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Wow, that is awesome! We (USA here) can learn some things from Japan.
by RickJWagner 7y ago
Wow, that is awesome! We (USA here) can learn some things from Japan.
- umvi 7y agoI'd like to see how busy Japan's police would be if they were more accepting of refugees, immigrants, and foreigners. Japan's high degree of order works because everybody is culturally on the same page. If you throw trash on the ground, 100% of the people around you will give you a disapproving look. Inject millions of immigrants into their society to upset their homogeneous cultural order and I bet the police would be a lot more busy.
- bastian 7y agoThis absolutely has to be the single most idiotic thing i've read on Hacker News ever. This argument is so broad that there is almost no way to even try to counter it in any meaningful way.
- golemiprague 7y agoIt's not different from the argument that "diversity is our strength", there is no support for that either. It seems like homogenous societies can function very well and have certain advantages(and maybe also disadvantages) comparing to diverse societies. But in the current climate in the west saying it is a heresy.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoI wouldn't rush to dismiss tribalism as a bad thing for society. Homogeneity is like any tradeoff: upsides and downsides. Japan is as homogenous as they come.
- Gibbon1 7y agoI wouldn't rush to assume that immigrants and refugees drive crime. One thing that hands down drives crime is racist policing.
- scarejunba 7y agoHaha, it's a just-so story, yeah.
- Aperocky 7y agoAt the same time, lack of foreign talent caused their innovation to stagnate - as compared to the United States for instance.
- matz1 7y agoWell, everything has trade off.
- ravenstine 7y agoExactly. Having a common culture and set of values seems more important to them than innovation.
- matz1 7y agoWhich is not necessarily bad thing.
- Spooky23 7y agoStagnate or stabilize? History will ultimately be the judge, but I truly worry about the sustainability of many things in the US. I grew up in a rural area of New York, which is basically rotting away. I worked on a farm as a kid that was continuously operated since the 1680s that is suddenly not viable. Life is great for my family, thanks to good education, luck, and good decisions, but I worry about my kids’ future.
- Aperocky 7y agoIf your kids going to be a farmer and only a farmer, I think it's quite right to worry about it. Innovation is not constrained in one country - whatever happens elsewhere will be felt, the only difference is where the benefits end up.
- slothtrop 7y agoBy virtue of a more rapidly increasing population, maybe. The interesting thing about Japan is the poverty level is estimated to be relatively high. In general we see that crime scales with poverty, but not as much there. That should be subject to more research.
- fiblye 7y agoWealth divide is incredibly low here. Japan’s poverty rate is among the lowest in the world. What are you talking about?
- postscapes1 7y agoArticle by Noah Smith on this. It's way hgher than I would have expected. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-30/u-s-economy-personal-bad-behavior-isn-t-what-causes-poverty https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-30/u-s-ec...
- SamReidHughes 7y agoWell that’s a stupid article. The operative words: “Defined by the percentage of the population earning less than half of the median national income”. In an absolute sense, Japan has no poverty.
- slothtrop 7y agoI've seen estimates ranging from 15% to 19%. That's not low, it's higher than most developed countries. Seems to me the stabilizing effect of a stagnating population is the main reason.
- squimmy 7y ago> If you throw trash on the ground, 100% of the people around you will give you a disapproving look. http://buzz-plus.com/article/2018/10/29/garbage-shibuya-halloween-news/ http://buzz-plus.com/article/2018/10/29/garbage-shibuya-hall...
- baddox 7y agoDo you have any data supporting your suggestion that areas with more diverse populations tend to be less disapproving of littering?
- pac39 7y agoDiversity is strength?
- matz1 7y agoLikewise with gun. But I guess the US prefer their "freedom" more.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoTechnically true but kind of loaded statement. For most societies, including the states, immigrants will not increase the crime rate.
- umvi 7y agoI don't know if that's completely true. Aren't many (most?) of the organized crime groups historically immigration-based in the US? The American Mafia was started by Italian immigrants in NYC, MS-13 by El Salvadorian immigrants in Los Angeles, etc.? I mean, we have MS-13 problems even here in Washington DC due to the large El Salvadorian population. I would wager if Japan allowed as many El Salvadorians into Japan as made it into the US, they would start having MS-13 problems too (but maybe not; Japan authorities pretty much decimated the Yakuza last I read).
- Spooky23 7y agoThey get a lot of play and operate in the open. The KKK and bootleggers of early NASCAR fame were red blooded Americans.
- CapricornNoble 7y agoThe yakuza is still alive and well.[1] They keep a lower profile now than during Japan's boom times, much like the mafia in the US today. I dunno about MS-13 per se, but I've definitely run into an outsized share of sketchy central and south American immigrants in nightclubs in Osaka. A Canadian DJ friend of mine (long-time Osaka resident, like 10+ years) cautioned me to avoid them. They had a reputation for violence, stabbings, etc... [1]NSFW Google search: "site:tokyoreporter.com yakuza". TokyoReporter is my favorite English-language Japan news source; they cover all the seedy shit like ex-porn stars getting busted for drugs.
- notjtrig 7y ago1 out of 8 young people turning 20 in Tokyo were not born in Japan, they have 2.2 million foreigners living in Japan, or 1.76% of the population.
- 7y ago
- codesushi42 7y agoThe grass is always greener. But in the case of the US, it usually is when the grass is the rest of the developed world, sadly. After staying in Japan, there is no doubt that I would live there if I were Japanese. It is even a consideration as a non-Japanese. Quality of life seems to be a lot better there, even if there aren't as many job opportunities.
- mutt2016 7y agoQuality if life seems better everywhere when you are a tourist. I think people in the USA work crazy hours and take no vacations. How does Japan compare?
- tmm84 7y agoThe people/times when I seen crazy hours worked are those doing paperwork or working on a death march for some project they didn't think when accepting it.
- codesushi42 7y agoIMO from what I have heard from folks working at Japanese offices of big tech companies: people work harder in SV.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 7y ago>I think people in the USA work crazy hours and take no vacations. You may think that but it's far from universal, including in the tech industry. [ADDED: The US does rank fairly low on average on the amount of vacation people take but Japan is as low or lower.]
- astrange 7y agoIn Japan you stay in the office all day and night, not because you're doing work but because everyone is too self-conscious to be the first to leave. This is less true for the newer generation, especially since they don't have full time jobs in the first place.
- alexgmcm 7y agoDoesn't Japan have a generation with extremely poor job prospects due to the 'lost decade' etc.?