

THE REMOTE ISLANDS

TED EASTBORN

TO ECONOMICS, PEACE AND THOSE WHO HAVE DREAMED
January 1st 2012

My dear,

Sorry that I could not have written to you earlier. The good news is that the plane crashed but I did not. My first priority after coming back home is to find another job that involves less travelling. I may not be lucky enough to have another narrow escape.

I am somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. It can't be Micronesia as we have already travelled long enough to reach Melanesia or even Polynesia. Looking around at my beautiful and modern hospital, I, for a moment, believed that we must have landed in our destination Wellington. But judging from the hours, no, I do not think so. I guess, and also sincerely hope, that this place is still far away from New Zealand, so far away that there is no chance that they can possibly take a half-recovered me over there to interpret for those fruitful but tasteless meetings.

Now meet my nurse Mary Owen. She is very pretty and very nice. Her accent reminds me of one of my British trainers in Brussels. Oh, I wish my treatment could be prolonged a bit, for the sake of language learning of course. She said a gentleman would take me out tomorrow, to help me look around and not feel as if I were under house arrest. I do not have serious injuries, but some inevitable fractured bones are keeping me here for a while.

Please be assured of my healthy return to you in the not too distant future. Until then I will keep writing every day and inform you of things I see here. Take good care of yourself while I am away.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 2nd 2012

My dear,

Still confined, to a wheelchair now instead of to bed, I was able to go outside and breathe in some fresh air, with the help from a gentleman named Frank More. He works for the government by the way, with the foreign office, as I am clearly alien to them.

This morning's walk was a brief one within the city centre, where I saw a few government buildings, libraries, museums and parks. Nothing special, just like Washington, DC. Mr More has arranged a temporary lodging in the vicinity for me, as I am too healthy to abuse scarce hospital resources. But do not worry. He has promised to provide necessary help, and both Ms Owen and Mr More will pay regular visits to see if I am doing well. They will help me move over in the afternoon. And I am allowed to stay until I feel fit enough to catch a flight back to where I belong. I guess it will take less than 100 days.

The guided tour also served as an introduction to my possible routine from tomorrow onwards. We visited my future lodging, went from there back to the hospital, and then to the entrances and exits of the aforesaid libraries, museums and parks. I will surely spend a lot of time around these places, to know the city and to enjoy these once-in-a-lifetime days. The air disaster was horrifying, but thanks to it I now have this little break and escape.

Office buildings and apartment blocks, according to my map, a pleasant gift from Mr More, are surrounding the city centre. Houses and gardens are further away from the downtown area. And then there is a ring road, on both sides of which are hotels and recreational facilities. Further out are beaches and the sea. Mr More will perhaps kindly take me around to see all the places someday, but definitely not today.

One thing I cannot help wondering about is the shape of the city: a perfect circle. But Mr More was not going to tell me why. He challenged me to find it out by myself. I do not have much to do anyway. It must be a good pastime to observe and discover this place.

I have not told you the name of the city, have I? It is called West-East City. Have we heard of it? I would surely have remembered such an embracing name if we had ever come across it. Try your maps and see if you can find where I am.

Mr More has given me a three-month identity card so that I am no longer illegal here. It is truly an all-in-one card. Mr More said it not only was my identification but also granted me access to my residence, to the libraries, and even to my bank account. These different institutions have different databases and keep their customers' information separately, but they share a common card-reading system, specifically designed for identity cards. Banks here do not issue their own brand name credit cards; nor do libraries offer membership cards. Once Mr More applies on a plane crash survivor's behalf to a block of flats for residence, the management collects the resident's information, puts him on its list, reads his card when he shows up, finds him in its list and then lets him in. After eating at a restaurant, one can simply put one's ID card on a reading machine, which finds out that a certain bank has authorised the cardholder to use it like a credit card.

A sum of 200 globos, their local currency, is to be credited to my account monthly. It is so nice of them: free medical treatment, board and lodging, and now they are giving me pocket money. I have been wanting to come back to you as soon as possible; in the mean time I also feel obliged to stay longer and do something, including but not limited to hard manual labour, for these good people after I recover, only to repay a small portion of their kindness to me. I hope that you are also meeting kind people every day. Frank is coming to help me move places. I will continue in the evening...

Now I am back, writing in my new residence, a cosy place with a small window overlooking a peaceful park. Across the park are a library and a museum. I need to visit both places a lot to find out more about my whereabouts, and I had a good beginning in the afternoon right after checking in at the new residence.

The first stop was the museum. It turns out that the people here are mainly descendants of survivors of air or sea disasters. The very first inhabitants gathered on several adjacent islands and somehow developed into an advanced society within a considerably short period of time.

They have been almost invisible to our world, but we are no mystery to them. They import certain raw materials from us, and a very small number of their young men and women work and live overseas. Their early development relied on iron ore from Australia, technology from Germany and the United States, and a migration of brains from all over the world. It appears today that their technology and level of development already match, if not surpass, those of our world.

Then I went to the library, where there were a lot of historical, political and legal documents. I guess it will take me ages to finish reading what I am interested in. Perhaps Ms Owen and Mr More could come and see me often, and save me some reading time by telling me interesting stories.

Taking a short break from the documents, I ventured to the underground level of the building, only to discover a whole new world. They seem to have a complete system of parallel roads beneath. All the buildings must have both ground- and underground-level entrances and exits. People, driving or on foot, can either choose to go in the sun or opt to travel underneath. Most private transport certainly prefers fresh air unless bad weather comes uninvited.

West-East City is the capital of the West-East Democracy (WED). Their democracy is somewhat different from what we generally believe it to be. Instead of focusing on "everyone has the right to vote", it stipulates that everyone has the right to defend certain interests. It is a "veto democracy" instead of "majority voting democracy", as someone puts it. The people here cannot vote in favour of the majority's interest, as the minority have the right to defend their own. The government here cannot just come up with some fancy policy, as one citizen may stand up and say the policy infringes upon certain rights or interests, not necessarily his own. Mr Vilfredo Pareto could not agree more.

The WED comprises three unions: the Polynesian Union, the Melanesian Union and the Micronesian Union. These are all island groups as you can see. Sovereign states join unions by treaties; similarly, unions sign treaties to join the WED. I have yet to see why they cannot simply have a big West-East Union. What is the difference between a democracy and a union? Just give me more time.

The books say it is called the West-East Democracy because it is indeed a mixture of peoples and cultures, and the capital city is the most diversified place among all the islands. It will not be long before I meet with people of Chinese origin.

Before ending today's report, I should not forget to let you know that I eat very well here. Mr More has kindly found me a buffet restaurant, where proper meals are served at a very reasonable price for regular customers. The standard charge is 20 globos per adult per meal. A diner who also came the day before gets a reduced price at 15 per meal. He who has come for ten meals or more in the last seven days spends just ten globos for all the grain, meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, plus non-alcoholic beverages. And those who have eaten 50 or more times there in the previous 30 days will only have to pay seven globos for each meal. If I go to this place three times a day during this 31-day month, I would need a total of 866 globos, which, fortunately, is to be deposited into my account shortly.

The only thing is you are not across the table.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 3rd 2012

My dear,

Mr More did come by to say hello and see if I am doing okay this morning. But he did not stay long enough for a history lesson. So again, I was alone for the rest of the day.

Tuesday is still library day. The city is a perfect circle in shape because it is a totally man-made one. You can say it is a huge ark, or a floating disc to be more exact considering the shape of it, anchored in a bay next to a heavily forested island to the east.

The floating disc can move like a ship, but has never done so since its birth. Perhaps only when a tsunami comes to cover the area or in case of a terrible quake will the ark ever function like a ship and sail to safe waters. At the west end there is an airport; at the east end, a port which sees both large ships from afar and smaller ones carrying fruit and vegetables from the island.

West-East City is unique in the WED. For one thing, there is no permanent resident. Constructed and funded by the WED, it is solely owned by the democracy, and its only role is to serve as the capital city. Therefore people who live here are either employed by the WED or providing services for it and its employees. Since all properties are owned by the WED, its staff rent houses and flats until they retire and go back to their respective home towns. People doing other businesses also can only rent places, and in this way they will have to leave too when they are no longer engaged here. The city attracts the talented and the hard-working, but is designed as a small piece of common land rather than anyone's home base. It will not grow bigger and bigger.

For another, it is the only place in the democracy where English dominates. Across the three unions, many very different languages are spoken as migrants from all over the world came to form many distinct communities. Strange enough, there is not an English community. Perhaps the English-speaking can either enjoy life at home or teach the language anywhere around the globe. These lucky men and women do not need to emigrate to some unknown corner in the Pacific Ocean. The absence of such a community makes English a perfect choice as the WED's official language, which must be an auxiliary language not spoken as mother tongue by any of the communities. If and when an English community comes into being, the WED will have to look to other options. I hope they would then like modified Esperanto.

Talking about "Esperanto", which also means "he who hopes" in the language, I do hope that we can have their way of city traffic management. Also crowded, the city nevertheless enjoys good order, with hardly anyone trying to cut in line or ignore traffic signals. "Dedicated parking spaces", as they call them, have been reserved here and there, even in the busiest areas. If an impatient driver is caught for not waiting for his turn in rush hour traffic, a certain punishment, among other possibilities, will be an invitation to a "dedicated parking space" for an amount of time much longer than what the driver might have saved by cutting in line. Back in Beijing, many are glad to pay a fine, which rarely comes, and save time.

Their buses are more like our underground trains than they are similar to our buses. Firstly, there is only one bus route along a road. And all bus routes are straight and do not turn. For example, the S1 is south of the city centre and connects the eastern and the western extremities. The S2 is parallel with the S1 but a bit further away towards the south. Likewise, the N1, also running parallel to the S1, is in the northern half of the city and closer to the centre than the N2, N3 etc. Then there are the E1, E2 etc in the eastern half and W1, W2 etc in the western half, all of which are running vertically on the map. Such an arrangement is easy to understand and one can change buses only once to get anywhere in the city. Secondly, all the buses run in bus lanes only as if there were invisible tracks beneath the tyres. In this way, the bus behind cannot overtake the one ahead. Hence there are no zigzagging buses racing against each other as can be seen in many Chinese cities. Moreover, all bus stops are located about 50 metres before the traffic lights. They are easy to find even for strangers, and bus drivers only need to decelerate once for both the stop and the lights when they are approaching the crossroads.

I also hope that sportswear makers in our world could understand sport better. A series of TV commercials tells me that their counterparts here do. Take one for example. The first scene shows a boy practising long shots with his weaker foot repeatedly on a muddy field. The second scene switches to their version of the UEFA Champions League final, where a star player scored exactly the way he had practised as a boy. The third and final scene shows the logo of the sportswear maker and their motto: "Practice makes perfect." They also produce high-tech products that help us improve athletically. But they understand that what matters most in sport is the human effort, and they honestly convey the message to the younger generation. I would like the children to be inspired by such sportswear makers.

The city I now live in is indeed a wonderful place, but another one interests me even more. Taoyuan, which literally means the Place of Peach Flowers, is a Chinese city located on the southern tip of Polynesia. Sitting in front of a hill to the north, it faces the ocean on the south. With a land area of 660 square kilometres, or one tenth of our home city, it is situated on the mouth of the River Peace.

With a population of half a million, Taoyuan is the largest city of the three unions. Its early establishments built more than 500 years ago, the city is also one of the oldest settlements. According to legend, descendants of Tao Yuanming, a recluse poet of the East Jin Dynasty, escorted the deposed second emperor of the Ming Dynasty to the sea. They first arrived in today's Malaysia. Then half of them headed west, and half of them drifted eastwards. Nobody knows in which direction the emperor went. But some survivors of the east mission did finally reach where today's Taoyuan is positioned and the group have settled down ever since.

Taoyuan has a temperate oceanic climate, with warm humid summers and mild, damp winters. The average daily maximum temperature is 27°C in February and 18°C in July. High levels of rainfall occur almost all the year round with an average of 1,200 mm per year spread over 130 precipitation days. Snowfall has yet to be recorded.

It is the only major habitat where ethnic Han Chinese gather. They have not, however, chosen to establish a sovereign state of their own. Instead, Taoyuan is part of the New Asian Republic, which also embraces considerable numbers of descendants of the Japanese, the Koreans from both the North and the South, the Filipinos, the Vietnamese, the Thais, the Malays, the Indonesians, the Indians and others. Citizens of the same republic, these people get along in a peaceful manner, fully aware, though, of the history and stories going between their respective countries of origin. They refrain from talking about one nation's past glory at the expense of another, as they have learnt a lesson from history and they have learnt it quietly in private.

Software and motor boats manufacturing are the city's two pillar industries. Sport, particularly association football, also plays an extremely important role in local people's life, both recreationally and economically. The average Taoyuan resident spends 200 globos a year on sports activities and merchandise. Two percent of the workforce is employed in this sector.

Their version of Wikipedia also illustrates the city's culture and art, places of interest as well as its cuisine. These need to be checked upon arrival, and I am looking forward to that day.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 4th 2012

My dear,

They give me 200 globos a month in addition to board and lodging already paid for by the government. Guess what! Each and every citizen aged 18 and over receives a monthly payment of 1,000 globos almost unconditionally. With this income alone, one can afford a decent but simple lifestyle. Of course people who work earn much more and can have some luxury.

They do not give money only to the unemployed, because the current practice, which also allows the employed to automatically get 1,000 globos, means the employed could demand 1,000 globos less in salary. Without the automatic 1,000 payment, one would ask for 1,000 more for what they do. All things being equal, the current practice does not make the employed richer. The management costs of distinguishing the unemployed from the employed and subsidising only the unemployed, however, no longer exist. And the universal benefit makes it unnecessary for parents to starve one or more of their children to become eligible to claim it.

The monthly payment, which they call the Citizenship Pay, sets a floor for working conditions. One works because one is happy about the offered conditions and finds the employer pleasant; otherwise one can quit and go home without worrying about survival. People are attracted to jobs; they are not forced to work for nasty employers.

The Citizenship Pay is also compensation for agreeing to social rules, which the citizens must voluntarily abide by so that these rules are most effective. The planet belongs to all human beings, or all creatures, if you like. No one has the right to force others into a system, however ideal it might be. He who has decided to join a society and become a citizen there is rewarded and compensated with the pay; he who has not can at least live on his own like an animal, not bound by laws, rules and regulations that other humans have made and agreed to.

The pay, furthermore, discourages crime. It gives people access to food and other basic needs. "He may commit a crime because he loses control or whatever, but will never have to because he is starving." It increases the cost of wrongdoing as well. People who have nothing to lose dare to and almost certainly will challenge the social order imposed upon them. But now everyone has something to lose. Wrongdoing leads to, among other things, a certain degree of deduction in the pay for a certain period of time, according to the severity of the wrongdoing, and clearly means a partial or even total loss of existing welfare.

The pay also makes pension schemes unnecessary. One no longer needs to worry about the investment prospects, risky and exciting by nature, for one's pension fund, protective and conservative by definition. A receiver can take money out of his Citizenship Pay and risk it in the financial market, the casinos or anywhere else, but the future inflow of the pay is predictable, steady and not subject to the performance of a financial instrument. The absence of pensions means no official retirement age needs to be defined and debated. An adult citizen receives the pay no matter how old he is. He can work for as long as he pleases and feels competent; he retires whenever he loses his momentum.

The Citizenship Pay is credited to each citizen's one and only transaction account, which is opened with the central bank and accessible at all commercial banks. All natural and legal persons must and only have one transaction account each. Payments among different persons can only be made and received through transaction accounts. Commercial banks offer various types of savings and investment accounts, but money to and from these accounts can only come from and go to a client's own transaction account.

There is only one central bank across the democracy. Multiple currencies are allowed by the law, but people here choose to use a single currency as long as they have confidence in it. The central bank prints money in the open space of its courtyard, only once in a year and always for anyone to watch. They used to print money to increase the basic money supply, the rate of which was determined by the previous year's GDP growth. Now they only increase the basic money supply in special circumstances, for example if a new economy enters the globo zone. In theory they are also entitled to adjust the basic supply when "they find sufficient reasons to do so and have permission from each and every union that is a member of the WED". But up to now there is no record that they have ever exercised such power. Today the basic money supply is rarely adjusted. New banknotes are printed only to replace old and missing ones. The money supply, says their latest theory, adjusts accordingly and automatically thanks to their zero reserve rate system.

Unlike our banking system, theirs does not require the commercial banks to turn in reserves at the central bank. The zero reserve rate means the money multiplier can be as large as infinity. When the economy boosts, the level of borrowing and lending activity increases and so does the money supply, which is not restricted by a definite money multiplier. When the economy slows, borrowing and lending also cools down to bring down the money multiplier. In this way the money supply drops. The money supply is not in the hand of a central bank, which can be either subjective or partial, but controlled by economic activity out there, the volume of which the money supply is supposed to match.

For the central bank to be impartial, it is necessary that it remains a referee who does not "rescue" a football game by giving a nonexistent penalty to avoid a goalless 90 minutes. When the players are not doing well enough, it is the managers' and team owners' responsibility to sort out the problem and find a solution. FIFA can promote the game by ensuring fair play and encouraging more competition. It will only kill the game by making the goal bigger so that scoring is easier.

The central bank does not take and keep reserves, nor is it a lender of last resort – commercial banks need guarantors who cannot at the same time be the monetary authority. A commercial bank must be a subsidiary of a big corporation, whose assets are substantially greater than the bank's lending capacity and who is legally liable for the bank's risk exposure. In other words, no one can apply to run a commercial bank per se. Only big corporations that have substantial investment in other areas are qualified to run one. In a time of crisis, the parent corporation will have to liquidate some or even all of its assets to pay for the bank's losses and guarantee the savers' money – that is, the corporation's assets are taken to fill the gap before a bank goes down. Therefore a commercial bank cannot blackmail the monetary authority, and the parent corporation must and is also in a much better position to watch the bank's behaviour.

That does not mean the central bank has little to do. Apart from the previously mentioned transaction accounts, the monitoring of which is to make money laundering difficult, the central bank also collects, studies and publishes all sorts of data and information. Furthermore, it monitors commercial banks' lending and other risks taken, which cannot exceed a certain ratio of their parent corporations' core assets.

The central bank does not determine interest rates, which are entirely subject to the market forces of supply and demand. If there is not sufficient demand for money in the market, the banks reduce or even completely give up new borrowing. Hence the interest rates for savings accounts drop until they are zero. Zero savings rate means there is no more demand for money, and the savers in fact receive negative interest considering the annual fees they pay for their banking services.

Since different parent corporations have assets of different value and quality, different banks have different lending capacities. Sometimes it is possible for banks with higher lending capacities to negotiate for higher lending rates. But that is left to the market.

The first working day after the New Year holiday must have been exhausting for you. And I stupidly keep writing and writing but cannot hold off telling you these big discoveries of mine. Now please have a good night's sleep.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 5th 2012

My dear,

I went to a bookshop and made my first purchase here: an account of global history from their perspectives. It cost me 20 globos, and the shop assistant denied me an invoice.

She explained to me that there was no such thing as an invoice here. The absence of invoices, however, does not encourage false accounting, she continued. Large sum transactions almost always happen online through transaction accounts. For small deals, vendors are also required to deposit all cash income in their transaction accounts. Customers can but do not have to report and register a small deal on a certain website. There will always be someone who will take time to do this once in a while. If a vendor fails to comply with the rules all the time, a contradiction will occur sooner or later and the computers will put the vendor on a blacklist, which will be handled by the police.

The police then will come to watch the vendor for a period of time, either playing as paying customers or gathering information from other consumers. Since committing a small crime just once or twice is not economically viable, the vendor will almost certainly be caught again, this time with all the hard evidence collected during the process. Small retailers are often exempt from taxes. They have no incentive to hide their income anyway.

Since the kicking out of invoices does not encourage foul play, I am no longer unhappy about me being rejected for the first time on the floating disc. Their choice means fake invoices will not show up and expensive anti-counterfeiting technology need not be developed.

The birth of an invoice, I guess, must have had something to do with tax collection, since invoices help determine the sum of taxes payable. The demise of invoices, nonetheless, does not mean the end of taxes. Paradise as this world is, taxation is still inevitable. All citizens and legal persons are obliged to turn in one globo per year for each square metre of land they own. This rate is fixed, not subject to fluctuation in economic situation, and serves as a clever precaution so that the government fears inflation even more than taxpayers do – cheaper money only means this category of stable fiscal income, which is quite a lot, is devalued while the government can hardly produce more land. And this is the only tax for the luckiest citizens and legal persons, who are not engaged in activities with negative externalities.

Another universal tax across the WED is meant for casinos, tobacco, pollution, the exploring and extracting of non-renewable resources, and things like that. These are usually considered "not so good". But a wise government does not forbid something that is either part of human nature or simply impossible to avoid completely; instead, it curbs the spread of it by introducing taxes, offsetting some, if not all, of the negative externalities, and in this way discourages people from getting addicted to such things and from enjoying themselves while harming others.

The above-mentioned two categories of taxes go to the WED. The next level of tax authorities, surprisingly, jumps directly to the city level. In other words, each citizen or legal person pays taxes only to the WED and his own city, but not to the sovereign state or union he belongs.

The taxation policies of different cities can be very different. In some cities citizens pay no local taxes at all, as the city authorities generate revenue by running a monopoly on public utilities, providing and certainly overcharging to some extent the use of water, gas, electricity and sometimes telephone or cable TV services. In some others, city authorities have absolutely no control over any business. Their income depends on city-level taxes, two most frequently seen and important ones of which are income tax and energy consumption tax, both in a progressive manner.

