[HN Gopher] Japan: the harbinger state
___________________________________________________________________
Japan: the harbinger state
Author : akg_67
Score : 134 points
Date : 2023-01-23 09:01 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cambridge.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cambridge.org)
| looseyesterday wrote:
| Japan has too many socio-political peculiarities for lessons to
| be translatable to other democracies. Especially when it comes to
| politics, its nearly a one party state with LDP having governed
| more than 50% of the time since the founding of the democracy.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I'd also argue that Japan's culture and the much lower
| immigration rate are huge confounds when trying to extrapolate
| to the US specifically.
| karaokeyoga wrote:
| "The LDP has been in power almost continuously since its
| foundation in 1955--a period called the 1955 System--except
| between 1993 and 1994, and again from 2009 to 2012. In the 2012
| election, it regained control of the government." - Wikipedia
| krapp wrote:
| [flagged]
| unity1001 wrote:
| Hard to understand why the parent comment was downvoted. This
| is precisely the interpretation of the US system in political
| science: A one party oligarchy with two factions that
| slightly differ in issues that are non-critical to the
| oligarchy's interests. They clash wildly on identity issues,
| but when it comes to feeding the military-industry complex,
| the stock market and keeping their own taxes low, they are
| always 'bipartisan'. A recent Princeton study confirmed this:
|
| http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-
| say-...
|
| Actually, the above study is just a confirmation of what was
| known a long time ago as outlined in one of the most famous
| and biggest study of the US system and social dynamics:
|
| https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.html
|
| This famous UCSC study found out that ~30,000 people
| (including women, children) constitute the American elite
| class and they are extremely class conscious and exclusive.
| They hold balls to introduce their children into their own
| society for coming of age, they intermarry within themselves,
| they monopolize all positions of power among themselves. The
| study found out that they monopolize everywhere from
| governors' seats to senate to corporate boards among
| themselves.
| pieix wrote:
| Likely because it's absurd to state that politics in
| America are "beholden to white supremacist conservative
| Christians."
| auctoritas wrote:
| Yes the two Parties can agree on a few things, that does
| not imply "one Party oligarchy". In fact much of the
| dysfunction in government can be traced to the wildly
| different positions of the two parties.
|
| However if we want to talk Oligarchy we can view the US as
| being dominated culturally by Liberal (classical sense)
| values. Open Society, all that stuff. This manifests in
| politics.
| zirgs wrote:
| Those two parties agree on most things that actually
| matter.
|
| They are both right wing capitalist parties.
|
| Sure - one of them might talk about LGBT rights or
| whatever. But when a LGBT person gets in an accident -
| they will still receive a crippling medical bill. Unlike
| in "homophobic" countries like Poland, South Korea or
| Japan.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| The bill will however have a colorful rainbow logo during
| pride month. What else could a gay person ask for.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > Yes the two Parties can agree on a few things, that
| does not imply "one Party oligarchy"
|
| Those 'few things' define the oligarchy. As the Princeton
| study found out.
|
| > Open Society, all that stuff.
|
| That's a false perception. There's nothing open about the
| existing American oligarchy. The famous UCSC study
| referenced in the grandparent comment found out that
| ~30,000 people (including women, children) constitute the
| American elite class and they are extremely class
| conscious and exclusive. They hold balls to introduce
| their children into their own society for coming of age,
| they intermarry within themselves, they monopolize all
| positions of power among themselves. The study found out
| that they monopolize everywhere from governors' seats to
| senate to corporate boards.
|
| Even the people who are more or less familiar with this
| think that because there are some 'exceptions' to this in
| the tech sector due to the existence of startups and also
| a few upwardly mobile upper middle class personas
| occasionally marry into that oligarchy, there isn't an
| oligarchy and the society is 'open' and upwardly mobile.
| But exceptions don't make a rule. Even the anomaly that
| is the tech sector is a rule-taker in American economy
| and politics, not a rule maker. The rules are still made
| by mostly East Coast 'old money' families and the elite
| networks that their social groups constitute. Here are
| the critical findings of the study again:
|
| https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/class_domination.h
| tml
| [deleted]
| trollerator23 wrote:
| God this is such a dumb comment
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site
| guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Laaas wrote:
| While historically true, the current Japanese government
| isn't very Buddhist, and hasn't been AFAICT since the
| Tokugawa shogunate crumbled (in fact, they persecuted
| Buddhism after that).
|
| The neo-imperialist conservative part isn't too far off from
| the truth though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nippon_Kaigi
|
| I disagree that they are somehow similar though, trivially
| evident by the fact that the Republicans aren't the only
| party.
|
| It's also important to note that even though LDP is one
| party, there are many factions within it: https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/Factions_in_the_Liberal_Democr...
|
| The factions can have quite different opinions.
| orangepurple wrote:
| What does it matter when all parties vote approximately in
| the same direction together on several thousand page long
| bills that are dropped on them by armies of ghostwriters
| funded and influenced by who knows?
| looseyesterday wrote:
| Wow so many assumptions to disentangle here. Seems like
| someone reads too much reddit and the like. If said corp. and
| military interests really controlled America, things would
| look completely different.
|
| I agree they exert a some influence on narrow areas, but
| control is too strong a word. World is too chaotic for any
| one entity to exert any degree of control on anything.
