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This was a fascinating reply to read with an outside perspective. Thank you for your comment. > It's questionable whether any of the globally well know names

This was a fascinating reply to read with an outside perspective. Thank you for your comment. > It's questionable whether any of the globally well know names will remain operational in their prior fields of production over the next 50 to 100 years without a significant shift in developing a way to build direct connections to capacity and applied skills at every tier of each company. With this, is it your contention that the demographic problem in Japan is so existential that even large established companies may quite literally "die out" because there is nobody left that knows how to operate them? How does that square with increasing foreign investment? Does it seem like there may be a shift towards foreign control of these large companies via equities markets instead? (Ala US style PE / zombie brands) > Taken to an 'in extremis' view: Within another 60 to 80 years, this might result in a well funded country of the elderly being waited on by robot butlers with until there is no one left to be waited on or fed the produce grown in automated fields. It does seem that way, but it seems at odd with the cultural values espoused in the media. Do those at the top not feel any social obligation to ensure continuation of Japanese society beyond serving their own selfish needs?

naishoya 8d ago
> Do those at the top not feel any social obligation to ensure continuation of Japanese society beyond serving their own selfish needs? I would refer you to: The Psychological Consequences of Money by Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode Science 17 Nov 2006, Vol 314, Issue 5802 pp. 1154-1156 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1132491 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1132491 The Abstract: "Money has been said to change people's motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts, participants primed with money preferred to play alone, work alone, and put more physical distance between themselves and a new acquaintance." These effects are observable across many cultures and social ideals. So, yes, those at the top do view themselves as distinct and independent of the larger society, as demonstrated by the highly selective and insular lifestyles that they actively seek and engage in. Exclusivity is very nearly a defining feature of that 'filter' which is applied at Japanese organizations as I explained above, such that mid-level employees find an enforced social ceiling to keep those who are not already in the leading cliques from rising into a controlling position. > How does that square with increasing foreign investment? Foreign investment into Japanese industry is not the same as foreign investment into other jurisdictions, like EU, UK or US. Foreign investors do not gain actual control of the Japanese parent corporation. Companies will allow foreign investment in strict minority positions. This applies in most industries even without official legal requirement, and the regulatory review threshold for control in any critical; semiconductor, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, medicine, rare earths is as low as 1%. Investment in these requires approval BEFORE not after finalization. Agriculture is another field with strict foreign investment rules. Non-Japanese citizens cannot purchase Ag. zoned land, period. It is not likely that foreign investment, i.e. PE will find much room for capture of potentially closing Japanese companies. What I think is more likely will be a blend of collectivization, as many operating companies are already highly leveraged from banking and national investment due to the durable extremely low interest rates of the last three decades. The firms which have successfully invested heavily overseas and have restrained those investments from repatriation, in order to maintain the low inflation rates, have immense capacity to absorb local productivity downturns. These 'external' finance pools do not appear on the Japanese companies balance sheets due to how those investments are structured, and will enable these companies to dwindle to extremely low staffing levels while maintaining the level of comfort and financial wherewithal for the executive board members.
naishoya 8d ago
> ... that even large established companies may quite literally "die out" because there is nobody left that knows how to operate them? We are already seeing this in the catastrophic system failures at major Japanese mega-banks like Mizuho. These failures are the classic symptoms of this exact condition: senior cliques that do not understand the underlying technology and by trying to manage massive systems via hierarchical edict combined with a side effect of greed made possible by institutional shortfall of observation and analysis and the inevitable results are operational paralysis and collapse.

naishoya 8d ago

> Do those at the top not feel any social obligation to ensure continuation of Japanese society beyond serving their own selfish needs? I would refer you to: The Psychological Consequences of Money by Kathleen D. Vohs, Nicole L. Mead, and Miranda R. Goode Science 17 Nov 2006, Vol 314, Issue 5802 pp. 1154-1156 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1132491 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1132491 The Abstract: "Money has been said to change people's motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts, participants primed with money preferred to play alone, work alone, and put more physical distance between themselves and a new acquaintance." These effects are observable across many cultures and social ideals. So, yes, those at the top do view themselves as distinct and independent of the larger society, as demonstrated by the highly selective and insular lifestyles that they actively seek and engage in. Exclusivity is very nearly a defining feature of that 'filter' which is applied at Japanese organizations as I explained above, such that mid-level employees find an enforced social ceiling to keep those who are not already in the leading cliques from rising into a controlling position. > How does that square with increasing foreign investment? Foreign investment into Japanese industry is not the same as foreign investment into other jurisdictions, like EU, UK or US. Foreign investors do not gain actual control of the Japanese parent corporation. Companies will allow foreign investment in strict minority positions. This applies in most industries even without official legal requirement, and the regulatory review threshold for control in any critical; semiconductor, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, medicine, rare earths is as low as 1%. Investment in these requires approval BEFORE not after finalization. Agriculture is another field with strict foreign investment rules. Non-Japanese citizens cannot purchase Ag. zoned land, period. It is not likely that foreign investment, i.e. PE will find much room for capture of potentially closing Japanese companies. What I think is more likely will be a blend of collectivization, as many operating companies are already highly leveraged from banking and national investment due to the durable extremely low interest rates of the last three decades. The firms which have successfully invested heavily overseas and have restrained those investments from repatriation, in order to maintain the low inflation rates, have immense capacity to absorb local productivity downturns. These 'external' finance pools do not appear on the Japanese companies balance sheets due to how those investments are structured, and will enable these companies to dwindle to extremely low staffing levels while maintaining the level of comfort and financial wherewithal for the executive board members.

naishoya 8d ago

> ... that even large established companies may quite literally "die out" because there is nobody left that knows how to operate them? We are already seeing this in the catastrophic system failures at major Japanese mega-banks like Mizuho. These failures are the classic symptoms of this exact condition: senior cliques that do not understand the underlying technology and by trying to manage massive systems via hierarchical edict combined with a side effect of greed made possible by institutional shortfall of observation and analysis and the inevitable results are operational paralysis and collapse.