A friend of mine (not in Japan) took over the family business. Previous to this, he was a "second chef" (is that a thing?) at a relatively well known restaurant regionally.
He took a ~25% paycut, he works harder and longer than he did before (as a chef, mind you, regularly known for 100+ hour weeks), spends close to half of that time driving, and often sleeps in the office. He went from probably being a few years away from running his own three star restaurant to running an unsalable, shrinking business, owns 400k worth of similarly unsalable equipment, in a slowly dwindling industry (dry cleaning).
His marriage has fallen apart (did I mention he moved 3 hours away from his wife + children to run the business), his mental health seems atrocious, and the only thing the future seems to hold for him is a piece of a slowly shrinking pie.
His father built a burgeoning postwar business that gave his family a good life, but markets change, and businesses that once made sense no longer do.
I spent some time over the holidays clearing out stuff and, even though I don't still own a lot of suits and jackets these days, I still have a lot of "business casual" I bought because I would "always use it some point." I'll probably donate a lot of it even the stuff that's never been opened.
This isn't true everywhere of course but a long time ago I worked at a company that had dry cleaning collection of premises. This was a computer company. That would be laughable today.
Ha ha. I take a Darwinian approach to my clothing: it all gets washed together, into the dryer together. Anything that shrinks or falls apart goes extinct from my wardrobe.
We do this. New stuff I buy has no sentimental value attached and if it can't be easily maintained, I have no interest in it. When in doubt (which is rare because we typically do our research before purchasing) we chuck it in the dishwasher...
As long as you put them in where the blade won't hit other items, i'm not sure it'll actually do damage to the blade itself. Wooden handles could be damaged, but otherwise I think you're fine.
Electric sharpener is another nice timesaver but decent knives can still be "sharp enough" even if mistreated, for those weird people that are fine with half-dull knife
I don’t know… I feel like slightly pivoting - tablecloth rental, rag rental, napkin rental to restaurants / labs / etc might still be profitable. Know of two businesses that use those services. (One a restaurant, one a lab ).
Or even just doing regular laundry…
Worst case turn the business into a laundromat in the right area…. (Though it might not be possible with that location).
Sounds like investing another $400K worth of washers and dryers into a failing business. Is there much reason to think that running a dry cleaner is similar to running a laundromat? If not, why laundry instead of anything else?
Laundromats look like rented parking space to me: a way to utilize a space that would otherwise be lost, but won’t be anywhere near the revenue of actually having a full business/tenant in that spot.
In some areas laundromat are basically cost/revenue neutral and inly make sense as a service to the community and keeping the light on.
Maybe businesses that provide an essential service to a community, like the logistics company from the article that many farmers depend on, should be donated the that community. Make it a coop of some sort, run not for profit, but for the needs of the community that uses it.
> Laundromats look like rented parking space to me [...] In some areas laundromat are basically cost/revenue neutral and inly make sense as a service to the community and keeping the light on.
Which is why laundromats / launderettes (as they're sometimes still called in the UK) are the stereotypical example of a type of business providing a very different kind of laundering service.
IIRC I've never used one, but I've also never owned a washing machine. By sheer luck both apartments I've been living in since 2006 have had a communal washer/dryer/drying room - but at least I would have the space to get my own washing machine here.
I do know of a few, but as someone said, I think they're in neighborhoods with old buildings where not everyone might have their own.
A bunch of the wool stuff that's so trendy among HN-reader sorts the last few years is supposed to be dry-clean only. Though I think some folks just rarely wash it, and hand-wash in a sink or something on the rare occasions that they do.
Yeah, I think a lot of the merino wool stuff--which I use as well--is to basically not wash it a lot and maybe do it on gentle or in a sink when traveling when you do.
Fair enough. I've found wool to do pretty well in the wash but of course no dry cycle. Merino can hold up surprisingly well and not shrink much if any, in a dryer
A modern dry-cleaning business is typically not just consumer dry cleaning. It's a whole host of B2B "make various dirty textiles not dirty anymore" services.
Well keep in mind this is Japan where many people where suits and go to smoky Izakayas in those suits. The business probably got hit hard by covid though.
There's much less smoke inside restaurants these days too thanks to some new anti-smoking laws caused by the Olympics. Izakaya are more traditional though, but even there many establishments no longer allow smoking.
Restaurants are tough business. Current statistics, about 90% are closed within first year with zero profit.
In Ukraine, to be precise, ex-USSR, just ~10 years ago, most restaurants owners where relatives of criminals, trying to make something legal with crime money.
Now things changed - large restaurants networks are daughters of Western restaurants networks (like mcdo), small restaurants mostly ostarbeiters, made start capital working abroad.
Add to that list the likely carcinogenic chemicals used in dry cleaning. It's also arguably a mostly pointless industry (if the ordinary consumer side largely vanished what would the negative effects really be?).
My FiL shut down his multigenerational business in Japan for exactly this reason.
I was not in a position to take it over and no-one else in the family wanted it. It was a very successful shop with a built in client base and hugely recognizable name in that community.
Culturally the lack of children means there are fewer chances for someone to want to take over a family business, so the likelihood of someone taking it over drops every generation.
This is really the key part. A business can be successful yet soul crushing or not making financial sense compared to other jobs. In France bakeries are facing this same issue: one can support the whole community and be wildly popular while being a losing proposition for the owning family, and it’s becoming a real issue to find a better balance and people to keep the traditions alive.
I think this gets to the core of it. It's just not economic anymore.
My sense is that most of these family shops were started during the mid-20th century when the economy in developed countries was more accommodating to small business. Through decades of ever-increasing pricing pressure from giant multinationals, the most successful family operations could still keep their doors open because of the trusted reputation they had earned in their communities. But even that lifeline is increasingly imperiled as their best, longest customers age out and die, and are not replaced by younger customers because of constantly falling wages in real terms.
Also to note: older generations were more used to crappy work conditions.
They didn’t enjoy it, oh no, and we saw the endless battles to get rid of dangerous and body crushing jobs, all the fight for unions, workers getting shot during strikes etc. And many traditional jobs were just a step below in terms of pressure and work hours.
In a way, their wish for a better future for their children mostly got realized, and a lot of traditional occupations didn’t or couldn’t adapt to that mindset.
The family business in the article is a farmer in the north, and by today’s standard it’s usually a brutal job, “work life balance” is basically an imaginary concept, there’s little leeway for error (forget to turn some knob just once in the dozens of time you do it in a day, and you have a month worth of production gone away), and you’re facing enough natural and economic odds that investment is basically akin to gambling.
The family business in the article is described as a transportation company with a farm attached? I wonder if he could sell the transport business separately.
I reread the article and it’s still not clear to me what he does exactly. It’s explained as a transportation company, but as the article progresses, we’re told that farmers “depend on Mr. Yokoyama for tasks like harvesting hay and clearing snow” and
“17 employees tend to 3,000 head of cattle, and Mr. Yokoyama’s company fills in the gaps.” so it seems they’re doing a lot, yes.
On the transportation business, it has a reputation of being cutthroat, and bigger national players like Yamato / Sagawa have had a lot of trouble recruiting despite the booming business coming from e-commerce.
Notably, Japan had previously enjoyed a very strong middle class. With age demographics and economics changing I suspect the spending capacity of the middle class as a whole might be dropping.
Small business struggles when people can't afford more than the cheapest as the cheapest usually comes from the big corporates.
I remember discussing with a friend whose father is a baker and he admited that his father was working more today than when he started a few decades ago, mostly because of the issue of finding reliable employees (including reliable enough to show up for work very early in the morning)
Yeah I recently walked into a very fancy European city center shop, obviously the owner took pride in what they do and the products where of high quality and the customers were there.
but the price was so much higher than amazon for the same product that it didn't make sense... I asked the owner and he complained about rent.
It obviously looks good from far, but if you know you're running a business at a negative to the customer fewer and fewer will show up year over year.
I mean, I will never give a penny to Amazon again, so I might patronize that establishment.
But yes, few people think like me, and probably every neighborhood business that isn't a service or a chain restaurant will be gone in a fairly short time.
The thought just horrifies me.
What are all these people going to do?
Adults who are making a good living, who have no skill sets other than dealing politely with humans and helping them? They aren't going to retrain for an STEM position. Their jobs are going to be replaced by nothing at all, just like we did with instrumentalists, just like we are doing with artists, just like we will do with drivers as soon as we can, which seems to be a bit slower than anticipated, but is inevitable.
they always found a new way to live, 100 years ago 92% of the general public worked on a farm, thank god for the tractor and automation that we don't have to physically slave away for 12 hours a day 6 days a week to earn a living.
optimizations in the system always lead to general improvements for everyone involved. it just might get ugly in the meantime while it's happening.
and ask yourself what if the city center stops being outlets for all those things that you can find online how many different ways can that space be used that might have positive impact (more yoga studios, more art exhibitions, more workshops places, more ....).
On the amazon comparison, there can be a few aspects at play, outside of just not liking Amazon as a company.
- Many people in europe don't pay for Prime, so for them shipping costs aren't free. Then many shops also don't use Amazon's delivery, and won't be free for Prime members
- Deliveries were a real PITA in dense neighborhood before covid. Perhaps it's better now but I doubt it's completely solved.
I once got a call from a driver that got lost in our neighborhood and was expected to do something while at work. And leaving packages on your doorstep isn't an option. They introduced lockers, so uou take it at some train station, but otherwise you'd need it delivered to your job and bring it home from there (carrying the package in public transport usually), or go line up at some random shop dozens of kilometers away from your home.
- You aren't guaranteed it's actually the same item you saw in shop. It might be the same brand and type, but acually the size or color is different. Perhaps the saler put the package size everywhere instead of the actual product, or they replaced the product and didn't update etc. You easily get a exchange or refund, but go through the return and delivery process again. It happened a lot with small vendors, especially for high rotation kitchen items.