A progressive income tax is common in our world. But here companies are also taxed on their income rather than profit, the same way as a natural person is. Certainly in some places, enterprises are taxed on their profit – it is up to the city authorities. Nevertheless income tax is more common and dominant. Capital gains tax, inheritance tax, transfer tax, value-added tax or sales tax, wealth tax etc are visible somewhere but often omitted in most places in pursuit of simple taxation. Tariffs have become extinct.

Energy consumption tax is a local tax, in contrast to the universal tax on pollution or the exploring and extracting of non-renewable resources. The universal tax is levied usually on companies – individuals vigorously engaged in harmful emissions are also subject to this tax – so that their production with certain negative externalities is contained. Their product on the market will not necessarily be taxed again at the local level in some cities, but it can be in some others. In those cities, the energy bill of each household or organisation is divided by the land area it occupies. The higher the sum per square metre of land, the higher rate of tax is added to the bill. Designed to restrain population concentration, this is a typical example of some rare cases of sales tax in this world.

To sum up, each natural or legal person is to pay one globo per year per square metre of land he owns. If his activities create negative externalities, he also needs to pay taxes accordingly. The two categories of taxes go to the WED, which uses the revenues to fund the Citizenship Pay and pay for the services of its employees as well as its own bills. Cities can but do not always tax to generate revenue. Cities decide to join a sovereign state usually because they are culturally and economically interconnected. Cities turn in some of their revenues to the state to help it run. States form a union, for the purposes of common defence and further economic integration. Unions collect funds from the states. No individuals or enterprises pay taxes to either a state or a union.

In most cities as well as at the WED level, there is no tax authority. All tax revenues are collected automatically through transaction accounts. If one, either a natural or a legal person, makes sure that all one's income and payout go through one's transaction account, without carrying mafia-style suitcases full of cash, then everything should be fine. Of course one must also not temper with other documents and official recording. The property information is available to the WED. The income can be traced and calculated by the transaction account system. Whenever a taxable event occurs, say an oil company produces another million barrels of oil, multiple parties – in the oil company's case the industry's watchdog, the press, consulting agencies, trade unions (seemingly different from those here) and the company itself – may forward data to the transaction account system, which will debit a certain sum from the company's account. In case of a city level energy tax, the tax is added to the bill which the consumer will pay through his transaction account. Then the system will automatically transfer the tax to the city's transaction account. If you earn your income and spend your money legally in an honest way, there is no need to worry about declaring earnings and paying taxes. The computers will do it for you. Another happy result is that finally accounting only focuses on helping us improve efficiency by reflecting real business activity. It does not need to cause so many problems as when it is part of the taxing game.

Their government also consists of legislators, administrators and arbitrators. Administrations at all levels cannot introduce new taxes. Any change must be made by the legislature. If a legislature decides to cut a tax, it may do so. If it decides to bring in a new tax or an increase in existing categories, the change can only happen in five years' time. This arrangement is meant to discourage short term considerations to fill up the budget gap. Do not worry that a tax against pollution may be revoked quickly. The legislators supporting such a move could lose their seats and face criminal charges for neglecting the public's health.

Nine o'clock again, and it is time for bed. Frank has invited me to his workplace tomorrow for a presentation of their diverse cities.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 6th 2012

My dear,

As this world is barely visible to ours, their foreign office is small and deals mainly with victim turned tourists who accidentally come into this area. Today's case was just typical for their daily routine – foreign officer Frank More described their diverse cities to a plane crash survivor.

West-East City, its land and properties thereon are entirely owned by the WED government, while in all the other cities private ownership of land and properties prevails.

Frank's home city is Neuendorf. Land owners of the city, not citizens, vote each year – their right in proportion to the land area they own – to select among themselves delegates to form a city congress, which then decides on important issues such as making law and choosing the mayor. The mayor, once sworn into office, can serve as long as he has the congress's confidence. The mayor can also be kicked out by the congress at any time, just like a CEO being fired by a company's board of directors. A major difference is, however, that the mayor must pledge to live in the city for the whole of his life. Short-term visits to other places are allowed but must be reported and approved by the congress. It has been designed this way to prevent a mayor pursuing short-term benefits and escaping from long-term damages. A CEO does not have to give a lifelong commitment to a company he has served.

In Neuendorf, no local tax is levied. The city's revenues come from city owned enterprises that enjoy a natural monopoly and supply water, gas, electricity and cable TV services to its residents. The tax haven attracts many financial organisations; it is also home to a number of manufacturers of sophisticated machine tools.

Frank then brought up Taoyuan. Congress members there must be at least 60 years of age. Each adult citizen, 18 years of age and over, is entitled to vote for whom they trust. Then the congress acts just like a company's board of directors, choosing a city-management firm to run the city. There are quite a few such firms across the three unions, providing services to liberal-minded cities like Taoyuan and Den Helder, a mainly Dutch city neighbouring Neuendorf. Taoyuan is currently run by a firm headquartered in a Swedish community; Den Helder now employs managers whose mother tongue is Danish. A city-management firm is very professional at running a city, trying to standardise city management procedures and send managers as mayors to the cities where it has won the congresses' heart. There are economies of scale too, I guess.

In Taoyuan, there are income taxes for both individuals and companies, as well as a progressive energy tax, the rate of which is based on the consumption per square metre of land, not floor area. As a result, high-rise buildings are discouraged and luxury hotels pay handsomely for energy bills. Frank has promised me a trip to this city before I return home.

People in other cities may have other ways to elect representatives to congress. In some smaller cities, residents may directly make the congress. A referendum is often held, since it is not too much trouble for them.

The smallest city, also a totally man-made one but much smaller than West-East City, was built by and belongs entirely to a Frenchman. Therefore it is reasonable that he alone decides the form of government. But the virtual king owns only the land and the properties but not the people there. He needs to make his rules, or laws, explicit for both him and his people to obey. And if any part of his law allows him to take advantage of his people, the people can sue him in a court of law at a higher level and may leave his kingdom before he notices, as the free movement of persons is a guarantee of people's well-being.

Frank was proud to say that the diversity of the cities laid the foundation of democracy in the WED. No one knows for sure how a city should be run. No one dares to impose a certain model upon others. Each city carries out its own experiment. Competition among the cities sees some of them prosper and some others fall behind and try to innovate or emulate to catch up. People move not only to a more prosperous place but also to a place where they feel they truly belong.

Likewise, cities are free to find a state where they truly belong. And each state finds a union with which it feels comfortable. Proximity is a convenient choice, but geography is usually not a priority. All three unions have chosen to join the WED, but they can quit if they think the WED system is not doing good to them. Everyone is attracted but not ordered to gather together.

For mayors, state and union chiefs, there can be either a fixed term in office or not, as is determined by relevant authorities. But there is a four-year term for the WED chief, who is in fact not that powerful. The President of the WED has more rules to follow than perhaps at lower levels and serves more as a coordinator than an innovator. More ceremonial than executive, the chair is rotated between the union chiefs.

Different names as they may be called, congresses exist in all cities, states, unions, but not at the top WED level. Perhaps the reason behind the absence is that the WED has been set up with a clear but limited mandate. It does not need to be flexible enough to make laws and authorise itself with new powers. There is a WED court of law though.

Again each congress can be a little different from the others, since no universal format is deemed the most appropriate. But the prevalent belief is that the congress is more or less like a company's board of directors, which oversees but does not run the company. Mayors, like CEOs, can be but are not necessarily on the board. Congress sessions are broadcast live in many places. Nothing discussed in a congress is kept secret from its people. Nonetheless an administration does hold confidential information as defined by its congress, which does not inquire into the details but ensures that the scope is neither widened nor narrowed.

In a city, land owners or citizens or whoever is entitled the power to vote by local law will gather or simply go online each year to select a congress which they trust. Very often a congressman has no fixed terms. He who is trusted can stay forever; he who is not any more will just go. There are independent directors on a board; similarly in many cities, there are congressmen from outside, who are not land owners or citizens and do not have the right to vote in that city.

A congress then appoints a mayor, usually but not always a stakeholder in the city, who runs the city until he is fired or decides to retire. Most cities require the mayor to live as a permanent citizen for the whole of his life.

Mayors then represent each city to vote for a congress of the state, members of which can be mayors themselves, recommended specialists who are believed to defend their respective home cities' interests, and some outside congressmen invited from other states providing words of wisdom. Similarly, presidents or prime ministers of sovereign states vote for a congress at the union level.

A mayor can be sacked at any time by the congress either for failure in the management of the city or for bad judgment made when representing the city: electing the wrong persons to the upper level congress or, when he himself is elected, performing poorly in the congress. The same also applies to state and union chiefs.

All congressmen, at city, state and union levels, publish on their official websites each of their official decisions, what they have stood up for and on what matter they have chosen to remain silent, so that voters know whether to re-elect a certain member next time. A model congressman is usually good at both listening to others before making a reasonable choice and bringing up new perspectives to remind people of things that should be considered. I do not think any of the congressmen here could have survived saying aye every time, without a single nay, throughout his voting career.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 7th 2012

My dear,

Both Mary and Frank came to see me today, not to do their duties, but as friends on a leisure weekend. They took me to a Chinese restaurant, a Huaiyang-style one to my pleasant surprise.

Mary is a second-generation Melanesian. Her mother and father had not met until the two travelled and fell in love on a falling plane. They had lived in a French-speaking community before her father took a job with the monetary authority. Her mother runs a little pet shop. Her younger sister Betty is an undergraduate studying economics.

Frank's father is British. His mother was born in a German community in Polynesia. Both of them are now retired and live back in Polynesia. Like me, he is the only child of the family. Like us, he was clever, worked hard, and went through the fiercest competition to attend the best secondary school in West-East City.

Their education system, while offering equal opportunities at the early stage, encourages differential treatment later on. Primary schools are more or less the same; secondary and tertiary ones are meant to be selective and of distinguishing characteristics. People here are comfortable and deem it appropriate that the best young students, judged by their characters and qualities but not their family names, are collected and deeply processed. Equality in education does not mean giving everyone the same piece of cake; it means giving everyone a chance to get a piece they can best digest. Not surprisingly, they also believe that appointing the brightest lads to ordinary undertakings is not an insult to the underused, and eventually the undermined, but rather a huge waste of public resources.

Acknowledging the difference in educational development is an important factor leading to their understanding of democracy. If all citizens were perfectly educated, knew what was best for them, and would not be easily manipulated, then a majority voting democracy would indeed work. But as people are very different from each other, a poorly educated majority may be misguided to vote for worse. A veto democracy, on the other hand, allows small, perhaps, but real gradual progress which requires the sacrifice of none.

Frank joined the Polynesian Air Force upon graduation from college. He did not join the WED Air Force because there was not one. The WED exists as the member unions think it is good and necessary and are willing to join it by signing treaties. There is no reason for the WED to keep military forces – it cannot force the unions to do anything. A union stays in the WED and abides by WED rules; it can quit and no longer needs to listen to the WED if it sees fit to do so. Each union, however, keeps the army, navy and air force to defend its own member states. There is a coordination committee at the WED level, but the unions can opt to ignore its "advice". The sovereign states have the right to establish the military, but none of them exercise the right in consideration of economies of scale. They just each have the police to keep order.

After three years of military service, Frank played five years of professional football. Intelligent, hard-working and self-disciplined, he soon became a star. "Football is different from athletics. At the top level, the brain makes the difference." I must have said something similar.

He did not play for money – despite their high-level league, the market here is small. He did not play to beat other players – "my goal is to enjoy the game and better myself by overcoming obstacles set up by my opponents." He hung up his football boots when he was past his peak and could not improve further.

Then he became a civil servant. No, he was not like me. I applied to work for the government simply because I could not find another job. How I miss those years immediately after college when job hunting was easy. I did not think I was picky. Interested in many things, I would settle for many positions. And I did believe I could be very good at many of them. But then every time I secured a new job, it did not take me long to disagree with the organisation and those who led it. I hope I will not have strong feelings this time, so that I can be a cog in the machine, small but carefree.

Mary and Frank left after lunch and I was alone again for the afternoon. On such a pleasant sunny day, I could not help paying a visit to the island to the east. The public transport in the city was very convenient even for a wheelchair user; it was almost nonexistent on the island except for a single bus route circling the western half of the island. I took the bus until halfway through, and then spent the next five hours wheeling myself back to the port. The eastern half of the island is a natural reserve. I dare not go in as the Chinese patient is currently too weak to defend himself even against an angry sheep.

Unlike the modern and orderly city, the island is pastoral and casual. The western half is dotted with country houses, large and small. Many people come to camp or simply take a walk in the woods here. Vast areas of grassland are ideal for amateur football. How I wish the two of us could come here every week. It is really a good place for the city dwellers to spend the weekend. But it is not all leisure on the island. There are also a good number of self-employed farmers and several incorporated agribusinesses, working hard to feed the city to the west.

The eastern half is also a Special Administrative Region (SAR) reserved for people who do not want to join the WED system. There are not many of them. But for different reasons, some people have chosen to enter the SAR. The majority of them are against modern civilisation and prefer a more natural way of living. A few of them just want to experience something different and after some time may go back to the other side.

No matter the motivation, once in the SAR, one is not seen as a WED citizen and does not receive the Citizenship Pay. Accordingly, one does not need to abide by WED laws or regulations. People in the SAR can have their own rules; they can set up a tribe or even a kingdom as long as the King's dream is not to conquer the rest of the world.

They can live their own way in the SAR. They are also free to come out of it and visit the modern world. They do not need to pay taxes to walk on the road – a cat can walk on them without paying, can it not? But if they break the rules, like walking through a red light, people in the modern world will either ignore them or, in cases of repeated violations, remove them in a humane manner and send them back to where they belong, just like what people in a modern civilised world will do to a stray animal.

But do not get it wrong. A criminal cannot just disappear into the SAR. People in the SAR can also ask for help when they need some modern technology to determine if there is crime, defined by their laws and rules, going on in their region. There is perfect understanding of such issues between the two sides.

The eastern half does not accommodate a lot of people. But the existence of the SAR gives people another option, and hence helps ensure people's rights in the city and in the western half of the island. Indeed, an organisation will not behave appallingly as long as it has competitors; an individual is not hopeless as long as he is given choices. If city life were a mess, why should I stay instead of returning to the nature and living like an ape?

Yours truly,

Ted
January 8th 2012

My dear,

A lot of people gathered in the Central Square today to witness open trials at the WED Supreme Court of Law. The Supreme Court has its own office building, but all trials must be handled in the literally "open" space of the Central Square. Temporary seats are arranged, loudspeakers allow passersby to have a clue, and digital displays, large and small, are permanently placed there for anyone to inquire about present and past cases. Lawsuits of any nature, significant or trivial, can be brought to the Supreme Court, provided a satisfactory outcome is impossible at another court. The WED Supreme Court is always open to appeals.

The first case was brought by a young man. He lived by the sea as a boy and came to know a fish when he was two years old. The fish came to greet him every summer for ten years until 2002, when he decided to name it Billy for whom he waited but could not see in the following year. In 2004, when the boy was fourteen, he found a dead fish of the same kind. Several other dead bodies were found in the next summer, and the boy became more and more interested in marine life, chemistry and environmental protection. He became a chemistry major at college in 2008, and began tracing the death of Billy's friends. From the specimen taken from the carcasses he has kept as evidence, the young man found traces of a certain toxic compound. Professor Boffin of Meerland Institute of Biology testified that the very compound had gradually weakened the gills of the fish which would be unable to breathe within two to five years after being poisoned. The man-made compound is unique and was a product of Liebig Brothers 20 years ago. The leading chemical company enjoys a very good reputation and has no record of mismanagement of lethal products.

The young man sued Liebig Brothers for unintentional fishslaughter. The court confirmed the causal link, and ruled that Liebig Brothers' invention 20 years ago did have an adverse effect today. The company must pay a fine to the Ocean Protection Fund to offset the estimated negative consequences and must also investigate how the compound got loose into the ocean. The court also ruled that there had been no criminal offence and there would not be further punitive actions taken, since it had not been intentional and the company had always been behaving in a very responsible way.

Lower courts previously reckoned that the company's offence had not been significant enough to be fined. But the young man believed an apology was not enough to give the company and its peers a warning. Obviously, the Supreme Court was more concerned with the danger ocean life was facing than lower courts were in this case.

The next two cases were on commercial bribery. In the first, reinsurance giant Bergen Re complained that one of its major competitors Norden Re had tried to gain unfair advantages by inviting clients to a seminar at the end of which winners of Norden Re's business simulation game each received a latest smartphone as rewards. The verdict said the gifts were not to be considered bribes as the defendant had included the budget clearly and correctly in its books and invited a wide range of its clients not to seek signatures to a contract but to promote the technical know-how in an open and acceptable manner. The seminar was helpful for both Norden Re and the industry as a whole and, moreover, the gifts were given to successful participants, not those who were ready to strike a deal.

In the second, a district attorney of Taoyuan deemed that GreenSafeKey, a pharmaceutical firm, had violated other parties' interests by arranging and paying for a country tour attended by several members of Taoyuan City Hospital's medical staff. The tour was targeted at qualified practitioners who wrote prescriptions regularly. Its competitors, doctors other than those on the trip and the patients who would go to Taoyuan City Hospital had no easy access to information of such an arrangement. The invited physicians had a preference for the defendant's drugs in their prescriptions, compared with a considerable number of colleagues who were not found to have been in touch with any drug company. GreenSafeKey was found to be guilty, its punishment to be announced in five days' time. A senior citizen sitting next to me said the fine, among other possibilities, could be up to 10 billion globos, equivalent to the company's revenue in the past five years, since it was the first time that the firm was involved in such a scandal. Several executives of the company and the involved medical staff were also to be prosecuted.

People here are usually very careful with gifts. If one does not want to be mistaken to have offered a bribe, one asks oneself three questions before sending a gift. Firstly, am I spending my own money? Secondly, am I seeking imminent benefits or long-term relationship which is more emotional than practical? Thirdly, will a third party have just causes to voice an objection to such an act?

If a man truly behaves, he need not worry that he is brought to trial by mistake, since each case is open to all unless reasons are presented to the public to keep it private. Even if he is not legally trained or has little resources to get well prepared, an open trial is for anyone to scrutinise so that the possibility that he cannot defend his lawful rights is minimal.

There are few written laws in this world. It is very hard and costly to depict each and every scenario perfectly so that justice is served. In the world of football, which is much simpler compared to the world of political, social or economic dimension, disputes have arisen over the years regarding the quick direct free kick. FIFA laws of the game fails to stipulate whether a direct free kick can be taken before the referee's whistle, and some players, including world-class strikers who should despise cheap tricks, easily scored from direct free kicks when the defence was in the middle of forming a wall. The scorers and the referees were not to blame: they did not break the law. But taking advantage in such a way is against fair play: the defence commits a foul and is punished with a free kick, not necessarily a goal, and they have the right to form a wall and put up resistance. There is one easy solution for the defence though. They can send a player to disrupt the free kick taker, which is against the laws, until the offence protests to the referee so that the free kick must be taken after the referee's whistle. The current laws encourage the defence to break the law. Ridiculous, is it not?

Furthermore, written laws need amendments or even big changes time after time. Who is there to ensure the modifications are made after wise and thorough consideration? If we are to have many written laws, it is not practical to arrange a plenary debate each time part of a law is altered. Who is there to ensure the standing committee are not misguided? The current FIFA president has not been able to make the goal larger, but he may soon be able to since FIFA has the power to rewrite the laws behind closed doors.

If FIFA did not put the flawed laws above everything else and could not alter the laws as it wishes, and both the referees and the players would look to the essence of the game for clarification, there should be less trouble. If the referees and the players had been allowed to debate openly, rather than to obey unwillingly, after a first incidence, someone would have read aloud a quote from Mr Pierre de Coubertin: "the titles you bestow are worthless save if won in absolute fairness and perfect unselfishness," and a second such opportunistic easy goal would have been ruled out.

Open debate, which competes with FIFA's voice and prevents its monopoly in changing and interpreting the laws of the game, provides an easy solution to many problems. Similar arrangements work elsewhere. Detailed laws and regulations do not extinguish corruption or inefficiency, but the introduction of competition almost always helps enormously. If there were two FIFAs competing against each other, would both organisations be as corrupt as we speculate today's governing body of world football is? If there were two World Cups fighting for participating teams and audience, would the authorities still be relaxed to allow some of the games to be fixed?

Football is a simple game. The laws of the society can be messier. People here believe they can always reason. Past practices serve as good reference for quick settlement, but good reasoning is always effective. For example a child under 18 is usually not old enough to be treated on equal terms as an adult. But who is to be considered a juvenile delinquent? A 17-year-old who was clever and skipped grades and has already graduated from high school, or a 19-year-old who had been raised in solitariness until the age of ten and has just finished the ninth grade? Should the 17-year-old be considered more mature and better acquainted with social rules and thus shoulder more responsibility? The age of 18 can be a guideline or a reference age to define a juvenile delinquent, but details can always be taken into consideration in each individual case. Open trials are usually enough to stop exceptions being made only in favour of the well-connected.

Monday mornings are usually terrible. Try to get up earlier and avoid the heavy traffic.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 9th 2012

My dear,

The schools are free to choose the teaching material – those that fail to pick up good textbooks will end up badly in a competitive education market. Mandatory reading is only sometimes enforced. An introduction to the Administration is a must-read for children in their first year of secondary education.

Not meant to be sophisticated, the book focuses on the principles many, if not all, administrations have agreed to follow in practice. Each chapter describes one aspect concerning an administration, followed by metaphorical questions at the end.