| bombolo wrote:
| He means they control congress, not individual citizens.
| srvmshr wrote:
| There was an article on New Yorker a few years ago. They
| illustrated that the US is usually at the kind of crossroads
| where Japan was two decades ago:
|
| Link:
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-united-st...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| On my second corporate trip to Japan I mentioned to one of my
| Japanese counterparts that I enjoy visiting Tokyo because it is
| like visiting the future.
|
| I wasn't referring to some futuristic veneer like Akihabara,
| but overall the way a society can function with the density
| that is Tokyo.
| justin66 wrote:
| "Harbinger" is an unusual word, and it's interesting the way the
| paper distinguishes between "leader," "bellwether," and
| "harbinger."
|
| In Japanese politics during the nineties there were a couple of
| parties whose names were commonly translated as "Harbinger Party"
| (Sakigake) and "New Harbinger Party" (Shinto Sakigake). (Or maybe
| these names referred to the same party?)
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Once you start reading about history you will laugh at the
| challenges of today.
|
| Like it literally couldn't get worse for the Netherlands than
| 1672 and we got through that (in fact look at the mighty France
| and England today who's laughing now).
| eternalban wrote:
| I had to look that up: https://www.aronson.com/the-disaster-
| year/
| abudabi123 wrote:
| At least Japan has the capacity to launch satellites whereas the
| Brits failed to launch a small batch from an out of production
| Virgin Boeing 747 shortly after SpaceX had launched over 50 then
| 100 satellites in one go.
|
| Although Jaxa's last attempt was a fail consistent with the
| Brits.
|
| What I couldn't understand was why Sony couldn't keep up with
| Apple's stellar hockey stick growth when it had the talent in
| hardware. Don't know about the software because Microsoft.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| All of the tech in (say) the iPhone was already in use
| elsewhere. Apple's great success was (1) bringing it all
| together and (2) selling consumers on one great leap forwards.
| That's where Apple beats the likes of Sony: Not in incremental
| improvements but in creating new product categories and
| marketing them so that 100m+ consumers want one on launch day.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Sony used to be like that.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Indeed. I remember having a slimline Sony Walkman in the
| late 1980s and people in London asking to buy it from me.
| Not friends, complete strangers like store proprietors who
| had a 'wow' reaction and made an offer on the spot.
| gkanai wrote:
| > What I couldn't understand was why Sony couldn't keep up with
| Apple's stellar hockey stick growth
|
| Apple's strength is it's software. Sony lost out because it
| could not compete with Apple's software.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Apple started it's recent strong of successes with the iPod.
| That was a device built around a cutting edge hard drive.
| Apple did well at choosing features, but iPod software was
| all contracted out. The hard drive was it's most important
| feature and Apple locked that on by buying all of the units
| Toshiba could produce before most had even heard about it.
| drumhead wrote:
| Britain gave up it's independent launch system program partly
| because it was part of the ESA and partly because it bought
| Polaris/Trident from the US. Virgin Space is actually a US
| company not a British one, but their launch system is cheap and
| definitely worth persevering with.
| smcl wrote:
| This isn't an article saying "Japan sucks, Britain is the
| best!". It is saying that Japan appears to have encountered
| some social and economic problems a few years ahead of the rest
| of the developed world.
| [deleted]
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| Fitting day for this to be posted given this article
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64373950
|
| "Japan's prime minister says his country is on the brink of not
| being able to function as a society because of its falling birth
| rate."
|
| How Japan handles this will either tell the rest of the world how
| to do it or how not to do it. Lets hope they figure it out
| csomar wrote:
| It's important to note (for those who didn't read the article) is
| that this article is not about why and how Japan is a Harbinger
| state but rather why scholars study Japan.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and: I'm more interested in comparisons than trends, which
| often just feels like punditry.
|
| Like how misc constitutions effect democratic participation.
| Like how misc court arrangements and criminal law impact
| policing. Like how land use impacts public health. Etc, etc.
| hourago wrote:
| > I argue that Japan is a harbinger state, which experiences many
| challenges before others in the international system.
|
| A good example is housing. Japan had a gigantic housing bubble a
| decade in advance than the USA and Europe. It is also interesting
| to see that meanwhile declining population has not reduced price
| of houses in the city, it has made many town houses almost free.
| I would expect this to be replicated elsewhere.
|
| Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in the
| 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also the
| USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population grows
| older? Again, it is to be expected.
|
| Japan is not the world, but it seems reasonable that can give a
| heads up for many problems that other places will experience in
| the future.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Situation in Germany: House prices are going down the last few
| months, but much more slowly than they consistently rose during
| the preceding 15 years. At the same time interest has sharply
| risen.
|
| Compared to prices there's a much bigger decrease in new
| construction, which I'd interpret as people increasingly not
| pursuing houses and instead piling onto the rent market.
| Urban/suburban/"sprawl" houses were basically a DI(preferably-
| NK-and-wealthy-parents-chipping-in) and beyond thing before,
| I'd suspect houses will continue to shrink while drifting even
| further up the income distribution and everyone else must rent
| for life - at an _average_ rent /income ratio of around one
| third which has only ever been going up, and is of course much
| higher for non-DI households.