Japan has a very service oriented business culture and from what I can tell a lot of the loyalty is based on knowing the owner and their family. Is it possible so many Japanese are unwilling to take over a business because they predict that the longtime customers will feel alienated and underwhelmed by the relationship with the new owner? In other words, do potential buyers purposefully avoid taking over business because they know they cannot live up to expectations in the same way a family member can?
> "In Japan, 98% of adoptions are actually adult men, aged between 20-30 years old — not children."
> "In Japan, there is a several-hundred-year-old tradition in which businesses adopt their executives so companies or institutions are "family-run" groups. In other words, bosses adopt their employees."
> Nowadays, legal adoption of this kind is paired up with an arranged marriage — known as "omiai" — of a daughter, meaning the adopted son becomes son and son-in-law at the same time because he changes his name to the wife's family name ("mukoyoshi").
So, daughter marries son-in-law, who is "adopted" into the family and carries on the family name.
The absolute number is around 80,000 per year, which is considerable, albeit not huge compared to a population of over 100M. (For comparison, the US has about 140,000 with a 3x larger population.)
The bit that is misleading is that adopting or even fostering children not related to you is vanishingly rare in Japan, nearly all orphans end up in orphanages instead.
I don't know if it's still a thing, but in Japan some business owners with no heir used to adopt adults for them to take over the business. It's like you said, starting as an apprentice, and if the owner trust him enough he'll adopt him, the apprentice litterally taking the family name of the business owner.
It's a thing everywhere, and doesn't require adoption (or making one of your child's spouses your successor.)
I know a printer right now where the owner has been working towards retiring and selling the business to his now-manager eventual-successor for a few years. The owner has reduced his work responsibilities to sales only at this point, and the goal has been to make his networks comfortable with his successor as he slips away (to live closer to his grandchildren, I bet.)
A related problem is when a child is available to take over the company but turns out not to be competent and the company ends up failing. I’ve been living in Japan for forty years, and I’ve known a half dozen such cases personally. Several failed when the succession reached the third generation: the founder had been talented and ambitious and made the company a success; his son was less talented but, having been mentored by his father, worked hard and kept the company going reasonably well; and the grandson was a spoiled goof-off who didn’t take the job seriously. In one case I know, several dozen employees lost their lifelong jobs as a result.
Not only in Japan; there have been many similar cases in the U.S. as well. Family businesses rarely do as well when the children or grandchildren take over. Though, of course, there are a few exceptions.
The blame is a bit on the first and second generation as well though. Ideally, once a company grows large enough, there should be a layer of upper management as well that has both the competence and the freedom to make actual decisions... meaning that even in the case the company owners end up being dumb-as-rocks spoiled morons, the company survives.
However, many on the smaller side go the way that the old 80+ generation keeps on micromanaging decades after their children have taken charge - a real problem in the German Mittelstand, because these fossils grew up with faxes and simply don't get the requirements of the modern age. They simply can't accept the idea that they have done their part once they reached retirement age and it is a natural requirement for them to actually retire so that the younger generations can learn and rise!
Are the children shying away from it because whatever business it is just isn't something they like (i.e. vegans not wanting to take over a butcher's shop), are they finding better offers outside of the family business (i.e. the businesses aren't making money), do they just not need to work because the business have made the family wealth (which is what I see a lot in Germany), or is it something else entirely?
Having seen this happen a few times (although in Europe) it is almost always that simply no one wanted to work in that sector. It is a lot more common these days that children have gone off to university and gotten an education in something that actually interests them, and then naturally they want to work in the field instead. It doesn't even have to be as extreme as "vegans not wanting to take over a butcher's shop", but simply "I'd rather be an architect than sell farming equipment", even if selling farming equipment might pay better.
And if they are in the Japanese career system, likely more stability and less uncertainty. Owning even a self-sustaining small business isn't always that great style of living.
Exactly. I could either take over a back breaking plumbing business and kiss my knees goodbye at 45 or take a cushy software job for a relatively small pay cut.
It happens here in the US too--family businesses that have no one to take over when the owners retire or die. If they haven't prepared a successor--whether a next-gen family member or employee, few may be willing to step in. So the business will just close.
It does. It often also happens even when there are people to take over, like in my families case. My dad didn't want me to inherit my parents business, in his words I would be inheriting debt.
This seems like a startup opportunity. Even if risking outsider status of seeking foreigners and finding a way to transition continuity of a particular shop's philosophy, it's terrible when a good business, like a living organism, is killed unnecessarily.
Certainly there are highly-motivated foreigners who would migrate from places like Africa, Eastern Europe, and SE Asia who would leap to "rescue" a viable business in some manner.
The business afterwards would not be the same, but it would be better than destroying all that hard work (and value) and the customers' delight.
The culture and language would need to be learned and customers' convinced of the new owner's business skills, but these are not impossible barriers.
I hate to see value thrown away, be it small-time manufacturing of specialized art, food, or equipment or even a corner grocery store... value thrown away is setting fire to money.
In the next years I’ll have to face the same question.
One of my parents manages and also own a part of a century old company, I’m sure must be one of the oldest continually running companies in my country.
After a century though, the percentage of the company that we actually own is smallish, perhaps about 20%, and the rest is owned by more distant relatives not involved in the administration.
One part of me would like to continue running the company, even though I’d have to take a pay cut. But it would only make sense if I owned a larger part of the business, which would be by its own an expensive thing to do.
Have you mentioned that to your distant relatives? They might be more interested in x/2% (or even x/4%) of something, instead of x% of nothing. I guess worse case they would try to help with admin.
Why would they accept a discount over what they could get if they just sold the whole company? In my experience of these situations it has little to do with the lack of "smarts" and everything to do with the lack of time and interest. In fact in many cases the 'smart' thing to do is to just sell and walk away, and the decision to keep going is more based on various notions of family 'loyalty' and tradition and responsibility, rather than actual "business smarts".
> But it would only make sense if I owned a larger part of the business
Co-owned companies are not easy to run, but when You have more than 10% of shares, You already have hard matter, which You could use as foundations for future grow of Your shares, if other coowners are not smart/experienced enough.
And You don't need to make deal with daemon, in most cases You just need to know very well, what You really want in Your life and what You want to pay for it.
Here in Germany I heard this a lot too as our economy is highly reliant on small family business and there's a lot of succession questions coming up as a huge chunk of the workforce ages into retirement.
Despite lots of political kerfuffle a few years ago immigration has been a huge boon. I can't tell you how often I've personally heard how people were ready to close down long existing family businesses because they had nobody to take over until they got immigrants into vocational programs who now look like they may continue the business in the future.
It's not just numbers either. A lot of domestic younger people were so set on going to uni and going to work for large firms that they just didn't want to take over their parents agricultural, trades or crafts business. In particular talking to Syrians this always stood out to me. A lot of them just seemed thankful for the stability and security that comes from our Mittelstand that we tend to take for granted.
Interesting that you mention Syrians. I know Nassim Taleb talks a lot about people from the Levant really prize running your own business. People who work in a regular office job get little respect even if they earn more money. Skin in the game.
Im working in IT (kind of obvious on HN) and I’m playing with the thought of buying some kind of business from someone who is retiring. Something completely different (like plumbing or electrician), where my knowledge is close to zero. It would be quite a risk, but in IT we are used to learning a lot of new things quickly. And I would need to have employees who are experts in that field anyway.
A lot of those professions became way more complicated in the last years (smart homes, computerized appliances, …), and many people who stepped up their career from being craftsmen have trouble running those businesses nowadays.
I did exactly this. Bought a tiny zero-tech business from an old guy. He wants to retire and nobody wants his business, so I got a steal of a deal.
My plan is to turn off the fax machines, start using email and see if I can automate parts of it or combine with another similar acquisition in a couple of years.
Just beware that buying a business is complicated and you need to keep your end clean, legally speaking.
I am getting this year this nice electrician’s certificate. If you’re studied electrical engineer 2 week course is enough. At least in Germany. I think it’s fair deal.
From a circuitry perspective, what most electricians deal with is relatively simple and obvious to an electrical engineer. Diagnosing issues in an electrical system is certain a familiar skill to any electrical engineer, so that part of the job is easy enough.
I would seriously expect a certification to be based primarily on the electrical safety/building code, possibly with some fault diagnostics stuff and basic theory of operation of the circuits involved mixed in.
I would expect little if any of the practical skills to be tested in most such certifications, so the required studying would mostly be about what the safety/building code required.
The regulators really won’t care about your skill at snaking wires through walls, ability to bend conduit into a nice curve, etc. Most practical skills needed fall into this category. If you are bad at those things, it might slow you down, require you to redo things more often, or even require you use more expensive parts to avoid needing those skills, or whatever.
Lacking such skills mostly just means you won’t be price competitive with others, which is your problem, not the governments. The government just cares that the result (and possibly intermediate steps) is safe and meets code. The fact that it took you longer than most competitors, and you made a much bigger mess than most of them isn’t really a major concern.
I would not expect it to take too terribly long to study up for the safety/building code portions enough to pass, if already familiar with how electricity works.
I would find a 2 week course entirely plausible to get up to speed enough to be able to pass such a certification test, if you already know the basics of how electricity works, which makes some of the safety rules relatively obvious, and should make learning the remaining rules easier.
A lot depends on the jurisdiction and what they want to test. For example some jurisdictions might want to test all electricians on the >600V stuff rules, but since many electricians will never touch that stuff working is residential or non-industrial commercial, other jurisdictions would omit that from the certifications, or have a sperate certification for that part of code.
