Japanese people have long coexisted with the nature.In these days, however, so-called scientific and industrialized styles in every field of current socio-economic systems have produced illusions in our minds as if the artificial environments can satisfy all of daily desires.In this paper, several scopes to re-construct the transactions between human and environments are proposed, describing the importance of Gestalt-reasonable socio-environmental system which should be endonegous in the societal systems.They are:1)role formation based on the gap between "I"and "Me", 2)dialogue of human and time, 3)transaction between human and space, 4)environmental education for the new intelligences, and 5)interchange between human and the nature.Some actual examples, in Japan, of above items are shown and the related researches engaged by the author, such as the new development of recycling type society in City of Suita, are also illustrated.

View full abstract

We consider some aspects of exchange between two subjective existences.Subjectivity is defined as a characteristic of a system having a mental pole, which acts as the matrix of self-becoming.Two major subjective existences are distinguished;a person and an organization.First, an organization is a system which is independent of individuals and dependent on personal activities contributing to the organization purpose.An organization coul preserve itself only by the contributions of personal efforts for which the organization must give some incentives.Conversely, the subjectivity of an individual is influenced, transformed and created by exchanging various kinds of factors with the related organizations.This type of exchange known as the organization economy teaches us that an organization has the property of wholeness that could not be reduced to personal activities.Second, any exchange based on agreement between individuals generates an organization called lateral, which is an intermediate of the exchange between persons.Third, liberty is essentially based on the intensity of subjectivity and it is strongly related to the exchange between a person and an ideal organization.

View full abstract

From systematical recognitions to living and house-holding, we can make new approches to "substantive meanings of economics(K.Polanyi), " "wide meanings of works, include shadow works(I.Illich)", "cyclical and organizational understandings to the family resource management (R.E.Deacon et.)", "all-around composits of M-M living system(T.Yoneyama)".The author propose new categories and understandings to living resource inter-changes.(1)Resource flow in the living structure;living resources(with human-, interpersonal-)(living technology, energy, time, space, etc.), living activities and behaviours (with many kinds of works;income-, commute-, household-, trainning-, social contributive-works, and leisure-, physiological-activities), and living values (stem from living culture, social norms and each one's theory of life;influence to objectives, criteria and standards;, hierarchical, indivisualistic, intrinsic or extrinsic, etc.).(2)Cyclical resource flow with through-put(between in-put and output)process, and enthropical understandings.(3)Reciprocity, redistribution and exchange in the case of living resources.(4)Why and how exchanges matter in the family resource management.(5)Human personality relations in the home, make different kinds of flow;share with, co-operate, tender nurture, care take one-way gift, many kinds of love and etc..These considerations have to be made more under the era of "dis-value(I.Illich)", overwhelming power of one pattern knowlege and mass products from science and technology combined with "exchange and monetary"economy, and era of one-way informative society with affluent-service(soft-nomic)economy.Social performing powers should accurue from living concepts and standerds in every humanistic era, social-economic system should be responsible to the needs.

View full abstract

Althoug this age is characterized by rapid thechnological progress, economists have been slow to extend the theory of the firm to this phenomenon.Technological progress is evidenced by firms that produce new or improved goods or produce goods products at a lower cost.The purpose of this paper is to construct a theory of technological progress in quality.The concept of quality is one of the most elusive in economic literature.A premise of the model studied here is that commodities are valuable because they possess qualities which consumers desire.This assumption makes it possible to specify the model by describing the amount of a desirable quality it possesses.This assumption also makes it possible to capture the observed fact that the production function shifts with a high quality product.Our version of the right-hand diagram shows that the production function always does not shift toward the point of origin, in the case of qualitative progress.It would seem the way out of this difficulty is to propose a model with the total cost function.In this paper, we should point out that an economy in the process of rapid qualitative progress is controlled by the rules of nature.

View full abstract

The Distribution Channel System has been studied by many researchers among and commodity is considered important subject of the channel flow.But there are many cases where one cannot explain to be limited commodity in real system of distribution channel from the producers to the final users.As is analogized from term of commodity in generally accepted sense of term itself, it seems there is term of no-commodity.The most important point, in fact, is that there is non-commodity in real systems.So it is pourpose of this paper to point out that there are the non-commodity, and a kind of duality whenever the commodity realizes non-commodity also does as found in the real system flow.Saying it differently, realization of the channel system most often depends on consisting of the commodity and non-commodity in nature.

