Denka, HELP!!!

“Yukari Denka! It had been a long time! Hope all is going well!”

Yukari looked up from her study, and there was a tiny kitten on the outside window sill. The cat had mostly white fur, with light patches of golden brown here and there. From the voice of the kitten, Yukari made a guess, “Hitomi?”

“Yay~~~ You recognized me! I thought I might have to awkwardly introduce myself. I am a bit embarrassed, causing you trouble with that dream of mine.”

“Are you in another dream now? Coming into this world to see Arashi again?”

“No. I have been wanting to meet Your Highness, and I am fortunate to have finally made it.”

“What might you desire from me?”

“I want to... um... just to talk with Your Highness, and I want some advice.”

“Area of interest?”

“Politics and government. Your Highness is the only one who can help me. So may I ask Your Highness to gracefully endow me with some precious time?”

“Your plea is granted to you. I do feel curious, however, do you enjoy talking in polite language?”

“That might be an accurate description.”

“Do not waste my time. From now on, talk plainly.”

“Understood. First, I have met great difficulty in my real life. The city I’m in has a population of one million, with a homeless population of more than five thousand. It’s a great burden on the city, and areas in the city centre have become devoid of businesses due to it.”

The situation was described to Yukari. Apparently homeless people got welfare checks around one thousand dollars a month per person. Meals were provided by food banks, churches, and other charities. There were many shelters, temporary and permanent, in the city. Despite all that, many homeless people disliked shelters, citing reasons concerning safety, sanitation, clear-out policies, among other things. Food banks had been stretched to the limit, and were spending a million dollars a year just for buying eggs for those who depended on the charity.

The city centre had large open air parking lots, unused lots, empty boarded up buildings and more than half empty office buildings. Due to the city centre emptying out, the metro rail system had lowered ridership. With reduced revenue from public transit tickets, the city was planning to convert large open air parking lots by the metro rail stations into paid parking. The city owned these transit parking lots. Hitomi feared that such a move would reduce ridership even more.

Hitomi had been presenting plans to city councilors, charities, and churches. Hitomi even pledged all her savings, a quarter of a million dollars, to the proposal, to show her seriousness.

Hitomi’s Proposal

The Goal

To convert ‘Park and Ride’ parking lots by metro rail stations into affordable housing with underground parking garages.

Reasoning

These parking lots are already owned by the city. They are already low in usage currently. Once changed into paid open air parking, people will be even less likely to use it. Once the cost of parking plus the cost of transit tickets approaches the cost of using downtown privately owned parking garages, people will be less inclined to ride public transit.

Feasibility

The affordable housing units charge a monthly rent. Tenants pay at the rate of 100 dollars a month for every one hundred square feet (about 10 m2 ) of unit area. Tenants must pay fifty dollars a month for laundry service, linen service, and cleaning service. Tenants can purchase simple meals that would cost a person about ten dollars a day if they choose to eat in the cafeteria. Such a rate gives the city a very small, but definite, profit on each unit, and for every meal sold. Thus this is not a financial drain or a money hole.

The building will also have regular rental units on the higher floors, ranging from 400 ft2 to 1000 ft2. These regular rental units are rented at the market rate. This is to generate revenue.

The building will have affordable office space for charitable organizations, so they can serve the needs of the residents. The building will have retail and restaurant space on the ground floor. This is to generate revenue.

The underground parking will shield vehicles from the elements. People are more likely to pay for parking when their vehicles are protected from our six months of snow and three months of scorching heat. This building will have security personnel on duty 24/7, and the parking garage will be patrolled by the same security. People are more likely to pay for parking if they feel safe.

With money from paid parking and rent, this building will generate revenue for the city. Even if the city wants to end the program in the future, such a rental building with a large number of units of all sizes can be sold to rental companies, and the city will be reimbursed for the costs.

