Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A foreign national that just extracts capital by capturing real state and collecting rent is a great example, this person is a large net loss for the country. Is this a creative way of arguing that landlords are a net loss for the country? Because I would like to remind you that MANY people cannot afford to buy homes, and renting is how they make sure they don't become homeless.
I'm from a region negatively affected by this. Foreign capital is undesirable in the housing market because: 1) It raises demand (when buying a home as a local, you now also have to compete with foreigners "investing", and this raises prices). 2) It often develops housing in a very unhealthy direction: Airbnbs and vacation apartments are toxic for local society and must be kept in check, otherwise you end up with hal…
Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
91–100 of 213 posts
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#92Earlier 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…
I understand why it's not great for the target country . I'm asking why GP said it was bad for the home country .
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. There was also a proliferation of Indian restaurants in the major cities, for the same basic reason. (Though I have to say that seems like a much harder road than operating a guesthouse for people from your own country, which is what I presume was the Chinese approach.) Since you can bring in relatives on this kind of visa, I’ve heard the expression “One curry pot equals three people” . There have been stories i…
> Since you can bring in relatives on this kind of visa, I’ve heard the expression “One curry pot equals three people”. Family reunification is a gaping loophole in any skilled immigration law and developed countries need to seriously limit it. The New York Times did a good podcast on how uncapped family reunification ended up being a loophole that totally overturned all the limits and compromises in the 1965 immigra…
I don’t know if I’d go that far. I tend to think it’s kind of cruel to separate families indefinitely in the name of labor, but I do see that restrictions are necessary to prevent abuse.
There’s an entire spectrum of reasonable debate here.
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
>will move wherever is most desirable, and thats pretty much only the US. What? Do you seriously think that wealthy people only want to move to the US? It's a wild claim, especially considering we're in a comment section of a post about immigration to Japan.
Let's say it's an absolute majority
https://m2now.com/this-is-where-the-rich-are-leaving-and-goi...
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#95It will become increasingly difficult to police international borders. On the other hand, commercial space travel will create new states that can police there borders. The borders don’t disappear but they will change
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, you're simultaneously (somehow?) living here as a non-resident, and complaining about people _abusing the system_? That's pretty rich, gotta say!
Your point doesn't follow logically. If you're a non-resident living in Japan according to Japanese peoples' expectations, why can't you criticize other non-residents who aren't living in a way that's consistent with Japanese peoples' expectations?
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#97Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry, you're simultaneously (somehow?) living here as a non-resident, and complaining about people _abusing the system_? That's pretty rich, gotta say!
Your point doesn't follow logically. If you're a non-resident living in Japan according to Japanese peoples' expectations, why can't you criticize other non-residents who aren't living in a way that's consistent with Japanese peoples' expectations?
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#99Earlier 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.
This has to be balanced with preserving culture and social homogeneity. A country is not just an economic entity and individuals are not just producers and consumers... Population has also exploded in never seen before proportions everywhere on Earth (Japan had a population of only 45 million in 1900...) and it is probably a blessing in disguise if it reduces.
As for population decline, I will give you that all the people who are currently very loud-mouthed about it are also far-right grifters who think The Handmaid's Tale is an instruction manual and want to turn America back into a shithole slave-breeding colony. The underlying concern is basically "I won't have enough cheaply-hired peons if people don't breed like rats". But, notably, all those people are also anti-immigration and basically want every country to be a closed off ethnostate breeding compound.
Anyway, migration is a human right.
What do we mean when we call something a "human right"? Well, usually, it's to mark some activity as sacred and untouchable. Like, when we say free speech is a human right, we're saying that speech is untouchable by law. But there's a deeper understanding embedded in this: humanity has been doing this activity freely since before we could remember, therefore anyone trying to restrict it deserves scrutiny.
For speech, we have documented evidence of people treating speech as a human right for hundreds, if not thousands of years. But the history of human migration goes back orders of magnitude further. A constant of human civilization is that when people don't like what is happening, they leave. Humanity's motto is "If it sucks, hit the bricks"!
So personally, I don't see this as a case of "people are abusing poor Japan's visa programs", but a case of "you built a dumb system of selling visas for money and were surprised that people figured out how to cough up the cash". Of course that was going to happen. People are going to bend over backwards to comply with your visa requirements no matter how stupid the visas are, because, again, migration is a human right.
Hell, I doubt Elon Musk is going to argue he should be sent back to South Africa. The rich racists don't even think the racism should equally apply to them.
But sure, yes, "cultural preservation" is important. Let us not ask too closely what that culture is, or if it's worth preserving[1]. Or even if it is being preserved. Because in the specific case of Japan, the population decline is primarily happening in remote rural towns. That culture is dying, today, because they are running out of people. Would having foreigners move in change that culture? Sure. But culture changes all the time! Trying to preserve a culture by sealing it off from foreigners is like trying to preserve a river by sealing off the water flowing through it!
[0] American Fork is something like 90% LDS members. If you go a little more north to anywhere in Salt Lake County, it's more like 50%. And my personal experience as a church member is that American Fork members do not recognize anyone from out-of-town as a member, even if they are.
[1] Likewise, the Japanese countryside has its own small town dynamics that are equally as shitty as American Fork, Utah. Go look up the story of Rin Japanese Country Life if you're curious.
Re: Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan
#100> In one case, investigators in Kanagawa Prefecture found that a Sri Lankan national had set up roughly 600 shell companies. He also allegedly submitted business manager visa applications for at least six Sri Lankan nationals by listing them as company presidents on paper, even though they actually worked manual labor jobs. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the government has a problem with this practice. The problem…
He also allegedly submitted business manager visa applications for at least six Sri Lankan nationals by listing them as company presidents on paper, even though they actually worked manual labor jobs. From Asterix & Cleopatra (1965): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSL0D_ZUAAAvbeM.jpg Relevant as ever.