Agreed, but is that necessarily a bad thing? If your labour has market value and you're taking crap from your employer, shop around for a new job. The other wa

Agreed, but is that necessarily a bad thing? If your labour has market value and you're taking crap from your employer, shop around for a new job. The other way of saying that we don't have lifetime employment anymore is that we don't have to suffer through lifetime employment anymore. You don't have to tolerate stultifying bureaucracy. You don't have to suffer nitwit bosses. You don't have to deal with impossible coworkers. With an open labour market, you can work where you like. A couple of days ago someone posted patio11's blog article on his experience working in Japan as a salaryman. The other side of the security of lifetime employment over there is that you have to tolerate horrible working conditions at your lifetime employer, and the labour market is so rigid that if you ever leave your employer, no one else will ever hire you.