Justification

With the smallest unit at 8 ft by 12.5 ft, it will fit a single bed, a desk, and a private lavatory, with a shower, a toilet, and a sink. [2.5 m by 4 m]

The next size of units will be 16 ft by 12.5 ft. [5 m by 4 m] It will fit a twin bed, a lavatory of shower, toilet and sink, a closet, a desk, and a small living room.

With 100 dollars of monthly rent, or 200 dollars, plus 50 dollars for laundry and cleaning, plus 310 dollar for the basic meals, that is a total of 460 dollars a month for the 100 ft2 unit, or 560 dollars a month for the 200 ft2 units. This cost is about half of the monthly welfare check a homeless person receives. Thus, such a design is affordable, and it gives dignity, sanitation, and security of personal belongings. And the city can get an extra source of revenue.

Currently, the largest part of the city budget is for policing, at 15%. This drains the city’s resources. With homelessness reduced, the strain on the city police also lessens. With homelessness reduced, downtown businesses can have a chance to survive again. Better business environment means more tax for the city, and more people going downtown means increased revenue for the city from parking meters. With downtown having a chance to be more vibrant, transit income might also increase for the city, from people traveling in, using the metro rail.

Security Features

This building will have an office available for the city police. This building will have a professional management company. The management company will be responsible for contracting security personnel to staff the mail room, the lobby, the elevators, and the parking garages. The management company will provide weekly mandatory cleaning of all small units, daily cleaning of all common areas, and mandatory weekly linen change for the small affordable units aimed at serving the needs of the homeless.

Service

The building is designed to include the cooperation of local businesses, trade colleges, and charities, especially businesses that rely heavily on unskilled temporary foreign workers, such as fast food restaurants and cleaning companies.

Residents are encouraged to learn to become trainees in food service, cleaning service, laundry service, and sewing, for example. Residents will be encouraged to study at a reduced pace, until they have mastered all the required knowledge and skills, as well as relevant policies, laws, procedures, and industry standards. Residents are encouraged to become apprentices after learning the courses, and learn to work in the cafeteria, the cleaning team, or the laundry room. An honorarium will be paid to the participants.

Situation

Soup kitchens draw in large crowds of homeless, and nearby businesses have died out.

Food banks in this city spend an enormous amount of money giving away food for free when homeless people get monthly checks. Food had to be purchased in order to “provide proper nutrition”, since donations of shelf-stable items are deemed often “lacking in nutrition”

Churches have parking lots that sit empty for six and half days a week. Churches claim that they are having difficulty getting enough money to serve the poor, and supposedly they are eager to help.

Many open air downtown parking lots are up for sale at the moment, due to low usage, as downtown is emptying out.

Many office buildings are near empty, just ready to be bought and converted. The city centre shopping mall is more than half empty and is up for sale. It takes up three full blocks of space, and has four levels on one side, five levels on the other side.

**********

**********

“Well designed.”

“Thanks, Your Highness. The problem is that city councilors and church leaders say that they like the idea, then proceed to say ‘I hope you find the right people to make it happen’. I have been getting this same same response for almost ten years! They don’t tell me why they won’t go with the idea. They don’t tell me where to improve. They don’t tell me whom they think would make it happen. If they actually liked the idea, I wanted them to at least say ‘I know this person who is very good at writing proposals’, or ‘I will introduce you to someone who is skilled at writing grant applications’, or ‘I will get you in touch with this city planner I know’. Almost ten years, and I got nothing! No one is telling me how to make the idea better, either. It is so depressing. Especially after I talked to church leaders.”

“Your Highness.” Hitomi looked at her half mournfully. “No world is perfect. Your world may be lacking in some areas, but my world might be even more dysfunctional. People get fixated on the idea that if the structure is better, the contents and outcomes must be better. If one day, Your Highness becomes Your Majesty, and reigns over this world, would a city like mine, with its financial debts and political inaction, be tolerated?”

“Of course not.”

“Your Highness, may I ask something that might be considered offensive?”

“As long as you know that yourself.”

“Your Highness, what would a strong person use as a justification for the ambition of conquering the world?”

“To bring order to the world.”