|
| Home ownership rate has always been falling and continues to do
| so (fell below 50 % in 2022). It'll get a lot lower when
| boomers start leaving their houses (feet first most likely),
| because baby boomers have far high home ownership rate than
| following generations. And with recent changes to the way
| houses are legally valuated and inheritance taxation I'd
| suspect many kids of baby boomers can't actually afford to
| inherit their parents houses and will have to sell.
|
| I dunno where this is supposed to converge to. Everyone renting
| at >50 % of net income (which is already not at all uncommon,
| especially for singles in cities) from huge housing companies?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > House prices are going down the last few months, but much
| more slowly than they consistently rose during the preceding
| 15 years.
|
| You are looking at nominal prices. Inflation adjusted real
| estate prices crashed hard. They literally went down when
| everything else rose 8%.
| dzonga wrote:
| I think for you - Germany might be an anomaly since in
| Germany you guys have strong rental protections. and rentals
| can have long leases i.e 3+ years. whereas in the UK / US a
| lease usually last a year. in london with average leases
| being 6 months to a year.
|
| in the UK new builds are inflated due to gvt shenanigans
| formerly_proven wrote:
| That's true, though the only protection for new tenants is
| rent control (the type where rents can't exceed a reference
| rent by ~10%), which is active in most cities - but is also
| generally ignored (~80 % of new leases violate these laws).
| New construction, modernized (also "modernized") and first-
| time-leased flats are excluded as well, and if the previous
| tenant overpaid, rent control is suspended as well.
| schroeding wrote:
| > Everyone renting [...] from huge housing companies?
|
| In cities like Munich, where the real estate is extremly
| valuable, definitely. The increase in inheritance tax you
| mentioned makes it _very_ unattractive to _not_ just sell the
| house to the highest bidder immediately, which in most cases
| will be one of the large housing companies.
|
| For small tenements, it's very challenging to generate enough
| rental income to offset the inheritance tax in a single
| lifetime, especially if the new owners want to keep rents
| low.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Situation in Germany: House prices are going down the last
| few months, but much more slowly than they consistently rose
| during the preceding 15 years. At the same time interest has
| sharply risen.
|
| That's the case in NL as well; the causes are multi-fold,
| housing prices have consistently gone up in the past decade,
| while mortgage interest rates have gone down, meaning it's
| more attractive and interesting to get a house and mortgage
| now and fix the interest rate.
|
| But the other issue there is a housing shortage, because
| population increase is not slowing down.
|
| But the other issue is that houses aren't being built fast
| enough, for diverse reasons - NIMBY, having to give up
| farmland or nature for houses, counties that want pretty
| housing estates instead of functional apartment buildings
| (because 'ugly' houses attract undesireables), and new
| nitrogen laws making getting licenses more difficult.
|
| And now there's sudden inflation due to a sudden change in
| situation (to put it mildly), which triggered the EU to
| rapidly increase interest rates (I'm no economist, I'm not
| sure how the two are related), which triggered mortgage rates
| to increase.
|
| Given people were already borrowing the max amount they
| could, if the interest rates suddenly go up, a gap appears
| which caused the reduction in interest in buying a house,
| lowering demand. The other one is that people stopped looking
| for houses because their energy bill suddenly tripled or
| worse.
| dzonga wrote:
| people in the NL are extremely lucky compared to other
| developed countries.
|
| high quality housing stock at decent prices, compared to
| the UK / US etc.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| The Netherlands ultimately decided on socialism which
| means that even in Amsterdam a lot of the houses are on
| government rent control. Also mixed neighborhoods with
| low income and middle income households so that you never
| get into a "banlieue" situation.
|
| The government decided what to build, where to build and
| for how much.
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| Hi, thanks for sharing - do you mind explaining what DI and
| NK mean?
|
| Thank you :)
| Terretta wrote:
| DINK == Dual Income No Kids
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| DINK means "Double Income No Kids".
| tjpnz wrote:
| >Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in
| the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also
| the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population
| grows older? Again, it is to be expected.
|
| I've lived in Japan for eight years and the only time I've ever
| been asked to fax something was by an American company. I told
| them no.
| freetime2 wrote:
| A few months ago when applying for internet service from NTT
| they required me to fax a copy of my residence card. I ended
| up going with KDDI (for that and other reasons).
| ne0flex wrote:
| I work for a Japanese bank in NYC. Up until COVID, when we
| had documents that had to be signed by the Tokyo team, we'd
| overnight it to them via DHL.
| aikinai wrote:
| It's not imposed on consumers as much anymore, but in
| business, it's still huge. There are plenty of articles about
| it even locally in Japanese.
| pigsty wrote:
| I recently (months ago)left a company where everything was
| faxed. All records were typed on computers, printed, and
| faxed to companies. Orders as well.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _printed, and faxed_
|
| Perplexed that they weren't faxed directly from computers.
| Are the records not considered 'real' until they exist in
| paper form, for which there are well-established storage/
| retrieval/ relocation standards?
| LeanderK wrote:
| japan, us or somewhere else?
| [deleted]
| pezezin wrote:
| I've only had to sent two faxes in my whole life, and both
| have been in the last four years while living in Japan. One
| was for Amazon, and the other for the Sapporo police.
| [deleted]
| gkanai wrote:
| > A good example is housing.
