> Government is merely an expression of the underlying society and culture. That didn't answer the question though, it didn't address the discussion of the thr

> Government is merely an expression of the underlying society and culture. That didn't answer the question though, it didn't address the discussion of the thread you replied to. > Yes and also all the others. Okay, well that's no different from other countries then. > Japan has gained the throne of countless industries and then squandered them time and time again. I'm not merely speaking of IT or industrial electronics, which they also gained the thrones of and then squandered. Same old story everywhere else then. Britain was once the textile manufacturing powerhouse of the world. USA once made the best automobiles. > Among other things: Consumer electronics (eg: mobile phones, TVs, etc.), household appliances, cars, aviation/aeronautics, medicine, pop culture (eg: anime, video games, music, etc.), and more. Many examples of such things in countries everywhere. > Consider that Japan literally owns the CPU architecture found in practically every mobile device (Softbank owns ARM) and they can't figure out how to fucking succeed. ARM is doing pretty well. It's the object of desire of Nvidia, Apple, China, Qualcomm, and more. Between x86 and riscv and its warring customers it does find itself in a competitive and difficult environment to be sure. Not sure what you mean there. > Japan's proud tradition of clutching failure from the jaws of success are rooted in problems with their very culture itself. I'm still not seeing what's special about Japan here. Things rise and fall. Phones? Finland had Nokia and messed that up so badly it's laughable. Canada had BlackBerry and did the same. Chinese companies haven't been able to beat out Apple and Samsung... Japan makes some good stuff. Cars, motorbikes, engines, electronics, video games, sensors, lenses, cameras, machinery and tools.