A lot of complexity of the code comes from the code laying out general rules, and then some exceptions. While I'd expect such a test to cover some of the more commonly used exceptions, and exceptions that are more restrictive than the general rule, some jurisdictions probably won't test about less common exceptions that make rules more permissive. In those scenarios knowing the general rule is probably good enough for safety. Applying the more restrictive general rule when an exception was available often won't harm safety.
2 weeks may be a bit short, even for somebody who learns quick, but 6-12 weeks should totally do it. And that’s still feasible. It’s not rocket science after all.
There's more trouble ahead with inheritance tax for real estate being an unsolved problem since the begin of the year with limits not adapted to new property valuation requirements.
Oddly enough, I talked to a college friend on Sunday (our yearly tradition), and he has a thriving business helping buyers of such businesses! (Not in Japan, though.)
There are a lot of older people who used to own businesses, and are looking for something new to run in their semi-retirement years. Once they find one, he helps them complete the sale.
I wouldn't have thought there was a business there, but apparently there is.
If I wouldn't have seen two people close to me get absolutely crushed by starting a business in their childhood dream job, I might be a startup CEO too.
Now I just work for other people for salary and have very little stress in my life.
Reminds me of a different but somewhat similar situation faced in the US by the Gamble-Skogmo holdings [0] - 4300 stores - back in the 1970s. The complex lashup (dozens of store names) was decades old, the aging owner wanted out, the purchaser went bankrupt in two years. Some of the pieces survived (Red Owl to SuperValu), the rest fell apart. Maybe a co-op could work.
Especially as it seems in this case the customers are all local farmer who probably know each other. They would save the 30% profit the company apparently makes. However if the current owner really works 15 hours a day and sleeps in the office to keep the place running he might have to be replaced by two employees, and with the 500k debt the whole thing may not even be worth it as a co-op.
It seems that sometimes clients who have enjoyed the business for a long time will offer to take it over. But they usually need to have that "passion" to do it.
The underlying problem is that having kids is sort of irrational, and the strong cultural pressure to do so anyway that used to be there is gone (there's still some pressure, but a far cry from what it used to be).
I say this as a dad: having a kid, especially the first few years, is like having the world's worst second job.
You get paid? No, you pay to have the job! Set hours? No, you're always on call! You might get an occasional break for a few hours, if you pay up for it! Decent working conditions? How does constantly cleaning up shit and piss sound? Ah, but you could get out of it if you change your mind, right? Sure...after your 18 year long contract is up.
Obviously I'm glossing over the emotional angle, but yeah, from a material perspective having kids is fucking dumb, and for all you know spending that time and money with existing friends and family would've actually left you happier overall. It's a big irrational gamble in a lot of ways.
Anyway, you can't fix all of that, but it would be possible for society, via the government, to fix some of it. For example, you could implement subsidies to the point where having kids had a net zero impact on your finances, so that you wouldn't be looking at lowered standard of living or reduced retirement savings from having children.
Of course many would object to this, because culturally we believe that parents should be people who accept a worse standard of living with a smile on their face. That's stupid, of course, which is exactly why birth rates are below replacement in pretty much all the developed world, and beyond. People may be okay with the emotional effort involved in raising children, but telling them to throw away going out as a couple, abandon most of their nicer vacations, blah blah blah isn't gonna sell the idea.
>the strong cultural pressure to do so anyway that used to be there is gone (there's still some pressure, but a far cry from what it used to be).
These days, the cultural pressure is to have 1-2 kids, not a whole bunch.
So, with the people who do sign up for this "world's second worst job" only having 1-2 (occasionally 3), and a bunch of others refusing, we end up with birthrates between 1.2 and 1.8, roughly, which isn't enough to sustain the population (this would require a rate of 2.1).
People still want to have kids, but how many people want to repeat all the worst parts of childrearing 3-8 times? Most couples do it once or twice and they've had enough.
>you could implement subsidies to the point where having kids had a net zero impact on your finances,
Honestly, I don't see how this is possible without severely taxing people who don't have any kids, and that's not going to go over well (plus it would screw over all the people who haven't had kids yet, so they're unable to save any money for when they do).
I think the ultimate solution to this is going to look like the novel Brave New World: we're going to have to resort to raising the next generation in institutions.
Many people will celebrate a population crash back to 2 billion as long as it’s not via war or pandemic. The problem will be that getting back to 2 billion is likely to raise the average age so high that you actually do have to raise children in bottles because it’s medically dangerous or impossible for the existing population to have offspring.
One set of data points to look at might be the relative stress levels of new parents who have given birth to the child versus ones who adopted an infant. The act of childbirth is exhausting, and then you’re sent home with a tiny lizard full of self destruct buttons that you have to take care of. Showing up on day one well rested has got to be a factor.
We won’t do it until there aren’t enough young people to employ at retirement homes, but we are going to have to treat parenting as a profession, which is going to ruffle people who have made a hobby out of complaining about welfare queens.
We’ve increased parental leave in parts of the first world but I think we are going to have to increase the deductions for dependents and may have to make childcare expenses tax deductible, because otherwise you have people working for essentially no net income just to stay relevant in their career and funneling all of the money to daycare.
But in the great scheme of things, that's fine: because developing nations crank out many, many more bodies than they could ever feed. The worldwide rate of population growth is still massive, the only way to make things stable is to allow countries to slow down once they're wealthy enough.
> While their population is booming they can't replace the world.
I wouldn't be too sure about that. Global population is growing at an astonishing pace, and Malthus continues to be very popular (even here on HN, where people should know better).
> if wealth is a negative for evolutionary fitness
Wealth will eventually take us to other planets, which is arguably the pinnacle of evolutionary fitness.
Developing nations are supposed to develop themselves, not to replace our failures in enticing people to breed.
How are these nations supposed to develop when we lure their best of the young away every year, and lots of them don't even make it but die along the route in the Mediterranean or end up in a slave camp in Libya, Italy or Spain?
Well, in theory some people will go back to their home country with skills, capital, and connections developed while in the richer countries, sensing opportunity in a faster growing market. I know I've read articles about this with Indians coming back from the states.
That said, many of these countries have issues with hilariously poor governance and civil society which handicaps growth and strangles the young's ambitions, so I don't blame anyone for leaving and not coming back either.
> How are these nations supposed to develop when we lure their best of the young away
The same way other countries did it (and still do): remittances.
Now, I'm not saying the current state of things is acceptable (it isn't), but it's not about stemming the flow as much as allowing it to be a net positive for the source countries.
An aging population and fewer children may be issues, but when zero family members and zero employees want to rub the business, they don't seem like the main problem.
It's a country with 92% of people living in cities, despite government intervention to support rural areas. People keep making the choice to leave.
If 92% of the people live in the city this means the country side are only 8% of votes. If your goal is to be in the power rather than making good decisions in the long term you do decisions that will be popular in the short term at any cost. Extend it to other large groups and you end up with a recipe for disaster.
If politicians are conditioned like this (and I believe this has to be the situation for most developed countries even if it's with different topics), there is no way we can work well in the long term. This is a massive problem with democracy...
I want to clarify that I'm not advocating for dictatorships at all, period. I think that democracy is actually the best system that mankind has had so far.
In America we solve this problem with the much maligned electoral college. Keeps the folks in highly populated coastal cities from controlling the whole country.
Correction, it’s not the electoral college itself but the senate primarily that favors representatives from the countryside (and not really countryside so much as low population states. Voters in states with both countryside and huge cities, say Texas, are also underrepresented in the Senate)
Electoral college votes for a state are senate seats plus house seats. House is roughly population based.
Senate is 2 per state and constitutes half the legislative branch. So it very heavily favors representation for low-population states.
House has significantly more seats than senate (4X), so electoral college only slightly favors low population states.
My issue with electoral college isn’t the weighting but the voting. First past the post is idiotic; every democrat in a red state gets their vote ignored and every Republican in a blue state gets their vote ignored, meanwhile purple states are chucked marketing funds by the boatload. It’s inherently divisive because there’s no political reason for a candidate to unite a state that’s already won or lost, like California or Texas.
As very experienced in such matters (self run few businesses, startup exp, lot of consulting), must say, "business is profitable" is not enough.
We name this trend - non-system business, when business closely tied to owner/founder, so it will disappear when for some reason owner/founder will not work.
And in many cases I seen, these ties are not naturally defined by market or other natural causes, but are integral part of behavior of owner, mean, he made this business defective.
For example, in ex-USSR countries, MOST businesses intentionally made non-systematic, because our law enforcement is not working good, and owners are fear, if business will not closely tied to owner, some criminals will take it away.
And other must say, there are also many cases, where it is too expensive, to fix such business. Just, it's owner gather all cream in past, and have not bother about make healthy systematic business, and now cry.
And finally must say, I know many cases, when LOCAL community depend on such non-system business. What to do? Unfortunately, it is problem of this local community and this community most probably, will be subject, deeply interested to solve problem (nobody else). In such case, local community must be ready, and take over business if owner give away, or do alternative quickly, to fill market gap, if owner will decide to just close business.
this is quite a hard problem for Japan to solve tbh. it's a beautiful country, however originally they're not immigrant friendly, you can't even get a citizenship back then.
Because of the working culture, many of the younger generations are reluctant to have family, apart from that the stagflation is getting worse and hardly solved.
I'm not really sure what to do as a leader of Japan as well tbh, hopefully they find out what to do before all is too late
The workforce that should be technically literate that would have been hired in the 90's, suffered that whole decade and couldn't get hired because the bubble popped and the companies kept on current workers and didn't hire. So now they have a lot of really old tech illiterate workers and younger ones that have to do the technical work (basic computer work for the old workers) and suffer long hours due to inefficiencies. They need to off load any older worker who can't keep up and that is also keeping the younger generations locked down to working 12 hours a day and modernize.
