2026-08-21
This essay was originally published on March 15, 2012, prompted by an NHK news report examining the relationship between rising stock prices and the broader economy.
Fourteen years later, on August 21, 2026, I am publishing it again as a record of the argument I made at the time concerning the role of politics, stock markets, corporate value, and the media in a capitalist nation.
Last night, NHK News aired a feature on what happens when stock prices rise—in other words, on the extremely obvious fact that the economy as a whole improves.
It also provided a concise and absolute demonstration of the correctness of the “answer” I had presented.
I believe that the job of the President of the United States—or, more generally, the job of the leader of a country that has chosen capitalism—can be stated very simply: to raise stock prices.
What does it mean to raise stock prices?
It means increasing the value of one’s own market and increasing the value of the publicly listed companies that represent one’s country.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is little else that politicians and public commentators should regard as more important.
Day after day, the mass-media companies concentrated overwhelmingly in Tokyo all report exactly the same stories on television, in magazines, and elsewhere about what I have repeatedly called the “vulgar evil” committed by the bad people who, as I have argued, make up some twenty percent of humanity.
That is what I call true folly.
Where could intelligence possibly exist in such a state of affairs?
People of this kind, once they commit serious offenses, should all be sent—as I have argued before—to places of confinement and never again returned to ordinary society.
They should spend the rest of their lives there.
That, I think, would be the proper form of the Panopticon—was that the term, Mr. Henmi?—the idea, if I remember correctly, associated with Bentham.
Instead of every media company spending every single day reporting, with solemn expressions, on the deeds of such people, they should be using their minds every single day to think seriously about how to raise stock prices in the stock market.
If they did so, they would understand without my having to say another word just how significant the “answer” I presented in my book really was.
Last night, NHK News reported on what happens when stock prices rise—in other words, on how the economy as a whole improves.