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Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

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Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#91

Post by Danieru »

le_lenny_face wrote: post #23
carsongross wrote: post #2

Nearly everyone was on the same proverbial page: Japan's population is 98.5 per cent Japanese, as defined by citizenry. While ethnic diversity has its strengths (and some academics point out that, when you analyse the population's regional roots, Japan is quite diverse), a set of common cultural values, instilled from birth, may strengthen resilience in the face of crisis and adversity. Thought-crime in progress, cit…

Jesus Christ. Why do we even allow this sort of pseudo-scientific "race realist" (read: racist) rubbish on Hacker News? Japan is one of the most racist first-world countries in the world. Have you even seen their incessant xenophobia?

No I haven't seen the zenophobia. Granted I only live here so maybe it is more obvious from SF?

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#92

Post by lmm »

thret wrote: post #46
LukeHoersten wrote: post #39

'"Do rich societies really need to get richer and richer indefinitely?" he asks.' They do if they are going to pay off their mega-debt. The real fear is when the GDP drops below the yearly interest payments. I feel the same when I go to nice European countries. "Wow everything is so nice" and then I remind myself that Germany is paying for it all. It's not sustainable. Look at some of the Scandinavian countries for n…

Does anyone actually think the USA will ever pay off its debt?

If you're talking about bonds, it came pretty close near the end of the Clinton administration. (If you're considering every dollar as a piece of government debt, which in some sense it is, then probably not).

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#93

Post by Slackwise »

e12e wrote: post #86
Bognar wrote: post #7

This site has this line in bookstrap.css: /* Use responsive pixels */ font-size: 1px; Since Firefox uses the font size to determine scroll distance, this page scrolls really slowly in FF.

Thanks for the heads up. I was mostly happy the thing worked well (except for arrow-key scrolling) with js off... I wasn't aware of this (mis)feature of Firefox (I can see the rationale of using line-height for scrolling a line at a time, so it might be safe to say that the css is at fault here).

Speaking of misfeatures: I was scrolling down this page, wanted to go back up to re-read something, and the entire page just changed.

I wondered why for a second, then made a half-inch swipe to the left and discovered there's a "feature" to let me change the page for some reason, but it requires that I change the fundamental way I operate my phone/browser.

Tried to read the article again, and on the way down to where I was last reading, the page changed again. Closed the tab and won't bother reading the rest because I'm infuriated.

This is on a Nexus 5 with Android 5.1, so no, there is no rendering issue here, or lag in read of inputs. This is just an anti-feature that need not exist, nor is made obvious to the user that it exists and needs to be worked around.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#94

Post by Osmium »

Dewie wrote: post #61
rodgerd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why so many negative comments? Because the English-speaking world has roughly agreed on the neoliberal economic consensus that extreme individualism, devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism is the Only Way. It is an absolute dogma, reinforced constantly through the press and the best-funded political parties. Rich nations like Japan or Norway who are trundling happily along with more equitable societies, rather than a r…

Please don't bring Norway into this. I'd rather not see it inspire yet another subthread with a bunch of cocksure foreigners who think they know what this country is like. Their analysis tends to be shallow.

If that's true, why not help educate? What is Norway actually like?

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#95

Post by relet »

rtpg wrote: post #80
jpatokal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that line is ridiculous. Tokyo is the only part of Japan that's still growing in population, and that will stall and reverse by 2020. Even in Tokyo, "new and shiny" is concentrated in a few central spots near major train stations. Population in the rest of the country is shrinking, with many places in outright collapse. https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/yubari-withering...

