6 ms·

the fact that Japan has wallowed in the backwaters since the 1980s is endlessly fascinating to me. Can't think of another country that had so much potential jus

by swyx 3y ago

the fact that Japan has wallowed in the backwaters since the 1980s is endlessly fascinating to me. Can't think of another country that had so much potential just voluntarily squander it away because of.. bad culture?

permo-w 3y ago
wallowed in the backwaters is a bit strong. it's still the world's 3rd/4th largest economy with the 12th largest population
- swyx 3y ago
  yea i knkow... i struggled to describe the feelings i had about japan, this is the best i had lol. open to suggestions. but primarily thinking of: - nikkei/real estate not past its dotcom peak - telecoms/internet infra generally 1 generation behind most other developed countries - anecdotally seemingly very hostile/unstable politics especially to women and immigrants - i vaguely remember some revisionist history around their ww2 atrocities?
  - permo-w 3y ago
    absolutely booming culturally though. food, tv, comic books, video games, trading cards all extremely popular the world over, which cannot be said for any other nation besides the US, which is almost 3x the size and hasn't earned that position on merit the same way Japan has
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    How about Rested on the laurels of its postwar boom?
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    IMO, the lower the real estate valuations, the better. Cheap real estate is one of the main points Japan has in its favor right now. Cheap transportation, cheap food, and cheap electricity all contribute to a healthy economy; cheap real estate is no different. On the telecom side, as with so many others, Japan squandered their early lead by being extremely inward-focused, as usual. Despite their export-oriented economy and a few giants like Toyota and Sony, most Japanese companies are rarely interested in looking beyond their (shrinking) domestic market, resulting in "Galapagos syndrome", where diverse and sophisticated domestic technologies evolve in isolation from the rest of the world, only to eventually be crushed when global competitors catch up and subsequently pass them.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    1. For real estates, it's not bad. Agree for stock 2. Not true. Fiber is so ubiquitous unlike the US and maybe Germany? 3. For woman, it's changing but it takes long time to be applied to real world. 4. Such people exists of course. A problem is that a part of long running ruling party is linked to such people.
throwawaysleep 3y ago
Canada.
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  Canada’s situation is nothing like Japan’s. Canada’s economy has tripled in size since 1995. Japan’s economy is smaller than it was in 1995.
  - vkou 3y ago
    Canada's signed two Faustian bargains - one with the resource extraction economy, and one with the real estate sector. Neither one is long-term sustainable. Eventually, the oil will be dug out of the ground, and eventually, it won't be able to endlessly generate paper value by trading rat-infested outhouses in Vancouver back-and-forth for 5 million/pop. It has other exports[1], but they aren't the engine of Canadian economic growth. [1] (Insert lame joke about how its biggest export is SWEs to the United States.)
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Argentina? Ukraine? Belarus? Brasil? Russia? Turkey? The Balkans?
- permo-w 3y ago
  United Kingdom?
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Meh, UK is still in the top economies, innovators and militaries in the world and one of the most desirable immigration countries for skilled workers along with having some of the top universities in the world. Yeah it doesn't rule the waves and 1/3 of the planet anymore like in the "glory days" of the empire but maybe that's for the better.
    - permo-w 3y ago
      that's not what it feels like living here, and let's be real, it's that coming from the largest empire the world has ever seen, which in many ways is the problem. since the late 70s our political decisions have been tainted by the false assumption of exceptionalism
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >that's not what it feels like living here Then I suggest you move somewhere in the south of Europe like Italy, Greece, or the Balkans, get a job and rent there, interact with the government bureaucracy and make use of public services, just to get a perspective on what a sad hopeless economic situation and badly managed government that doesn't do anything for you, actually looks like.
        Y_Y 3y ago
        I did that. Ignoring the better weather, food, culture, transport, and public services, my disposable income relative to cost of living is much higher. (But what have the Romans ever done for us?)
miguelazo 3y ago
Being anti-immigration probably contributed a lot towards this.
- ruiisnwn 3y ago
  Japan has a long term strategy and your country has a short term optimised strategy perhaps
  - miguelazo 3y ago
    I actually don't believe that these statistics (GDP ranking, etc) are all that useful, for many reasons. I'm just saying that one of the ways Germany and the rest of Europe have pulled ahead, despite having "structural" issues that US neoliberals drone on about incessantly, is with immigration. Japan is notoriously anti-immigrant. This raises its labor costs and creates a more insular culture that fails to adapt quickly enough. Now, its culture might be fine with that, and I respect that choice (up to the point that it becomes racist). Growth isn't everything, and as we see contributes much towards the climate destabilization we are experiencing.
fatherzine 3y ago
While I am not an expert, the most common cited cause for the Japanese stagnation is the late '80s Japanese asset bubble, possibly worsened by the '85 Plaza Accords where US significantly devalued its currency USD, via currency market manipulation. From a wider perspective, individuals and countries alike are subject to economic forces that sometimes are beyond their control. The American cultural habit of attributing, without rest, ill fate to moral failing, lacks in nuance. Possibly a byproduct of the historically unique wealth of opportunity bestowed onto the post-war generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord
- nradov 3y ago
  The asset bubble was a problem, but Japan has also suffered from excessive economic central planning leading to malinvestment. They squandered their resources by literally building bridges to nowhere. The book "Dogs & Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan" by Alex Kerr gives a thorough and balanced explanation of what happened. http://alex-kerr.com/html/dogs___demons__english_.html http://alex-kerr.com/html/dogs___demons__english_.html
nwienert 3y ago
Wallowed in backwaters is one way to put a nation with the second highest GDP in the world, extremely low poverty and crime, and rankings generally at the top of every measurable facet most care about including self reported quality of life.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  This is more than a little rose-colored. Japan does do very well on some metrics, but there's also ones where they do pretty badly. For example, they do badly on measures of gender equality IIRC.
  - nwienert 3y ago
    As measured by their own self reported satisfaction with treatment of genders, or liberal western theories on what gender equality should look like? Would be curious to see the data there.