|
| I think housing is a bad example to use wrt Japan.
|
| Japan is one of the few markets in the world where, for the
| most part, only land has value. Buildings LOSE value over time.
| This is for multiple reasons but mostly due to ever-changing
| earthquake-related construction regulations such that it's
| almost always cheaper to rebuild from scratch than keep an
| edifice and retrofit to regulations.
|
| This is also why Japan has more architects than any other
| country- if buildings are not kept and are almost always
| destroyed after a 30 year mortgage, the owner can build
| whatever they want and not have to be concerned about resale
| value- so lots of unique residential architecture.
|
| Alastair Townsend first covered this in ArchDaily years ago and
| it went on to be covered extensively by NPR and other outlets.
|
| https://www.archdaily.com/450212/why-japan-is-crazy-about-ho...
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Buildings always lose value over time unless they have
| exceptional historical value.
|
| A small, new apartment next to the old, big apartment I live
| in is much more expensive than mine. And mine was considered
| high end when it was built.
| TheDong wrote:
| Your claim is something different.
|
| You're claiming that _relative to newer buildings_, yours
| has lost value.
|
| The parent poster is claiming that _relative to the same
| building in the past_, prices go down in japan and up
| elsewhere.
|
| Would the apartment you live in now have cost more or less
| 5 or 10 years ago? That's really the thing the parent
| poster is talking about, and other newer constructions are
| unrelated to that point.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| tamade wrote:
| Not really. Japan isn't unique in how property is valued.
| Real estate values in market-based economies are set by the
| market. Cap rates in Japan are comparable to the US and other
| major markets. Assigning value to land or improvements is
| just accounting. Buildings in Japan (and elsewhere) "lose
| value" over time due to depreciation, not because only land
| has value. There are huge tax advantages to owning real
| estate vs other asset classes. For example, Japanese real
| estate owners take advantage of accelerated depreciation for
| wooden structures as a tax shield.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| In Japan, houses were treated as capital expenses. Other
| countries treat housing as capital assets. Things may have
| changed in Japan in the past two decades, but that's how
| things worked up into the late 90s/early 00s when I stopped
| studying all things Japanese. This financial treatment was
| why so many smaller/rural communities were turning into ghost
| towns.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Buildings lose value in almost every market. It's just that
| in western cities the land increases by so much more than the
| building decreases we don't notice it.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Yes, but there remain factors that cause the value of
| western building to rise in value even decades later (my
| 120 year old house is worth $90,000 and going up in value).
| For example as construction costs increase, replacement
| costs increase, which causes the value of an existing
| building to rise.
|
| This is apparently not the case, and for some odd reason
| (probably government and tax policy) a house absolutely
| goes to $0 in 25 years and stays there.
| zurn wrote:
| Buildings lose value over time in most places. And in many
| places where they don't, including renovation investments in
| the picture results shows declining value.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| [dead]
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands this is absolutely not true for
| houses. My house, despite no renovations done, has more
| than doubled in value over the past ten years. Housing
| shortages make sure that existing houses are definitely not
| losing value.
| dbsmith83 wrote:
| But is that the value of the building, or the land that
| is increasing for yours? My home (building + land) value
| has gone up a ton due to the housing shortages in tech
| centers, but on the assessment, the building value has
| gone down, while the land value has shot up a lot.
| imtringued wrote:
| The only places where buildings go up in value is where the
| building has been grandfathered in and is no longer able to
| be built in accordance with modern zoning rules.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Which is rather common in my experience. The town
| adjacent to the one I just moved to has a bunch of
| duplexes, but if you look at the current zoning it's all
| single-family-only. You couldn't build much of the town
| as it is today, which is a shame as it's very nice.
|
| As you might expect given this, the town has steadily
| lost population.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Existing buildings will go up in value in an environment
| where construction costs are rising and the cost of
| replacement is increasing.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I think this is becoming increasingly less common. I am
| seeing lots of 30+ year old homes for sale in my local market
| that have been renovated by the seller before putting it up
| for sale. Housing quality has improved significantly since
| the post-WW2 era, so there's no need to tear down a 30-year
| old home anymore. Some new appliances, wallpaper, and
| flooring is enough to attract a buyer.
|
| Here's an example of a listing of a 39 year old home where
| renovation is still in progress. They include product links
| to the new appliances they are installing now, and will
| update the listing once remodeling is completed. This is
| super common to see in used homes listings these days.
|
| https://suumo.jp/chukoikkodate/gumma/sc_takasaki/nc_71189001.
| ..
|
| I do still see a lot of houses being torn down. But they are
| more like 50+ years old, and in such a state of disrepair
| that they are not worth saving.
| zztop44 wrote:
| I agree. I just bought a 20 year old place and it's still
| in fine condition (and freshly renovated). Im planning to
| live in it for a while but honestly I wouldn't be surprised
| if so long as I renovate it before selling I can get
| basically the same as what I paid now in another 10 or 15
| years.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >I can get basically the same as what I paid now in
| another 10 or 15 years.
|
| Accounting for inflation, or without (even
| approximately)?