From the (few) Japanese people I know, the workplace culture can be grim - long hours and crushing hierarchy. It sounds all consuming. Time is very much lacking.
In post-soviet countries and especially Russia, there are virtually no businesses older than 30 years (communism means no business to speak of), and most of them are quite new still, since there were a few different epochs already and every one had its own mass extinction event at the end.
The upside is that almost everything is run by people who are not old, hence not stuck in the past. Also, gravitate towards hiring instead of famity ties, and towards horizontal growth instead of forever keeping a single store or eatery.
The downside being that most places/services simply suck due to incompetence and cynicism. Corners cut, rules frequently disobeyed, mediocrity wins, and worker frustration means a revolving door. This is exacerbated by a stingy consumer base with no sense of loyalty. No thanks.
I don’t know which post-Soviet reality you come from but the one I live in has a reputation for miraculous economic recovery. And even here most people aspire to leave and succeed elsewhere.
It is not the same scale but the same issue as in article happens here. There is huge meat-processing plant next town, build from nothing in those 30 years and owner had to sell it to some big corporation since his children didn't want to take over. And that is would be management job, not crazy overworking yourself for pennies, like those examples from japan.
Lot of great comments here. Couple things I've seen in America talking to Boomers who are (trying) to sell their business.
1) the owner is absolutely integral for day to day ops. These businesses in all practicality are people who are self employed at a high level (if owner isn't there, the place doesn't run).
2) the asking price for some of these businesses can be absurd, mostly due to the Boomer needing it to fund retirement, or a large injection of capital late in their life. They have a mentality that this is America, and it's our god given birth rite to grow indefinitely, etc. they've put their life and soul into it and sometimes don't see economic realities. Also, they cook the hell out of their books. A lot of this passes through the cracks because no accountant or tax person even understands the business or expenses.
(2) is definitely a regular occurrence in my experience talking with retirement age or older business owners. There is this inherent misjudgement of value, the only way to describe it is to compare it to car owners who put $X into their car to modify it or repair it. Then turning around and saying the cost to buy is (stock price) + $X.
And there is no bargaining with them, their way or the highway. They especially don't want to hear cost versus ROI based on profits of the past 5 years. So honestly, in my experience - start your own small company and keep an eye out for when their business folds because no one will buy at inflated prices... Then buy what you need from the auction they eventually have to recoup some money from their shuttered business.
You're spot on. At the end of the day there really isn't any bargaining with them. They either forcibly sell to deal with bills or they literally die with it.
"But you can make money look at all the money I made in the past" while you look at their last 3 sales years and it was abysmal because they started to slow down / retire themselves.
Society at large benefits from a stable, ongoing population. But the burden of keeping that going obviously falls much moreso on parents than non-parents. You can try to even things out more via subsidies, but non-parents will quickly start objecting, even if they're materially still better off than parents.
It used to be cultural pressure, combined with kids being not as materially demanding, meant that people had kids anyway. Obviously less true today.
As much as they are a great country, there is a level of xenophobia there still. Even in the major cities. To clarify, if you are not Japanese they will be courteous to you but you will still be classified as an other. Take this however you will, but I have a sibling who works there, has a wife (Japanese citizen) and two kids there, and it is definitely one of the aspects that sounds the most grating. Especially when it comes to the potential, but subtle, ostracization of the kids when they are going through school
Resident is not the same as citizen, which is what OP mentioned. Having "resident" status in a country generally gives you many perks of being a citizen without actually becoming one. Usually things like being able to open a bank account, working legally, getting a drivers license, etc. with the "liability" of possibly having to pay into the equivalent of social security (and other things, can't vote for example).
This does not change any citizenship status on either side.
A small business owner will say he makes $400K profit a year, but wants to sell it for $2M (5 times $400K). What he doesn't tell you is that $400K includes his salary. As an owner, one needs to spend 60 hrs a week to run such a business. Here, $400k is just the salary for oneself to run that business. No profit left.
The people who have means to buy such a business (like the bay area tech people), don't want to buy such businesses, because there is no upside. The people who want to run such a business (say, a security guard working for Pinkerton), don't have the means to buy such a business.
You've hit the nail on the head. Small business valuation is hard and surprising. Almost by definition a small business has not been systematized and abstracted. The owner is vital to the operations.
This is in strong contrast with medium or large businesses where a professional management layer exists. Thus allowing the owner, even if nominally the CEO, to relax and ignore day to day operations.
Thus small business are best through of as a job, not an asset.
I agree with you. Retiring owners of small businesses seems to want 5 times the profit, even though he appears to be listing for 3 times the profit. Once you go through the books properly, that's what happens.
Before we bought a house (in SF) we rented. My landlord was born in SF and owned his own home in Daly City. He inherited the house from his mom for free with a 200k tax base on a 1.1m home.
He owned a food truck that was grandfathered by SF - sometime in the 70s he parked on city property (the government area) and ended up squatting there so long the city let him stay. His closest competitors were two blocks away. You'd think that business would have premium value - no one can get a permit or permission to setup a similar business in that area and anyone working in the area had to walk several blocks to find competition. He parked the truck in his mom's garage in SF until we rented the house (free enclosed parking, with charging, water tap and drainage!)
Instead he retired and shut it down because no one would make enough money operating the business to want to take it over. Driving your food truck 2 hours every day was just not enticing and most people wouldn't be able to find a safe place to park the truck with electrical and water access.
The only people capable of operating that business were old people who bought their property cheap in the 60s/70s or children who inherited property for free.
It isn't always that no one wants the business... sometimes the personal economics make it impractical.
I looked at a few and even took over 1 from someone retiring; the amount they want to sell for here in the west is often too high for all the risk involved in taking something over you have less experience with than the retiring founder. Valuations are interesting but for many small businesses, it is not very clear if it’s worthwhile unless you have extensive experience in that market/area or yourself a company that benefits from taking over the other company.
>>I heard in the West its similar, lots of baby boomers want to retire with small businesses that no one wants to take over.
Yes[1], and this becomes even more complicated when these baby boomer small business owners are/were planning on the sale of their business as a way to (partially) fund their retirement, whether in future cash flows as a residual equity owner or lump-sum with (too) high valuations.
It’s because we invented money, basically. If you want your kids to have a head start you buy then a college education, a down payment on a house, etc. When the world was less liquid it made sense that the only value you could give your kid was an apprenticeship.
The same thing is happening all over Western Europe too. There are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed skills/knowledge to run a business.
> But their own children have now mostly moved to cities in search of higher-paying, less onerous work.
Perhaps they have plenty of skills, look at the rewards, and "Nope" right out.
Running a small business is ferociously hard, and you are almost always better off taking a nice, cushy, well-paying salary somewhere if you have the option--in spite of the general HN zeitgeist, advice, and bias towards startups.
But with most of those cushy desk jobs it’s really hard to make a living nowadays. 95% will probably never be able to buy a house, and also owning a car got too expensive for many of them (although that may be a thing). As a small business owner you can easily make two or three times what a white collar worker with a masters degree makes. And they usually keep some cash on the side, so they don’t have to pay 50% taxes, like employees do.
Yep, housing in Japan isn't really that expensive, as there's lots of options for very small and inexpensive places to live. You can also get extremely low-interest housing loans here.
They're not going to make it illegal to build housing in places where people want to live; that would require a huge change to the national zoning law, which would never happen. The current law works extremely well. Other countries really should learn from Japan's example, as urban planning here is fantastic compared to anyplace else I've been.
You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities
In Europe we are currently mostly selecting refugees. Most of the migration of qualified people is taking place inside the European Union, where people can move and work freely. Well educated people from other countries usually pick the US or Canada, as they are actively looking for qualified people.
I thought OP meant refugees when I read it. You typically don't become a refugee ending up in Europe by sitting still in your city of origin, then suddenly being airlifted into Germany.
It's hard work ending up in Europe. You have to be driven, one way or another, to endure that journey.
It's hard work, but if you come at 18 you're missing 11-12 years of employer-relevant schooling compared to your local peers, and your parents aren't there to encourage you to value education.
Refugees are at a disadvantage in terms of employability, capital, and in academic capital, while the European labor market has high unemployment, few low-skilled jobs, and high educational demands on most jobs.
They may be driven, but the deck is stacked against them, which is why we aren't seeing more impressive outcomes for these groups.
Education, language, and refugee-specific labour restrictions are the biggest issue.
By education I don't even mean they're undereducated - for example over 40% of Syrian refugees here in Ireland are college educated, comparable to the overall level nationally. But their educational institutions are unknown here, and not necessarily trusted - and a limited grasp of the language is always going to hold you back. We have a significant shortage of medical staff here but Ukrainian doctors have so far been unable to enter the workforce because it takes about a year to go through exams to verify their qualifications.
Plus asylum seekers in many countries are banned from working at all - hard to have a good economic outcome when you're not allowed to earn an income, sometimes for years.
> There are increasingly fewer young people and a lot of them are first or second generation immigrants, that are lacking the needed skills/knowledge to run a business.
That reads to me that immigrants are less likely and don't have the skills to be entrepreneurs.
> You have to remember that immigrants tend to be self-selected - they're the people with the get up and go to leave their lives and travel to another country and make another new life - of course there are more entrepreneurs in immigrant communities
On top of self-selection, they are also selected by the immigration system, which is... not a neutral force.
In full immersion it only takes a few months to know enough of a language to be autonomous in a country. The hardest part is to find trustable lawyers that can translate for you the most complicated bits.
