a billion people looking for more productive ways to live. The top down system which has starved over 50 million peoples was replaced bu barefoot doctors in the villages and agrarian keynsianism so that farmers would never starve again.

Bangladesh emerged as a free nation having suffered the double short-straw of colonisation first by the british and then west pakistan. Miraculously the ideology of Paulo Freire was adopted by leaders of the race to end poverty across the rural villages of bangladesh. There was some sharing of knowledge with china particularly on rice science the agricultural innovation that did most to end famine.

To Norman post-industrial meant:

Win-win world trades as japan, south korea and then the Chinese – superports epitomized

The end of big nations having an endless pursuit of carbon

Valuing how service and knowledge economies increasingly depend on valuing people not just consuming things

Reviewing what short-term fixes to financial systems –eg paper currencies printed at the whim of politicians – could not sustain te future

Re-asserting keynes view that increasingly inly economists determne what futures are possible for a place’s next generation

1968: Time to imagine how sS.Africa could go beyond apartheid

So Norman published this 1972 future of the next 40 years with a checklist of issues around which the best or worst of times would spin

Further references

Paulo Freire

Banagldesh’s adoption of pauklo freitre by fazle abed (and later muhamamd yunus)

Energaebce of Singapore as led by

Henry kissingers first visit to china