| TylerE wrote:
| Is Japan inflationary? I know their central bank actually
| had negative interest rates for a long time.. still,
| maybe.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| A whole 4% year-over-year. Seems like a pretty healthy
| level of inflation to me.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-19/japan-
| s-i...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| May I ask how difficult this was, in terms of paperwork
| and so forth, and (if you're not Japanese) getting to
| know your new neighbors? Thanks.
| jstarfish wrote:
| From what I've seen, buying a house is easy (you can hire
| brokers/realtors to do the paperwork) but the biggest
| hurdle is your visa status. Owning property does not
| entitle you to stay in-country longer than 90 days.
| You'll need a local job or spouse in order to reside
| there.
|
| Loans can also be difficult for foreigners to acquire, so
| prearrange financing or cash.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| I wonder if japan has an architect industrial complex that
| would lobby to keep regulatory changes regular.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >I think this is becoming increasingly less common.
|
| That should be the case. As regulations get stiffer and
| stiffer the amount of area under the "long tail" get
| smaller. Of course there's always people who want to
| screech about how more is needed but at some point the tail
| is so narrow that society just ignores them because the
| amortized cost per improvement is just so high it's a no-
| starter.
| fomine3 wrote:
| Most important regulation for earthquake proof was made in
| 1981, that is about 40 years ago. It's often mentioned
| first on buying house checklist. So I expect that more
| houses will be supplied to market.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| It is very weird how houses depreciate very quickly in Japan.
|
| There is surely intentional government policy behind this,
| and this would have significant impacts on the broader
| housing environment.
|
| I recall reading at one point for example that the property
| transfer tax is _lower_ for empty lots than it is for
| occupied lots. Another subtle housing policy that
| incentivizes people to tear down old houses.
|
| Much has been written about Japan's zoning impacting its
| housing prices and rents, but imo it's as likely that the
| various tax and housing policy that creates this incentive to
| tear down homes is as important of a factor in creating a
| housing market that looks very different from other rich
| nations.
| tamade wrote:
| It's just a notional loss for tax purposes. Japan has
| generous depreciation loopholes, some of which was closed a
| few years ago.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Buildings LOSE value over time.
|
| This is not unique to Japan. Buildings depreciate.
|
| You only notice it in Japan because general inflation has
| been close to 0% and sometimes negative.
|
| Also - people in Japan tend to spend much less money updating
| their home compared to the rest of "The West". If you're
| sinking 1% of the value of your home into updates annually -
| the home isn't going to depreciate as much as if you didn't.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Considering older people tend to use computers and be more tech
| savvy while younger generations only interact with tech on
| their phones it will be interesting how this turns out.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Europe - sure US has mostly solved our population aging problem
| with having fairly open immigration and high immigration
| numbers relative to the rest of the developed/rich world.. Now
| if politics change that, it's another story.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > US has mostly solved our population aging problem with
| having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers
| relative to the rest of the developed/rich world
|
| I'm not sure about that. For starters, it's easier to
| immigrate to Germany or the UK than to the US, and by
| percentage of the population, Germany does host a higher
| number of immigrants.
|
| The US does accept more foreigners yearly, but it makes it a
| long way, if any, to stay in the country permanently.
| codekansas wrote:
| A key difference is jus soli citizenship in the Americas,
| if you're born here you're a citizen
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yup, we don't have permanent citizen sub-classes like
| Koreans in Japan who end up being neither Korean nor
| Japanese even multiple generations in.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Maybe legally but we literally have millions of people that
| come here to work every year and are not documented. Nearly
| 3 million last year and although there are many refugees
| that are here for help, it's mainly people that want to
| work in everything from kitchens, the landscaping, to
| construction, to farming, to whatever else can make use of
| people that want to work hard every day at a manual job and
| show up.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That's only true if you are educated and from the west.
| Otherwise, it's much harder to legally (or illegally)
| immigrate to germany. The USA is a lot more open to
| immigrants, and in my experience, there is more
| xenophobia/racism towards non-western immigrants in
| germany.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I'm not comparing Germany to the US from a societal
| standpoint, but their legal immigration frameworks.
|
| For instance, the US has immigration quotas for pretty
| much everything, thus the backlogs that resulted in
| Chinese and Indian born people to wait for a decade or
| more to achieve their permanent residency status. The
| process is also extremely complex and, as a result of
| that, it is quite expensive, in the order of thousands of
| dollars.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I suspect EU country vs US comparisons get thrown off as
| well by EU freedom of movement vs US interstate mobility.
| We should probably be looking at aggregate EU immigration
| from non-EU nations when comparing to other developed
| countries.
|
| Someone born in France but lives in Germany vs someone born
| in New York but lives in California are both similarly easy
| from a legal standpoint. However counting the Frenchman in
| Germany as an immigrant seems kind of dubious given that's
| kind of the point of the EU.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Skills. The US hoovers up the world's skilled immigrants.
| Germany - like much of the non-english speaking world is
| left with the scraps.
|
| Don't take it from me, look at what the German government
| is doing with allowing foreigners to immigrate there. When
| a country throws open its doors the way Germany has, you
| must ask the question - why?
| m0llusk wrote:
| Population crash, that's why. You can choose not to have
| kids but enterprises cannot choose to not have employees.
| People can be taught new skills.
| zirgs wrote:
| High immigration numbers are fine for countries like the USA.
| But for many small countries it's a death sentence.