View full abstract

Market economy is an object which can only be well understood when viewed as a complex system.The agents are subjected to three limits:(1)bounded sight, (2)bounded rationality, and (3)bounded activity.They have no ability for a full adjustment which is assumed in the walrassian groping processes.The complexity of the system remains far beyond the human capacity to see, think, and act.An agent behaves by a rule of thumb, a routine which has been selected through a number of trials of success and failure.In order that this selection be meaningful, the economy itself must have certain characteristics.First, the economic processes must be stationary even though they inevitably involve fluctuations.Second, the system is to be divided into a large number of small parts and each part must be loosely connected with others.This looseness is only possible when the system functions with play.An agent can then isolate a subsystem which he may partially control.Adjustments and controls are always imperfect.Agents may make errors.If the system is to subsist, however, the agents cannot die out all in once and so, thirdly, they must have a sufficient marge of viability above the death-life break-even point.

View full abstract

In this paper the attempt is made to summarize the changes in the contemporary economic systems.At present the three basic types of economic systems are in existence in east and west, i.e., guided capitalism, centralized socialism and market socialism.In the author's view, the market socialism, which has been founded in Yugoslavia and Hungary in the last thirty years, is becoming increasingly similar to the guided capitalism, particularly to the one with a national economic planning(e.g., in France, Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands, etc.).Because in the former, as in the latter, the market mechanism and the indicative economic planning have been institutionalized.But the market socialism will not assimilate completely to the guided capitalism, since in the former the public ownership is still dominant.In this sense, the approximation of the market socialism to the guided capitalism is not full-scale, but partial.We can't confirm that the soviet-type of centralized socialism(e.g., in the USSR, East Germany, etc.)is approximating to the guided capitalism.Because the centralized socialism has not undergone thorough changes at the systemic level in the past three decades.

View full abstract

This paper reconsiders Estelle James and Gail Benjamin's important paper, Educational Distribution and Income Redistribution through Education in Japan, The Journal of Human Resources, Vol.22, No.4(1987).James and Benjamin have calculated the distribution of enrolments and taxes by lifetime income within a cohort to draw inferences about redistribution through education in Japan.Their paper draw heavily on my data presented in Kikuchi(1978).In this paper we recalculate the same kind of data for 1976-1987 according to the method as devised in their paper.We conclude that the changing direction of income redistribution is the reverse which they have diagnosed on Japanese higher education in 1976.It cannot be denied that private universities have become more income biased;hence subsidies to private institutions have become less income redistributive than those to the national and public sector.While some skewing of enrolment toward the upper classes in Japanese national and public universities remains, progressive taxes imply that government spending has been redistributing real income from rich to poor to a limited extent, with the middle class receiving a relatively small net benefit.

View full abstract

Five distributive problems are discussed.These are (1)traits of medical services and distributive justice.(2)Innovation and its diffusion in medical technology and distributive justice.(3)Conflicts of distributive rules in hospital resources and among constituents.(4)Distributive justice and restriction of patients'life chance.(5)Unintended consequences of priority in distribution and provision of buffer stock in medical resources.Firstly, medical services have some traits that inherently cause distributive problems.These traits are professional discretion, information gaps between doctor and patients, technical difficulty and form of private supply in medicine.Because of them distributive injustice cases could be cut into patient's private unlucky cases or attributed to individual dissatisfaction.So, we must be careful not to be caught into this trap.Secondly, innovation and its diffusion in medical technology can make some medical treatments free from distributive problems.But at the same time, it can produce another distributive problems in more crucial diseases.Innovation continuously changes basic condition of distribution, so distributive justice in medicine will change accordingly.We find that sever distributive problems occur not in the part of top innovation, but in moderate innovation.Thirdly, hospitals are constituted of many professinal or non-professinal staffs and variety of patients.Each members has own resources to be offered and distributive rules to follow.But, he sometimes uses the rules outside his control area so conflicts occour between rules.These conflicts partly account for distributive problems in hospitals.Typical example of this is a conflict between achievement principle in staffs and need principle in patients.Fourthly, patients not only consume medical resources, but also undergo restrictions of their life chances in hospital.These restrictions are legitimated by the necessity for recovery.But are there any unnecessary restrictions in them?Doesn't it tend to be a hidden punishment for patients?These are still the questions to be answered.Lastly, there are unintended consequences of priority in distribution and provision of buffer stock in medicine.Medical system partly falls into a vicious circle, produces huge cost and sluppies unnecessary service on the basis of buffer provision and a back up system.

View full abstract