In my experience, it's the exact opposite. It's the first and second generation immigrants who tend to have more kids and who tend to bring in fresh labour pools, and therefore more business making and running opportunities. This is a longstanding problem for any country that has an aging population, but the going solution (at least in Europe) has been to import labour by turning the needle on immigration. Japan hasn't done this, and they're notoriously anti-immigration. Think about the businesses that get created - local cultural food shops, cultural clothing shops, even in some cases entire submarkets to service immigrant communities. As time goes on, like or not, but countries that failed to adapt to the global era will fall behind to those willing to take a chance on immigration.
>Japan hasn't done this, and they're notoriously anti-immigration.
No, they're not. Immigration laws were reformed completely in the last decade, and it's extremely easy to immigrate here if you have valuable skills. Lots of service jobs are also being filled by immigrants from SE Asia now.
Not sure if that’s because of the same reason. Most people I see here who are in a position to take on something like taking over a running business also usually already have some kind of career or business and are not interested in more risk, responsibility or harder work. They rather take an easier life with family and friends.
Western European here (Lisbon, Portugal). One outstanding point to me from the article is that even very successful businesses are having trouble finding successors.
I know very few successful businesses here. Believe you me, those are not lacking suitors, inheritors, successors or what have you in Portugal. There's a sad story of economic opportunity between the lines.
You are assuming that people not wanting to have kids has to do with some worldwide sentiment rather than the simple reality on the ground – it is just not financially viable anymore. Costs like housing, healthcare and college tuition have risen thousands of percent more than inflation and wage growth in the last few decades. More and more households have both spouses working full time and still not able to afford a decent house or minor luxuries. Add in childcare, education, supplies and more for 1-2 kids and the math simply doesn't add up.
I think this way of looking at things is rather recent historically speaking, and may in fact be part of the antinatalist sentiment you are trying to refute. Globally, improved standards of living have decreased birthrates, not increased them. If the real reason was finances, this would not happen. I think you have to consider peoples' shifting priorities, and look at what is expected culturally.
Look at our recent ancestors. There was a baby boom after WWII when times were good, but before then in the 1930s, people still had a net positive birthrate. This was true throughout our history except in the very worst of times. People simply prioritized having children. Children were the luxury. People were willing to have leaner times in order to have children. They were not considered a burden or a drain. They were a gift, for which a temporary sacrifice of small luxuries was considered worth it.
One could argue that the increased availability of contraception was a big part of the cause, and that people wanted less children but couldn't achieve that. But really contraception was available long before birthrates started declining, and what changed most of all was cultural attitudes towards contraception.
If you want to talk history, people would have 15-20 kids, 4 would survive to adulthood, and would be put to work in the fields to support the family. Daughters would often be abandoned or killed at birth because they were considered a burden. Developed countries have lower birth rates because (1) they don't need the extra labor and (2) more women have careers and don't want to keep popping out kids. None of it has anything to do with children being a "gift". Practical concerns have always and will always win out.
We don't even need to speculate. Ask married couples in the US who are eager to start a family what they are waiting for, and better financial security will be #1 on the list.
> We don't even need to speculate. Ask married couples in the US who are eager to start a family what they are waiting for, and better financial security will be #1 on the list.
I understand this. My point was, almost every previous generation lived with objectively less financial security and a lower standard of living, and they still chose to have more children. We can't say people are more financially insecure than before. It just isn't true, on the whole. So, logically speaking, it must be true that those same concerns would often not have stopped this hypothetical couple's grandparents or great grandparents... Because they didn't. And I don't think you can say in good faith that they all had more children for monetary reasons like labor.
Look at first generation immigrants from third world countries. They tend to have a ton more kids than the existing populace, while at the same time being much poorer than average. Then, by the 2nd (or 3rd) generation, that birthrate difference disappears completely. I bet if you were to ask this group why, they would talk about financial insecurity. But that didn't stop their parents (or grandparents), despite being much more financially insecure.
So besides being more well off, what else changes between 1st and 3rd generation immigrants? Integration into the Western culture.
We don't even need to look back into history, right here today poorer regions have higher birth rates.
Ergo: A poorer society has more children. A richer society has fewer children.
It's a phenomenon that continues to flabbergast me.
Logic would seem to indicate that a more plentiful environment (a richer society) would lead to more children due to a surplus of life's necessities. But the reality is the exact opposite.
I don't know why this is the case, but it's flabbergasting. It almost seems like evolution strives to eliminate those that find too much success.
Perhaps -
1) The people in the richer society are exposed to more ideas and options than the people in poorer societies, which makes them evaluate having/not having children vs "have them because everyone does it"
2) The people in richer societies have a social security net/wealth to fall back on in their old age, whereas the poorer societies are always "hand to mouth" without having the luxury of any retirement savings - all their time and energy goes just for basic survival - and they need children to support them in their old age.
>Logic would seem to indicate that a more plentiful environment (a richer society) would lead to more children due to a surplus of life's necessities.
Based on seeing my wife’s experience of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, without any complications, I would not agree the above statement.
Based on speaking to my women members of my family, friends, and the data, it is evident that childbirth/child rearing is a costly undertaking, not measurable in any “normal” amount of money.
So logically, I would expect women to have a couple kids (due to wanting to be mothers, or whatever), but each additional kid is at a very high marginal cost (on their body).
I would posit poorer regions have higher birthrates simply because women lack the knowledge and power to obtain and use contraception. Even in poorer regions, giving women freedom (economic freedom and security such that they are deciding when to get pregnant), and access to contraception will make the birthrate drop.
>>> A poorer society has more children. A richer society has fewer children.
>>>It's a phenomenon that continues to flabbergast me.
Poor people can't afford hobbies, vacations, or VR headsets. So they spend what leisure time they have doing a highly-rewarding activity that is free: fucking. Do that enough times, and eventually people stop pulling out.....and boom population growth.
Also wealthier people with hobbies perhaps become inherently a bit anti-social (maybe I'm projecting...)? The value proposition of dopamine-delivering activities exceeds the perceived value of childrearing?
Do the richer societies actually have surplus as in the money used to buy these things? At least on the middle-class or working class level? Sure they can afford more stuff than poorer countries, but do they have higher relative surplus? While they are richer, many things are lot more expensive in relation.
Is the surplus actually enough to feed, house, cloth, entertain etc. the children? Maybe poorer have cheaper costs thus their surplus can better afford this as the quality desired is lower?
>Look at first generation immigrants from third world countries. They tend to have a ton more kids than the existing populace, while at the same time being much poorer than average.
The data below indicates otherwise.
I assume it is because contraception is far more available.
See figure 3, showing foreign born vs native born statistics for US. Both show big drops in fertility rate between 1990 and 2019:
Financial security is the reason - if people don't have financial security, they'll expect their children to care for them in their old age when they're unable to earn.
That's the case in most (all?) immigrants cultures - children are expected to, and do, take care of their parents in their old age (exceptions are always there ofc).
After families are established and have financial security, they no longer need to rely on their children in their old age - at which point it becomes a choice.
>But really contraception was available long before birthrates started declining, and what changed most of all was cultural attitudes towards contraception.
The important statistic would be birthrates after women gained access to convenient and obtainable (cheap or subsidized) contraception.
Did women really have access to effective contraception before the sharp drop in this graph? Or were they having kids because they did not have control over it?
It seems to me, anecdotally, that the number of kids you have is inversely correlated with the amount of money you earn. My blue collar friends have the third kid in the oven, my DINK attorney friends are worried about "financial viability" while they watch their fertility window slip away...
Is your blue collar friend religious and the dink is not? In my personal experience that has been a better indicator because the religious educated people have kids and the non religious blue collars tend to have less kids
Is it possible your blue collar friends are more financially secure than your DINK attorney friends?
An attorney could be 26 and hundreds of thousands in debt and effectively earning $30 per hour working 60 hour weeks earning $100k per year, while a plumber/hvac/welder/electrician/etc could be earning $100k per year with no debt by the time they are 25.
1) Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe.
2) Citation needed for housing vs wages for the "last few decades". Price-to-income ratios have increased only a little bit before 2020 compared to either 1950 or 2000, as far as I remember.
3) If you take a given region (e.g. Europe, or East Asia) birth rates have fallen more in more affluent countries.
Note how the GP says "worldwide", not "in Palo Alto" ;)
> Healthcare and college tuition are a much bigger problem in the USA than e.g. in Europe, and yet birth rates have fallen more in Europe.
Immigration is a huge confound here: for many years the U.S. had a younger population for that reason but since the rise of nativism that’s been changing.
Europe is also far from a monolith. I’d have to search for an article I read a few months back but they found that while healthcare is important the main differentiating factors were basically support for families with very young children and helping mothers go back to work. IIRC, France was doing pretty well because they had things like gap childcare so it’s not a question of, say, someone having to only consider jobs which allow them to be available to pick a 5 year old up every day at 3:30.
That goes back to the rational actor explanation: if women are marginally employed, as was often the case historically when many jobs excluded them outright, the tradeoff for having another child was lower. If women can have full careers, the desire to have more children is forced into conflict with the professional and financial rewards for alternatives (especially if it’s hard to later re-enter the workforce).
What if the problem is the cost of degrees? I think it's possible that many degrees are not worth the money and maybe we should stop encouraging people to get them. In most cases that seems like a reasonable conclusion. Degrees are also probably creating a lot of social problems I won't discuss.
They laden people, in particular women, with debt. Women have more student loan and other debt than men. This makes them feel obligated to work for corporations that don't care about them in mediocre jobs. Some degrees are necessary but many I think are completely superfluous.
The push to go to college/university "just because" is by far one of the biggest ripoff lies told in our time.
You go into higher education when your life goals require it, eg: you get a medical degree because you need one to become a doctor.
The way most people go about higher education today is bass ackwards, going to college/university and then figuring out what you want to do. That more than likely isn't going to amount to anything besides useless debt and precious time wasted.