Chapter One talks about the formation of an administration. In principle, a congress appoints the administration chief, who has the power to hire officials reporting to him. He can recruit anyone he sees fit, including his friends and relatives. But in such cases, the chief almost always goes into great length in explaining his decisions beforehand. He does not want to jeopardise his own career and reputation over allegations of jobs for the boys – in the end he must stay in the place for life, hopefully not in a hostile atmosphere. The officials he has hired then get to find staff members of their own.

An administration is usually free to manage in whatever style it sees fit, until it goes too far for the congress to tolerate. Different as they initially were, administrations have evolved to bear in mind similar principles and responsibilities. Chapters Two through Five are dedicated to roles an administration plays. Two easy questions follow the first chapter: (1) Who is the boss in your family? (2) Does the boss ever made bad choices?

In Chapter Two, an administration is asked to act only as the referee. Boosting the economy can be left to the private sector, and if the private sector seems reluctant to do so, perhaps it is better to maintain the status quo. That is why fiscal policy is rare, but the WED administration is an exception – it considers every year whether to adjust the percentage of revenues that are dispensed as the Citizenship Pay. No law says the WED central bank has the exclusive right to print money. But virtually no administration tries to exert any influence to get any mint tax. They completely give up the monetary policy. Economy should be driven by some other force, but not the increase of liquidity.

No job creation targets are set for an administration. Scientific and technological advances mean machines will help people work less to produce food and other necessities. Keeping them occupied with traditional jobs is neither necessary nor beneficial to our progress. People could do other things more. They can be employed in cultural and sport industries; they can also be engaged in such or other activities purely out of interest and are not classified as "employed" by old standards. They have the Citizenship Pay to survive, and they are attracted to something that does not infringe upon other people's rights. No harm done.

A referee ensures that rules are respected. He does not create rules, although he can devise new methods for better enforcement. And he does not help a footballer play "better" by allowing him to foul a little bit.

Questions attached to this chapter are as follows: (1) Do you have in your family agreed rules that everyone must abide by or do you always listen to your parents? (2) How would you like your parents to help you with your schoolwork? (3) Do you do chores at home? If yes, would you like to be rewarded with money or with IOUs issued by your parents? (4) What makes you happy?

Chapter Three says the second priority is to provide public schools that compete with privates ones. Public schools set a minimum standard, and the same is true with public transport, hospitals, libraries, museums etc.

Chapter Four believes the third responsibility is to stop or minimise negative externalities. This chapter does not introduce ABCs of economics. It describes a few examples without mentioning the specific terms. At the end, it asks the readers to give a few more similar examples and try to think of a way to solve these problems.

In Chapter Five, an administration is required to think in the long run. More often than not citizens do not expect an ambitious superhero to reshape the city into one he sees fit. A mayor cannot meddle with people's everyday life with his own ideas. Short-term policies can only be used in an emergency. Many loser mayors are sacked for their unpopular short-sighted actions. At the end, the readers are asked what they want to do in a month, in a year and in ten years.

Chapter Six includes profiles of and interviews with a number of administrative staff members. The attached questions are: (1) Is there a housekeeper in your house? If yes, what is he like? If not, imagine you have a big estate, what kind of person would you like to hire to help you? (2) What are the common characteristics you have found in the people we have talked about in this chapter? My answer to the second question is: they are all people with principles. They work hard to get their fair share and have good control over their behaviour, temper and desire. They may not be the most intelligent, but they must be observant and know what is going on in the house. I do agree that an old-fashioned English butler is a perfect choice as a civil servant. Energetic young people with extremely high IQs can be good business partners.

Chapter Seven consists of a few blank pages, encouraging the readers to think of other aspects concerning an administration that interest them. They can give their own ideas as to what should be done and what should be avoided by an administration. Or they can simply raise questions.

Chapter Eight is optional reading. Among the dos and don'ts, the administrations do not stop imitation or reproduction to protect patents. It is still a controversial principle, but over the past few years of experiment, it has been going well. So far so good. Mankind, after all, advances by repeating others' clever ways and innovating bit by bit, perhaps not significant enough to be recorded as patents. The very idea of a patent is to encourage new things and the spread of them. If we can encourage creative thinking through other means, why impose a patent right that sometimes restrict the repeat-and-improve process?

Their solution is to set up foundations, in large numbers and of a great variety, supported by governments, organisations and individuals. Anyone can use a patent without the owner's consent, as long as the beneficiary acknowledges the benefits. The foundations keep watch on major breakthroughs and award patent owners in accordance with their assessment. Innovators who are not in the spot light can also remind these foundations of their "minor" breakthroughs and ask for some adequate compensation. Entrepreneurs who have made a lot of money by using other people's patents are usually under pressure to donate handsomely to the foundations, if they do not want their brand names to be tarnished. Southern Motor Company has just announced it will contribute ten percent of its profits in the next ten years to the New Car Foundation, which specialises in the auto industry, for adopting a series of new developments in battery technology.

The death of patents was not initiated by the government. Many a patent holder began to patent his brainchild under what was called an "open patent", meaning it was available to anyone, making a gesture towards Volvo in our world, who gave away the three-point seat belt patent and made it available to other car manufacturers for free because they decided that the invention "had more value as a free life saving tool than something to profit from". Those open patent holders moved on to call on others to follow suit, and foundations were set up to make up to them before congresses finally agreed to remove the patent system.

What makes us want to invent new stuff? And what truly stops us from being creative?

Yours truly,

Ted
January 10th 2012

My dear,

It must have been more than fifteen years since I last walked light-heartedly in a drizzling morning. I feel as if I were a teenager again: young, full of energy and always ready to discover the world, only not on foot but with wheels this time.

The city square today was quiet. Rain drops and I replaced the large audience two days ago. This is where someone received a stiff sentence. This place also witnessed a man's name being cleared. Whoever walks in here facing an accusation, probably would be honest with himself, paying more attention to what he has and has not done properly than the possibility that justice goes missing. The best part of being a professional footballer is perhaps that even if he has been wronged by a poor referee the whole world knows who is right through live broadcast. Therefore all he has to do is focus on his game without worrying too much about injustice and bias. The less fortunate ones, however, working and living in little transparency, are induced to pretend to gain advantage. There is nothing wrong with actors acting out stories, but it is not okay for everyone in every business to act and excel.

Wheeling along the edge of the square, I came to a building on the opposite side, overlooking the spot where the judge's bench had been placed. It was the city prison. Totally different to my imagination, it was a small, glass building. People were free to go around the place but needed permission to get inside. No armed officers could be seen on the door – they must have been hiding somewhere behind the neatly dressed lobby manager, who was occupied with some other visitors. I did not want to bother him and took a brochure to read.

The prison has been put here to allow the inmates to watch more cases. I do not know whether or not an irritable man who has been locked up for his past violent behaviour can later pursue a career in law after careful study of all the cases at close quarters. But surely he can learn why he is inside and that he has been treated in accordance with standard procedures. If he has been given a heavier sentence than he deserves, he may be able to find it out by comparing similar cases and lodge an appeal or even ask for compensation, if and when all his lawyers have failed to offer him proper help. In such a scenario, he has the right to put up a poster against his French window, making claims for all the passersby to see. The design of French windows allows certain communication between the inside and the outside, and abusive treatment of prisoners is hard to conceal.

Do not worry about the safety and privacy of the convicts. Bullet-proof glass protects them from revengeful civilian attacks. A cell consists of two parts: the outer balcony with the French window and the inner room where the resident has his own space.

Walking around the building, I tried my best to read all the posters visible to me. One said: "I was innocent. There was another man at the western entrance to the SAR on February 29th 2008 around about 10.30 pm. Help me find him!" The next one read: "I did not mean it. Alcohol made me lose control. Will never drink again!" Another one said: "I hate myself for the terrible things I have done to you even more than you hate me. My life is over but yours has just begun. Please forgive and forget!" These people now have plenty of time to review their past and think about life. They are suggesting clues which might lead to new evidence, writing about the reasons why they have ended up in there, or saying sorry to victims who might be passing by and asking for their forgiveness. Not always working, but not malicious either.

The inmates had been all but violent offenders. Economic criminals usually do not face imprisonment. They have already caused losses to other parties, why further abuse public resources to accommodate them? The principle is to make it impossible for them to benefit from breaking the rules again, and then make them find ways to compensate, if they can by lawful means. On the other hand, he who has been wrongfully convicted can be roughly compensated economically by calculating his opportunity cost. If he has also been jailed for things he has not done, how can you measure his psychological torment while kept in there? Nobody should go to prison, unless their violent action or tendency justifies the confinement. Similarly, they have banned the death penalty because vindicating a dead innocent man does not bring him back to life or lessen the family's hatred towards society. Convicts who are spared their lives are nonetheless punished relentlessly, serving a lifetime sentence without the slightest hope of ever getting out unless they have been wronged.

Even when someone needs to be confined, house arrest is preferred when prison is not necessary. It is a good way to reduce public expenditure. And the purpose of confinement is to limit a man's ability to disturb social order after all, not to make him go nuts in a more hostile prison cell. Many economic criminals have an insatiable appetite but very limited practical skills. A quality old-fashioned lock may be enough to keep most of them in the house. An addition of some modern technology will offer better coverage. Monitoring their phone calls and other interactions with the outside, if they are allowed to do so, is both necessary and sufficient to deter them from running away and disappearing. They are not Rambo, who can break away and live a tough life in the wilderness. Living in his own house is also good for a calm and sensible man to lodge appeals. Even if it is the Supreme Court's final decision, one can appeal against it in five years' time.

Most citizens are not Rambo does not mean that they are physically very weak. In fact, most of them have received combat training at school. Their training has nothing to do with marching forwards and backwards. They do not learn to make their bed. They are taught as many combat skills as they can take in. The training is promoted not only as a sport, enhancing the students' fitness as well as their ability to concentrate, but also as a means to maintain social stability.

A male robber approaches a girl because he thinks she is weaker than he is. An armed man bullies an unarmed man because he knows his bullet is faster than the victim's fist even if the victim is a boxing champion. If many people around are good at hand-to-hand combat, I would think twice before being rude to a stranger. If I am not the only one who has access to a gun, I would always behave even when I am facing an old granny, as long as she has the strength to pull the trigger.

That is exactly the logic behind their decisions to ensure both unarmed and armed combat training at school. In our imagination, bully boys usually do not do well at school. But they are strong in the street only because those who do well at school have not chosen to compete with them. When everyone is trained, many of those who score high in written examinations also turn out to be great fighters since combat training also requires concentration, comprehension and persistence, as are required by academic studies. Top students also tend to be more willing and likely to help maintain social order after growing up.

The need to balance the evil and the good by arming the latter mandates that weapons are not controlled, but licences to carry one are. He who finds it hard to control himself is obviously not deemed a qualified applicant. The final test before getting the permission is interesting: four hours of meditation. What is going on in your mind does not matter; to remain calm and peaceful does. You can stand up for a while if your legs are stiff from sitting cross-legged. But losing patience and wandering around all the time kicks you out of the game. Drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes is not okay; going to the bathroom is. Murmuring to yourself without disturbing others is allowed; sleeping through the test time is not.

Peace lovers do not carry a gun everywhere. What if a gunman shoots at the crowd? Besides quick response from the police, gun booths also help. They are like telephone booths, with bullet-proof glass and alarms that go off when someone enters one of them. Guns in the booths are released with a ten-second delay after the alarms. Good citizens can take the booths and help tackle a terrorist when necessary. The alarms warn passersby of potential danger. The large number of booths scattered around makes it very hard for gangsters to occupy all of them against us good people.

But of course, guns can be available only in a stable society and in turn make it a safer place.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 11th 2012

My dear,

Apparent violence in the street is met with police crackdown and possible firearm resistance from the common man. Other crimes can be more intricate and less obvious to determine. This is when the FBI or another mysterious agency needs to step in with its professionalism and its input of time and money.

Their FBI is called the Investigation Forces, its name in the plural as there are many independent such forces that closely cooperate with one another, stationed in all major cities. Each force can be commissioned by an individual, an institution, itself or one of its peer forces to investigate into any possible crime, including one committed by an Investigation Force. Basically, it is team play. But if a force constantly underperforms and is deemed to be the weak link, it is reduced to playing a backup role, receiving a smaller budget and even being kicked out and replaced in the end.

One routine job for the forces is to fight bribery and corruption. With the help from the one and only transaction account system, they can conveniently monitor abnormal behaviours of anyone employed in the public sector. Then of course they will watch for government officials carrying a suitcase of cash. Believe them: spending a large sum in cash without being noticed is not easy. On many occasions an Investigation Force from another place is entrusted with corruption cases, as outsiders know little about local hidden rules and are less likely to be influenced by local interests. For the same reason an outsider is sometimes put in charge of a corrupt organisation to clean it up. The foreign head of the Qing Dynasty's customs service was not a disgrace to sovereignty but a sober choice – it is wise to pour a stream of clear water, instead of just one or two drops that are to be assimilated quickly, into a basin of dirty water. Bribery and corruption in the private sector is subject to investigation only upon request, because the owners of private businesses have the primary responsibility to clean up their own houses.

Another major job is to check if a complaint about the government leads to a punishable offence. The Chinese concluded a long time ago that a country must be conquered by force but thereafter ruled with cultural values and civilities. In modern civilised societies, where information is widely disseminated, cunning and conspiracy may still sometimes work to gain governorship but will not lead to prosperous rule. Since public affairs are extremely transparent here, anyone can take time to learn how the government should act in a particular situation. Even if the complainant does not suffer from the government's action, he can complain that the government is not acting in accordance with its own protocol. He can see the result, but does not have resources to dig further into the causes. The Investigation Forces take over from here, finding out why and collecting all the evidence needed to bring the offenders to justice.

Prosecution also needs professionals. There are prosecutors in each and every city. They represent the interest of their own cities and peoples and can file a lawsuit against institutions at all levels or individuals from anywhere.

Before sitting down and writing to you, I was watching a talk show called Halfway Through. The show is on Wednesdays – halfway through the week – and it probably tries to remind us that we should think hard when we are only halfway through the pursuit of happiness. Each time a voice is invited to a sometimes debatable topic. But no debate will occur – the opposition can be invited at another time if needed. The show wants to help us patiently listen to a speaker without being interrupted. A debate sometimes helps us understand things better. At other times, the two sides cannot help trying to make the other party look ugly, hoping in this way the other's ideas and arguments will also not be able to stand up and denying everything the opposition says despite an unwilling admission of some truth in it.

For today's show, a congressman talked about why there should be no government debt. A man who had always been told to love his country but fear his government, Mr Adam Rock strongly advocated that the government must balance its books and spend only what has been allocated to it.

Mr Rock is not a stingy man. He will lend to his friends and often gives money to charities, but only those he knows well. He explained that in his eyes lending or giving money to charity was no different from spending it in another way. Money means the right to possession of a certain quantity of resources. When Mr Rock lends to a friend or donates to charity, he knows the character of the borrower and has confidence that the resources are used in a way that Mr Rock also agrees with or at least has no objection to. Mr Rock does not fully give up his control, nor does he want to. But he cannot trust the government as much as he trusts his friends and the charities. More often than not the government tends to borrow without much disclosure of where the money is going. It only promises a return which is guaranteed by its tax revenues, if not by its ruthless printing of new money. But how much tax is it going to collect, and how much is it spending? It must be spending more than it collects so that it needs to borrow. How can it convince Mr Rock that its future spending is to be reined in to an extent that its future tax revenues can finally catch up? The government does not answer these questions partly because some of the money borrowed is borrowing costs and some of the money is spent without the lenders' knowledge or even against their will.

Politicians come and go. Government officials spend money on behalf of others. We do not know them well enough. They not only must keep within the budget but also should spend as little as possible because of the principal-agent problem. With a large budget, a government will always be able to given reasons why its officials must travel in first class to attend that meeting at a five-star hotel in that renowned resort area. They will come up with all kinds of plans and projects to justify this year's annual budget or even overspend it so that next year will be better still. But if a government is given a small budget to cover only what has been clearly mandated, then it is almost impossible to see a great deal of corruption or squandering of taxpayers' money.

The government is more or less like a company providing services to apartment blocks. Such a company is responsible for: (1) building maintenance, e.g. repairs and replacements, lift services, plumbing services; (2) grounds maintenance, e.g. landscaping, road services; (3) environment management, e.g. pest control, waste management, refuse collection and recycling management; (4) energy, e.g. water supply, lighting and power; and (5) damage control, e.g. loss prevention, dehumidification. Such a company is not responsible for how property owners would like to live their life, e.g. whether to work harder, whether to spend the holiday abroad, whether to invest in some fancy projects, whether to let in advertising posters or salesmen. These decisions are up to the owners.

A company providing services collects fees for its services and may be entrusted with an adequate size of fund co-owned by all the property owners to facilitate the owners' needs as defined by the owners, e.g. check the lift and replace it when necessary. The company is not entitled to hold a large pool of the owners' money at its own disposal, whatever good will it might have. It should not be able to determine how big the pool is, let alone borrowing from the owners to make itself comfortable with the level of funding. The owners are to decide the size of the pool and where and when to take money out of it. So should the government behave. It has been selected for the purpose of managing the country for us, not at its own free will.

I think their government runs exactly as Mr Rock demands. Yet people like Mr Rock still find it necessary to come to a talk show and repeatedly remind everyone what is and what is not a government's role. In this way they do not have a big brother but a helping hand.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 12th 2012

My dear,

West-East Corporation (WEC) is their one and only SOE, or DOE as it is owned by the democracy. WEC plays a role in stabilizing the market and setting a minimum standard so that other companies must do better to stay in the game.

Stabilizing the market is no equivalent to losing money. The monetary and pricing systems were invented to measure the worthiness of a business quantitatively. These systems, contrary to physical experiments displayed in controlled conditions, run in much more complicated social settings and can be inaccurate on some occasions or may even be manipulated for a while. But losing money constantly can only indicate a rotten management now or a doomed future later on or both. That is why WEC, in spite of its status as a DOE, should never receive a subsidy from public resources. Neither does it enjoy special treatment to gain unfair advantages. It has been set up and is owned by the government. It follows certain principles set forth by law. It has a few peculiarities in its operations as a result of its compliance with its principles. It is otherwise no different from a private entity and must always be on its own to compete with others. It is an asset rather than a liability to the government.

WEC is a holding company that invests in multiple areas. Unlike other enterprises, which aspire to swiftness in search of fat profits whenever they show up, WEC is usually the last to quit an industry that falls into decline. The subsidiary in question gradually shrinks, but WEC does not give it up once and for all right away. Hence top technicians in this trade will not be forced out of job all at once as WEC admires these perfectionists for all those years of their efforts and encourages industry among the younger generation – they have been trained as masters of technique rather than strategists with business acumen and could not possibly predict the ebb and flow of businesses, could they? In this way WEC also serves as a museum of diminishing technologies before they actually go into history books. Mediocre staff can rely on the Citizenship Pay for survival and may also try another business into which they can put more effort.

WEC is also slow at trying new products. Whatever they produce, it must be recyclable. Compared with businesses in our world, WEC subsidiaries provide a small range of goods and services. They will not manufacture something that, after being used and disposed, they do not know how to deal with. They did not introduce smartphones until they figured out how to reuse every single part of the handset. Some products are indeed expensive, but they do not have future worries. All future costs are already added to the current price here; in our world the consumers buy at a lower price because the future environment is also paying. Their way ensures that once a product is innovated, it definitely means an improvement of life. The lovely purchase today will not be regarded as a monster later on.

WEC is not slow at trying new ideas. It publishes on its official website not only all the required financial reports but many more details – even cost price with a time lag when necessary – that are regarded as "internal" by other companies. This practice is meant to demonstrate WEC's stance in favour of transparency and integrity, which might in turn bring more customer loyalty. Another desired effect is that the public and all interested parties can help scrutinise the company's books so that it is less likely that someone is falsifying the accounts and escaping the attention of internal audit.

A pioneer in management, WEC advocates attracting its employees to do a particular job. The basic salary is compensation for an employee's opportunity cost. His bonus and commission, however, are not paid according to the value of the goods he has sold, if he is a salesman. Selling a one-million-dollar house is not necessarily 100 times as hard as marketing a ten-thousand-dollar motorcar. Considering this, WEC invites its employees to bid for projects. The more difficult the project, the more WEC needs to pay to get it done. Of course such practices would suit top-notchers. Those who do not have a clear understanding of the market, of the product and of their abilities may well end up in receiving a minimal pay. Also most jobs have flexible working hours – forced stay in office does not guarantee success but only ensures consumption of corporate resources.

Managers at all levels have the final say as to whom to hire for their own teams. There are three criteria for appraising managers: performance, team budget and staff turnover. As a manager chooses his team members, a subordinate employee also chooses his manager. If one decides to leave a team or is no longer wanted by the manager, one is not immediately out of job. All employees, working for WEC or its subsidiaries, sign a secondary contract with the parent company. He who has ended his primary contract and left a team then reports to the WEC human resources, which provides him with further training when necessary and recommends him to fill other vacancies within the WEC group. He receives a minimal pay during the transition period. Only when he has failed to find a new team for twelve consecutive months or his transition period has totalled 36 months, will he be advised to quit the WEC group or be fired as a last resort.

Most of WEC employees are either young people with very few professional experiences or senior executives who have been around. The young come to WEC for training and experience, perhaps not the best available but good enough. Then many of them move on to various private companies and walk on different career paths. WEC is happy to receive and finally let go the pool of young talent, as they will help spread many of WEC's values. Senior executives also come back to WEC when there are suitable vacancies. They no longer need money and exciting challenges as much as the young usually do, and become more concerned with and worried about the potential negative impact of human activity on the earth. Their role is to make it least likely that WEC goes into a wrong direction.