| ericmay wrote:
| Why? And do you mean small geographically or small
| population-wise? Perhaps both/neither?
| zirgs wrote:
| Population wise. Imagine 500k immigrants a year. It would
| be nothing for a country like India. But it would be a
| death sentence for Iceland.
| gotorazor wrote:
| Considering that Iceland has a population of less than
| 400k, more than doubling the population over a 12-month
| period in the cold would be a death sentence not just the
| the country, but for all the new immigrants that are
| moving there.
| ericmay wrote:
| Death sentence in that you envision the services and
| economy can't handle that many new immigrants?
| zirgs wrote:
| Iceland with 80% of immigrants would not be Iceland any
| more. Its language and culture would be completely
| marginalised and replaced with something else.
| distances wrote:
| That's a bogus reason though. No culture is static, Japan
| or US or Germany 100 years ago were very different to the
| current day. Culture is how citizens live their lives,
| and it's pointless to try to immortalize something that
| is naturally in constant flux.
| ericmay wrote:
| On the other hand, what rights do people have or not have
| to preserve their culture or their way of life?
|
| An exaggerated example, but a good litmus test here is
| something simple like are you ok with lots of Americans
| moving to country X (let's use China and Norway) and
| making it culturally more like America? You can't say
| that this is a problem but then Iceland (since that's the
| example we're using) being weary of accepting large
| numbers of immigrants out of fear of culture change isn't
| a valid concern also.
| avar wrote:
| Iceland's combined first- and second generation
| immigration is around 18% of the total population[1], [2]
| seems to suggest it's around 25% for the US.
|
| The country has also signed up to accept practically
| unlimited immigration. It's a part of the EEA (the
| economic area of the EU), meaning that a population of
| around 500 million can move there tomorrow with very few
| legal hurdles. "Unlimited" in the sense that the
| difference between 500 million and the world population
| of 8 billion hardly matters for a country with a
| population of far less than 1/2 million.
|
| 1. https://www.hagstofa.is/utgafur/frettasafn/mannfjoldi/
| mannfj...
|
| 2. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publ
| icatio...
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Sure, but the practical limit is basically the
| attractiveness of an environment, economy & availability
| of jobs.
|
| All things being equal, how many people want to flock to
| Iceland to work in tourism and fishing? Maybe with the
| right immigrants one could replicate their last financial
| bubble & crisis.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| None of this actually requires immigration. Cultural
| imports are enough to utterly _destroy_ aspects of local
| culture without a single person immigrating.
|
| I don't know about Norway or Iceland specifically, but I
| have been told that English is so trendy in Sweden that
| not a lot of cultural works are actually _written_ in
| Swedish anymore. As for China, we 've actually gotten
| cultural backwash from Hollywood doing so much business
| there. Specifically, a lot of western media companies
| have had to self-censor in order to retain Chinese market
| access.
|
| If we really wanted to coat every culture in amber then
| we would need a lot more than just immigration controls.
| We would need to emulate pre-Meiji Japan in every country
| in the world: i.e. no migration _whatsoever_ , and heavy
| restriction and censorship of cultural imports. So no
| Internet, no imported cinema or TV shows, no
| international phone calls... hell, no international
| postal system.
|
| Less dramatically you have countries like Canada or
| France that have local content quotas, but those have
| their own issues. But those are less "stop cultural
| change" and more "keep Hollywood from completely
| smothering our local creative industry".
| ericmay wrote:
| Yes none of this required immigration but that's besides
| the point when we're talking about a country absorbing
| immigrants.
|
| > If we really wanted to coat every culture in amber then
| we would need a lot more than just immigration controls.
|
| Following this extreme reasoning we should equally just
| dissolve all borders. Let's start with Japan or
| Switzerland perhaps? I've always thought it would be cool
| to live in Switzerland myself. I'm disappointed I can't
| retire to the Scottish countryside or to Brittany. Who
| are they to tell me I can't live there?
|
| Obviously this is a non-starter, but being dismissive of
| others wanting to hold on to their contemporary culture
| is ridiculous too.
| dropit_sphere wrote:
| >No culture is static,
|
| indeed, the dodo would agree
| ROTMetro wrote:
| The Santa Cruz I grew up in, with vibrant cultures from
| hippies to punkers is gone. All the people that lived
| there have been forced to move due to lack of
| affordability, and the people and local culture has been
| replaced with immigrants. While there is a town,
| culturally, it is not the town I grew up. If you asked us
| in the 80/early 90s if we wanted that, we would have said
| no, we would like to be able to live the life we created,
| have the neighbors we have known our whole lives, etc
| instead of being California refugees spread across
| Oregon/Washington/Idaho/Nevada/Hawaii. It's not really
| bogus to those peoples whose entire way of life is being
| displaced, and shouldn't they have a say and some sort of
| agency over their local culture?
| kerpotgh wrote:
| It depends, if it's slow enough you'll end up with a
| hybrid culture that has parts of both.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| No one is saying Iceland should take 80% immigrants. A
| rational conversation is that US takes a higher % of
| immigrants than most of the developed world. No one sane
| is comparing notional numbers comparing a 330M country &
| small 5M countries.
|
| Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size.
|
| I think wether or not it matters depends on whether the
| effects of an increase is linear, sub linear,
| exponential, etc.