“What would happen if there is a lack of order?”

“Other people might invade your people”

“Why would they invade?”

“To enlarge their territory.”

“Because they want to conquer the world?... Your Highness... I sincerely apologize. I have been trying to grasp the idea for months, but it seems that the logic is that ‘commoners should submit to, and obey the person who wants to be the conqueror, so that the commoners can be protected from others who want to be conquerors.’......Your Highness, it's like saying better to tolerate a bully in my own school, than to imagine being bullied by some unmet bully from an unknown school. Is this not the justification by some street gangs? Pay protection money to them so they will protect me from other street gangs.”

“Hitomi, what are you trying to say!”

“Your Highness, many countries in my world rely on people paying tax in order to operate. The justification is that people have delegated certain duties to the state, such as policing, justice, national defense, policy making, public infrastructure, postal system, international-commerce negotiations. However, that is not all that the government has. With the large areas of land that the government has, and near monopoly on infrastructure, I feel the country can be more self-sufficient, independent of income tax, if it has more crown corporations.

The country in which I live has a shortage of farmers. The existing farms are often managed by farmers ready to retire due to old age. Small towns are dying out. If there are crown agriculture companies, they can buy the farms, and hire the urban unemployed. Currently, private companies buy them, and often use unskilled temporary foreign workers. Supposedly the citizens don’t like farm work because of the harsh working conditions, so the companies claim that they could not find local employees even with a high wage.

But didn’t people say that it’s the conditions that’s the problem? Why not hire more workers at a lower, more reasonable wage, reduce work hours, add more breaks, schedule more shifts, add small air conditioning to the driver’s compartment of machinery, buy houses and restaurants in the local small towns, rent them to the employees, and get profit from rent and food? These private companies often have to provide lodging and food free of charge to the temporary foreign workers.

Private companies have no obligation to reduce the unemployment rate, but a crown corporation can help in that regard.

We have high energy costs for using vehicles despite this being an oil producing region. Government has land. If the government builds some much needed refineries, at least the energy cost would help toward a balanced budget. Private companies find it easier to just extract the oil and sell it overseas. So despite sitting on oil, this country relies on foreign gasoline. A crown corporation can change that.

Your Highness, people in my world dislike crown corporations and state enterprises, because they say that it would not be efficiently managed and might become a financial drain, as the government might not give enough scrutiny and incentive for the proper operation of the corporation, as compared to private owners toward their own companies. But is that not like saying ‘cooking might make the stove messy, so I will never use the kitchen’? Is this not just a reflection of people’s lack of trust in the government? Or some politicians’ excuse for inaction?”

“Hitomi, do you want to rule over your world so that you can make it better?”

“No, Your Highness. I would not be any good at it. I think I am more like Her Excellence Kasumi in terms of area of interest. I try to analyze and provide suggestions and possible solutions, and the leader can decide whether or not to implement that.”

“Is that not just irresponsibility on your part, though? That you can just think things up and someone else will be burdened with the decision?”

“You Highness, I have not succeeded in any role of leadership, ever. I am an ordinary commoner, and I cannot even blame society for that. I have not met my leader like Her Excellence Kasumi has met hers. I often find myself depressed as a result. I talk to political and religious leaders, and I propose plans that take multiple sides into consideration. I calculate the cost and propose suggestions that will be financially sound. I get nowhere, and no one tells me what I am doing wrong.”

“You Highness, I have a lot of respect for Your Highness. No longer just a vague silhouette in a dream, no longer just an antagonist in a novel. Your Highness has come alive for me, and now I can talk to Your Highness. I am very very happy.”

“In the beginning, I was just a villain under your pen in your journal, then I became an antagonist in a novel. Now I am a person to you. You even wrote an official ending that readers can reasonably expect that I will grow and mature and become a true ruler, for the benefit of the world, and my powers will return and be even more glorious. And people will not obey me because of fear. People will listen to me and follow my direction because they know I am good.”