WEC is a large conglomerate. It sets foot in financial services, wholesale and retail markets, agribusiness, garment industries, hotels and restaurants, the mass media and anything that is closely related to people's daily life.

West-East Supermarkets and Supermalls (WESS) is advancing old-fashioned sales. No product bundling occurs at a WESS franchise. Neither does WESS offer consumers a discount for bulk buying, though retailers can negotiate and pay less per unit. The purpose of the two practices is to discourage unnecessary consumption. Just buy what we need, not the extra stuff or amount which is so tempting because of the cheaper price. In this way WESS helps reduce waste and lessen the burden on the planet. My buffet restaurant gives a discount only to regular diners, who are less likely to stuff themselves as regular overeating damages their health. I guess the restaurant is not encouraging excessive consumption either. WESS never puts up "30% OFF" signs to lure customers into its stores: it does not want to trouble them with arithmetic calculations, which add additional cost to some, if not all, shoppers. When a product gets out of favour, WESS slashes the old price and puts on a new price tag, which explicitly states the actual sum a customer needs to pay. The comparison of prices should be simple. That is why we put a price on everything and stopped bartering in the first place. WESS also prefers selling a shirt for 50 instead of 49.99, as it does not intend to play psychological games and feels the convenience in payment is worth more than a penny. Some say all those little tricks are part of the fun. But it is the purchased goods and services that satisfy a consumer. He who enjoys the purchase more than the purchases will almost certainly consume much more than enough and, accumulatively, cause excessive waste. This is purely a view held by WESS; other shops have their own choices. Besides, all pieces of packaging coming out of WESS are marked with recycle prices, and can be returned conveniently to any WESS franchise or other contracted recyclers.

West-East Food and Beverage (WEFB) not only processes fresh meat and vegetables but also produces canned and frozen food for long storage. The company buys more from the farmers when there is a good harvest not just to ease the farmers' anxiety but also because the agricultural produce is cheaper then. The increased output is released when agricultural supply drops so that market demand is met and the company also reaps a profit.

WEC subsidiaries do business with each other. Just because they have the same parent company does not mean preference is given. West-East Banking Corporation (WEBC) offers a loan to West-East Yachting Hotel (WEYH), where each yacht is a hotel room, for the new WEYH project is commercially promising. WESS invites West-East Construction Company (WECC) to build a new shopping mall as WECC is the winning bidder for the contract. All subsidiaries follow market prices, since artificially higher or lower prices distort the allocation of resources. And if a WEC firm is so successful that its market share exceeds ten percent, it invites major competitors to watch and copy its model. WEC companies do not pursue a monopoly.

The government has a one hundred percent stake in WEC, which then has a sole or partial ownership in its subsidiaries. WEC follows the pre-set principles, but not advice from the government in a certain case.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 13th 2012

My dear,

The virtual absence of trade unions has contributed heavily to the life of les misérables up there. The absence of them down here is not a problem.

Trade unions came into being to counter the employers' dominating bargaining power. They had successfully managed to do so and had helped the members get higher pay and better working conditions over the years. But if their collective bargaining gets too powerful, should the employers form employers' unions and escalate the antagonism? Is each and every strike fully justified? Does a union, an agent too, faithfully represent the interest of each of its member? Is relying on a union the only and best way to protect the working class?

Their answers to all these questions are no. As many have already noted, trade unions often, if not always, benefit inside workers at the expense of outside workers, owners of the businesses and even consumers. While businesses are encouraged to adjust, when selling, the prices of their products to reflect the change of supply and demand, they should also be able to adjust, when buying, the labour costs more swiftly to keep up with the market, as long as the adjustment is done in an open and honest way and the labourers do not face a sudden death because of the adjustment.

Hence the logic is: if we can safeguard the interest of the working class through other means, we had better not keep the unions. Fortunately, the Citizenship Pay sets the bottom line and presents itself as a perfect substitution for trade unions. Underpaid jobs and harsh working conditions are not possible in normal situations. Abnormal situations as in forced labour need to be dealt with by other government agencies. Trade unions would not solve this kind of problem either.

The old trade unions did not disappear altogether though. Many of them have turned into think tanks and consultancies, providing all sorts of services based on their particular understanding of a specific trade. Some of them have chosen to reorganise as sports clubs, appealing to a crowd that has much in common. One thing they do not do any more is to give orders to bring businesses to a halt.

No law says a strike per se is illegal. But no one organises a strike because the ensuing damage can hardly be justified and the suffering parties, at least in theory, may file a lawsuit against the organiser for compensation. One can choose to go on a personal strike though. An employee has the legal right to end his contract at any time provided no special terms and conditions forbid that. An employer can choose to sign a one-year contract with a less indispensable worker and renew it towards the end so that the enterprise responds more swiftly to changes in the market. A key employee is usually offered a long-term contract. Either way the contract can be terminated immediately if the employer agrees to pay the pre-set severance package.

It is inevitable that trade unions will eventually go into history books. Workers today are better educated. Skilled jobs are greater in number as less skilled ones are being done by machines whenever possible. The labour law does well to protect workers' rights. Now there is no need to have trade unions as there was before. Fewer people work because they have to; more of them do something because they are attracted to it. As a consequence, more and more happy citizens are involved in sport, cultural, medical and recreational activities. They are either employed or unemployed, having a job or not at all by traditional standards. The aim of human efforts is to improve the quality of life, and manufacturing is only a small part of that cause.

Despite the small number of people employed in the manufacturing sector, their production capacity of consumer goods is huge with the help of the extensive use of automated production lines. But they do not seem very fond of electronic gadgets, in stark contrast to what is going on up there.

Not everyone has a mobile phone. Instead, telephone booths, along with gun booths, are dotted everywhere. You do not need to purchase a top-up card every now and then to make calls – a collect call is always a convenient alternative. The only trouble is that you will have to memorise a few numbers. But how often will you call a stranger in the street? The only number of great urgency one has to learn by heart is 112 or 911. Apart from an emergency call, what kind of phone call really has to be made right away while you are outdoors?

They do have plenty of smartphones as well as desktop computers, laptops etc. But these are playing a supplementary role. Walking in the street or sitting on a bus, I find it hard to catch someone playing with an electronic device. In consideration of high supervision costs, no law forbids talking on the phone while walking, driving or riding a bike. But if an accident happens, the party distracted by the communication is to be sued for criminal negligence. Mobile phone operators are required to testify whether someone is using a phone at the time in question.

There are also quite a few people here who do not use these electronic things at all. They live a more natural or, if you like, more primitive way of life. They love to stay close to nature. Very often I look at them as if I were gazing at the carefree dogs running about in our neighbourhood. Both groups are nimble and strong, without wearing spectacles or suffering from other modern physical or mental problems. Contrary to man's best friend of course, people here do usually get dressed before going out for a walk and are much more sophisticated as they have a profound understanding of the complex world around them, despite their simple way of life.

I read more than my peers in primary school and began suffering from myopia at twelve despite my good eye care habits. Ever since then I have reduced my reading to only the essentials. But as I grew up there seemed to be fewer and fewer interesting activities, and reading remains one of the few pleasures. For me reading is to shun the real world. For people here reading is one of the many pleasures and a means of embracing the real world, consisting of both the existing and the imaginary parts.

For me living a simple life – going to work and then coming back home to spend as much time as possible with you – is to run away from the many popular and maybe colourful choices that are not that enticing to me. For them living a simple life – without dining and drinking and singing and dancing with people other than family and close friends – is to spare more time to do what really draws their attention or simply run about like happy dogs enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

If the outdoor world is lovely, why should I stay home and become a couch potato watching television programmes while I could hardly tell the differences between them? But it is too dangerous outside. You will not be able to tell where and when a long repressed soul would lose control and set a bomb to bring himself and people who happen to be around to another world, which I do not want to discover yet. Please remain indoors more until I come back. My company should be able to lower the probability of you running into inexplicable dangers.

It was a happy day and I was absolutely light-hearted at the beginning of this letter. How did I put myself into such a sad mood? I had better call it a day and try to cheer up a little by watching some entertaining television before I sleep.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 14th 2012

My dear,

Some people want to be cops because uniformed officers look cool. Some others are not at all interested because of the danger the job entails.

Down here it is almost a tradition for the young to become police officers for the first job. Some leave after gaining an inside look for a couple of years. Others are truly into the job and feel confident about keeping order and assisting in criminal investigations. These young men and women stay and accumulate experiences, and the qualifiers get promoted after being tested both in training and in the real world. As a result, almost everyone knows something about being a cop. Almost everyone has a friend or two who was or still is a cop. The police are deeply rooted in the public – very often it is a colleague of your neighbour's son that is coming to help you. Working as a cop is as normal a job as any other.

Cop stories start at school; children are invited to tour around local cop shops. The police are no mysterious and they do not use undercover agents who risk their lives playing bad guys as are depicted in many of our films. They believe it signals the failure of their design of social systems if undercover investigation is the only way to tackle crimes. There is always an honest way to beat dishonest perpetrators. Being a cop is a job in the sun and is just as safe or dangerous as any other job.

When there is a protest going on, the cops come out to keep order. As some in the crowd might carry guns, which are legal, the cops are also well equipped. But the principle of reciprocity must be observed. They keep order with their bare hands if the people they are facing do not produce weapons. If the crowd is out of control and thugs begin to use cold weapons, the officers will also use shields and truncheons. No firearm is used against their fellow countrymen unless the cops are being attacked with a gun. In such a scenario, the police can and must fire back as they are not only defending themselves but safeguarding the public against terror as well. Putting a hand into the pocket is not sufficient to be considered planning to hit the cops with a bullet. Producing a gun without firing is. Digital cameras attached to a cop's uniform are usually enough to determine if an officer's response is appropriate.

Police officers are administered by the states, not the cities. Since a state chooses not to keep military forces, the policemen and policewomen are the first to stand up to invasion. Then their brothers and sisters, friends and relatives – whoever receives training in peacetime – will come to join them in fighting for independence, until the union army, navy and air force arrive and take over.

The military are sent in only to fight enemy forces or carry out relief operations. Otherwise they stay inside their bases and camps. If and when some of them walk into civilian territory off duty, they must be dressed in civvies, comply with civilian rules, be subject to arrest by the police if in trouble and appear in civilian court before facing military discipline or trial by court-martial.

The police are supposed to be our friends, honest and reliable friends. They must live up to our expectations. How to keep them from being corrupt? The practice here that many young people come in and put on the uniform for a while certainly helps.

Running water is not stale. With the fresh minds coming in constantly, it is difficult, if not entirely impossible, to develop and maintain a set of underground rules. It is much easier when a comparatively enclosed circle hangs on to some exclusive authority, especially when they also have lingering woes. Young graduates are immature, knowing little and having even less; they are also powerful, full of the wonderful ideals which do not need to come true to make the world a better place. We must protect them, cherish their dreams, the good side of human nature and help them resist temptations and refuse to yield to existing powers. The continuous injection of new blood does just that, enhancing the bright side of life so that it is not submerged by restless evil thoughts.

The police are somewhat a third party – they are not really an arm of the administration and do not take sides between the administration and the people. When the two sides are in conflict, they come to keep order, usually by stopping offensive actions and helping the defensive party, because everyone can go to a court of law peacefully but no one, not even the powerful government, can impose anything upon others, not even the helpless smallest fry, with force. Only violent citizens and government officials are arrested and put in jail as they might hurt others; he who refuses to move away to let the administration go on with its pursuit of "public interest" is not to be locked away – the administration can always go to a court, prove that he is not properly defending his rights and then sue for damages. Therefore there is no Singaporean-style land appropriation and house demolition down here.

The best way for a government to get a piece of land is to make an offer in the market. To avoid insane demands for unreasonable sums of compensation, which is likely to be made by property owners who do not really want to stay but to take advantage of the government's relatively small elasticity, the government can use agents to make separate offers. These agents can make an offer using an individual's profile and then, after all individual purchases are completed – the process can be years during which these properties are rented out – transfer the ownership to the government. If a home owner really wants to stay and will not be moved by any offer, the government's plan must either change or wait until the target property finally changes hand to someone willing to sell.

Likewise, the police will not get involved in coercion of false confessions or wrongful convictions as they are just a third party and their job is only to maintain discipline. Lawyers and prosecutors and other professional staff talk to the suspects and collect evidence. Judges and juries make decisions. The police just need to make sure that the suspects stay where they are or, when needed, stay in custody, and bear witness to the suspects' behaviour at the police station. They also protect the crime scene, but crime scene investigation is mainly the job of professional agencies that are not part of the police force.

They make sure that everyday life, crime scene investigations and legal prosecutions go on in proper order, and things beyond those are not their responsibilities.

But do not be mistaken. Keeping order is their job, not their excuse for abuse of power. The police are not allowed to stop and frisk a passerby whom they thought could be a potential criminal but who has not done anything yet. If a man is suspicious, plain-clothes detectives can follow him, in public places only unless otherwise justified, to determine whether further actions are necessary. Uniformed officers normally would not be seen in the street. They hide somewhere, sometimes in a police car parked in an underground garage, so that they are not intrusive but are quick to show up when someone needs them.

I guess you are not to be bothered by those police constables and their auxiliary partners dotted along the Chang'an Avenue. They are only interested in tough-looking, dark-skinned males with rucksacks, are they not?

Yours truly,

Ted
January 15th 2012

My dear,

It had been raining heavily last night. The sun came out this morning to allow us a dry ground for the weekly open trials in the Central Square. If the rain had not stopped, they would have put up canopies so that the trials could go on as scheduled. When lightning and violent tropical storms drop by, the event is put off.

Some brands of olive oil are blended with canola or other vegetable oils. This practice has been so far allowed as long as a precise breakdown of the oils used is clearly stated on the label. But a one-time trade union, now a consultancy that does not have an authoritative voice, decided to challenge this practice for the good of the game. They believe such a product should only be named "Blended Olive Oil", because details on the label are assistance to the consumers, who can but do not have to read meticulously. Most of us just look at the name of the product and make a choice – there is nothing wrong with that if manufacturers acknowledge that it is good for consumers to trust them. Something named "Olive Oil", in the eyes of an ordinary punter, is supposed to be obtained purely from olives. Up there under EU rules, olive oil may be sold as Italian even if it only contains a small amount of Italian oil. The trade union also took issue with this misleading trick and wanted to end it down here.

The trade union has been suing the largest producer of olive oil for the above-mentioned two offences for quite a few years. All lower-level courts of law have declined to set a precedent and reverse the tradition. Those courts tend to concur with the view that the two forms of misleading practice are merely promotion with mild, acceptable exaggeration. They are punishable only if the promoter has a monopoly, which, combined with the exaggeration, has brought huge unjust profits.

The Supreme Court acknowledged that the defendant had many competitors and its benefit from the promotion with exaggeration, a common practice in the industry, was very limited. But it also reckoned that the practice was nevertheless misleading and the benefit, however small it might be, was unjust. The court adjudicated that all purchasers should get double compensation from the defendant and the product concerned need not be recalled since it is otherwise top-quality. The defendant must stop misleading the consumers in similar ways and must pay a moderate fine of 200,000 globos to a consumer protection body, which the defendant has the freedom to choose.

Down here no fine is to be handed in to the government unless the government is the suffering party. Such an arrangement is to avoid encouraging the government to create scenarios that generate amercements. Instead, charities and other such third parties receive the money as they are there to help victims and vulnerable groups.

After today's ruling at the Supreme Court, lower courts would dispense summary punishment to other producers in line with the precedent set here.

The second trial is perhaps even more controversial. A man, hailed a hero by many, was found guilty by the Supreme Court after lower courts had cleared his name repeatedly. He was a retired army officer, well trained and keen on helping people in the neighbourhood. He used his handgun, which was a legal possession, to shoot the tyres of a fast and furious car that violated several safety regulations and to a considerable extent threatened the life and property rights of residents along its route, and stopped the crazy man and the vehicle by pointing his gun at the driver's head before turning him in.

The Supreme Court agreed with the district attorney, who admired the accused but insisted it was a case of overuse of violence. The verdict said weapons were meant to defend rather than attack. The use of a gun in public places offers a possibility of hitting the innocent and therefore has to be restrained. In this case, it was not a must to produce a gun and the accused was not justified to turn to the last resort. His unnecessary act of aggression, though with good intentions and without deadly consequences this time, has led to a one-month sentence in prison plus a compulsory three-month self control course aimed at training the participants to think of other means before using a gun. His licence to carry a gun was temporarily suspended. He would have to pass a test due in six months' time to be qualified to hold guns again.

The driver's case did not reach the Supreme Court. He was sentenced to five years in prison for dangerous driving and others.

Another man named Nicolas Poe, who had killed one man and injured another three, was very lucky to be found not guilty at all. Poe was on his way home one night when four gangsters, with cold weapons in hand, came up and cornered him. Poe, who happened to be a top student in his combat training class, initiated a sudden attack against the four. He quickly killed the nearest one, crippled the next, and then took some time to fight and seriously injure the last two.

The focus of debate is whether that was self-defence since Mr Poe moved first. The final opinion of the Supreme Court states that although the four did not strike first they did circle Mr Poe. The threat was there and Mr Poe fought in self-defence.

Then there is no evidence that the four wanted to kill or even seriously injure him. Perhaps they just wanted some money. So the next question is whether it was justifiable defence. Or was it overdone? The Supreme Court once again stood by Mr Poe's side and said that in such a situation it would be hard or impossible to predict the intentions of the dominant side. When the intentions are indeed clear, it would be too late for the weaker side to put up effective resistance. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the four had the worst intentions and Mr Poe was justified to do what was needed to stop them from being able to deliver harm unto him.

The Supreme Court's further explanation says that as long as the four still stood and had the ability to attack, Mr Poe, or anyone in such danger, was justified to use maximum force, including means to deliver disabling or fatal injury, to reduce the adversaries' ability to offend. Only if it is obvious that all adversaries cannot strike back again, and the weaker side is in good condition to judge the situation, would it be called overdone if the weaker side continues to kill whoever is alive. But if one of the adversaries is lying with hands invisible, the weaker side is justifiable to suspect that he himself is still in danger. If a gangster is lying with four broken limbs and no deadly weapons nearby, however, the weaker side should not strike again.

I do not believe such rulings would victimise villains with only moderate ambitions. When they make up their mind to bully other people, they should be prepared for the worst.

The same principle applies in the next two cases – the accused, despite his involvement in violent, offensive or improper conduct, is not guilty if he had no better choice in the matter. A group of youngsters were cast away on a desert island. Most of them survived in the end by eating the bodies of their dead companions. Since there was no evidence of murder and the survivors were in extremely bad shape and would not have made it without consuming the dead, they were found not guilty. But they did benefit from the death of their friends and must compensate financially to the families of the deceased. This case was about civil liability rather than a criminal offence. In the other case, a junior government official followed his superior's instructions to disguise the environmental hazard a local factory had caused. He was found guilty because he could have quit his job and told on his superior but he did not. He had better choices back then.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 16th 2012

My dear,

The third Monday of January in the beginning year of a modern Olympiad is a big day for the WED. This is the time when its new president is sworn in.

You must have guessed correctly that the swearing-in took place in the Central Square. It is the Micronesian Union's turn to hold the WED presidency for the next four years. The new WED President, also the current head of the Micronesian Union, is to step down as union chief for Micronesia in two years' time and her successor will automatically become the WED President for the rest of the Olympiad. Her successor, though, will not be lucky enough to go through a ceremony like today's.

The name of the new president is Margaret Franklin. She was tall and lean and quite young compared to leaders up there in our motherland. She gave a short speech introducing herself to the gathering before taking a few questions. Then she took the oath of office and the ceremony was over. It lasted around about five minutes only – very simple indeed but it has served the purpose.

As I have mentioned before, the WED President is largely ceremonial and has strict guidelines to follow. She does not have many discretionary powers. In contrast, leaders of unions, states and cities are like CEOs, who can sometimes or even often give executive orders when they see fit, as long as these actions do not result in the termination of their contracts with their respective congresses. What none of the leaders ever do is play kind-hearted and visit kindergartens like film stars – people expect them to leave the children to teachers and professional entertainers and return to their offices to do their real job.

Surely there is no election in a kingdom, where the king owns the land, but not the people, and has the legitimate power to set the rules on his own premises and pass down his possessions to his heir. In other places, the congresses, using their own unique procedures, elect the leaders or choose management firms which send managers to be leaders there. Universal suffrage is only meant to vote for a congress, consisting of many people coming from among us. If some of them are not good enough, they will be replaced gradually and the damage should not be unbearable. Direct election by everyone is hardly seen as an efficient way to choose a CEO, who needs to have certain skills that the common people may not know how to tell or have time to make continuous assessment. Fixed terms of office are not popular either. This is to ensure consistency but not to endorse absolute power. A CEO with an open-ended contract is not encouraged to accumulate power, unless each and every member of the congress is incompetent and none of them holds his ground. Congressmen, and other government officials at different levels, have not been taught to make concessions to the commander in chief, who is at the top of the executive pyramid but has no control over matters outside his mandate.