Yeah, after moving to Finland which is a fantastic place to raise kids financially, and seeing the birth rates around here I'm actually much more convinced it _is_ a global vibe shift moreso than a straight economic concern.
My conspiracy theory is that kids used to inject a lot more novelty into the lives of adults, but now that hunger for novelty is now much more readily filled by books / videos / interesting work.
ya I agree. I was talking about the affordability of living for couples especially since I know people who are in this situation. The fertility decline is a much bigger issue that I think obtaining degrees is one particular symptom of. That topic is probably not a good one for HN discussion unfortunately.
I have a hard time believing that it is financial because even high earning SWEs are skipping it. Feels a lot more like both parties want a career than an inability to afford.
Also an issue is, that most newly constructed apartments are just one bedroom, the ones with two or three bedrooms are mostly unaffordable, so where to put the kids?
Somehow people deciding against having kids purely for the sake of having family business successors doesn’t really bug me.
But of course the real thing is that people get polled on this and economic reasons are the big point (along with, in Japan, the semi-economic “can’t take care of more kids because of work environment”)
In Japan’s case, their aging population does not result from a myth of global overpopulation.
During the recession in the 90s, firms stopped hiring. However, they only hired graduating university students, to train in their methods and for lifetime employment. When the economy recovered, instead of hiring from the pool of the unemployed, they resumed hiring straight from college. The entire cohort that graduated during the recession was frozen out, never having started careers nor families.
The logic behind having more kids in order to keep old businesses open is tortured. That's like building more cars to make sure that we can keep the parking lots full.
I disagree. This is because of bubbles of anti-natalist sentiment. There are plenty of places in the world with consistently increasing birth rates. Japan, for example, is not welcoming to them though.
There are easy solutions available right now but they cost money. I don't want to assume you are the same but often people that use key phrases like "myth of global overpopulation" and "abortion on demand" are STRONGLY against any of those solutions.
The largest factor encouraging people not to have children (preventatively or abortively) is money. Taking time off work is akin to dropping down below poverty level and childcare sometimes makes working a net negative financially. Housing, healthcare, schooling... it all traces back to money. Legally you're supposed to have your position at work protected but in most states you have to burn your vacation time and in practice you're penalized for being out (enforcement requires you sue your employer which is not easy and makes finding future employment difficult as the lawsuit shows up on "background" checks marking you as a "problem".)
Free universal childcare, free universal child healthcare, legally-mandated accommodations with government enforcement for childbirth (including both work and schooling) would massively change the equation for many people who currently choose not to have kids. This must be accompanied by programs to train people to operate daycare centers, graduate more pediatricians, and so on.
I also need to clarify: I don't mean "means-tested" programs like Medicaid where taking a job disqualifies you from the program or a childcare program where means-testing excludes most people. Or "welfare" programs that require you file 12 TPS forms every 2 months or they kick you out. I mean low-hassle automatic "proof of citizenship or legal residency = automatically approved, no questions asked".
And by "legal accommodations" I mean any student wanting to give birth gets an automatic 5 year sabbatical with no penalties from high school, university, grants, post-doc programs, residency programs, etc. The government must handle the reporting, auditing, and enforcement so it doesn't become a "legally yeah but in practice no" like we have today.
If those solutions seem complicated the simpler route is a large increase in wages plus import controls/taxes or other measures to penalize offshoring to avoid pro-family wages. Most people don't make enough that even a 100% refundable tax credit would make up the gap but it might help.
In any case these are all large interventions with costs. People are often reluctant to pay those costs (in taxes or higher prices for goods).
I'll admit using government to restrict personal freedom (banning contraceptives/abortion, banning proper sex education, etc) is definitely cheaper, though I find that morally objectionable. In practice it isn't all that effective either.
edit: having a developed economy is technically the primary driver of lower birth rates but only up to a point (5-8 down to 2-3). When people feel financially secure and secure in their career they tend to average out to replacement rate (give or take). The calculus for a subsistence farmer is quite different from anyone likely reading HN.
This is a popular take, but I'm not convinced. The world has counterexamples to both your claims and the "overpopulation/abortion" claims made by conservatives.
Scandinavia has very strong social programs for new parents (as well as "abortion on demand"), but only slightly higher fertility rates than Russia (which has less generous parental benefits, but fewer abortions than Scandinavia). And indeed, the fertility rate in the USA are in the same ballpark, despite the US having no parental benefits.
(Scandinavian fertility is 1.8-1.9, Russian fertility is 1.7-1.8, USA fertility is 1.8-1.9, all in 2021 numbers from Gapminder)
(Scandinavian abortion rates are generally above 15%, Russia is ~12%, and USA is ~11%)
Edit: Data caveats there are some sources claiming russia's abortion rate is >50%, but they seem to be confusing the abortion rate with the abortion ratio. Also, the abortion rate in Russia has evidently undergone a precipitous decline since the 90s, so the abortion rate can look much different if you get/use a source that is even a few years old.
> Free universal childcare, free universal child healthcare, legally-mandated accommodations with government enforcement for childbirth ... would massively change the equation
Norway and Finland have all of that and yet their birth rates are 1.48 and 1.37. Germany, Belgium and Netherlands too have those goodies and yet have a birthrate around 1.55. So your premise seems faulty.
There's also a huge push to try to get people to move to "more efficient" cities, and away from rural areas.
For example "Strong Towns" (which I like to call "Strong Towns weak Country") pushes this view, ones of their goals is less rural living and fewer interstates.
This type of thinking will devastate the world, people don't realize how the hard working rural people make/grown/build/mine everything people in the high paying cities need in order to survive.
The point of the strong towns movement is to reduce suburban living (particularly when people commute into town for work), which is the worst of both worlds. If anything it should make life easier for people who actually work in rural areas rather than using them as a fancy dormitory.
The suburbs by their very nature take more than they give from most services - roads, water, you name it - and push up land prices and tax rates. They don't tend to offer much of what rural neighbours would need - the people who live their are car commuters, so they go to the bank/doctor/etc. in the town/city where they work, and they do their shopping at the big box store on the highway. Self-sustaining small towns - the kind that can support a population that lives and works in the area - are very much in line with the strong downs ethos, and those are the kind of towns that would benefit their rural neighbours too.
The suburbs are next to the city, not "many hours" from it. It makes no difference to rural communities if they are there are not, they just go to the city instead, at minimal extra travel time.
Make cities more efficient – yes. Move away from rural areas – no. Strong Towns and all such related efforts have no opinion on people who choose to live outside of cities, and aren't encouraging anyone to move anywhere. Migration to urban areas has been naturally happening all over the world ever since the industrial revolution. It isn't some new liberal conspiracy.
The previous post said "Strong Towns and all such related efforts have no opinion on people who choose to live outside of cities, and aren't encouraging anyone to move anywhere."
My impression was that Strong Towns and similar movements do have an opinion on people that chose to live outside of cities (suburbs) and are encouraging them to move to dense cities.
Its more they are encouraging zoning that increase density in a way that is also enjoyable to live in while increasing the viability of the city because it increase the value of the tax base above the cost of servicing the land that makes up the tax base.
Moving away from the suburbs ≠ moving away from rural
Also suburbs aren't inherently bad, they used to be good but currently their design today is car centric.
This contributes to sprawl, devouring land in an economically unsustainable way.
The word "suburbs" describes a different pattern of development from small towns. Small towns can exist as service hubs in rural areas. Suburbs form around cities to allow people to commute to jobs in those cities.
Of course it’s not related to anti-immigration ethnostate nationalism dead end suicidal philosophy of ruling elites in Japan.. or neoliberalism leading to the casualisation of labor and economic stress of many people. it’s people worrying about over population and choosing not to have kids.
Japan is pretty difficult to integrate into. Aside from the language issue, it is also difficult to integrate socially if you are a foreigner. It's also not the most attractive destination for skilled foreigners to immigrate to given that wages are much better elsewhere. Fixing these issues is more complex than simply increasing visa quotas.
> Aside from the language issue, it is also difficult to integrate socially if you are a foreigner.
So, I do not live in Japan, but I've visited multiple times now. I don't speak Japanese more than a few words here and there and mainly get by usually with Google Translate.
I've had a not-too-difficult time making friends (who I even stay in touch with from here in the US) by finding people there who participate in the same hobbies (car culture and baseball, specifically). Generally, most people I've met in those communities are very friendly. Not everyone enjoys the Google Translate back and forth but many still do.
Anyway, like I said before, I don't live there so it may be different as a long-term resident. But I just feel like based on my experience so far, the "way in" may just be a matter of finding people with similar interests, much like I would here in the US.
My personal experience having lived here for 8 years (not in a city and not in the tech industry), is you are quickly "welcomed" but to "integrate" takes a long time, if ever, and involves changing a lot of your own behavior. Many of my friends who have lived here much longer than me have the same experience.
Most of us quickly made casual friends as you described, but are yet to make many close friends. As for integrating into society, most of us found society quick to help and welcome us, but struggled to move on from "the foreigner that needs help and teaching" to "the person with ideas and opinions as valid as an equivalent Japanese person", this is irrespective of Japanese ability.
Perhaps that is why many people says it's difficult to integrate, what we immigrants want from integration and what Japanese society wants from integrated immigrants is fundamentaly different.
As a person who lived in many countries I felt the same in almost every english speaking countries, they could be welcoming but making friends isn't that easy, maybe easier in NZ and OZ than the rest.
In Latin countries I felt it was a lot easier, especially coming from one myself.
It's always a strange feeling seeing other foreigners on the train home and thinking... I wonder if they're just a tourist who knows nothing or if they live here and are actually fluent in Japanese. It's such a crapshoot. And that's exactly how everyone else is looking at you.
