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Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

tokyopaladin.substack.com

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Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty crazy when you see that in developed countries, Japan in particular, population is aging and declining. Countries should be competing for the best immigrants, not closing their doors.

The problem is that identifying who the "best" immigrants are for your country can be very difficult when thousands upon thousands of people are trying to game the system. Japan is a very attractive destination for a variety of reasons (highly-developed, safe, relatively "cheap", etc.) so you have lots of people who are willing to jump through some hoops and put up some capital for a chance to live there. I wouldn't…

And as you put up more roadblocks, the more you select for desperation. Your best prospects have lots of options and can take a path of lower resistance.

Just as in sports, if you’re trying to draft a top kicker/thrower/catcher/goalie/whatever, they’re going to avoid onerous terms and outsized effort.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#142
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries should be competing for the best immigrants, not closing their doors. Don't mistake what the elites want with what working class people want. Elites want a higher population - even if they're immigrants - so the market grows bigger for their businesses. But immigrants come with many problems for the working class people. The elites aren't going to have a house next to immigrants. They don't feel the effects…

> a house next to immigrants This assumes there is something wrong with immigrants. I've lived next to many immigrants. Almost everyone in the US is an immigrant or decended from them. The problem is the hateful - they destroy the society and neighborhood. > lower quality Humans are not lower or higher quality - except arguably those acting on hate, who damage the social contract of liberty.

I'm explaining why Japan is doing this. A lot of people don't understand why Japan would do this when their population is already declining.

It's because to the working class, a declining population isn't the most pressing issue. In fact, some of them may even want that because it means more resources to everyone else. Mass importing immigrants causes many issues for locals. Anyone who denies this is simply virtue signaling.

To businesses and governments, a declining population means lower market size and lower tax income. They're incentivized to want a larger population - sometimes by any means necessary.

And no, you can't mass import high quality immigrants because high quality immigrants have options and generally don't want to move to a country that isn't their culture or speak their own language. You will always end up with lower quality immigrants from the 3rd world.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#143
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is this an exemplar of the distinction between generating income by producing vs generating income by rent-seeking. Producing something, goods, services, useful information, etc. is a net plus for society, adding value for both the producer and the consumer, making the society overall richer. Rent-seeking is purely extractive - it extracts value from the consumer, and in the cases where the extractor…

Many positives. For example, the buildings get to be maintained and left in a better condition, rather than deteriorate. Streets look better too, and landrods have an interest that their assets are located in areas with low crime and adequate public services, as that improves the value of their properties. Often airbnb properties are well maintained, and I've seen a few examples where derelict properties were turned…

>>Many positives....buildings get to be maintained

Sure, let's talk about second-order effects as if they somehow contradict the main issue of extracting all profit.

Yes, to the extent there is investment that returns to the local economy, both as good/services purchased locally, and assets that remain local. that is a positive. But remember, these are ALL ostensibly profit-making ventures. To the extent the profit leaves the local/national economy, it is an absolute negative. If the landlord is a local, and their profits are spent locally, it is all positive. When the landlord is foreign or doesn't participate in the local economy, it is a hard negative. And a foreign or corporate-/oligarch-ish landlord has no incentive to put anything back into the local economy, or maintain the buildings beyond the minimum, so any positive effects are minimized contrasted with a local landlord who might take pride in his buildings & reputation and participate in community building because it is his community too. (Obviously exceptions exist, but exfiltrating the profits is a pure net negative.)

AS for your AirBnB argument, it is fabricated fantasy. There may be isolated instances where it is a positive, but I've recently read reports from four continents how both movements and laws are underway to attempt to undo the damage AifBnBs do to communities; you conveniently ignore this while tacitly arguing against it. The fact is, even as an AirBnB guest, remote owners suck, while on-site owners are typically great (I just enjoyed one of the best examples last week). The remote owners superficially spiff up the place so it takes good pics, but do the absolute bare minimum of short-term maintenance, while the on-site owners renting out parts of their own building actually invest in the property.

And overall, the influence of turning a substantial number of buildings into short-term rentals is pernicious. The people staying in those buildings by definition have no investment in the local economy, culture, or society, so they do nothing to help the commons issues. The reduced housing stock droves up rental rates for actual locals, allowing often remote landlords to extract more money from a declining community. It is effectively two methods of stripping assets and wealth from a community, effectively making it poorer — please explain how involuntary impoverishment makes improvements in the life of a community or it's individual people.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#144
post #125
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because someone who's not a resident in Japan, and claims to be living here, is fundamentally either also abusing the system, or not actually living here.