Another distinguishing characteristic is that they shun partisan politics. To run for office, a candidate send his curriculum vitae to the congress and try to convince them that he is the right choice, just like applying for any other job. Once in office, the appointed person or the manager sent by the chosen management firm does not pursue his or his organisation's ideals, but rather, has many constraints and follows agreed guidelines as an executive does at a company. In contrast, people up there have the freedom to choose from a number of parties. And then the elected party has the freedom to give directions instead of just performing management duties. But the parties are usually more consolidated and have an edge over the masses. The former cannot represent the interests of the latter. Congress members down here are all independent, representing their own values and making their own decisions (so that each member's fortunes and reputation are at stake and no one can argue that he is only taking orders from a superior). No organisation is allowed to unite a number of congressmen and congresswomen upon whom it exerts influence. Such an alliance is just a cartel in the political arena, is it not? In a word, a mayor answers to the congress and a congressman to the voters – neither pledges allegiance to a political party.

The absence of partisanship allows the congress to focus on setting the direction (institution building and the appointment of key positions) rather than getting tangled with vested interests. The legislature is not involved in passing bills to manage the details of everyday life. They do not discuss whether GMOs should be labelled, as anyone can sue a company which has not made it clear that its products contain GMOs, not for declining to label but for being dishonest and hiding a fact that its counter party has reasons to be interested in. The judge only has to understand the principle that he who cheats gets punished; there is no need for the congress to figure out how many ways a man cheats and make each and every one of them a crime, and the judge does not have to memorise each type of hustle and update his knowledge of the dirty business as if he himself were an inside man. What is required of a judge is that he has to be able to see beyond the surface and details of each case and know clearly whether there is misconduct and injustice.

What is also banned is lobbying. If making a phone call to a competitor to agree on prices is evidence of a private cartel, which is subject to legal liability under the antitrust laws now found in nearly every nation, lobbying to make a law in the interest of the lobbyists is worse. Consumers can choose to walk away from the private cartel if they think the high price is unbearable, but citizens have to abide by laws that are imposed upon them. Lobbying costs a lot and is a rich man's game. It reflects the strong's will, which can be realised in the jungle. The government should be fair, not favouring any particular side. If it is to mess around, it had better do something in favour of the weak. It is a paradox that the government should do anything, apart from ensuring justice and security, to help the strong prosper, because the absence of government makes sure of just that.

Typical and ideal members of congress are polymaths with dignity. He who is weak at mathematics, logic, economics or general knowledge is less likely to become successful candidates. They do not need to come from all walks of life though. And they do not have to be top scientists in a specific area either – they must know when and where to find specialists to consult. The need to balance all parties' interests does not mean members of congress are trying to satisfy everyone. They make laws and important decisions to give and take away not because of who you are and where you belong but because of what you have and have not done.

Much of their diplomacy is done in writing. Although all government officials speak English, which is the WED's official language, their levels of proficiency vary and no one wants to be misunderstood or taken advantage of. Written digital exchanges allow them plenty of time to determine the true meaning of others and make sure of a clear expression of their own ideas. Emails cost much less as well. When officials from two governments have to talk to the other side, they prefer the telephone and video conferencing. When they feel it is necessary to meet in person, their meetings, as well as their digital exchanges, focus on showing facts and figures and new ideas that may be not yet known to the other side. The other side then may choose to learn from the experience or not. The two sides do not try to convince one another, and meetings are not negotiations aimed at reaching consensus.

The reason why meetings up there are often routine tasks packed with people who walk out of the room the same as they went in is that they only want to sell their product, which may be successful in their system, without considering its appeal to the other side in the other system. Reaching consensus is difficult because the two sides have different propositions, which are the natural outcome of different understanding. Different understanding stems from different experiences and access to facts. Therefore trying to persuade the other side is not as good as sharing with each other one's own experiences and the facts one has seen, which are behind one's viewpoints and propositions.

Children love to hear stories and they will learn lessons from well-chosen ones before growing into good men and women. They hate to be told what should be done and what should not. Adults are the same.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 17th 2012

My dear,

A neighbour of mine had a heart attack early this morning. He was lucky and is now spending the night under observation at a West-East General Hospital. I went to see him in the afternoon and came to know more about the health care system.

There is no Medicare or Medicaid programme. They believe health care can be left to the market, because the poor are not more inclined to terrible illnesses than the rich. There is no need to establish a publicly funded, if not publicly wasted, health insurance programme, when reasonable health care costs can be covered by the Citizenship Pay and certain types of commercial insurance policies.

Again, West-East General Hospitals set a minimum standard. Many other hospitals, privately owned or charity-funded, offer quality services at higher rates or differential treatment on certain conditions. The Citizenship Pay ensures even the poorest can have some resources to buy basic services. Those who have jobs and earn salaries have a wider range to choose from. The rich guys can stay at a five-star private ward. There is nothing wrong with that. At least I, who has never been rich, am not envious of their comfort and have no objection to this practice.

Emergency units at WE hospitals provide first aid services and training free of charge. Their ambulances run on petrol paid by the hospitals. The relevant costs, including the salaries for the crew, are considered advertising expenditure which helps to promote the image of the hospitals and attract more customers – hospitals are businesses after all.

A patient does not have to pay in advance or put down a deposit to get treated. Treatment always comes first. Then, after everything that can be done is done, a bill is given to the patient or his family. For those who pay right away, no question is asked. For those who have neither cash nor insurance coverage, either the patient himself or a family member or a friend or anyone who agrees to settle the bill needs to show some form of identification. Then a loan is automatically made to whoever agrees to act on behalf of the patient. If a loan arrangement still does not solve the problem, the patient or his appointee can apply to any of the many charity funds which may extend a helping hand and clear his debt. The charity funds, with the patient or his appointee's authorisation, have access to records of the relevant transaction accounts to determine whether such an application for help is genuine and much needed. The application can be filed with explanations if the transaction accounts appear to be affluent. The applicant will be in big trouble if the Investigation Forces are ever to find him guilty of fraud.

Medical services are basically no different from other services. The providers incur costs and are entitled to reimbursement. The uniqueness lies in the fact that consumers of this service can hardly put off or give up the purchase without taking potential life-threatening risks. That is why many other hospitals, though not required by law, follow suit and ask the patients to pay now if they can or pay later if they cannot right now. Also, very few healthy people enjoy seeing a doctor more than is needed. No sensible man takes medicine when not necessary to disrupt his inner balance. Universal access to treatment-first-and-pay-when-you-can services makes reselling of medical resources unprofitable. With these arguments, the charity funds are confident that they are able to cover the expenses for the limited number of unfortunate souls.

They have succeeded in omitting the public health care system but cannot wipe out the oldest profession. Nor do they try to. Up there many governments have tried and failed to ban the trade. If the reason behind the ban is that they believe offering such services is an indecent job, yet quite a few women, and men, still choose to disgrace themselves, then it is indeed a disgrace to the policy-making lords that these voters who support them and taxpayers who feed them have not been able to live a decent life as the lords themselves have always been able to.

Up there workers in this business are receiving less than their predecessors; down here the rates are kept high because the Citizenship Pay has put a floor under the living standards and constrains the supply side significantly. The middleman, however, is dying out. Business is done all but online. Pseudonyms can be used but all payments, as in any other business, must be made through transaction accounts. Privacy is kept until a dispute or even crime leads to the discovery of true identities. Third party websites display both the sellers' and the buyers' health records, other people's comments on them and how often they have changed their pseudonyms, among others. Therefore honest and safe vendors and clients have a bigger chance to be picked and accepted by the other side.

Gambling here is more an entertainment than a way of winning and losing money. There are thousands of popular forms, all of which are enjoyable experiences. Some of them are novel; others fancy or exciting. Of course behind all that you can see, there are mathematics, probability and creativity. A casino is no inferior to a video arcade, where you also put in money to get fun along with some radiation and sore eyes, or any other fun place. To promote sustainable development, the businesses have agreed to regulate themselves before things get out of control and the government has to set foot in. They hire actuaries to estimate and keep their profit margins at a reasonable level. At the end of each fiscal year, any sum more than the pre-set earnings is donated to charity. When a man bets a large sum, he is required to demonstrate that losing all of it poses no threat to his or his family's well-being. Even after he has claimed responsibility, the casino may have to, it depends on the circumstances, compensate the sufferers or donate handsomely to redeem itself if his rashness later turns out to be a disaster.

I cannot recall how I have changed the topic from my neighbour's heart attack to the two businesses that are said to be banned in our country. A third one, the selling and purchasing of drugs, is also legal and openly done down here.

Though not a Marxist – the ending paragraph of Mr Karl Marx's Reflection of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession is touching – I agree with him and Mr Thomas Joseph Dunning that a three hundred percent profit will make people commit any crime and take any risk even to the chance of being hanged. Perhaps the best way to curb the gangsters' activities is to lower the profitability; in order to minimise the disastrous consequences for the punters, it is better to encourage the addicted to seek help than to punish them in any way. Parlours, with warning signs and all sorts of objective information available, are dotted around and in close contact with the government, which helps reduce the prices to as low as possible by collecting data on demand and bargaining on behalf of all the parlours directly with large producers. Whoever wants to end the days of addiction is given free treatment co-sponsored by government and charity.

Bad guys cannot make a lot of money even if they successfully get someone addicted – the victim does not have to go to them for drugs at high prices. Sensible people will not easily try and the fools who did can always seek help to quit without being prejudiced and intimidated. When demand is contained, supply will not flourish. Cracking down on supply, while demand is not properly taken care of, is doomed to failure or at best extravagantly costly.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 18th 2012

My dear,

Not many television programmes can draw my attention. Faithfully made documentaries do; the Halfway Through talk show does.

This evening's guest speaker was David Blueman, a monetarist economist according to our classification. He discussed his version of the origin of the financial crisis of 2007-08 in our world, and insisted that the government, not even a very independent central bank, should have discretionary powers over the money supply. He also believed that linking the money supply with observed inflation rates was deceptive and no more objective than a "wise" chairman's judgment.

The root of the problem, says Mr Blueman, lies in the previous twenty years during which liquidity gradually accelerated. As a result, the money supply substantially exceeded goods and services. The authorities may defend themselves by saying that the inflation figures were not too high. But the rate of inflation only concerns a number of things that hardly witness huge price fluctuations. Even when the money supply doubles, rice will not be twice as expensive because an uprising will occur before the corresponding adjustment could ever be made. There are certainly other things that absorb the extra liquidity: property, equity, antiques, gold and so on. When these are soaring in value, the total value of goods and services rises to match the money supply again, and inflation easily remains mild. The monetary authorities then reckon it is okay to keep the easy money policy or even make it easier.

But the property markets will not always be heated; gold prices will not keep going up all the way. There will be a point when investors believe it is time to go short. Then these investment goods fall in price, and the total value of goods and services is again way below the money supply. The extra money needs to find somewhere to go. By the way, when money is abundant, the return on investment is under pressure to stay low. That is why financial institutions are becoming more and more creative and will do whatever they can to invent new vehicles in search of higher profit margins. When they are successful, often with the help from governments, house prices and others can maintain the current high level for some time. The bubbles are there longer than expected but will eventually burst one day. A few powerful parties, i.e. governments or financial giants, cannot win each and every battle of manipulation, and they are doomed to fail sooner or later. When they fail at last, the investment goods will return to their lower prices.

The price of rice may or may not go up during the process. People with money now become cautious, and "cash is king" is the prevalent belief. Money still exceeds goods and services. But liquidity becomes solid. The cash king sits in the bank, demanding returns which cannot be negative in our system. But at the same time, no one is borrowing so that no one is supporting the king.

People now realise that money (nominal economy, if you like) is way more than goods and services (real economy). There are usually two ways to deal with the problem. One is to endorse the nominal economy by easing the money supply further. Then the government encourages or forces the public and private sectors to spend more. The real economy is stimulated and expands until it matches the nominal economy again. When the real economy gets bigger, the government also tries to find opportunities to back off from further easing the money supply and may be able to reduce the nominal economy a little.

Another proposition is to respect the real economy and bring down the nominal economy as soon as possible. Government spending plans are usually too big as they are drawn up based on the size of the nominal economy. Since the nominal one is not real, austerity measures are necessary to take the government back to the real world. A stern monetary policy and a smaller money multiplier which is the result of a slowdown in the economy quickly squeeze the nominal economy until it is more or less the same as the real one.

Both methods can regain the balance. The best way, however, is not to manipulate the money supply in the first place. To create a problem and then solve it does some good to politicians and maybe also some others, but definitely not to the majority of billions of people who believe money to be a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. Distortion eats away at the foundation of market economies.

That is why the origin of the financial crisis, according to Mr Blueman, is the improper handling of the money supply. Therefore he strongly recommends that no government control over the money supply is allowed. He believes that a third party must be invited, as a mediocre third party is better than a "reasonable" in-game player. Further, who ensures that the government is reasonable?

A third party is not an independent central bank, but a set of rules which the central bank has to follow and has very little power to alter. Linking the money supply with observed inflation rates can be considered a third party. But Mr Blueman prefers linking the money supply with the previous year's GDP growth, since observed inflation rates fail to capture the extra money that goes to investment goods.

I am not a fan of flexible monetary policy either. Encouraged by the government then, my mother had been extremely thrifty and had been setting aside every penny she could. She scrimped and saved for some twenty years to save up ten thousand yuan. And then wages went up significantly in the early 1990s, and it took her only another two to three years to save the next ten thousand.

Easy money did not hurt the majority of people badly back then, as most of the Chinese workforce was still "inside the system", where wages did go up, despite a possible time lag, if the money supply soared. And not every one of them had been as frugal as my mother had been; not many had accumulated appreciable savings just to be eaten away. But it has become a different story since then. When the government injected four trillion into the economy, an unknown number of private business owners reaped the benefits but were unwilling to raise the sticky wages of the millions. In addition, the rich are borrowing heavily from the poor. Therefore inflation in the early 1990s, though unjust all the same, was not widening the gap between the rich and the poor as today's money increases are.

Moreover, the injection of new money pushes up asset prices and devalues the contributions of wage-earners. It rewards speculators but punishes the labour force, which is the root cause of economic development. Obviously, an anticipated loose monetary policy hinders rather than stimulates the economy.

Mr Blueman is also sceptical of the fiscal policy. He firmly believes that the government is not to be trusted. Hence even when there is a need to stimulate or hold down the economy, the adjustment should only go through the Citizenship Pay. To make things clearer, he explains that the pay rises when supply is more than demand. Consequently, consumption goes up while the incentive to work is on the wane and production goes down. In other words, the private sector has more to spend so that the economy is boosted, and then recession is over because demand catches up and overproduction is no longer there. Of course the pay drops when demand is more than supply, or as the mass media say the economy is overheated. Consequently, the people have less to spend and need to work more. As the citizens are asked to be more prudent so that everything, from prices to salaries, slows down a bit, consumption goes down and production goes up. As a result, the economy is cooled.

The need to raise the pay does not justify tax increases. A certain percentage of government revenues go into a pool that supports the Citizenship Pay. An administration will be ousted well before the pool is to be emptied; a one-off payout happens when there is too much money in the pool, and tax cuts may be considered if the abundance continues as a long-term trend.

Next week on the Halfway Through, "a middle-aged man of Chinese origin will share with us his stories and the reasons why he believes we should not travel afar when parents are home." We both wondered what we had left home for. Perhaps it is time for us to seriously consider returning home, again. I will report to you on the man and his stories a week from today.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 19th 2012

My dear,

Working on a farm means being rich in some places or living a poor life in some others. Down here it is either as normal as any other occupation if one is hired by a large agribusiness corporation or mainly a hobby for those individual farm owners who have a deep feeling for the land.

Large corporations take the vast majority of the market share. The advantages of large corporations are that they can take more risks and tend to operate with long-term plans. If the market is dominated by a huge number of small individual suppliers, these farmers will easily flock to plant a certain crop when its price goes up. The soaring price in the first year would almost certainly lead to a plunge in the next because of the increased production. This kind of price fluctuation is man-made and disruptive. Small farmers cannot resist the temptation partly because of their inferior capability to gather information.

To solve the problem, both the government and large corporations step in. The government, along with think tanks and consultancies, tries its best to provide information as to the current and forecast market demand and planting acreage of a certain crop. (Information on the supply and demand in all the industries also helps to smooth out fluctuations in overall economic activity, by urging an economy to cut surplus capacity rather than create the otherwise nonexistent demand.) The Government does not interfere with or guide the production of any crop. It purchases a certain amount of food crops as reserve so that the supply of rice, wheat, barley, oats, rye etc is a little more than the current consumption.

Large corporations do not adjust its planting plans in accordance with spot prices. They have specialists working on strategies, and can better cope with possible negative outcome should the specialists make bad decisions. Within a certain area, a number of corporations engage in monopolistic competition. Local people mainly consume farm products produced as near as possible, as the ancient Chinese believed a people from one place were best fed by the produce from that place. Across the WED, there are far too many agribusiness corporations for them to be monopolistic. Preference for local produce, however, does not mean there are obstacles to import. The possibility of import, not necessarily a large amount of it, is sufficient to hold down prices to a reasonable and comparable level.

They consume more local food as it is fresh and usually provides most of the nutrients contained in any sort of exotica. Industrial goods, on the contrary, need to cross the border a lot and it is especially so for these tiny island economies. To get the most out of import and export, all sovereign states have abolished tariffs, not after rounds of negotiations but thanks to unilateral free trade policies announced one after another.

Meerland was the first to abandon customs duties. The immediate result was a slump in prices, and then an inflow of migrants seeking value for money and a better life. Businesses initially faced tougher competition from abroad when its competitors were able to sell cheaper. But their costs also gradually fell as raw materials coming from overseas became less dear and wage demand less strong. The offsetting effect, however, was not big enough to keep sunset industries afloat. In response local entrepreneurs turned to sunrise industries and made good use of the new, young migrants. The soaring growth rate and fat margins made trade barriers negligible. A bold policy did not prove suicidal. On the contrary it brought into Meerland vigour that any economy would need to keep going. New Asian Republic answered the call, and unilateral free trade proclamations were made in one state after another, leading eventually to the universal zero-tariff world.

They have ensured the free movement of goods as well as that of persons, but there is not much foreign aid going about. There is no need for it. The Citizenship Pay provides more than food and shelter. One can further improve one's quality of life by moving into a less expensive area since the pay remains the same everywhere when prices do not.

Some worry that migration, though economically viable, will cause social problems and to some extent force original residents to change their way of life. Not necessarily. At least not in places like Neuendorf, where land owners, not just anyone who has arrived and begun to live there, vote to select the congress. If a significant number of land owners decide to sell their land to new immigrants, who then are entitled to vote to reshape the city, it is the original residents that voluntarily let the immigrants take control. It is reasonable to assume that it is in the interest of the old residents to let it happen. Taoyuan also has its own protective mechanism. Its citizens must be 18 years of age and over to vote. In other words, they have been citizens there for at least 18 years. Immigrants in Taoyuan must first get citizenship and then wait for 18 years to be eligible to vote.

There is absolutely no foreign aid arranged by any government. People should move to where there are sufficient resources. Think twice when we plan to move resources to a place which can hardly support its population. Some companies are providing aid to poorer areas, perhaps in the hope that these will be their future markets and that their names are positively spread all over the world. They only choose projects that they think are worth funding.

Governments refrain from providing aid to other countries on economic or environmental grounds. People, rather than countries, are to be helped. Let me refer to businesses again to illustrate the point. If a company is doing poorly, successful businesses should lure its best staff away so that these employees have a chance to prove their value. Outsiders can also help by providing training to the mediocre workers so that they may be able to adapt to other positions at other places. Pouring resources into such a company would only feed the shareholders and the management, who should take the blame for the company's failure, and would not help the staff there.

This is not indifference but sense. Quite the contrary state governments are very much concerned about what is going on next door. Sovereignty is not an excuse to resist "foreign intervention". Nor is it an umbrella over evil deeds. Countries are not very different from households. When a man and his wife have a disagreement, the incident can be said to be internal and none of other people's business. When he starts beating or even killing her, dogs at the next door bark and humans should at least call the police if they are not able or not willing to find other means to intervene. Calling the police is an act of care and love, making you aware that the social safety net goes beyond family and close friends, who usually do not but sometimes might turn against you. States get along with one another as neighbours do. They occasionally remind each other of improper behaviour so that the neighbourhood becomes a pleasant place to live in. If a gunman intrudes, neighbours all produce weapons to defend their own houses and cover each other's back. They also co-fund the police who will come to their aid and who are better trained for this purpose. This is exactly the model of collective defence by all member states within a union. The police and armed residents put up first resistance, and then union forces will take over from there.

A man who is stronger than another is more likely to ignite a fight. He would think again if his opponent is of equal strength, which means his odds are more uncertain and his victory, if it is to come, will be at high cost. That is why arms dealers can always sell to foreign buyers, either in another state or in another union. No state government can ban arms sale across the border. This makes it possible that each side is equally equipped.

But unions are not equally rich. Richer unions may have a bigger defence budget, stock up on more advanced weaponry and break the balance between powers. That is not a problem because rich unions want a war least. They prosper from the current arrangements, which make them rich, and would not want to resort to extreme methods. The rich have much more to lose than the poor in a war, while the poor with a big fist is the most formidable.

We have been living peacefully together because mentally we are fairly evenly matched and I, the one with much less income, have small fists.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 20th 2012

My dear,

The third Friday of January each year is the day when they print new money in the Central Square, where the WED Supreme Court of Law holds open trials and the WED President is sworn in.

Ms Margaret Franklin did not see a large audience when she became president on Monday. On her second public show, the square was full of people. Besides President Franklin, who is the Secretary General of Micronesia as well, also present were the Chair of Melanesia, the President of Polynesia, the Supreme Court justices, officials from the central bank, reporters, photographers, cameramen, local citizens, tourists and three chosen charity funds that ranked the highest in the previous year's official market research.