Every government official I've dealt with here has been extremely patient with me; I've never had a problem at government offices, or at work, with Japanese people.
>It's also not the most attractive destination for skilled foreigners to immigrate to given that wages are much better elsewhere.
This isn't true in my experience. The wages for IT work are much better in the US, but that's it. Tech salaries in Europe are just as bad as in Japan, AFAICT, but housing costs in Europe are worse.
>Aside from the language issue, it is also difficult to integrate socially if you are a foreigner.
This is true everywhere. Talk to anyone about their experiences of emigrating to Germany, for instance. Or someplace in middle America like Iowa. From my experiences with immigrant friends in the US, their social circles are mostly other immigrants or expats from their home countries.
That's not a counterargument to not needing immigration. Immigration would buffer their population decline and help them to loosen up some of the calcified structures in the society or at least ameliorate their negative consequences.
Of course it's not just about visas. If there is a way and a reason to immigrate, people will do so, even illegally. Japan can't even benefit from illegal immigration because its geographic properties isolate it so well.
That is also not a counterargument to not needing immigration, just a reiteration of not wanting immigration.
You hand-wave over what actually constitutes "too much immigration", and any evidence that more immigration leads to more "fascism" or even just hatred against immigrants. Hungary has hardly any immigration but manages to motivate fascism through fear of immigration. On the other hand, more contact with immigrants often leads to less fear of immigrants (has been shown in many studies). The sentiment is stronger for example in Eastern Germany vs Western Germany and guess where there are almost no immigrants.
Limiting immigration to keep nutjobs and evil people happy seems like a dangerous argument.
East Germans' votes count just the same as west Germans'. Same in the US, only worse: votes in Iowa and Idaho count more than votes in California and NY. That's how the US got Trump. You seem to have forgotten about that 4-year period of hell.
That feels like a problem fairly unique towards the way US elects presidents and senators. In countries where a vote isn’t “worth” less in one area than another you wouldn’t have this. Besides I don’t think “but how will this make the racists feel” is a great way to govern.
Well, with "Eastern Germany" I mean a particular region which is particularly smaller. And my point was towards racism in general, which is greater where there are fewer immigrants. It's still completely safe to immigrate to cities in Eastern Germany, even for Muslims and black people, even though those would be the most "frowned upon" ethnicities.
Still, stopping immigration to stop Trump even seems stupider than the original argument.
Immigration laws in Japan are very lax now. If you have highly-valued skills and get a job here, you get a 5-year visa, and can get permanent residence in 1 or 3 years if you want, and can naturalize after 5 years. There's no visa caps, green card lotteries, etc. The only problem is that not that many people want to come here, and there's not that many applicable jobs anyway, but demand for tech workers is much greater than supply at the moment.
Aside from skilled workers, they've eased up a lot on the unskilled workers, so there's many from SE Asian nations like Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam working in service positions. Of course, westerners who come here probably don't notice this because they think all Asians look alike...
What I have noticed is internet commenters who have never even been to Japan, let alone lived here, talking about the "casual racism" that they think is so common here just because they read someone else on the internet make that claim. I see this in probably every discussion about Japan either here or especially on Reddit.
Plenty of countries pay foreign workers better than the Saudis. And even the Saudis (and the Emirates) do really need that labor, it's just that they can get away with treating them like shit so they do.
Shortage of labor is a definite problem in Japan, lack of progress or flexibility is another one. Both can be helped by immigration.
Eventually, developed and aging countries like Japan or South Korea have to import immigrants or simply die away gradually. Either way, their cultures are going to cease the way they are today.
> So what happens when the whole world becomes developed?
The criteria for what makes a country "developed" will shift: at the moment, it's stuff like 24/7 reliable electricity and communications grids, fresh water and sewage grids, transportation infrastructure, access to healthcare, affordable quality housing and food. As a result of that being available, particularly healthcare, food and water, reproduction rates will fall as you don't need six children to hope one makes it to an old enough age to be a caregiver. We're seeing this pattern already with first and second generation migrants from countries with high reproduction rates.
> Immigration as a solution to population decline seems like a temporary fix.
It doesn't need to be more then a temporary fix: those countries who are rich at the moment will still be rich in the future and continue to invent stuff - the new marker for "developed" may then be "basic labor is done by robots", so there won't be any more need for more immigration. The crucial issue is that Western societies are hard-wired on judging people by their employment - my fear is that in a world with declining employment rates, we'll end up with a small caste of ultra rich elites, and a mob of people who may enjoy what we call a "high standard of living" in our standards, but still fighting for status aka the few jobs that will exist, and there will be lots of people blaming immigrants again.
>If say, blue deep state dysfunction keeps getting worse, and it ends up couped by reds who purge & reform the federal government along the lines of less handouts, more guns, and set up the system so that political power of unproductive classes is minimized, woke may just die out.
>It's not at all clear that biological agelessness is impossible.
I have heard this before, I kind of think that there is a nontrivial percentage of people that hope or believe that we will solve aging within their lifetime and that having kids isn’t necessary.
Africa is projected to grow rapidly in population until the end of the century. If developed countries can assimilate large numbers of African immigrants peacefully and productively, that could represent a path forward for the planet.
India's population also continues to explode. We've been very successful assimilating Indian immigrants in the US.
This blog post is a great read on the importance of institutions and how assimilation has succeeded with past immigrant waves: https://anowrasteh.substack.com/p/review-of-the-culture-tran... The tl;dr is that in principle, it's possible to imagine a South Korea in the year 2100 which is 80% descended from African immigrants and functions more or less the same way it does today. The immigrants just have to come at a slow enough rate that they adopt to the local way of doing things instead of overwhelming it. Probably would work best with a points-based immigration system similar to what Canada has. Also getting the host country to accept the new arrivals would also be an important challenge. In my opinion, more countries should follow France's lead and establish a foreign legion, so even right-wingers have to acknowledge that immigrants are helping the country out.
>Africa is projected to grow rapidly in population until the end of the century. If developed countries can assimilate large numbers of African immigrants peacefully and productively, that could represent a path forward for the planet.
I don't see any reason why anyone should take those projections seriously. Countries went from booms to baby busts in the span of few decades.
Latest UN projection was adjusted so that by the end of century they would 100 million less people, again from a downward adjustment three years ago. They will experience a modernization unlike the world has ever seen thanks to globalization, and there is no reason to believe they will have that many people as a consequence of the decline in fertility rates (caused by education, more wealth, etc.).
1. Because you don't shrink uniformly. Shrinkage is unevenly distributed over the age groups. In simpler terms, you will have a shrunk society with a lot of old people and very few young ones. Who will run the society in that case? TFA talks about a specific instance of that problem in detail, but also provides useful overall stats where profitable businesses are shuttering down only because there are no humans to run them.
2. This shrinking will be painful as our current structure relies on young caring for old, either directly as part of families or indirectly via tax-funded social programs. If there are not enough young people to pay taxes for the welfare, what should we do about the old ones? Let them die? Let them rot away in loneliness[1]? Force them to work till they die[2]? Or nudge them towards euthanasia like Canada does[3]?
The shrinking population in Japan is absolutely organic. I suspect panicking about it (certainly if it extends to e.g. opening up to immigration) is doing more damage than the actual population decline does.
Both countries existed before they experienced population growth (due to modern medicine), so there is little reason to believe they cannot exist at previous population levels with some adjustments. It's not as though they will simply refuse to reproduce, but rather may settle for a stable population around what they had in the `40s or `50s --which would be great if every country went back to those population levels given the consumption demands of today's people.
> there is little reason to believe they cannot exist at previous population levels with some adjustments
There is all the reason to believe that. In the past few years, Japan took in a record number of immigrants, and yet they still werent able to stop the population decline. They lost ~600,000 people/year in total or during that time period, if i remember right. 'Some adjustments' wont fix that. A total overhaul of the society is necessary.
In the former universe, you lose genetic continuity but may retain cultural continuity. Up to you whether that matters. To the Japanese, who adopt adults into the family to preserve the family business notion, one can speculate that they care about the cultural continuity more than the genetic continuity, but it's hard to tell.
Most online descriptions of Japanese people appear as caricatures, but from the few who I know who live in Japan, they are like any other human group: if some form of continuity or success is the only form accessible they will accept it.
Most countries who import a lot of labor tend to specialize on a narrow profile of immigrants (Turks in Germany, Latinos in the US, Central Asians in Russia), hence they are not getting cultural continuity. The imported labor clings together and forms a distinct culture.
In this regard it would make sense to eat it up and accept population decline. Japan of 50 million Japanese is still Japan. Japan of 40 million Japanese and 40 million Filipino is no longer Japan. May still be passable country, though.
It may be different than it is today, but Japan is Japan regardless of how many people live or do not live there. Also, I do not follow why it makes sense to "eat it up and accept population decline"; can you elaborate?
It's the difference between Miami, a city whose population is more than fifty percent immigrants, and Detroit, a city whose population has declined more than fifty percent.
Japanese culture ceasing to exist isn't about tattoos or racism or whatever bad culture points you want to call out, it's the good that would cease to exist as well. Every culture has problems (including Japanese), but just because Japanese culture dies doesn't mean that it will be purified and become without flaws. Not sure why you suggest it's good if Japanese culture ceases to exist.
I said it might not be bad if "their cultures are going to cease the way they are today." and pointed out issues with racism and sexism.
(The classic example being unwilling to tolerate guest workers, as I mentioned in reply to annother commenter).
I didn't mean the entire culture should cease to exist, hence taking pains to point out positive things too.
(They're more health oriented for example -- can't get a healthy meal in an American 7/11 unless you count the weight loss from a pack of cigs for breakfast)
Anime can be a legitimate form of art - Akira was great for example.
