About Economy

 Well, I mentioned about the 3 factors: History, Economy and Politics that you must understand in order to understand the theme of my blog, “International Development”. From now on, I’ll focus on Economy so I may have to leave my students and school for the time being, I’m very sorry for that.  

What is the definition of Economy? In Japanese it is called “経済(Keizai)” which is the abbreviation of 経国済民(Keikokusaimin) or 経世済民(Keiseisaimin). But the meaning of “Keizai” in Japanese is literarily “Help people by ruling country well”, which sounds like “Politics” because this word was used for “political economy” at first. When Japan started modernizing country, Japanese scholars translated many words necessary for modernization from European languages, and although the word “Kiezai” is originated, for the above meaning, in China, today it is widely used for economy in Asian countries. On the other hand, the English word “Economy” derived from the Greek words “οἶκος (house)” and “νέμω (mange)”; the original meaning in Greek is “οἰκονόμος (household management)” and later it was applied for “country management”. And the definition of Economy is: “An economy is the total sum of product and service transactions of value between two agents in a region, be it individuals, organizations or states” (Wikipedia). And my definition is: “Economy is movement of things and people and money is lubricating oil to reduce friction of the movement.”

It wouldn’t be very clear for you. When I studied IT at college in Australia, I happened to take a lecture on Economy and the professor explained it with “Fish and Coconut”: there are 4 fish and 4 coconuts in society and if you take 1 coconut, you can take 3 fish at maximum; if 2 coconuts, 2 fish; if 1 coconut, 3 fish; and if 0 coconut, 4 fish etc. What he meant was “Distribution of products”, so the definition of Economy is “how to distribute resources to people in society”, according to the professor. This sounds pretty reasonable and much clearer and we are getting closer to Economy. 

By the way, do you know the difference between Economy and Economics? According to Wikipedia, “Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.” In short, it is a field of study in my understanding. Thus I would say: Economy is “actual activities of selling and buying by ordinary people in everyday life” while Economics is “logical flow of money on paper by so-called ‘economists’ in academic studies”. Are you with me? I know it’s a bit complicated but if you don’t understand my explanation, you will be tricked by “economists”. The thing is, if the logic is easy, people can catch up, but if it’s complicated, people will give up, therefore economists make up new words, theories, common sense, regardless of right or wrong, in order to confuse and manipulate people’s mind because people tend to easily believe words, “theory”, “specialist”, “science”, “Law”, “TV”, “newspaper” etc. But you must know that there are people who want to dominate “4 fish and 4 coconuts”. You must understand that Economics is just a logical work and Economy has nothing to do with Economics. And we, ordinary people, live with Economy, not Economics which is an instrument for those who have power in Economy.

Interestingly enough, Keizai means “Help people by ruling country well” and was used for political economy in Japan and in truth the words Economics was replaced with political economy by Alfred Marshall in his book “Principles of Economics” in 1890. Nevertheless today Economics help greedy people by manipulating ordinary people’s mind. In sum, although I talk about “Economy”, I have to talk about “Politics” because some people trick us in order to take 4 fish and 4 coconuts.