The observance began at nine in the morning with a speech from Ms Franklin. It was not long and my memory recorded it as follows: "Money is nothing but a guiding star, the flow of which, reflected in the change of prices, informs us where we should put in more resources and where we should retreat from. The best we can do about money, as our current understanding permits, is to keep it steady and free from human interference. Whether there is too much or too little of it, as long as we do not mess with it, the market will be able to determine the globo's true value or at least grope its way towards the globo's true value. Hence we gather here today to witness and oversee this ceremony to replenish the money stock, not to create new supply. According to the central bank's estimation, notes and coins worth 5.1 million wore away or got burnt last year. Blue Planet and Green Home, Cancel Cancer, Energy for Tomorrow, the top three charity funds in Money to Whom 2011, will each receive 1.7 million globos. We are confident that these three good organisations will live up to our expectations and put the money in the right places."

After the speech, the three union chiefs each inserted his or her union's key and password into a giant bronze lock, a mechanical and digital device permanently planted in front of the Supreme Court building, and jointly opened a chasm in the centre of the square. Out of the chasm rose two money printers, both properly sealed. Ten minutes were given to the public to go around these machines to check the seal. Then some central bank officials came to remove the seal and started printing money. In just a few minutes, the staff finished printing and cutting the new banknotes. They counted 5.1 million, put these notes through several banknote counters, and destroyed the notes that had been printed but deemed surplus. Then they sealed the two machines – another ten minutes were given to the public to examine how the job was done – and credited 1.7 million to the transaction account of each of the three funds. Ms Franklin handed proofs of deposit to the funds, which then delivered short speeches of gratitude and solemn promises.

After around two hours, the stately process of the observance was over. Several cameramen had been there from start to finish for live broadcast, and a large number of photographers and reporters were also busy doing their job.

The three charity funds present today are not the only ones whose names clearly state many a worthy cause. No fund is named after its founder. In fact, the list of donors and their contributions only appears in the annual report for transparency purposes. Few are truly interested in who has founded a fund. The public, the press, the authorities and other relevant parties are more concerned with what a fund is endeavouring to do and how it makes sure the money is not misused. The funds usually publish only their charters, procedures, financial reports and anything else that is requested to justify their operation. Founders or other large stakeholders dare not use a charity fund to promote their own names or their other businesses. If they ever did, the fund would no longer be regarded as a charity. People give money to charity because they want to help it do something.

Charities are not supposed to be losing a lot of money. The need to inject huge sums might suggest that they are doing something unworthy. Charities are not to earn big profits either, as they are founded to do things which the founders deem necessary and which the society has not paid enough attention to. Profitable projects can be left to commercial enterprises.

They refuse to increase the basic money supply. Are they not worried about deflation and its negative consequences? An infinite money multiplier may, in theory, push M2 up to match a growing economy. But what if, for one reason or another, it does not work? As a precaution they have changed the way businesses and economies are evaluated.

Growth is no longer important. There are peaks and troughs of M2 due to changing lending activity, and growth is still possible when M2 expands with the economy. Even if M2 does not expand and the money aggregate is constant – no growth in monetary terms but there are more and more products and services available on the market – deflation is not a disaster because money will not all be sleeping in the banks as interest rates can be zero or even negative considering fees charged. A certain amount of output is valued less before, but a company is considered successful when it only manages to achieve zero growth – it means its output greatly increases though its sales remain arithmetically the same – or even when its growth is slightly negative given that deflation is high.

What matters is the market share. If a company is advancing and winning more customers, who cares about the numbers in the books? For those who love big numbers, my suggestion is that they change all their dollars to yens. What is worth observing is into which company investment is going and into which industry money is heading. Money, since its birth, has helped us, in comparative rather than absolute terms, judge which should be chosen over another. An industry's share of the global output and the changes of its share are studied more instead of the dollar value of its annual revenue. And these studies help entrepreneurs know whether to enter or quit an industry. Studies of the changes of a company's market share reveal its need to push forward or to retreat.

Similarly, a country's GDP growth is no longer important. Its GDP share of the global economy reflects the country's current economic role in the world. And the change of its share predicts the country's economic future and its popularity among its peers.

I must say a few words about GDP. Basically, a country's GDP can reflect the well-being of the residents there if they willingly spend their own money. Since no one forces them to exchange a dollar of their own for certain goods and services, the goods and services must be, in their opinion, worth at least that dollar's value. In this way, we can roughly say that the GDP number stands for the dollar value of what the residents have enjoyed during a certain period of time. Sadly in a country with paternalistic government, not all money is spent willingly and too many individuals and organisations are paying out of other people's pockets. Hence the GDP in such a country represents what has been spent but not what its residents have chosen to enjoy. In one such country, where migrant workers' endurance has been the number one driving force behind its economic achievements, growth is not to be sustained as the workers have come to realise that their children's schooling, funded by their lifetime bitterness, does not lead to a welcome change of fate. They age and stop working for other people's aspirations and their children will not repeat the hard course of their life. This country's GDP, hopefully, will soon be reined in and no longer implies unimaginable waste and extravagance.

Let me return to the change they have made. This is not really a revolution. Up there if they just report GDP share instead of GDP dollar terms and put more emphasis on FDI than on GDP, then the two evaluation systems are more or less the same. The real major difference is that human decisions influence, or increase at most times, the money supply up there but not down here.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 21st 2012

My dear,

Frank invited me to his friend's birthday party. The host lives in a villa on the western half of the island to the east. His name is Arnold Zola, and he is a technocrat whose products greatly improve the efficiency of many aspects of life. Or to put it simply, he is their version of Bill Gates.

Rich people are different in that they have control over a large amount of resources. However extravagant they might be, most of them eat three meals a day and sleep in one bed too. But their preferences in and off work have a huge resonance for the rest of us. What they do really matters, a lot.

Mr Zola's friends are mostly very rich too. Bernard Young is their Warren Buffet, busy studying industries and companies in search of chances to make investments. He finances today's minnows in the hope that they will become the giants of tomorrow. Mr Young will also seize every arbitrage opportunity and therefore balance different markets. Conrad Xanadu is heir to a vast estate. His father was a respected tycoon and an icon in the eyes of many entrepreneurs. The family's wealth allows the younger Mr Xanadu plenty of time and assistance to explore the world, and he has enough money to keep a large piece of land unexploited and well-protected. And Donald Wilson is a highly successful lawyer, who was born into a mediocre family but has been recognised for his talent, expertise and professionalism. They are different people from different walks of life, and they become rich along different paths. But billionaires in our homeland – millionaires are not to be counted rich for most of them cannot afford a downtown flat – all seem to fall in the same category. The common feature of rich people down here is that all of them have received good education and behave gentlemanly as if they were the nobility without noble titles.

By talking with them, I have learnt that hardly any of their rich friends are politically powerful people, relentless business owners or people who do not read. Politicians are supposed to serve the people. A butler can be financially healthy, but too much wealth might undermine his loyalty and his position as a subordinate to his masters. He who is relentless prospers at the expense of everyone else. His success is others' failure. It seems to me that most of the businessmen up there must fall in this category, or can I say all of them? He who never reads but inherits to become rich will see his riches vanish as a Chinese saying goes: a family's riches cannot extend beyond five generations. The family fortune of the well-educated may not last forever, but it often survives for more than five generations.

Mr Zola does not micromanage his companies. He needs to find distractions to keep himself occupied. But he does not go to charity events a lot. There are not many charities that take care of the poor or the sick – the Citizenship Pay and WE hospitals have set a minimum standard and shouldered the social responsibility. But if charities also include those that do not aim for immediate economic returns, there are a lot of them here. Mr Zola sets aside 20 percent of his software company's profits for scientific research and technological development. He finances research projects within his companies and on school campuses. He has a team evaluating interesting and promising start-ups and gives them whatever help he is capable of providing. Takeovers are also part of Mr Zola's plan.

An entrepreneur is not someone who can make money. He is to gather resources and then distribute these resources to where they are needed. Mr Zola and his like-minded friends are interested in building good companies, not necessarily to earn more money but to make things happen. They realise their ideals by building a business empire that is strong enough to try new things. Some are even planning to buy large pieces of land to build a city and make social and political experiments.

What is most important for an entrepreneur, or for anyone else, is to do his own job well. A big boss who goes to charity parties a lot when his own company is a mess is a loser. Charity begins at home and he must first ensure that his employees, customers and suppliers are happy. Mr Zola is a perfectionist. He first tried to perfect himself by studying hard. Then he tried to build a successful company. Now he is trying to improve every aspect he could think of through technological breakthroughs. And his more ambitious friends are dreaming of building a perfect community, a city or even a state. This is what the super-rich down here aspire to.

Mr Xanadu is perhaps less ambitious but more focused. He loves travelling around the world and enjoys painting landscapes. Wherever tourists go, they take photographs; wherever Mr Xanadu visits, he sits down and paints in oils.

In today's world there are just too many things on which one can spend a whole lifetime. A rich man, who does not have to earn his living by going to work all the time, can devote himself more into the pursuit of a hobby. Many even become established artists or master craftsmen. He who is less gifted is happy just to be a big fan and an ardent supporter.

Mr Xanadu is very talented. He has brought with him a small painting of the Patagonian plains as a birthday present for Mr Zola. The cooler weather displayed, in contrast to a hot Rio de Janeiro summer, clearly explains the difference between the Argentine character and the Brazilian charm. His footprints were left all around the globe and his brushes reproduced blue skies, foreign lands, snow-capped mountains and clear waters. Many of the guests gathered around Mr Xanadu and listened to his stories on the road.

He has also been to China, but only once. He said it was heaven for social scientists and novelists, but less so for a nature lover like him. I tried to talk with him more. He declined and said: "Mr Eastborn, we have just met each other for the first time. I truly feel it has been a pleasure talking with you as I always enjoy making new friends. But it is not appropriate for me to discuss controversial issues with a new acquaintance when it is perfectly okay for me to do so with an old pal like Mr Zola. Pardon me, but I need to tend to the ladies." He bid farewell with a polite smile, a smile that somehow saddens me.

Walking about Mr Zola's gardens and chatting with the "upper class" this evening, I made a bold guess that hardly anyone here abuses his money and power to bully other people or indulge too much in women and liquor. They have simply received too much education to be defiled by base passions. Most of them identify themselves with the intelligentsia, though few of them have academic achievements. Luckily, the society here rewards knowledge, innovation and courage, but not rashness or cronyism. He who is rich only because he has been lucky will find it very hard to keep being lucky again and again.

In a way they bear a lot more pressure than we do. We do not need to work hard, do we? Those well-connected have a million ways of making easy money. Even commoners, when they are ready to lower their moral standards, can talk senior citizens into purchasing expensive but worthless products. An astonishing number of the elderly receive a phone call and wire their lifetime savings to con artists. Our parents and grandparents are not stupid; they are just lonely and they are living in a world very different from what has been told of to them. Those with even better acting abilities play beggars on tube trains and acquire metropolitan properties funded by countless young, inexperienced, still warm-hearted working class men and women who spend hours every day commuting between their downtown cubicles and their rented homes in the distance. Those who are more conventional are happy to follow the tradition of sleeping on the job – they deny customers and whoever is standing opposite them the rights and benefits the latter are entitled to because inertia saves the former the trouble of complying with requirements and because the former are also turned down and robbed elsewhere.

Most people have many weak points that are not hard to discover. Attack these weaknesses and life can be comfortable for the attacker. A most ruthless one may well become richer than the most diligent entrepreneur. Moderate supply of cigarettes and casinos is meant to give people choices – they have the right to harm themselves, but not others, a bit in exchange for some pleasure. But tycoons who have become super-rich by selling cigarettes, and lung cancer, to millions or by operating casinos that drain a family's financial resources are not offering an alternative but are murdering and robbing others in a thinly disguised way. Perhaps I should also learn to harm others a bit to get what I need, as long as they willingly walk into my trap. But one's success in making much money should indicate that one has been providing what the society needs. Exploiting other people's weaknesses is not only pathetic but also a direct challenge to human civilisation. If we know in theory the possibility and sustainability of mutual benefit, but cannot make it happen in the real world, where only the reckless win and those who respect both the rules and other people can at best barely survive, then we are not yet civilised.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 22nd 2012

My dear,

Happy Spring Festival's Eve! You must have returned from the most congested city in the world to the less noisy, though only to a minimal degree, home town of Nanjing.

At this hour you must be staying with your parents and your elder sister's family, either watching television or playing card games. I am sitting here, looking out of the window into the darkness and reviewing the time we have spent together.

You came to this world seven months and thirteen days, or 225 days, earlier than I did. We may have first met on May 12th 1991, my mother's 40th birthday, when both of us attended the NFLS entrance examinations at 30 East Beijing Road. I did not know you then; I could not tell which one would be my lifetime partner at that time. But now I know you were 12 and I was catching up. Destiny and serendipity helped us excel again in the oral tests afterwards, and we became classmates.

It was not love at first sight, although I did notice you in a white dress on the first day of school, sitting right in front of my deskmate. One day after lunch you watched me doing my homework for a second or two, and said good things about my handwriting which, I knew, was just mediocre. I questioned whether it was flattery or sarcasm; you replied without hesitation that it was praise. You then turned your head but had cleverly distinguished yourself from other lovely Nanwai girls ever since. We were classmates for three years and learnt English in the same small class of 23. The first year of senior high school separated us temporarily, but the following year saw us enter the same room again. I knew then that I would not want to live my life without you.

I did not speak to you about my feelings. We were both too orthodox to begin a relationship that early. I was content to watch you at a distance and ask for your help with a maths problem occasionally. You must have felt me out but waited patiently for my phone call on that Saturday after both of us had secured a ticket to our respective Nandas. My heart beat faster when giving a public speech but I never had stage fright; I lost my voice for a moment during that most important phone call of my life. Would you have rung me if I had not? Would you just have let me go if I had not asked for your hand?

Why is your Nanda in Tianjin but mine in Nanjing? I put a cross in the calendar every day during the following eight semesters. Unmet expectations of college mixed with constant longing for you had turned those four years, considered by many to be the happiest in life, into dull, if not painful, memories. It was then when my default facial expression went from a smile to nothing at all. I did not want to play cool. Nothing could cheer me up but your handwritten letters every two or three days. I was excited and could not feel the cold on those winter evenings when I cycled to a phone booth – no, it was not a booth for it was not enclosed – outside the school campus, dialling the only number for the whole of your dormitory building for one hour to get through and talking to you for the next. Poor youngsters today! They have been denied those pleasures with the advent of the email and the mobile phone.

Upon graduation, I got an offer to work as a sports reporter in Beijing; you took a job with a national giant whose headquarters happened to be across the street from mine. One and a half years later when my illusions were shattered and I came to realise my dislike of the city, I wanted to go back and you applied to be transferred to the provincial branch, taking a steep pay cut. I was unable to continue with my second job and you supported me to spend 14 months jobless at home preparing for a postgraduate programme. You not only goaded me on with remarks that I was perhaps too old to compete again but also paid for food and drink and my tuition fees in the six years when I had no source of income.

We went to Beijing again as job hunting there was a bit easier. You earned an overdue promotion at another company; I finally squeezed into a government department a ten-minute walk away from you. Apart from all other problems, my income was below the Beijing average, even less than that from my first job nine years before, and not enough to pay the rent.

Fortunately, you did not ask for much. Not a Hermes, which has become a standard present a young woman receives from her sugar daddy; not a BMW – too many of its owners drive ferociously on the road. I could not buy you a place to live; nor could I bring you justice when the authorities had failed in their duty. But you deserve so much better than I could give or our home country could offer. You were top of the class at school, very brilliant at work, and, most importantly, never walked alone and had to resign as I always did. You took my hand and watched others get ahead of us in terms of living standards. You did not ask me why we could not have things others already had. If you had asked, I would not have been able to provide an answer.

I have not been able to make much money. It is not that I did not want to; nor was I afraid of hard work or short of creative thinking. You know exactly how much effort I have put in during the past years and why I was able to achieve some of the goals I was after. But there are certain things I would never do. I am not one of those who fear nothing.

When I received my first paycheque, I feared that my lack of expertise might not justify the number, which was much larger than my mother's monthly income and which was comparatively rather meagre. While teaching, I feared that my stubbornness might not help my students in the real world. On both occasions, I feared that I could not be happy with the direction my employer was taking. I understand that starting a business and being an employer may be a good way to realise ideas, but I fear that, if one day I become one, I would also impose my own values onto my employees, exploit them recklessly and bully them as best as I could, while bowing and kowtowing to the authorities so that I could keep what I have gained and go on to get more.

Among other things, I fear that I could not be a good father. I do love children and can devote my time and energy to them. But I do not know whether we should help them become good people with principles and the backbone or practical ones who live more comfortably in our world. I hate to see our son turn a blind eye to those who need help; it is heartbreaking to watch him fall defending his family and friends. I am afraid that even if a middle way is possible in theory, I would always end up nurturing a mini me, having all those unnecessary worries. And I would not want to see him grow up just to be a second-generation slave. Being a coward, I persuaded you that we should avoid the problem and would not have children in this life. The only thing is you are deprived of the chance of being a mother. I am so sorry but also feel that we do not really have a choice, do we?

I am fully aware that you know me well and I did not have to say this to you. I am writing it down so that it is not lingering in my mind all the time and then I could feel better. Please forgive me for everything that I have done in an inappropriate way. I did not mean to hurt you, or anyone else.

Happy New Year! Bon appétit with your mother's home cooking!

Please spend a half day at my mother's. Read her some of the letters that I have sent you, so that she knows I have not only survived but lived an interesting and enlightening life here as well. Thank you.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 23rd 2012

My dear,

Looking back at the years I have been walking through, I have to concede that I have not been able to get the best out of myself. Nonetheless I would rather be myself than anyone else because I take great pride in the fact that despite all the adversity I have always been trying, very hard, to be a just man.

Then what is a just man like? The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines "just" as "morally right and fair". But we need further explanations as to what can be called morally right and fair. I would like to put it this way: a just man is he who, in his pursuit of happiness, does no harm to a third party.

A powerful tycoon could have ignored many petty injustices in his climbing up the social ladder. A rich billionaire could have preferred profitable opportunities to the emotional needs of his own family and friends. And a successful oligarch could have behaved in either or both of the aforesaid ways.

A clever guy may consider deceiving the less shrewd a natural and deserved victory. A straightforward youngster may regard making hurtful remarks as being honest. And a humble person may just boost the confidence of the incompetent, who then go on to shoulder responsibilities that are beyond their reaches and become a nightmare for their organisations, colleagues and occasionally themselves.

A brave warrior must know exactly what he is fighting bravely for. His might and resolution could be exploited by treacherous souls to work against and crush his own beliefs. A polite gentleman must be aware that politeness does not ease the tension among barbarians. Etiquette should not become a burden on only one side and serve as encouragement to the other. And a good-hearted granny must learn to tell the viper from the grateful. Her aid to the viper is a threat to herself and all other good-hearted people.

Being aware of all the above and beyond, a man who is not only kind but also wise and able and who constantly reflects on whether his behaviour is at the expense or sacrifice of others can be called just.

Nature is also among "others" and a third party that deserves attention. I am not saying that we should stop eating animals and plants as the food chain is part of nature. Hunting for food is okay; teasing and torturing is out of line. Whale meat can be part of the local people's diet, but the massacre near the Antarctic should be opposed for its brutality and the damage it causes to the ecosystem. Enjoying the delicacy of foie gras is fine, but those who force-feed the geese should be sued for animal maltreatment. A just man only makes reasonable requests and takes his fair share from nature. He tastes the joy of living to the full without making other people or his surroundings worse off.

Walking in a prosperous city, I would ask, before expressing my admiration, whether its gold and silver has been earned by skinny boys working in sweatshops all the year round. Entering a peaceful city, I would inquire, before sleeping in the tranquillity, whether its residents' mouths have been sealed from awakening the guests who are to leave this place in a few days anyway.

A large metropolis may welcome cheap labour but incline to deny the new arrivals their deserved social benefits. A small town may not be able to retain the young, but at least it could keep its beauty so that those who have left are willing to come back later and relive their most wonderful memories.

All these cities can be called just, when they keep trying to safeguard the environment (the natural order) and reward those worthy people so that children from poor families could also have a chance of moving up provided they have both the desire and the qualities (the social order). And only just cities, either large or small ones, can keep being prosperous and/or peaceful.

Just cities do not automatically form a just state. Consisting of a number of cities, a state is expected to coordinate regional development so that there is more economic efficiency and less wasteful use of resources. A state is best comprised of closely connected cultures and a just state encourages intercity integration.

A union, the only level of government that keeps military forces, is just when its attention is focused on protecting the peoples and territories of its member states.

A democracy is just when it defends human rights and other universal values at all costs. Oddly enough, a just democracy as the WED is does not fight against discrimination proactively. Any person or organisation can discriminate against, or choose to overlook, a single person or a group of people; but the law cannot. No law can forbid a company to hire someone not for what he has done but for who he is; a discriminatory person must not thwart another party's attempt to accept those he overlooks. The companies that discriminate against certain people, if the candidates are otherwise competent and can best fill the vacancies, will have to either pay more to find employees of a similar standard or keep within the same budget and settle for less able helpers, while their less discriminatory rivals can hire the less favoured – lessened demand pushes their wages lower than their comparable peers – and be more cost effective. A government is also free to discriminate, and, as history has proved again and again, another government can hire the unwanted talent and the latter nation can leapfrog the picky former one.

They do not really agree with the idea of discrimination but "allow" it to exist in theory, because very often someone is passed over in consideration of his character but not his colour or background. He who does not even try to figure out where his failure is rooted is hopeless and does not deserve respect or sympathy or affirmative action going to his aid.