“Hitomi, you didn’t change Midori, Kasumi, Yayoi, or Ryō”

“No, I did not make any change in personality for any of them.”

“I guess my return to glory will likely depend on how I can bring about the goodness in them, and direct their skills onto the right path.”

“I don’t have any guesses in that regard, actually.”

“Thank you for paying an artist to draw a portrait of my perceived likeness.”

“Of all the characters in my novel, You Highness deserves that the most, to be honest.”

“Hitomi, how long have you had that rant of yours bottled inside you, the one in the chapter titled Mirror’s Questioning?”

“More than a year, actually, I would say almost two years by this point. When the newest OVA for Ikki Tousen came out, in 2023, in my world, the leader of Yamato Academy, Himiko, wanted to appropriate the divine power of the Three Holy Treasures for herself, thus enabling her army of ghosts to conquer Japan, if not more, and I started my rant.”

“I wanted to ask her, what did she plan to do with Japan? Japan already has one of the lowest crime rates in my world. Japan is already one of the richest countries. Japan is already an influential country. Japan is already advanced in technology. What will she bring to Japan that will be significantly better?

Would she find a way to sustain the pension system? Would she reform the school system so that students are not tired during the day, and drained during the night in tutoring companies? Would she create more useful employment for people with advanced education, so that they are not left with no choice but to become tutors?

Would she bring peace to the world? And reduce wars and conflicts to zero? Would she order all foreign military stations to cease their operation? So that Japanese school students will no longer be raped by foreign soldiers? Will she reform the school curriculum so that it is more balanced among the subjects of language art, fine art, science, trades, physical education, second and third languages? Would she devise a global goods-for-goods trading system so no country will ever run a trade deficit? Would she use her power of holiness to save people from fire and floods and earthquakes and tsunamis? Would she use her influence to stop people from using endangered animals and plants merely for the sake of decoration and superstition?

Your Highness, I do apologize. Because the anime has a familiar setting to me, my rant was a lot more detailed, and might go on for a long time.”

“Hitomi, would it not be interesting if you could become one of my staff?”

“I would love to, Your Highness. But I know that this is just a dream again, and I do not have the ability to actually reside in the world of Your Highness.” Hitomi meowed in a sighing way. Hitomi liked cats and often meowed to her family for conveying feelings of grumpiness, happiness, surprise and anger. “Wouldn’t it be nice if Your Highness can somehow make my world better?”

“First order of business?”

“Well, Japan has a large swath of land now unusable due to nuclear contamination after a natural disaster. Special concrete can be poured over the whole area to block radiation from soil, and turn it into a huge automated factory. The control centre can be located elsewhere, at a place where workers feel safe. Japan is the world leader in robotics and automation, and faces labour shortage for manufacturing, plus building new factories is not an easy task, since land is a premium in Japan. Now we have such an open space that we can do all kinds of things on it, and yet it has been lying unused for more than a decade.”

“What about other parts of your world, Hitomi?”

“Let’s see... Quite a few countries in Europe have frequent disputes between government and employees. Postal workers, for example, are sometimes involved and they would go on strike. Waste collection workers, teachers, ground crews for airports, heavy machinery operators at ports, bus drivers... All kinds of people. People demand more because the cost of living is too high. Governments have a hard time because large companies and the super wealthy pay very little tax.”

“Hitomi, you know that I am just indulging you with my time and letting you talk.”

“And I am most grateful, Your Highness.”

The problem, as Hitomi saw it, was partially due to the tax system. Tax was based on ‘net income’ and not ‘total income’. The super wealthy and large companies paid for experts to legally inflate their operational cost, even counting this fee paid for legal tax avoidance as part of it, to reduce their net income to a negligible amount. A part of the solution, as Hitomi proposed, is spelling things out loud to the citizens: change the corporate tax rate to 0.5% of gross income. If a company wails that that is too much, then that company should not be in business in the first place, since companies often had more than 50% gross profit. In a restaurant situation, the cost of food was often less than 30%, as bulk of the menu price went to rent, wage, and utilities.