OTOH, I went to a maid cafè in Akihabara and got so thoroughly unnerved I think I hurt their feelings when I exclaimed “this is too weird I gotta go” and went to an actual arcade.
It’s sad the radio shack style electronics stores are closing and all that seems left in that area is… that.
> It's a lovely place to visit but I cannot understand why the HN crowd idolizes it when there's a lot of places in SE Asia that have less toxic attitudes about immigrants and women.
We must all share your values or perish? Anything short of them is unfathomable to you? And you have a deep understanding of 130m people because you've stepped foot in the country?
Japan is perishing because of the values it currently has. Pseudo-feudal society that imitates the samurai-ruled commoners who must sacrifice their lives for one zaibatsu or the other, never-ending work in which they must karoshi themselves out for the 'ganbare' principle, extreme xenophobia that even afflicts Japanese that move from one region to another, leave aside immigrants.
You definitely don't have to share his values. His values may not even be suitable for you. But you definitely must stop having the current values that you have since they are literally eradicating your society in an a case that has not been ever seen in modern age before.
Japan is doing better than most developed societies. Countries that allow more immigration may paper over their population decline, but the resulting social problems mean the cure is worse than the disease.
Doing better how, exactly? People can't retire because the retirement age is going up or there's no one to run the business. There are vast swathes of cities that have become literal ghost towns because the children leave and the parents die. The economy has become massively stagnate, quality of living is going down and the generation that they expect to support these final pillars has been checking out due to horrid working conditions.
> Japan is doing better than most developed societies
As far as I know no country including the depopulating Western European countries face the demographic crisis that Japan faces. Its a crisis at a totally different level.
Nah. If you subtract out the effects of immigration the likes of e.g. France are doing worse, and even if you don't believe that, South Korea is doing worse than Japan even in raw numbers.
Why would you subtract the effects of immigration. Immigration is how a lot of countries are getting out of the stranglehold in the first place.
And Japan cant even do immigration. That's the problem. Within at most 2 generations, those European immigrants' descendants will become integrated enough to their European countries - as it happened in countries that started getting immigrants much before others. For Spanish speaking countries, its much better - immigrants just fit into the society immediately - partly because a precedent/format already pre-existing, partly because Latin countries are pretty social and swiftly integrate anyone.
Compared to those, Japan is in an extremely worse position not only due to the lingering presence of the feudal society, but also xenophobia, overwork culture and various other factors
Japan is, however, unique simply in being at least 10 years ahead on the demographic curve compared to any other aging country, so they're a crystal ball of where we're all going.
Also, it's not meaningful to say "France is doing worse except for the immigrants", because the immigrants are there for good and they're having children, taking jobs, paying taxes, etc, which changes the equation for everybody else as well.
> You definitely must stop having the current values that you have
There it is, mask off.
I'm not Japanese but since we are making assumptions I could guess that you are a "progressive" American or from certain parts of the "Western World".
Should I be so inclined I could enumerate the many problems the west has and its own current obvious decline. Ironically you yourselves are the very source of the doomer memes.
I could further declare that your country is obviously perishing because of the wrongfully adopted woke values currently in vogue and that you must repent and adopt sharia law.
Of course that would be a monumentally stupid and outright fascist take on things as it is really not my place to dictate to other cultures that their values are wrong and they must adopt mine or suffer immensely.
If I don't gel with a society rather than sanctimoniously preaching I simply steer clear. I hope you have the good sense to leave the Japanese people alone offline.
Im not American. I have no horse in the woke/conservative culture race.
Regardless of the problems in the US, neither the US nor any other country on the planet is facing a crisis like Japan. Not even the Western European countries that have a depopulation problem. The crisis in Japan is at a level that has never been seen since the start of early modern age.
> I hope you have the good sense to leave the Japanese people alone offline.
Its hard to interpret what that even means. This is a social studies topic in which people are discussing a major phenomenon. People cant stop discussing sciences for the fear of a certain demographic not wanting them discussing it.
> Regardless of the problems in the US, neither the US nor any other country on the planet is facing a crisis like Japan.
I'm guessing you haven't followed what's been happening in eastern Europe the last few decades very closely? For example, Bulgaria has already lost about 30% of it's population since 1988 and is predicted to lose much more in the coming years.
> I'm guessing you haven't followed what's been happening in eastern Europe the last few decades very closely?
Im aware of the different demographic situations in different regions. Bulgaria and parts of Eastern Europe's depopulations are not due to endemic factors like Japan's, but due to effects of Eu which cause the youth to move to other countries for jobs and settle there. Japan does not have such a situation. It is depopulation solely out of declining birth rates.
No, all countries in EEU have fertility rates below replacement. UN population fund says 1.6 for Bulgaria but some countries (Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine) have the same as Japan (1.4). Some countries in south Europe have an even lower fertility rate (Portugal, Greece, Italy are all at 1.3). Emigration is just an aggravating factor on top of this.
Each of those countries are either countries that were affected by the 2008 crisis, or countries that are being used by the richer countries in the Eu as cheap labor sources. Even though their birth rates may be below replacement, the real crisis comes from emigration from those countries.
> For example, Bulgaria has already lost about 30% of it's population since 1988 and is predicted to lose much more in the coming years.
Half-Croat here. We have the same issue, but at least the EU is throwing money around across the board to lift up standards of living in order to curb emigration, and it's not just money either, it's as well enforcing at least a basic code of conduct for politicians. A large part that drives young people away is endemic corruption, and the metrics for that have improved virtually everywhere in the EU except Poland, Hungary and sadly Slovenia.
Japanese “work” is like DC law firms and NGOs - work can involve hoping no one notices you’re watching Netflix on your laptop to make it look like you’re staying late to benefit the company rather than engaging in performative nonsense :-)
I’d have more sympathy if they were actually productively using those long hours…
No matter if it's productive or lazy usage of your time at work, the problem is it's time you spend at work instead of at home with your s/o or outside to find one. Can't have children if you're too dead after work to have sex.
I don't think they should perish? It's a lovely place, with a lot of things to teach Americans , but they're going to have issues if they won't let foreigners get some kind of working visa to care for their aging population... I'm bad with tone, but I stand by the core of that argument.
You don't have an argument. You have a religion. The Japanese are heretics and the Swedes are pious. And yourself a self anointed cardinal.
Famously, they rejected similar sort of persons in the 16th century and closed all entry to foreigners. Let me assure you they'll successfully sort out their issues without your input.
Of course if I don't immediately concur with these very poorly made points I must be a racist and a sexist too, right? Or some weeb lover of anime and cyberpunk as also mentioned. Sorry to disappoint.
I am not at all opposed to such discussions when done in good faith by knowledgeable people. I am allergic to the phony critics who transparently play those cards to appoint themselves judge and jury. The baseless smug supriority is simply infuriating.
As I pointed out in another comment it is akin to some fundy jihadi slagging off western countries for being godless sodomite infidels and hanging all of their societal challenges on not conforming to their particular world view on how the country should run.
That is an altogether different thing from somebody with deep knowledge of the place ("I've been there" doesn't cut it) simply sharing their perspective as a nonvoter on its flaws.
Who are you to tell people in other countries what they should or shouldn't do? You just know what is best for them eh?
No, but if you fly off the handle like this at a very mild comment then you may want to consider taking a step away from the computer and calming down. As someone is just scrolling the comments yours in this thread stick out as pretty unhinged.
Very genuinely, you seem to be opposed to mere mention of either.
There was no good faith in your responses either. You accused people of positions they did not took. The jihady sodomite part sounds mostly like stream of insults.
It is not even that you would claim racism or sexism in Japan does not exists. Or that you would claim them to be good things. You just demand that people don't talk about them.
> many Okinawans can't even move to the mainland and find a salaryman job due to racism within Japan.
I would call it more xenophobia than racism - even if you move to a new region from another, more accepted region, you still seem to be seen as an outsider for a while. Even while moving in between local neighborhoods. Such concepts exist in other countries too, but Japan seems to be on an extreme level.
Coupled with the extreme amounts of strict social norms that everyone must adhere to, its no surprise that even Japanese youth themselves are alienated from literally life in Japan itself, leave aside immigrants.
I read that in their new plan for attracting immigrants, the new Japanese government was planning to use a sufficiently depopulated region to put only immigrants there so that they wouldnt be put off by the xenophobia/racism that plagues the Japanese society.
What's necessary seems to be a total overhaul of the Japanese society that seems to have stuck in a rehashed medieval feudalism led by pseudo-samurai. The zaibatsu system that the US occupation fostered in order to use Japan as an agent in the region elevated former local mafia and gangs as well as established, formerly-feudal family owned companies to global stage. They still keep the feudal traits they had at the start of the 20th century. All of these strict norms, totally-hierarchical caste society, segregation, the commoners having to sacrifice themselves for one company or the other etc seem to stem from that origin.
>I would call it more xenophobia than racism - even if you move to a new region from another, more accepted region, you still seem to be seen as an outsider for a while. Even while moving in between local neighborhoods.
Thanks for pointing this out, to be fair it can be a thing in the USA too but more an urban / rural divide - can’t just move into a small town many places…
I call bullshit. From Pacific northwest mountain small towns to Midwest small towns I've never seen where people can't move there. I have seen city people with a chip on their shoulder have a hard time but that was based on personality not some general attitude.
I read Konbini Ningen recently and to me it read less as a social commentary on late stage capitalism and more as a lived experience of "here's what it's like to live with undiagnosed autism".
For that plot to be "movie-able", you also need to add the Gaijin marrying the Japanese Business Owner's Daughter. Small addendum to make it a box office success :)
I'm sure some YouTube channels could pull this off too.