With the exception of discrimination, the WED defends rights and values similar to those in our world. Unions, states and cities can choose different paths, but this is no excuse for doing evil things in their own backyard. Holding the same bottom line is a prerequisite to joining the democracy. In turn, a democracy has no concern over economic development or political strife or philosophical thoughts. It does not hold absolute power – although the democracy is at the top of the administrative pyramid – and does not want to control every aspect of life, contrary to a centralised power that proclaims its almighty efficiency. Efficiency can be and is best left to the private sector, while the authorities' almighty efficiency implies the possibility of man-made disasters. A democracy is indeed less capable of making tragic mistakes.

A democracy is better than a totalitarian regime because the former is less likely to keep going in the wrong direction without being reined in; private ownership is preferable to public or collective ownership because the former automatically ensures, without supervision costs or agent problems, efficiency.

It is freer, if not easier, for a man to pursue happiness or whatever he is after that is not harming others in a just society, where no one, in particular not the government, stands in his way by imposing unnecessary conditions or burdens.

The government need not deliberately keep people busy with their jobs to maintain stability. It is wiser to let productivity rise and shed jobs so that people are free to pursue what they truly feel happiest being busy with. There are an awful lot of activities that can keep the citizens occupied. Let their combined strength of body and mind alone set the bounds to their success – vested interests would surely oppose this proposal. But otherwise the masses would feel that someone is jeopardising their just cause and anger would seed itself. This anger would eventually devour those standing in its way and topple the society in the least pleasant manner.

How can a society full of angry souls be called a just one?

Yours truly,

Ted
January 24th 2012

My dear,

Why does a man read? For some at least, reading is a short cut to a richer life, a life not only spent on eating, drinking and playing. Perhaps every man has a desire underneath, however small it might appears, to differ from animals and even leave a mark.

A man reads to learn about the past and the present and to keep himself informed of developments at home and abroad without having to be there. Comprehensive and enlightening reading enables him to better perceive both the natural world and human societies. It does not confer on him the power to restructure this less than perfect world but only helps him understand the mechanism of worldly affairs. Therefore he could, if he is willing to, avoid being negative, calm down and not to be too anxious or hold unreasonable expectations. He subconsciously learns to know etiquette and behaves appropriately so that his presence will not be a pain in the neck. He takes a bold step forwards when the time is right for him to use his talents and pursue a career; he retreats when it is not right and is content with just two meals during the daytime and a bed for the night.

Reading satisfies our curiosity, and allows our imagination to run wild so that we get greater satisfaction from print than we do from vivid real experiences or beautifully made films. And a library is a perfectly quiet choice for an inquisitive mind to seek a most vibrant adventure. Also, reading kills time, a lot of it, so that an avid reader does not bother to get into trouble or cause trouble for others.

It takes hundreds of years to read literature just from one's own culture. But the greedy nature of humans urges us to peep into other cultures in alien languages. We are fortunate to be able to read in both Chinese, a digging tool into the buried treasure of an ancient civilisation in the East, and English, the working language of the modern world that took root in the West.

I am sure poetry in any language is untranslatable. A native speaker of Chinese and a mediocre interpreter, I am fully aware of a translator's frustration and annoyance when he tries to put a Chinese poem into English. One by Li Zhiyi from the Song Dynasty goes roughly as follows:

I live upstream the long long Yangtze flow

Downstream the long long river there are you

I think of you each day but cannot meet

Same watercourse from which we drink and eat

When will the long long river start to dry

How often must I miss you so and cry

As long as you shall also love me back

Determination I shall never lack

And Yuan Zhen of the Tang Dynasty wrote:

No water waves are as impressive as those in the ocean

No cloud rises more enigmatically than in that mountain

Reluctant to linger on beautiful flowers no longer

I have turned monastic for long since you left me forever

My attempt to introduce the two pieces of love poetry to English readers must be no more than an introduction to the general idea. The original use of rhyme and rhythm is altered, and part of the sensation (the coexistence of indirectness and passion) is lost. Let me just advise anyone who is interested to spend some ten years learning the Chinese language and then read the original works, which I promise are well worth the effort.

Reading in Chinese also fosters understanding of Chinese paintings, games and thoughts. Behind the recurring theme of mountains and rivers on the painting paper is the Chinese reverence for nature, which is vast and beyond human control (big). This reverence is resonant with the top-down Chinese tradition, also abundantly found in Chinese writings: many of them on the nation's fate and moral values (big) rather than the author's personal happiness (little). A pawn (little) is often sacrificed to save a castle (big) in the Chinese chess. The same principle applies in the Go chess where the key to success (winning the game, which is big) requires the player not to pay too much attention to the gain or loss of a regional territory (little). Masters of the Chinese schools of thoughts would surely find it easier to become masters at Chinese arts and games.

Modern science and technology, which have played such an important part in our life, were born and nurtured in the English world. Computer terminology, among others, can all be traced back to English. The brightest classmates of ours are now almost exclusively living and working in English-speaking America. If you are looking for the ABC of a particular subject, science or otherwise, English websites like Wikipedia are almost always helpful, being very informative and intriguing. I have not counted, but documentaries in English must be the most in number. And I guess they are also of the highest quality. TED, the website probably not named after me, features a series of enlightening, encouraging or entertaining speeches by eminent or unknown orators from all walks of life. Songs in English and Hollywood movies make an integral part of the popular culture and give us great leisure times.

A good many Chinese artefacts are kept and studied overseas. English-speaking scholars are making strenuous efforts to examine historical archives of works from and on the Eastern country. Numerous think tanks and other organisations are keen on collecting and analysing data on every aspect of present-day China. Foreign capital is perhaps even more sensitive than local money and knows better than to risk its investments there. The Chinese first learnt English to take a look at the outside world; now they are depending on the language to learn about themselves.

Thanks to Nanwai we had a solid grounding in both languages and our vantage point was on a hill a little higher than that underneath the feet of our compatriots. The mother tongue has equipped me with the ability to uncover unspeakable sensibility while the second language has taught me to be clear and easy to understand. Surely languages have much more in common than they are different, and I am just comparing Chinese and English as they have played different roles in my life.

When we were studying at Nanwai, I found that a lot of it could improve. But looking back, I am sure it was the best choice we could have made. It was deemed one of the best schools in Nanjing. In my eyes, it was the most unique and liberal one nationwide. The school management might not mean it, but the students there were successfully trained to be confident and open-minded as a result of the combination of competitive peers and leading techniques in second language teaching.

Of course I am talking about the school at our time. I am not sure how the tradition has been passed down. During my short spell as a teacher there, two boys had a fight on the sports day. The first question asked, amazingly as well as naturally, was whose father was more prominent. That incident, along with other scenes observed and stories heard, is a cause for concern. Now that competition for entrance to Nanwai is even more intense, off the pitch if not on it, than when we were enrolled, the nostalgic alumnus in me has expectations of our alma mater and wants to have a word with her: Nanwai can aim to be an elite school, but not one filled only with descendants of powerful and wealthy families; earning a healthy profit is not a sin, but losing a good tradition is.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 25th 2012

My dear,

Today's Halfway Through invited Mr Gao Fei, a Chinese national whose family have just settled down here and are applying for permanent residence.

He had been living in mainland China for forty years before a friend told him about this world. He then took a flight to the edge of our world and jumped into the Pacific Ocean swimming towards this world. Mr Gao must have been a champion swimmer and have studied the shipping routes meticulously. Otherwise how could he have been luckily rescued by a freighter just before exhausting and drowning himself in the middle of the open sea? He did many and various manual jobs initially and now owns a small catering business. With his aged parents, his wife and two children all sitting beside him, the man looked content with his current lifestyle.

He was born and raised in a seaside town in Zhejiang and went to the national capital for higher education. After studying English for seven years, he started to work for the foreign office of the Beijing government. He had been allotted cheap policy housing, had bought a car before number plates were in short supply, and was quite comfortable with the job he had been doing for 15 years.

But he was not happy. The old two-bedroomed flat was sold so that his family could afford a larger and more contemporary one on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. He left home at 6.15 in the morning to avoid rush hour traffic on four of the five weekdays when he was allowed to drive, only to arrive at work by 7 am and have a quick breakfast alone before gazing at the unchanging computer screen until his colleagues came in one after another. On the weekday when his car was banned on the road, he left home at 7 am and it took him a little less than an hour and a half to get to the city centre. Time to get home was less certain – he had to work overtime at short notice and even if he could leave on time the traffic to the dormitory town was unpredictable.

His daughter's education was a headache. The old boss had made an arrangement with a fairly good primary school, which had agreed to accept his and his colleagues' children. The next commander in chief seemed unconcerned and no secondary school was in touch. But his daughter would not stop growing and would have to settle for a mediocre school in a couple of years – unless, of course, he has the luck to win a five million windfall in the lottery to purchase residential property in a good school district.

Not all his colleagues had problems of this sort. Many of them lived in downtown mansions, drove luxury cars, wore designer labels, travelled to exotic places and, for sure, sent their children to elite schools. He had absolutely no idea how they could maintain their lavish lifestyle on their meagre income. There is nothing wrong to enjoy life. But it is a shame that the government has been urging its subjects to work hard, sacrifice personal life and contribute to the Communist cause while its own members have secured the best of the bunch.

His little son was born down here. He did not have to worry about contaminated infant milk powder. Nor did he even bother to pick up his old chemistry books to learn what melamine was.

But contamination was everywhere up there. He was suspicious of the water pipe and spent quite a fortune on bottled water. Polluted air persuaded him to give up physical exercises – he loved football and was particularly good at table tennis – in the hope that he would breathe in fewer harmful particles.

The city was too vast and too crowded for him to fancy going out on weekends. His family just stayed at home. An occasional gathering among friends took a couple of hours to get to the meeting place. Old classmates with whom he used to be happy doing silly things tended to talk about career prospects and first-rate luxuries, in neither of which he had a keen interest.

His aged parents would not move to live with him as they found it too difficult to adjust to the arid Beijing climate. He seriously considered going back to spend more time caring for them in the same way as they once did for him, but no employer responded to his letter of application. Walking on the thoroughfare of his home town on vacation, he enjoyed the longed-for sea air but felt a bit ashamed to tell an old acquaintance that he lived in Beijing. He somehow believed that the capital city had taken much more than its fair share of resources. He was not happy about being a beneficiary of such unjustified transfer and did not know for what he was staying there.

Now his family are living happily together, and Mr Gao calmly reflected on his decision to bring his family down here and start all over again. It is true that if he had not gone to Beijing in the first place, he may not have come to know this place and the following stories would not have happened. But if he were to be born in China again, he would probably not pack up at 18 and leave. His move down here, he argued, was in fact a return to a substitute for the home town, to which he had not been able to go back.

Both he and I are fully aware that one may miss many opportunities if one does not go out. The problem is: going out does not guarantee a life as expected; it surely means parting with one's family. We do not know about other cultures, but in ours many parents, especially when they have an only child, have lived their life solely for their offspring. The parents live a simple life – they eat casually, sleep little and work hard – and save every penny they could not for their own future consumption but to invest in the next generation. They squeeze themselves in exchange for the best possible food, shelter, education and so on for the kid. All the expenditure is spent to prevent the kid from falling behind others and it is so large a heavy burden on the working class. And when the kid grows up and works in another place, the parents' life becomes empty and meaningless. Of course there are parents who have their own colourful life, but not Mr Gao's or mine. Over the years we have learnt that brains and labour do not sell for a good price. Then why not sell cheap at home and save us the trouble of staying away for too long? Suppose our parents can live to the age of 100 and we can go home twice each year, how many days do we still have together?

If I were to live my life again, I would think twice before leaving home. Most likely, I would stay and visit my parents on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Life at home might be dull and plain, but life out there is not necessarily any better. If we must move places, the new home had better be somewhere suitable for our parents too. Let us stick to them, as they once did to us, and live for better or worse together. I also agree with Mr Gao that taking care of the old may not be fun but is way better than wasting our time on those ignoble hypocrites. Mr Gao ended the interview with a Chinese saying: do not travel afar when parents are home.

During the whole process, his wife was also interviewed and helped him recall details of their stories. The daughter mostly remained quiet and the son, not yet able to speak, burst into laughter on several occasions. The man's father and mother did not speak English and could not understand a word for the whole time. But they kept looking at their son from start to finish with a genuine smile of delight, entirely satisfied with the eventual family reunion.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 26th 2012

My dear,

A free world as it is, the WED collects an enormous amount of its citizens' information that could be used against them (e.g. when tracing and locating a fugitive or searching for evidence of fraud). But it does not and is not authorised with the discretionary powers to access the database targeting innocent civilians.

Biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or iris patterns are kept with the League of Hospitals, a trade union, except when a written objection is filed to exclude one's own details from the database. Drink-driving is recorded by local police and forwarded to police departments of all other places as well as the union of insurers, with no exceptions and no possibility for the record to be removed even if no repeated offence ever occurs. Financial institutions of course keep copies of all transaction details. When you walk in the street, an unknown number of cameras may be pointing at you. But do not worry: no one has legal access to the images unless you are involved in a criminal investigation which, only when authorised by a court of law, requests the footage to be reviewed. No sound is collected either, so your conversation with a business partner or whisper in your lover's ear will never be broadcast on the evening news.

The inside of your residence, your backyard or any place that is private is free of surveillance by parties other than the owner – a hotel owner cannot install surveillance equipment inside a guest room as he temporarily cedes the room to the occupants. The outside of your residence or any corner of the public space – apparently neither is considered private – is not immune from scrutiny and may enter the data ocean stored at both public and private entities.

Mobile phone operators keep data transmission records that can be used to trace a handset. Motor vehicle manufacturers install a black box on each car, bus or truck they have made and their data banks boast the capacity to determine the whereabouts of a particular vehicle at any given time. Again, it is a criminal offence for the companies to retrieve information without proper legal procedures.

Everything that is okay to be recorded will be stored for quite a long time, two to five years in most cases, when permanent storage is not required. But no one, not even a police officer of the highest rank, has easy access to the data. Different entities keep different sorts of data separately in accordance with their respective legal obligations. Only Investigation Forces, backed by a court of law, can request different entities to surrender the data so that they can unlock their insights into a specific case. At other times, although every step you take in a public place may be recorded by this or that organisation or individual, no one can use such information to try to find out what kind of person you are or what you are doing without risking being caught and punished.

When a liability claim is supported by a court of law, a government fund pays the victim and then turns to the offender for reimbursement. The government, with a warrant by the court, is in a better position than the victim to monitor the offender's financial resources and make him pay in full immediately or by instalments within an agreed period of time. The fund may incur losses due to bad debts. But this is okay as the government is believed to be indirectly responsible for damage done to its citizens living on its soil and under its rule.

Such an arrangement to collect citizens' information is meant to protect them in a previously agreed manner, within defined scope and in a transparent way. The legislatures have passed laws which state clearly as to what is collected, where the data are kept and who is entitled to take a look. Anyone who feels his rights are not respected accordingly can turn to a court of law.

Not yet been struck by a terrorist attack, they have heard of plenty of such atrocities and are preparing themselves for a possible encounter with it. "They are just like lightning strikes," Frank told me. "And you can reason with neither. You do not question them why they target innocent people. All we can do is collect and analyse data, try to find out the pattern and the cause, prevent or predict the next incident when we can, accept that it has happened when we cannot do much beforehand, and then do whatever can be done to help the victims and the bereaved. We do not negotiate with lightning."

The fight against terrorism is a good reason for Investigation Forces to watch and follow any citizen in a public place. It is not a good reason for them to intrude into other people's private lives or to playfully handle the matter. Phone-tapping is strictly prohibited even when a suspect is concerned. An investigation officer who, when working on a case, accidentally spots a pretty woman and then digs into her profile and daily routine to determine whether she would be his next girlfriend will lose his job if this act of his should come to light. Any form of leakages of information or harm done to irrelevant third parties leads to civil and criminal lawsuits.

If a passerby is asked, he may prefer being watched less. But the public perfectly understand that they are not in the best position to vote and decide everything. A democracy is not for all to gather and make concrete decisions by majority vote, which often leads to unwise choices, or even unfair ones when the majority find it irresistible to rob the minority. Democracy means people can delegate able members among themselves to make more well-informed decisions. And the voters simply focus on choosing the right delegates and filtering out the wrong guys who have abused the trust.

An ordinary person may have no idea of politics, economics and whatever else is essential in dealing with public affairs, but he knows who is good to him and whom he can trust. "Do not employ a man whom you do not trust; do not suspect a man whom you have employed." The people here trust the congress, which has decided that the current level of data collection – like nuclear power, it can be a force of good if it is in the right hands – is appropriate and necessary. One day the congress may alter the law and stop keeping a watchful eye. One day congress members who support data collection may be voted out. But for now the congress believes it is necessary to do so, although this might be disturbing for some.

One thing is for sure: paternalism is definitely not what they intend. Data stored serve as backup to provide support and help if they are needed to safeguard the citizens' interest. They are not a tool for the government to introduce tighter controls.

Then it goes without saying that this private letter between you and me will not be read by any other person despite the fact that all the bits and bytes have been faithfully copied to and technically can be retrieved from a server out there.

A safe world collects an enormous amount of information, and so must its leaders. A superior social framework is more likely to select competent leaders, but it is the leaders that ensure good administration, not the framework itself. What a leader has read and learnt, not only in political science, economics and law that are directly related to the administration of an area but also in philosophy, mathematics, history and literature that have indirect links, greatly defines his horizons and capacity and guides him into the direction he deems right. A backward society, when extremely lucky, is blessed with a learned leader and may experience a time of prosperity. But more often than not such a society systematically selects leaders who have collected so little information during the course of their life, which has been filled with nothing beyond conspiracies and power struggles. Sometimes such a leader intentionally introduces bad policies so that his kith and kin prosper, and sometimes he just cannot think of a good way to solve a particular problem and is not open-minded to hire someone who is capable of finding a way out. Such a leader reads too little or only in a limited sphere; his focus is on the near side but not the far side; he has to win at the expense of others and does not truly believe in mutual benefit. Such leaders are simply impossible, and a place or an organisation under such leadership is just hopeless.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 27th 2012

My dear,

Tomorrow is the last day of your holiday. I guess you must have spent six days of joy and leisure with both family and friends. How have they been? None of them has to stay in a strange place at this time of year, I hope. You will fly back to Beijing, will you not? The high-speed rail network is not safe at the current stage.

Talking of transport, I could not help looking first to the left when crossing a road at the beginning of the month. But they all drive on the left. The locals, however, will not get confused even when they are walking or driving in foreign territory within the WED as all the states have conformed to left-hand traffic for more than twenty years.

Uniformity also exists elsewhere. The owner of a petrol station, where petrol is sold in litres, has told me that the metric system is now the norm after a prolonged period of confusion between the UK and US gallon. The kilogramme and the metre may not be more comprehensible (but surely more convenient arithmetically) than the pound and the foot (or our Chinese jin and chi). A foot was a little longer than the foot of a white male – actually it was a synonym for a shoe. An inch was "three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end, lengthwise". Another past definition of an inch was "the width of an average man's thumb at the base of the nail". People could easily have an idea of how long one of these units roughly meant. But the abstract concept of a metre is a real challenge: originally, it was intended to be "one ten-millionth of the distance from the earth's equator to the North Pole at sea level"; since 1983, it has been defined as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second". I have never reached as far as the North Pole; nor can I imagine how fast light can run.

But the first merit of a measuring system is the comparability it provides – the same is true of the monetary system. For this reason, two or more brilliantly invented systems are less effective than either one of them. The metric system, despite its distance from everyday life, prevails as the majority of people find it psychologically easier to accept this newer invention, which is not inherited from the ancestors of a single nation and thus reckoned to belong to the whole world. In this way, supporters of the imperial or US customary units and those of the Chinese table of weights and measures or other systems of measurement could finally make their peace with one another after the heated debate between hostile rivals who concurrently spared no effort to boast about their own heritage and devalue that of others.

As to the temperature, the Fahrenheit fans have magnanimously agreed to convert to the Celsius scale, which had been, before uniformity, in use among a wider range of people. As a small concession to the considerate and reasonable minority side, decimals are always used so that each Fahrenheit degree is accurately shown rather than rounded up or down on the Celsius scale.

Neither does a traveller need adapters that allow insertion of otherwise mechanically incompatible plugs into sockets any longer. The fused British plug (Type G in our world), the residential voltage of 230 V and the frequency of 50 Hz are what they have chosen for providing electrical power to household appliances.

During a conversion, it was inevitable that the states which had promised to change needed to pay quite a lot of money to repaint the roads, update the street signs, change the labels, alter the industrial standards and rewrite the software packages. Since uniform weights and measures would benefit all peoples, each and every state should bear some of the cost. It was sensible of the states that did not need to change to share the financial burden, according to their ability and willingness to pay, with those that underwent all the massive changes.

Usually it is the minority that changed to conform to the majority, as the cost could be reduced to a minimum. The rule of the road was an exception: before the uniform direction of traffic materialised, a larger number of states and a higher proportion of the population had adhered to the right-hand rule. They favoured left over right mainly for two reasons. Firstly, the history of the keep-left rule can be traced back to ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome. They have chosen the left to pay tribute to these pioneers of public order and fine ideas. Secondly, the direction of traffic was the starting point for a series of uniformity reforms. The leading advocates and founder members of the Uniformity Alliance, which has gradually sought the endorsements by all WED states after years of strenuous efforts, wanted to showcase their determination and confidence that this act, despite the great expense, would pay off well.