by swyx 3y ago

permo-w 3y ago

wallowed in the backwaters is a bit strong. it's still the world's 3rd/4th largest economy with the 12th largest population

swyx 3y ago
yea i knkow... i struggled to describe the feelings i had about japan, this is the best i had lol. open to suggestions. but primarily thinking of: - nikkei/real estate not past its dotcom peak - telecoms/internet infra generally 1 generation behind most other developed countries - anecdotally seemingly very hostile/unstable politics especially to women and immigrants - i vaguely remember some revisionist history around their ww2 atrocities?
- permo-w 3y ago
  absolutely booming culturally though. food, tv, comic books, video games, trading cards all extremely popular the world over, which cannot be said for any other nation besides the US, which is almost 3x the size and hasn't earned that position on merit the same way Japan has
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  How about Rested on the laurels of its postwar boom?
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  IMO, the lower the real estate valuations, the better. Cheap real estate is one of the main points Japan has in its favor right now. Cheap transportation, cheap food, and cheap electricity all contribute to a healthy economy; cheap real estate is no different. On the telecom side, as with so many others, Japan squandered their early lead by being extremely inward-focused, as usual. Despite their export-oriented economy and a few giants like Toyota and Sony, most Japanese companies are rarely interested in looking beyond their (shrinking) domestic market, resulting in "Galapagos syndrome", where diverse and sophisticated domestic technologies evolve in isolation from the rest of the world, only to eventually be crushed when global competitors catch up and subsequently pass them.
- fomine3 3y ago
  1. For real estates, it's not bad. Agree for stock 2. Not true. Fiber is so ubiquitous unlike the US and maybe Germany? 3. For woman, it's changing but it takes long time to be applied to real world. 4. Such people exists of course. A problem is that a part of long running ruling party is linked to such people.

throwawaysleep 3y ago

Canada.

