Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Japanese are just the first country to tackle the demographic transition without gambling their entire culture and country on mass immigration. We don't know yet whether it's a bad bet. In favor of their approach: 1) the demographic transition will pass (since fertility is heritable), 2) increasing automation will probably reduce the demand for labor, 3) meanwhile life is still good for Japanese people.
"1) the demographic transition will pass (since fertility is heritable)" Citation needed. Sure fertility is well correlated with educational attainment which is likely somewhat "heritable" by proxy (social class, intelligence, lack of disabilities) but that doesn't mean the heritable effect will be large enough in aggregate.
Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
131–140 of 157 posts
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is Lisbon a dystopia we should fear becoming? For Portuguese people, perhaps it is. Who really wants to feel like a foreigner in their own country (esp. when that country is as small as Portugal)? I know I'd be really irritated if I tried going to local restaurants around me and all the servers there only spoke Spanish. How would you feel about that? >Returning to the first point, we've had a lot of non-english-spea…
The first part seems circular to me: you feel like we should fear becoming Lisbon because if you were in their shoes you would fear this outcome. Well, sure. But at a glance Lisbon seems to be doing pretty well for itself-- certainly better than lots of places in the US. Besides your sense that such cultural changes are bad, what makes them bad? Why, objectively, should they be feared? And the second part feels is fr…
>you feel like we should fear becoming Lisbon because if you were in their shoes you would fear this outcome.
Who's "we", and where did I say "we" should fear this? I just pointed out the people of Portugal might not like this, nor might people in other places that might be having similar issues. If you're talking about the US, then no, that's not a well-founded fear at all.
>But at a glance Lisbon seems to be doing pretty well for itself-- certainly better than lots of places in the US.
Does that matter to the Portuguese? This idea that economic well-being (which frequently doesn't "trickle down" that much) trumps everything is exactly how we got Brexit and Trump.
>Besides your sense that such cultural changes are bad, what makes them bad? Why, objectively, should they be feared?
Well, I'd say electing people like Trump is demonstrably bad, and this is what happens when you simply ignore cultural changes. You end up with people voting for right-wing politicians, so we're seeing this in the US, the UK, and many other European nations.
>we've dealt with this issue before, the fear was the same, and the feared thing didn't happen.
Again, who's "we"? The US is not the world, and other countries are not like the US. You can't apply the US's experience with immigration to countries like Portugal; they have extremely different cultures and histories. Try going to Portugal and telling everyone there "you need to accept mass immigration and you all need to stop speaking Portuguese and switch to English", and see how friendly people are to you.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the only way we have peace is through brutal dictatorships or superpowers' hegemony, does it really invalidate what I'm saying? Also, all those powers also attempted to spread their culture, language and religion. Hence Latin based languages, Arabic being spread as far as it has, Russian being spoke all over the former USSR, English being the new lingua franca.
Yes. Your argument that was “monocultural” societies are somehow more peaceful, and now more so than imperial rule, when the history of the 20th century demonstrates the opposite. Nationalism led to massive internal violence and attempts at creating new empires that ultimately led to subjugation of these states between two outside empires.
So basically you're arguing in favor of imperialism? Imperialism replaces internal violence with violence (or the threat of it) from an outside oppressor. How is this a good solution?
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Your argument that was “monocultural” societies are somehow more peaceful, and now more so than imperial rule, when the history of the 20th century demonstrates the opposite. Nationalism led to massive internal violence and attempts at creating new empires that ultimately led to subjugation of these states between two outside empires.
So basically you're arguing in favor of imperialism? Imperialism replaces internal violence with violence (or the threat of it) from an outside oppressor. How is this a good solution?
No, I’m stridently anti-imperialist, but simply observing the historical reality that, counter to OP’s claims, “monocultural” nationalism is a modern, unstable construction, that tends toward violence.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#135Regarding the out-of-print book mentioned, Making Common Sense of Japan, there's a scanned pdf of it on Library Genesis.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone doesn't speak my language I'd sell them groceries out of politeness, but other than that they're worthless beggars until they prove themselves to be good for my local culture.
This is harsh, but I think the seed of correctness is in there. Let’s consider: what is the value to a nation of importing immigrants? First, they offer different perspectives, which is highly valuable in business. Second, they introduce new customs, food, ideas, etc which help others in the community. Etc, etc, etc. All of this is lost if there is a strong language barrier between the existing culture and the immigr…
Thank you, I'm leaving.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#137I'm a foreigner who has started a number of companies in Japan over the past 25 years. Right now is a great time to be starting a company here.
BTW, shameless plug for my podcast: https://www.disruptingjapan.com/
However, the idea of trying to get someone to move to Japan to start a startup is kind of odd. Ideally, you should be near your customers.
Japan is a wonderful place to live, but there is much more they can do to make things attractive to Japanese entrepreneurs, which will, in turn, make it attractive to everyone, including foreign entrepreneurs.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a valid choice for a country to decide that the economic boon from foreign entrepreneurs isn't worth it if those people can't speak your language. I'd certainly be irritated if someone opened a business in my town and couldn't speak English, and the US is a lot less homogeneous than Japan.
So, I don't understand this perspective at all. Help me get it. It seems to me that speaking a language is a skill. I know from my own experience trying to learn a second language that it isn't an easy skill for many people to acquire. Why should I be more irritated that someone doesn't speak English than that they, say, can't make a cabinet or can't write Java, or any other mildly demanding skill? I get the argument…
It's the same reason I would be irritated to find myself in a restaurant in America that only accepts Chinese Yuan and won't let me pay with dollars. Sure, I could just avoid that place, but I dislike the idea that someone from a foreign country has carved out a portion of my homeland in which I am less welcome.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#139Japan is a pretty good cautionary tale for Britain (and to a lesser extent to the US) on how shutting yourself off from immigration tends to go. Japan was expected to become the next global superpower in the 1980s, and instead has seen closing in on three lost decades. It’s only now trying to catch up, politically, culturally and economically.
> Japan is a pretty good cautionary tale for Britain (and to a lesser extent to the US) on how shutting yourself off from immigration tends to go.
The US? You do realize that the US became the largest economy in the world when it was isolationist and pretty much banned immigration right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
Also, China has become the 2nd largest nominal economy ( or the largest in terms of purchasing parity ) in the world without being open to immigration. Instead of letting agenda drive your reasoning, why not let the facts?
> Japan was expected to become the next global superpower in the 1980s
By whom? The media?
Nobody in their right mind thought Japan was going to be a global superpower. Japan depends almost entirely on the US for defense and resource acquisition. They neither had the population nor the resources nor the international presence to be a global superpower - economic or military.
Re: Japan wants foreign entrepreneurs, but what's missing?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Subtract their position as the forward operating base for the US military in Asia and try telling this story again. While Japanese economic progress postwar was astonishing, it was entirely premised on them having favored status in the region. Few people know, for example, that the US forced Korea to purchase massive amounts of goods from Japan to rebuild its economy, essentially reinstating their former colonial rel…
I think it's rather an oversimplification to say that five years of reconstruction of a totally shattered Japan caused the Korean War. Or to take any lessons from the immediate postwar period and use them to explain the state of Japan 75 years later.
At least as far as development goes, the United States supercharged the postwar economy in Japan which directly lead to where it is today. If, say Indiana got the same investment, it too would look like Japan today with high speed maglev rail criss crossing like a fisherman's net and be a dominant position in high tech manufacturing.