Asking everyone in an amateur football team to contribute a little so that a few differently dressed players can pull on jerseys of a common colour and all of them can play as a team – similar to the principle of insurance – is a creative solution to the problem of parallel public orders, where diversity is not needed. Or rather, it is not a problem but a waste of human efforts to adapt and adjust between very different systems that serve exactly the same purpose. There is no right and wrong. Neither driving on the left or on the right is unacceptable, but using both the kilometre and the mile is confusing.

I asked Frank how they could be so creative in so many ways that many conundrums up there could be dealt with easily down here. And he replied that they had not tried any clever means to train themselves to be creative. For them, being creative is not deliberately denying traditions or what others think is right. It is about pursuing the right thing, which happens to be not yet perceived or discovered by others and which is to be reckoned to be right or effective afterwards.

Really and truly, a creative mind is far from an eccentric walking off the main road. Up there many pupils are enjoying a freewheeling life in the name of encouraging creativity and nurturing their capacity to think in an original way. These admirable objectives and understandable ambitions are not at all opposite to established rules and teachings. Before thinking outside the box, one needs to know what is already inside it. If children of today are not learning to respect the generally accepted principles, how can we expect them to surpass us and do the right thing, which we have yet to figure out, in the future?

A community speak their own language that is distinct from their neighbours', because the fathers and mothers of the inhabitants there learnt it from their fathers and mothers and taught it to their children. They did not and need not invent a new language so as to be different from others.

There is no uniformity among the various systems of government. But there are some common practices that have been tested and approved to be effective in certain circumstances. No government should deny these practices only because a rival has already adopted it. The decision to search for another solution, when there are comparable alternatives, proves a government's generosity with its taxpayers' money. The insistence on another approach, when the known one is perhaps the only solution or by far the best one, leads to an escalation of the situation, chaos and confusion, and the tragic suffering of many.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 28th 2012

My dear,

This world was never heavily polluted. But they are sober-minded and take precautions before serious pollution actually comes.

All congresses make tough anti-pollution laws. And they always add a clause to the contract offered to the mayor they have employed. Once a factory chimney exceeds its limit, the mayor automatically gets fired and may be sued for criminal negligence, depending on the situation. The concerned state leader and union chief will also be adversely affected and resignation is perhaps an inevitable consequence.

Tight monetary policy helps reduce pollutants too. When there is a lot of money, the level of industrial activity increases to satisfy the investors' thirst for returns and household consumption rises so that wages are not being eaten away by inflation. When the money supply is relatively constant, neither the investors nor the wage-earners are desperate to boost the economy. People can go to the beach, bask in the sun and enjoy the sea breeze at their leisure, happy but not contributing to either GDP or pollution levels.

Of course household activities pollute, but to such a trivia extent that no one has been persuaded that ordinary residents should be regulated. Industries, on the other hand, are closely watched. The troublemaker, if there is any, is always ordered to shut down immediately before it takes a long time and a lot of effort to convince both the government and the neighbourhood that it will not misbehave again. Its laid-off employees are not to be worried about: the Citizenship Pay helps them to meet their basic needs before they find another job. The irresponsible owner is not to be worried about: he also receives the pay and any damage, from lost production to future problems of reopening and rehiring staff, just serves him right. It should be high on his list of priorities to ensure that his business does good rather than harm to the society. His old customers are not to be worried about either: they can always turn to other producers and heavy polluters usually make supplementary products that can be forfeited temporarily or even forever.

But up there we lack the courage to forfeit even what is already in surplus. Do we really need that much heating in the Beijing winter? Many homes – though I do not know the percentage – can reach between 25°C and 30°C and the occupants have to leave a window wide open during the day to keep from getting roasted like a Beijing duck. A lot of coal is inefficiently burnt to provide that level of heating. No need to mention the chilliness in many of the office buildings in midsummer.

Do we really need that many mobile handsets before we know how to safely dispose of the batteries? Many of the young up there change their mobiles every one or two years. They have done nothing wrong as long as their source of income and the purchased products are both legal. Their enthusiasm reflects the rapid development of technology that has resulted in an influx of irresistible new designs. But why are the numerous firms, large and small, so attracted to making new phones while no big name is known to be actively involved in cleaning up the mess that has been left behind? What kind of incentives have the governments provided for the businesses?

Beijing's plan to reduce air pollution by forbidding a number of cars from hitting the road each weekday does not work. Privately owned modern passenger cars barely produce enough particles to be observed with the naked eye. But they have been identified as a major source of pollution and found themselves on the receiving end of the ban, because once purchased they almost stopped paying taxes or fees as long as they travelled within the main city area. That is why no such ban applies outside the fifth ring road, beyond which a lot of tollgates loom up and collect huge financial gain. That is why taxis, many of which are empty but still keep running all the time, and buses, many of which are in bad conditions and puff black smoke, are exempt from the ban. Taxis generate only a small proportion of the income for their poor drivers and a lot for the idle rich who have monopolised the market. Buses must be there to receive an unknown amount of subsidy.

Government cars are not affected: there are many of them in rotation. Some of the more senior number plates are immune from being stopped by a traffic police officer or caught by a surveillance camera. Those junior number plates, if they are on the road by accident or on purpose when they are banned, pay the fine with taxpayers' money. A rich man does not feel the pain either. He used to collect multiple cars to pursue a luxurious lifestyle while the less fortunate turned years of savings into a small engine which hopefully will propel the owners to a better future by saving their time and energy to and fro. In the past or at present, a rich man cannot take the wheel of two cars concurrently. Hence he is now not much bothered and the only trouble is that he has to remember numbers and pick a car not according to his likes and dislikes but to the government's order. But for us, the metal frame is a means of transport on some days and a window display on some others. When only luxury can ensure that your daily routine is not greatly harassed, the government is encouraging wastefulness and punishing frugality.

Barbecues and the practice of burning dried stems of plants are also far from powerful enough to cloud a city the size of Beijing.

Industrial pollution is the prime culprit. Dry places like Beijing are smoggy because there is not enough rainfall to wash down the area dotted with countless workshops. But Beijing's sky is always as blue as that of any other country's capital on the National Day or any other big occasion. Cities with plenty of rainwater, like Nanjing, are no better as they are located along big rivers and installed with too many thirsty chemical plants. Nanjing is always a pleasantly clean city for visitors who happen to be big shots. We do need colourful clothing, but not the workshop that dyes both the cloth and the stream at its back door. The government knows all about it. It just does not want to touch them.

Officials say that the country must maintain a high growth rate so that its people have jobs and can feed their families. The Chinese in ancient times, when the population was not growing too fast and the rulers not too cruel, had an abundant supply of food relying just on rain and soil but not modern technology. How dare one disgrace the human race by claiming that, after hundreds of years of progress, it still cannot find a way to fill its stomach? There are enough resources to produce enough food and other basic necessities. But the resources and the necessities are not guided to flow in a balanced way, only because those living below the poverty line have not enough coins to pay the producers for their share of corn and the well-off have the demand (both desire and purchasing power) for suppliers to find ways, including dirty ones, to meet their reasonable or bizarre needs. And up there the dirty factories will not close and the workers must keep poisoning the environment, because it is assumed that the workers do not deserve to have access to bread and go on living unless they are engaged in some kind of activity – even a harmful one is better than none.

It is a shame and disaster that a citizen has to do harmful activities to earn his right to live. Certain experts say that strict pollution control bears high social cost. Or rather, the termination of those monsters and the restoration of the environment have unimaginable social benefits but huge private cost for the factory owners, who must be so well-connected as to be exempt from punishment and living so far away from the dirty spot as to be happy to watch the smokestacks puffing heavily.

Down here, they have always known that food and shelter are a must, and other things are favoured only if they do not dim the sun, dye the air or poison the water.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 29th 2012

My dear,

Today is the last Sunday before I return home. Frank did not forget his promise and the two of us went to tour around Taoyuan.

We went by boat, powered by wind and solar energy. These boats are not as fast as traditional petrol-driven ones – the latter are usually deployed for military or disaster relief purposes. But in this world of peace and leisure, civilian vehicles do not have to reach top speed. Instead, people settle for greener, if less vibrant, technology.

It took us almost four hours to get there. Upon arrival, a mini ancient square city jumped into my eyes. With grey stone walls no longer than 300 metres on each side, it must have been some kind of museum – too small to accommodate even a single percentage of the city's population. I learnt afterwards that it was in fact a stadium. On the inside, it is as modern as Beijing's Bird's Nest; on the outside, it is as traditional as the walled city of Xi'an. Such a model is my number one choice for a national stadium with Chinese characteristics.

Sailing past the stadium by the sea, we went upstream on the River Peace. Along the river on both sides, there were peach trees spreading as long as a few hundred steps. Amazingly, there was not a single tree of another kind mixed among these peach trees. On the forest floor, there were fresh grass and fallen peach flowers. We went ahead to have a full view of the forest.

At the end of the forest, a huge rock stood in our way. The river, however, led us to a small entrance to the other side of the rock, where there seemed to be plenty of light. We stepped off the boat and went through the corridor-like entrance, which was narrow at first but got wider later on. Suddenly, we found ourselves in the middle of traditional Chinese culture. Farms and cottages suggested an agricultural society. Yet cables and modern sewage systems, among others, clearly demonstrated that it was a modern one. Dogs were happy running about and chickens busy feeding themselves. People were dressed in both traditional and modern styles. But no simplified Chinese characters could be spotted anywhere.

I talked to several strangers – I thought I was an introvert but now it has proved that I am not, not from deep inside. The first settlers seemed to have escaped from early Ming Dynasty turmoil and chaos. The offspring had kept their way of life until modern means of transport brought lucky aliens and their cultures to nearby places. West and east met and merged.

People here have knowledge of what happened in China after their ancestors had left. They regretted the ban on maritime trade, were delighted with the quest for science and technology and the founding of a republic, and felt sorry for the wars the Chinese people had to undergo. They had little idea, however, of the severity of today's pollution or the speed at which domestic resources were running out.

I was invited to several households. From Beijing quadrangles to Fujian fortified earth buildings, all historical types of residence in China that I have ever heard of can be found here. Since the most typical working hours are between 10 am and 3 pm, people here spend a lot of time at home. I think that is why time-consuming activities such as playing stringed instruments, board games, calligraphy and painting are still popular among commoners.

Government officials – legislators, administrators and arbitrators – mostly come from middle-class families. It is not easy for the super-rich to keep their eyes peeled for the needs of the underdogs; the impoverished find it hard to resist the temptation to benefit from a "Robin Hood effect". He who has had a happy childhood, but not an extravagant one that would distance himself from the masses, and received good education afterwards may better cope with the reality that some people can be justifiably much richer while some others deservedly need help.

It is also true that people in the middle are closer to success in many other areas. Those who are far ahead of their time are not understood or accepted; those with less capacity easily become targets of exploitation. He who is just clever enough to perceive the current world makes the most adequate effort to adapt to it.

The size of the Taoyuan government is extremely small. Division directors, like managers with WEC, are judged by performance, team budget and staff turnover. Therefore a director tries his best to retain as few subordinates as is possible to get the job done, or else another candidate might be able to take over from him with a smaller and more efficient team.

Bidding farewell, they said to me: "There is no need to mention us to people on your native soil." We had dinner and spent the night at the Place upon Peaceful River, a hotel and restaurant run by someone from our home town. The Nanjing salted duck served here was truly authentic, unlike that served in Nanjing Great Hotel in Beijing. The duck blood and vermicelli soup was also as good as the best in Nanjing.

Other places of interest include Great Wall FC, their local football club. They are not Real Madrid, whose boss keeps collecting extremely expensive big names in quest of trophies and worldwide fame. They are a small club, playing at the above-mentioned stadium with a capacity of only 27,000. They are stubborn and narrow-minded – most of their players are born and raised locally and the only foreign players must be culturally attracted to this place and speak fluent Chinese. No interpreters are wanted at this club. The team jersey is of similar modern fabric, but the design is very ancient. The home edition is white in colour and looks like a suit of armour worn by ethnic Han soldiers in battles in past times. The away edition is very dark with the typical y-shaped cross collar that Han Chinese clothing boasts. It resembles the clothing an old time peasant wore when he was working in the field. Long, formal Hanfu robes serve as coats only. I said I was willing to accept a job cutting grass at a well-run European football club, but not a Chinese one. I do not know if they are to be counted as a Chinese club, but I am willing to mow the lawn for them.

For too long I have not been able to be a simple and happy fan. The fate of Italian clubs is closely knitted into the owning family. Manchester United are too Ferguson; Arsenal are always young. Real Madrid released the likes of long-serving Fernando Hierro and Raúl González; Barcelona never had a solid defence. The mighty Bayern München could perhaps become more creative. I like one aspect of each club, but never feel like being a fan of any of them. I am sort of a fan of Argentina, despite the inconsistency as a result of the incompetence of the football association. But La Albiceleste do not represent my land, my people or my culture. I now proudly pronounce myself a fan of Great Wall FC, having finally found a team, the matches of which I can follow and whose joy and sorrow I can share.

Oh, I should not forget. I must have seen your childhood in a seven-year-old girl earlier today. She looked like you in the old photographs. She chased chickens with boys and was adept at climbing trees. She was full of energy and was running nonstop until her father, standing on their home balcony, called her back to dinner. She was fully enjoying her life. And I am glad that you also had a perfect time, growing up slowly outside the city walls with your elder sister. I was not among the boys near you at that time, but never felt upset as I have already shared 20 years of your life and more is yet to come.

Maybe someday, you and I would be able to come back to Taoyuan together. You could try the tree the girl sat on; I could be a boy too clumsy to be up there, waiting patiently for you down on the ground.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 30th 2012

My dear,

Within the first few days of arrival, I looked upon this land as just another wonderful place in a corner of our world. Then little by little, the democracy convinced me of its many peculiarities. I like these peculiarities.

In our world there is too much money and the government pushes hard. The economy has to maintain top speed and no one dares to lag behind. But who says the faster the better? In theirs, liquidity is not available at will and the gas pedal is pressed with the invisible foot of the market, not susceptible to the government. Our government is big with many civil servants. Theirs is small, for the taxpayers are healthy people who can care for themselves and do not need many servants, let alone those who claim importance by creating problems to solve problems that they have previously created. We bear children as a natural result, with or without proper preparations from the first days of a new life. Some even despise academic training as many top students at school do not end up well at work, not questioning why and failing to see many more others doing great in a different setting. They all have a chance to receive good education in early childhood and at school, where raising children is a recurrent theme in lectures and discussions. They begin to learn to be good parents even when they are still small.

Up there someone speaks on behalf of other people on many occasions. And too often the other people pay heavy prices. Down here representation is rare. Even the congress cannot represent the people and just pass a law for everyone to obey. Its main job is to find the right people to the executive and the judiciary. It only makes laws with a clear mandate given by all citizens or residents through prior referendums. People here prefer to negotiate with parties involved and attract others to one's plans. They try to avoid enforcing something on unwilling people whenever it is possible.

They do not set targets to increase jobs. Their Citizenship Pay guarantees survival across the WED and everyone is free to pursue what they are most interested in and best capable of. Businesses are also free to hire as many or as few staff as they please to seek the greatest efficiency. Very often, a smaller team is more competent than a larger one, where the redundant team members cause trouble to make them seem important. Automatic production lines reduce the number of employees in the industrial world. The political campaign to increase jobs does nothing more than make the politicians popular. It stops technical advances and keeps workers occupied at very high opportunity costs.

Their regulatory commissions are supplementary and few in number. The contrary simply means good companies have been systematically eliminated. And we need to fix the real problems but not to regulate and supervise more ardently. When tax evasion is rampant, probably the taxes are too heavy. The ones that still pay in full may be bribing corrupt officials and have gained unfair market position and excessive profits.

In our country, there are many laws and regulations which only good people abide by. Good people in this way become disadvantaged since the bad guys are freer. In their states, only laws that can be properly enforced on all men and women are established. If a referee is often deceived by Hand of God goals, either change the referee or simply let everyone strike the ball with hands. The ban on weapons is sensible if the government can make sure nobody gets a gun. If not, simply let the good guys be armed and trained too. As previously discussed, potential criminals, ironically, are usually not the best shooters if everyone is given equal opportunities.

With all the differences, the key to their success lies in their emphasis on education and on people. Schools offer classes on how to be a good father or mother. Rebellion youngsters – there are always some of them somewhere – will most often choose not to have children until they are ready. They know they have the right to risk their own lives but also are aware that they should not risk the lives of their children, who do not really have a choice. No one can be fully prepared before being a parent, but once a kid is born the parents have to be aware that their words and actions affect not only their own life but that of another.

School education is important, and it is critical to ensure that successful students, after graduation, have good prospects in the real world too. A good education system turns out countless able persons; a less impressive one, however pathetic it may be, occasionally comes across one or two of them. The weaker the education system, the more urgent it is to make the best use of these able students. In them we find the desire for knowledge, the ability to think, the attention to detail, the patience from beginning to end and all those good qualities, the absence of any one of which would make academic success extremely painful and virtually impossible. If such students grow to become losers or just mediocre survivors, for one reason or another other than they cease to keep those good qualities, then is it right or wrong for us to advocate these qualities at school? Are these qualities not the ones that are integral to every walk of life and all the success stories? If able persons with these qualities do not win, others will cleverly choose not to possess these qualities. Hence the future success of successful students is of crucial importance, more so than a good education system is.

At the very beginning, people here also thought the system was more important than the people. They made countless detailed laws, regulations and procedures, hoping that the people could fit in like machine parts if the system was flawless. But for one thing, even if there could be one perfect system, the costs might be very high, so high that the perfect system would be impractical. For another, no system is perfect. It is always possible to find holes in a system, like there are bugs in computer programs. Writing patches to counteract the unwanted consequences works, but is passive and exhausting. A better way is not to tackle the bugs but to discourage bug-finders. Their solution is to design a system that selects governors only from people who both cleverly understand and stubbornly uphold principles. In this way this land is ruled neither by people nor by written complicated "laws", but by principles that everyone understands, e.g. "he who does harm to others shall compensate," and "he who intentionally does harm to others shall be punished." They believe the most important job of all is always to choose the right people. The key to success here is creating a system that efficiently allocates humans, more importantly than it allocates other resources, to where they best fit in.

How have they come up with such a system? No one designed it. If a backward company claims that it is incompetent because it has fewer resources and lousy employees, requires special treatment from the regulatory authorities, and refuses to shoulder social responsibilities or abide by laws, people would probably laugh at the company's management. Such a company would never succeed and the best way out is to shut down and hand over resources to other competent ones. It is the same with sovereign states. States also merge and split like companies do to maximise each state's welfare, as countries are no different than companies and they also need to compete with each other. Different systems are tried even in two neighbouring cities. The ones who make good choices excel, and others are free to copy and modify the good systems to fit themselves. Survival of the fittest policies leads to peaceful emulation, and no patent fees are collected.

Today's dominant systems seem perfect enough for me and also for the locals, but who knows about tomorrow. Some island state may come up with a better system and its model may become prevailing in some twenty years. A politician of today can in no way tell the people that his campaign is the best. He can, though, try to persuade people to try his way while letting others try their way and then wait and see.

After all, the government cannot make the world a better place. It can easily make it hell or, in most cases, hinder its progress. The private sector, i.e. businesses and individuals, is the one that pushes modern society forward, but only when the government lets it do so.

A government seeking reforms is like an ailing man seeing a doctor. The man needs an overall change if he does not want to come back time and again. He must quit smoking and drinking to be healthy. He cannot stick to these bad habits and still dreams of playing professional football at the top level, even if he is totally ready to make other major improvements and sacrifices. The government cannot keep fooling and enslaving its people and expects good days ahead. Being a little nicer is good, but far from enough and will not make much of a difference. Many owners voluntarily manumitted their slaves, partly because of high supervision costs, which as circumstances evolve would go even higher and eventually unbearable. It is the same for the government.

The systems here are not the only stable ones on their own. But different stable systems have different efficiency. Old China had been stable on its own, but another stable system had much greater efficiency elsewhere. When the time came for the two to meet, the superior stable one, its mere presence perhaps, made the other, the inferior stable one, vulnerable, both shaken from the outside and abandoned from within. Therefore a country should not only look at itself and be happy about its current stability but look outside and see if there is a better way. If there is, it means your own way will sooner or later give way. He who does not lead can at least follow.

We simply have to change.

Yours truly,

Ted
January 31st 2012

My dear,

All these days I have been thinking about what I can do here for these good people and for this heavenly place. But on the last of the 31 days, which I enjoyed very much, I feel that I can do little for them – I even fear that a stranger from outside like me would become a stubborn stain on the picture of their beautiful world.

But at least I have briefly recorded their civilisation through these 31 letters to you. If 2012 is indeed the end for most lives, these letters can tell the generations to come what can be and already has been achieved by mankind.

They say I am a nice person. Frank said that I could get a permanent residence permit if I wanted, as they have always believed that a state or a city is not comprised of people who were born there or whose vessels carry the same blood, but is buttressed by citizens of like character, though they may have either similar or very different habits. Anyone who agrees with the state's or the city's ideas can move in and stay. Their only obligation is to live and work there legally, abiding by agreed local rules and customs.

I cannot deny that I am interested. But I do not know. To stay means we need to leave everything behind in the country that I know best. Going back, I have to stand by and watch so many pathetic scenes, about which I can do nothing. You know that I hate chaos and have always been looking for a peaceful corner, to no avail though. But maybe it is our destiny to witness a nation's fate. Now I am physically ready to board a plane and come back to you before any final decision is made.

My dear, I am coming home.

Yours truly,

Ted