If companies complain that a 0.5% tax on their gross income is too much to bear, then the government can conveniently broadcast that to the people, showing them the greediness of corporations.

As for the super rich, who also pay very little tax, the government can simply implement a financial tax of 0.1% on all transactions, including between accounts held by the same person, as well as a 0.1% tax charged annually on all bank accounts.

Money has a cost to be made. This 0.1% tax simply pays the royal mint to keep on making money, as the mint cannot just take out a stack of bills and use it. Funds for the operation of the mint have to be issued by the central bank, then through the government budget. This new tax will actually get the ultra rich to start paying some tax, and a 0.1% tax would seem negligible to the commoners, as they often pay income tax between 25% to 55%, or even more.

One argument for the rich to not pay tax was that if the rich get richer, they would spend more money, which would then liven up the whole economy. That is not common sense.

Every business conducts sales to make money, with zero exceptions. For a commoner to be able to buy bread, it means the bread is worth less than the price tag. If not, the bread at that price would not appear in stores.

The supplier sells the bread to the store because the price the store pays is more than the value of the bread. The factory sells the bread because the supplier pays more than its worth.

So as a commoner buys from the supermarket, the buyer pays to all the upstream, including manager and executives of supermarkets, supply chain/ logistics, and corporations.

Similarly, when a farmer sells wheat, the buyer buys it precisely because it can be sold for more. Regional distributors buy mass quantities because they can be sold for more. Factories buy them so that they can be sold for more. A farmer gets paid the least possible price, because it is essential for every business to buy at the lowest possible price and sell at the highest possible price. When a farmer sells, the transaction goes into paying all the large corporations along the way.

An employee is hired because the company can make more money that way. A manager exists because it is deemed reasonable that the company will make more profit with that layer than without it. So when the contribution is quantified, the bottom employee gets paid the least for production, since products get sold and generate revenue. Management reports cannot be sold in a supermarket to generate revenue.

In short, if governments collect tax to keep order and prevent unrest, the rich are the ones benefiting from this service, as bottom layer workers are the one prone to be fanned with revolutionary ideals, not managers or executives. Users payers.

“Hitomi, I am bored with your rant. Did you not mention encounters with holiness? Why did you not ask the divine?”

Hitomi buried her head under her paws. “Your Highness, I am sorry that I don’t think it works that way. I cannot control the divine. I encounter the divine when I am fortunate and when I am alert to notice it. A church in my city needs the roof fixed. It would cost more than 1.5 million dollars as it is a historic building. Would it not be nice if a church goer could just win the lottery and have the funds? Could God not do that little thing for the church? But that is not how the divine works. We encounter the divine. We cannot coax it. We cannot even control our encounters with the divine. Some go to religious places to seek the divine, and some do find it there, while others are disappointed, and still others cannot get in. Do we find the divine in the natural world? In music or art? Through meditation or special exercises? In the end, we can only make ourselves available to the divine, but never control what actually comes, if anything. Does Your Highness recall my original dream? I wanted to sacrifice my body to bring divine power into this world, but I could not, for it was not my decision to bring it here. The divine comes when it decides to come. I don’t get to decide.”

“Your Highness, I look forward to seeing what will happen to this world. I am hopeful. I am writing all these things down so that people can read it. If homelessness cannot be reduced in my city, maybe someone will read my ideas, make it better, and improve the situation in another city. Maybe a reader who knows someone in the Japanese government will read it, and forward the idea to their superiors, and the coastal land near Fukushima can be useful again. I care about the world that I live in. From countries starting with A like Armenia, all the way to Z like Zimbabwe.”

“Your Highness, I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude. I was on the side of Kageyama, and Himeyama was an opponent. Had I been on the side of Himeyama, certainly Kageyama would be the antagonist. We were simply on different sides. I am truly glad that I could write this story without labeling anyone as the Villain. I am sure if goblins were to write history, all the human heroes would be crouched over with crooked shoulders.”