| avar wrote:
| As an Icelander, our traditional culture has already been
| completely marginalized and destroyed by the outlawing of
| piracy, as well as of raping and pillaging.
|
| If the rest of the world would agree to look the other
| way on those topics, I'm sure we could be persuaded to
| once again accept double-digit percentages of the
| population as sla..., ahem, immigrants every year.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the
| population grows older? Again, it is to be expected.
|
| You already see it in some countries that just skipped cable
| TV, desktop PCs and wired internet, and that went straight to
| smartphones with mobile internet (or wifi). These are countries
| where you can do everything with your phone, whereas here some
| (e.g. government, banking organizations) are still trying to
| catch up and adjust.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| But is this MORE technological? Using smartphones imparts way
| less tech capabilities on the user than does using PCs, and
| definitely doesn't push users to learning new things (how
| many people are discovering IDEs on their phone and learning
| development as a hobby?).
| tudorizer wrote:
| People do like to mention those faxes a lot, don't they? Or
| pocket translators.
|
| I think there are other uses of tech far beyond it that are far
| better integrated in the Japanese society that in the western
| world.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Declining population isn't entirely relevant. Japan's major
| cities still continue to grow, and western countries will
| probably continue to grow as a whole due to immigration. I
| still suspect that we will see housing bubbles pop in some
| major western cities, but many will fight it to the death. I
| predict that whole industries moving to areas with more
| reasonable housing policy will be the cause. We already see it
| in cases with investment in Eastern Europe (especially Ukraine
| until a year ago), and southern U.S states. Part of me hopes
| that these cities with horribly selfish housing policy end up
| like the declining western cities that lost out when
| manufacturing went overseas.
| ehnto wrote:
| > Will also the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the
| population grows older? Again, it is to be expected.
|
| I think they may have escaped to evergreen technology for
| consumer electronics, but one might argue America is equally as
| trapped by historical infrastructure. Japan's infrastructure is
| interesting as it's clear much of it was built in the 80s and
| 90s, but it's still serviceable and their big bets on trains
| turned out to be rather future proof. When walking the streets,
| especially somewhere like Osaka, you can see much of the
| signage, bridges, pedestrian crossing buttons are very old
| indeed. You do often feel like you are in a future-past of some
| kind.
|
| None of these statements apply universally across both
| countries mind you, there is good rail in the US and modern
| infra in Japan as well.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Old people love buttons. I don't say this disparagingly. I too
| long for my feature phone days. Things were simpler.
| Mumps wrote:
| Typed from a Cherry MX "keeb".
| rwmj wrote:
| Housing in Japan is so peculiar that it seems difficult to draw
| global lessons from it. Are there any other countries in the
| world where a perfectly servicable house that is over 30 years
| old is literally worth less than nothing (because it "must" be
| demolished before the land can be reused)?
| alangibson wrote:
| I've never heard this before. Any insight into why values so
| quickly drop to 0?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Building codes changing and earthquake resistant
| construction: plumbing is more flexible and less durable,
| shake resistance technology evolves enough to make old
| building deprecated (or the house is straight build with
| light wood with a set life expectancy)
| rwmj wrote:
| This is the reason often stated, but I don't think it's
| always the true reason. I think people just don't want to
| live in a house that another family lived in if they have
| the choice (rental apartments seem to be different).
|
| Also if it was true then people wouldn't be living in any
| house older than 30 years since they'd fear death by
| earthquake. But that's not true - I know loads of
| Japanese people who have lived in their house for more
| than 30 years. It's only when the land changes hands that
| it suddenly becomes vitally important to implement this
| rule.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's not just regulations and earthquake resistance,
| thermal and noise insulation too improve over time,
| following economic growth.
| pezezin wrote:
| My experience living in Japan is that thermal and noise
| insulation is pretty much non-existent here.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Earthquakes' influence isn't just about when they happen.
| I might be hard to visualize but the actual structure and
| materials need to change to adapt.
|
| For instance in europe lead pipes were widely used for
| the internal plumbing and nowadays it's replaced by rigid
| and pretty durable polymers. The plumbing goes into the
| walls, floors, etc. to each place where water goes.
|
| Except that doesn't work if your walls and floor can
| shake. You don't want pipes break into your walls and
| leak internally. So pipes can't be rigid, and you'll have
| to compromise on durability for flexibility.
|
| When buying an appartment, our plumbing was rated for 30
| years. After that, even if everything else is in a
| perfect state, we'd all have to tear down the building
| walls and change the plumbing. It can be done, but cost
| wise it's not so far from rebuilding from scratch.
|
| Public buildings get away with way longer life by either
| paying for way more expensive techniques, and/or having
| the plumbing and any other things that could need
| inspection or maintenance put outside the walls. It works
| great, but is ugly as fuck and can have other practical
| issues (all pipes being exposed has weird safety issues,
| some europeans house do that and it's really not great)
|
| And that's just plumbing.
|
| PS: the second hand housing market is actually super
| healthy. In particular you get to see how the buildings
| and neighbors are doing after a few years, and the risk
| of a bad surprise is that much lower.
|
| PS2: you can live longer than 30y in a house/appartment.