> Because someone who's not a resident in Japan, and claims to be living here, is fundamentally either also abusing the system, or not actually living here. What? No…I am not suddenly forbidden from using the English language because of visa status. What is one supposed to say? Temporarily residing? Extended vacationing? Work-visa-free inhabiting? Come on. You’re hanging your hat on the OP’s use of the word “living”,…

Sure. I think it's meaningful to distinguish someone staying for six months, and someone staying for years; but if that's weirdly pedantic, so be it.

(Maybe it's also a cultural difference?

My native language distinguishes between the kind of "living" somewhere where you're just "staying" somewhere and where that place is the center of your life. I would not use the "I built my life here" verb for a 6mo stay.

Perhaps I'm letting that color my English a bit more than I should.)

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#145
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Those are four of the most free and wealthiest countries in the world, with the highest standards of living. > insanity What is the end of hate and oppression of immigrants, gay people, racial minorities, the working class ...? The point is to get people to embrace hate and oppression. The (overused) trope is that insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. What has been the result of…

it appears I did not make the point I was trying to make stand out enough, so I'll do it again: even the countries who are importing unbelievable numbers of aliens have not halted, let alone reversed, their ongoing demographic collapse. it's not an opinion or a speculation - we literally have the data. and with that indisputable fact in mind, I find the sentiment that "without immigrants, Japan will not survive", expressed ad nauseam whenever Japan is mentioned, to be somewhat detached from our shared reality.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that it takes a lot of work. You can outsource pretty much the entire thing, and just be a name on a paper, and receive money in your bank account, that's as close to "passive income" as you can get. Lots of people do this today, pretty common for landlords to do so in Spain for example, and I'm sure all around the world.

>You can outsource pretty much the entire thing This is probably the fantasy part. Quality of maintenance, honest, doesn't take all the money - you can pick only 2 of these for your property operator. Actually, you have to be lucky to get 2. If it works great and you aren't involved in solving constantly incoming troubles, you're earning peanuts.

> This is probably the fantasy part.

It really isn't, some of people I know personally are literally doing exactly that. These "management companies" basically does everything for you, if you haven't heard about them since before, go look them up, I'm sure there is at least one active in your own area.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#147
post #70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s rich about it? You can live in Japan as a non-resident and still be following 100% of the rules. I agree with the GP. It’s their country. They set the rules. If they want to change the rules because those rules aren’t working for them , that’s their prerogative. As a USian, I’m actually sort of jealous that they have the ability to make changes so quickly.

Double standards. He is an immigrant in Japan but he doesn’t want immigrants both in his host (Japan) and home (UK) countries. Pretty ironic come to think of. I guess he thinks his type are “good” immigrants, others are not so much.

With all due respect aka_67, your reading comprehension is as low as your bigotry is rich.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#148
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general feedback loop is "have lots of money === easier to make more money", and doing so via passive approaches like "own property, rent it out" basically spirals out of control to a few owning a lot, unless you try to restrict it somehow. Add in that "vacation rentals" is hugely interesting for real estate owners as you get so much more per owned property, and suddenly local residents are even harder hit by pro…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48541141

Did you miss the last part?

> suddenly it's basically all downside for the country and the people living there

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that it takes a lot of work. You can outsource pretty much the entire thing, and just be a name on a paper, and receive money in your bank account, that's as close to "passive income" as you can get. Lots of people do this today, pretty common for landlords to do so in Spain for example, and I'm sure all around the world.

100% this. My parents had a beach house for a while. It was rented May-Sept every year. They'd visit for a week in each shoulder season, spend half the time doing major cleaning/fixing, and left the day-to-day during rental season to a management company (same one that managed bookings for the house). It wasn't 100% passive, but it was about as close as you can get as a retired upper-middle-class couple.

>100% this >wasn't 100% passive

Apparently it's not passive, then. It's a seasonal job essentially.

Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can outsource pretty much the entire thing This is probably the fantasy part. Quality of maintenance, honest, doesn't take all the money - you can pick only 2 of these for your property operator. Actually, you have to be lucky to get 2. If it works great and you aren't involved in solving constantly incoming troubles, you're earning peanuts.

> This is probably the fantasy part. It really isn't, some of people I know personally are literally doing exactly that. These "management companies" basically does everything for you, if you haven't heard about them since before, go look them up, I'm sure there is at least one active in your own area.

My close relative does it, and it's exactly like I wrote above: if it doesn't take your time, money mostly go to other people. There's a comment from everforward which gives a glimpse into reality.
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