DoughnutHole 3y ago
Canada’s situation is nothing like Japan’s. Canada’s economy has tripled in size since 1995. Japan’s economy is smaller than it was in 1995.
- vkou 3y ago
  Canada's signed two Faustian bargains - one with the resource extraction economy, and one with the real estate sector. Neither one is long-term sustainable. Eventually, the oil will be dug out of the ground, and eventually, it won't be able to endlessly generate paper value by trading rat-infested outhouses in Vancouver back-and-forth for 5 million/pop. It has other exports[1], but they aren't the engine of Canadian economic growth. [1] (Insert lame joke about how its biggest export is SWEs to the United States.)

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Argentina? Ukraine? Belarus? Brasil? Russia? Turkey? The Balkans?

permo-w 3y ago
United Kingdom?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Meh, UK is still in the top economies, innovators and militaries in the world and one of the most desirable immigration countries for skilled workers along with having some of the top universities in the world. Yeah it doesn't rule the waves and 1/3 of the planet anymore like in the "glory days" of the empire but maybe that's for the better.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    that's not what it feels like living here, and let's be real, it's that coming from the largest empire the world has ever seen, which in many ways is the problem. since the late 70s our political decisions have been tainted by the false assumption of exceptionalism
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >that's not what it feels like living here Then I suggest you move somewhere in the south of Europe like Italy, Greece, or the Balkans, get a job and rent there, interact with the government bureaucracy and make use of public services, just to get a perspective on what a sad hopeless economic situation and badly managed government that doesn't do anything for you, actually looks like.
      - Y_Y 3y ago
        I did that. Ignoring the better weather, food, culture, transport, and public services, my disposable income relative to cost of living is much higher. (But what have the Romans ever done for us?)

miguelazo 3y ago

Being anti-immigration probably contributed a lot towards this.

ruiisnwn 3y ago
Japan has a long term strategy and your country has a short term optimised strategy perhaps
- miguelazo 3y ago
  I actually don't believe that these statistics (GDP ranking, etc) are all that useful, for many reasons. I'm just saying that one of the ways Germany and the rest of Europe have pulled ahead, despite having "structural" issues that US neoliberals drone on about incessantly, is with immigration. Japan is notoriously anti-immigrant. This raises its labor costs and creates a more insular culture that fails to adapt quickly enough. Now, its culture might be fine with that, and I respect that choice (up to the point that it becomes racist). Growth isn't everything, and as we see contributes much towards the climate destabilization we are experiencing.

fatherzine 3y ago

While I am not an expert, the most common cited cause for the Japanese stagnation is the late '80s Japanese asset bubble, possibly worsened by the '85 Plaza Accords where US significantly devalued its currency USD, via currency market manipulation. From a wider perspective, individuals and countries alike are subject to economic forces that sometimes are beyond their control. The American cultural habit of attributing, without rest, ill fate to moral failing, lacks in nuance. Possibly a byproduct of the historically unique wealth of opportunity bestowed onto the post-war generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_asset_price_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

nradov 3y ago
The asset bubble was a problem, but Japan has also suffered from excessive economic central planning leading to malinvestment. They squandered their resources by literally building bridges to nowhere. The book "Dogs & Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan" by Alex Kerr gives a thorough and balanced explanation of what happened. http://alex-kerr.com/html/dogs___demons__english_.html http://alex-kerr.com/html/dogs___demons__english_.html

nwienert 3y ago

Wallowed in backwaters is one way to put a nation with the second highest GDP in the world, extremely low poverty and crime, and rankings generally at the top of every measurable facet most care about including self reported quality of life.

TulliusCicero 3y ago
This is more than a little rose-colored. Japan does do very well on some metrics, but there's also ones where they do pretty badly. For example, they do badly on measures of gender equality IIRC.
- nwienert 3y ago
  As measured by their own self reported satisfaction with treatment of genders, or liberal western theories on what gender equality should look like? Would be curious to see the data there.