| Its value just plummets, except if you prove you made all
| the recommended updates to extend its useful life. It's
| basically the same as keeping a car for 40 years. It can
| be done, but it's not the generic nor recommended use
| case.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Posted a similar comment up above, but this isn't really true
| anymore. Search in any non-rural area and you'll see lots of
| 30+ year old houses that have recently been remodeled, or are
| in the process of being remodeled.
|
| Here's one that I found in Takasaki with very little effort.
|
| https://suumo.jp/chukoikkodate/gumma/sc_takasaki/nc_70960514.
| ..
|
| Most of the houses being torn down are not what I would
| consider "perfectly serviceable". There are usually serious
| issues such that the home isn't worth saving.
| timr wrote:
| It's true for more places than not. Yes, you're seeing
| _more_ homes that have been remodeled and put up for sale
| than in the past, but these are the minority -- mostly
| newer mansions in cities. For many /most homes, it's often
| financially better for the owner to just tear them down, or
| leave them to rot (the latter is a big problem across
| Japan).
|
| Small towns really do have programs to give away homes if
| you commit to remodeling them or tear them down. Even in
| bigger cities it isn't difficult to find abandoned
| properties.
|
| (I'll also add: people see things like Cheap Houses Japan,
| and make incorrect assumptions about the state of the
| resale market. For a large portion of those "cheap"
| properties, you'd have to put in 2-3x the sales price just
| to make them livable. In other words, the owners are trying
| to solve their financial problem by dumping it on someone
| else who is more willing to deal with it. This could be
| appealing for someone who wants a vacation home and loves
| the area, but it's not a healthy housing market.)
| zirgs wrote:
| Depends on location. Some houses are indeed worth next to
| nothing, because nobody wants to live there.
|
| In many cases a big farming company buys land with a house on
| it and then lets the house to rot, because they only need the
| farmland that's around it. And they don't bother to demolish
| the house, because it costs money.
| wk_end wrote:
| > declining population has not reduced price of houses in the
| city
|
| Despite overall declining population, Japan's major urban
| centres are actually increasing their population. Tokyo, Osaka,
| Yokohama, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, and more
| are all growing cities.
| wheelerof4te wrote:
| "Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in
| the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change."
|
| I believe that their mindset and stance towards technology is
| simply different.
|
| Japan had a history of "gadget technology", which was
| revolutional in the 90's before the Internet became ubiquious.
|
| I am guessing that they (myself included) were dissapointed in
| the direction technological advances went. Their vision maybe
| didn't happen, but that doesn't make it wrong, or that the
| current technological trends are right.
| quartesixte wrote:
| >Their vision maybe didn't happen, but that doesn't make it
| wrong, or that the current technological trends are right.
|
| Nicely put. Perhaps the smartphone era will be seen as a odd
| blip in a long history of gadgets. Who knows what the future
| might bring?
| x98asfd wrote:
| >Another interesting one is technology. Japan got trapped in
| the 90s, the fax era, and it is difficult to change. Will also
| the USA and Europe get stuck technologically as the population
| grows older? Again, it is to be expected.
|
| Would beg to differ. Japan is one those nation with extremely
| advanced space, robotic and nuclear tech. They can be a nuclear
| power over night if they are allowed to legally. Far as space,
| they landed probe on asteroid for space mining
| (https://www.space.com/41898-hayabusa2-deploys-hopping-
| robots... ).
| rayiner wrote:
| Yeah, this is a very narrow HN definition of "technology"--
| I.e. web technology. And even then it overlooks the hardware
| side, since Japan has among the fastest broadband speeds,
| Japanese companies are leaders in cellular and fiber
| communications technology, etc.
|
| In terms of "core industrial competencies"--ability to design
| and build a nuke, ability to make advanced materials, ability
| to design and build a competitive microprocessor, ability to
| put things in space, etc.--Japan is still the second most
| technologically advanced country in the world.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| People like Peter Zeihan argue that the USA seems like it will
| have a large replacement population just because they had a
| large population to begin with (boomers -> Millenials -> Gen
| Alpha). There are things that can blunt this (Millenials can't
| afford to have kids) but so far it seems like it is holding
| fairly steady. Given this it would be difficult to argue for
| them getting stuck in some specific technological era.
| retrac wrote:
| > Japan got trapped in the 90s, the fax era, and it is
| difficult to change
|
| The fax machine in Japan is always treated like it's proof
| they're stuck in a timewarp, an earlier age, and just haven't
| moved on.
|
| But I think it makes sense. Japan was introduced to fax
| technology early on. Japanese is traditionally written
| vertically. It is written with Chinese characters. In
| handwritten Japanese, people actually invent/modify characters
| on the spot. (Much as how Engl. text might be littered with
| randomly-invented abbr'vns.) They're not going to be able to
| enter those into a computer easily.
|
| Some Japanese newspapers were using traditional typesetting
| techniques right into the 21st century because vertical text
| support was, and largely still is, an afterthought in most
| publishing software. Software has only recently gotten to the
| point where it can replace a fax machine and handwriting, for
| reproducing Japanese texts in the manner the Japanese expect.
| Besides scanning/taking a photo of a page and emailing it,
| which isn't enough of an improvement to motivate the change.
| (Particularly as business faxes just end up digitized and
| emailed anyway.)
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