I went to Gunma a couple months ago and saw this first hand. Small villages where abandoned housing outnumbered occupied buildings 2 to 1. In this case it was in a more mountainous area, but there's a lot of community collapse going on (the tsunami probably exacerbated the trend in some areas)

That makes me wonder if it's a good time to start up some mountain tourism in Japan. The landscape is magnificient, the culture is unique, and if the prices are falling a bit you could attract a lot more of budget-ish climbing/hiking/trekking/paragliding/younameit traffic both foreign and local. Especially hiking, trekking and trailrunning is quite big.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#96

Post by lmm »

jpatokal wrote: post #40
hkmurakami wrote: post #3

> And then there’s the view. Whether it’s the outskirts of Queens on the way from New York’s JFK airport, or the fringes of the Los Angeles highway off-ramps by LAX, everything seems a bit run down and decrepit. Even on the train from Narita Airport to Tokyo, you'll pass plenty of comparatively run down "commerce areas" adjacent to small train stops. The buildings are old, and made of nondescript concrete that have b…

Yeah, that line is ridiculous. Tokyo is the only part of Japan that's still growing in population, and that will stall and reverse by 2020. Even in Tokyo, "new and shiny" is concentrated in a few central spots near major train stations. Population in the rest of the country is shrinking, with many places in outright collapse. https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/yubari-withering...

That piece doesn't really contradict the article. Yubari is shrinking but it's maintaining strong public services, low crime, and a high quality of life for its residents.

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#97

Post by lmb »

relet wrote: post #95
rtpg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to Gunma a couple months ago and saw this first hand. Small villages where abandoned housing outnumbered occupied buildings 2 to 1. In this case it was in a more mountainous area, but there's a lot of community collapse going on (the tsunami probably exacerbated the trend in some areas)

That makes me wonder if it's a good time to start up some mountain tourism in Japan. The landscape is magnificient, the culture is unique, and if the prices are falling a bit you could attract a lot more of budget-ish climbing/hiking/trekking/paragliding/younameit traffic both foreign and local. Especially hiking, trekking and trailrunning is quite big.

The only downside being that the Yen is a strong currency, which kills the whole budget idea. The central bank has been trying for a long time to induce inflation, without much success.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29845466

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#98

Post by Dewie »

Dewie wrote: post #61
rodgerd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why so many negative comments? Because the English-speaking world has roughly agreed on the neoliberal economic consensus that extreme individualism, devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism is the Only Way. It is an absolute dogma, reinforced constantly through the press and the best-funded political parties. Rich nations like Japan or Norway who are trundling happily along with more equitable societies, rather than a r…

Please don't bring Norway into this. I'd rather not see it inspire yet another subthread with a bunch of cocksure foreigners who think they know what this country is like. Their analysis tends to be shallow.

Case in point of shallow analysis: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9236149

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#99

Post by jpatokal »

lmm wrote: post #96
jpatokal wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that line is ridiculous. Tokyo is the only part of Japan that's still growing in population, and that will stall and reverse by 2020. Even in Tokyo, "new and shiny" is concentrated in a few central spots near major train stations. Population in the rest of the country is shrinking, with many places in outright collapse. https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/yubari-withering...

That piece doesn't really contradict the article. Yubari is shrinking but it's maintaining strong public services, low crime, and a high quality of life for its residents.

It's desperately attempting to, yes. However, it will fail, sooner or later, because every single rural city in Japan will soon be like Yubari, and the central government can't prop up all of them.

The following piece, also on Spike, is much slower/less flashy reading, but nonetheless pretty terrifying.

https://spikejapan.wordpress.com/a-city-on-the-edge/

Re: Turning Japanese: Coping with stasis

#100

Post by Drakim »

Osmium wrote: post #94
Dewie wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't bring Norway into this. I'd rather not see it inspire yet another subthread with a bunch of cocksure foreigners who think they know what this country is like. Their analysis tends to be shallow.

If that's true, why not help educate? What is Norway actually like?

I live in Norway, and I think it's pretty close to an utopia.

Not that there aren't flaws, but people tend to complain for the sake of complaining.

This often makes outsiders think that it's all just a facade and that behind the scenes it's actually terrible, that Norway can't just be a good place to live, there has to be some sort of dirty secret that undoes all the good things about the place.

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