“I have entrusted the academy to Midori and Kasumi in the meantime, while I revise my plans and improve my vision for the world. I will closely monitor the situation at Himeyama, to ensure that Midori and Kasumi properly operate the enterprise. As a result, I have time to pause and contemplate. Hitomi, you are allowed to visit me and just talk.”

“With my most sincere thanks and with all of my heart, yes, Your Highness.”

......

“So Your Highness, how would Your Highness reign?”

Yukari looked at the little kitten that was Hitomi.

“Trying to get answers to your questions?.”

“Your Highness is very perceptive.”

“Hitomi, I have gone several times to the world where you reside since our encounter. It seemed that there were a lot more strife and regional conflicts than this world. I imagine my answers might not fit your questions. This world is already quite decentralized, and runs little risk of entering into war. I understand why in your novel, you had a hard time trying to comprehend what benefit might I bring. In your world, no amount of political good will can bring two countries to merge with each other for long. Force seems to be the only way to make a country bigger. When countries split, it furthermore is not due to a desired improvement in government efficiency, but is often appealed to language, dialects, religion, customs... When the desire to establish a government is not from the desire to improve its operation, I certainly am not surprised to see that your world is dysfunctional. We are all looking at your world with regrets. I would say bring things into the open. Your world has too many powers in the shadows. People form groups by themselves; this world in which I live is certainly self organized into towns and academies, with division of labour and borders for properties. Bring them all under the light of publicity.

Hitomi, my suggestion for your world is to recognize the limitations of what can be done without a bloody revolution or war, and get those who influence the government to openly sit at the negotiation table, with the whole process witnessed and broadcast.

Of course, that can be staged as a show. The real conversations can still happen in secrecy, behind the smoke screen of performing an act of transparency.

Your world, Hitomi, has a lack of good will. And even worse, it has a lack of believing that others have good will. It certainly believes that opponents have no good will at all.”

“That is very true, Your Highness. They chose November eleventh to sign the ceasefire of a very big war, because the church saint of November 11th was a saint against war, and these days nobody remembers that. The date was chosen to commemorate Saint Martin, who was then a member of the cavalry of the Roman Empire. Some even say that he was a member of the imperial guards. When Saint Martin decided to become a Christian, he decided that he must leave the military, because he believed that Christian must not kill or harm others, which was clearly required by the holy book. He sent in his notice, and the captain of the unit accused him of cowardice, and was going to punish him. Saint Martin, however, offered to go ahead of everyone in the next battle, and with no weapon or armor. He chose to go into certain death to prove that his decision was due to religious conviction. This was all arranged to take place, and yet on the early morning of the anticipated battle, the opposing forces sent in a truce. So it did not happen. The captain, however, decided that valor had been clearly demonstrated, and discharged Saint Martin, who then lost his pay and pension. Saint Maitin preached and became a leader. He was made a bishop. At that time, there was a controversy in the church, and a certain bishop convinced the Roman emperor to put all heretics to death. Saint Martin opposed this, and along with Saint Ambrose, a contemporary bishop of that time, traveled to the emperor’s court to explain that matters of religion should not be handled by political law. The emperor first agreed, but then was swayed back to the other opinion after the two saints left. Saint Martin broke his communion with those who supported the death penalty for heretics, as a result. Saint Martin became a hermit, and renounced all power, status, and fame. The ceasefire was signed on his feast day to remind people that wars are wrong, and wars are against the divine, but the significance had long been forgotten.

Another example is Mother’s Day. It was first proclaimed to end all wars, and for mothers to intervene when men made war. Very few people know that now...”

“Hitomi”, Yukari said at last, after a long silence between the two, “Your world will have to be improved by people in your own world. Just as you cannot come to stay by my side to help me make this world better under one crown, I cannot extend my command of magic to erase the pains of your world, either.”

“Yes...Your Highness...”

[Appendix]

For Reader's Convenience, the original Mothers' Day Proclamation, by Julia Ward Howe, written in 1870, is attatched below:

Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.

Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,

to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

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