For the fourteenth year running, Japan's population has slumped to a record low. The non-foreign population dropped by nearly 900,000 — an unprecedented fall.
What sense does it make if you raise your population and everyone is miserably poor or on the edge of becoming poor?
I mean, misery is extremely relative. One of the paradoxes of Japan, thanks to its extremely conservative immigration policy and hyper-competitive economy, is that they’ve made a genuinely beautiful country to live in but one in which foreigners can’t stay and most natives can’t enjoy it. This population of NEETs who failed the cut-throat academic setting lack the resources to live a comfortable middle class existence. Meanwhile, the new guest worker program simply brings foreigners in to crush the wage labor out and dispose of them. Only foreign tourists, wealthy labor aristocrats, and the handful of small business owners who figured out how to survive get to enjoy Japan for what it is.
But, like, it shouldn’t be a miserable place to live. The amenities are world class. The country’s ecology is well-preserved. The education system rivals international peers. They’ve got advanced industry, mass transit, modern health care, spectacular recreation, a population large enough to keep the ball rolling indefinitely without going Easter Island on their own turf, and excellent placement adjacent to other post-industrial powers.
All they need to do is reform their abysmal work culture. But the work culture has become a tulpa they’re convinced creates the beatific conditions, rather than a cancer that’s destroying it.
+1 for correct understanding of “tulpa”. We need to be aware of our ideas and ideals we create and sustain. Not all tulpas are what we envision. They are, otoh, all teaching spirit-guides.
I think they may be referring to the archaeological history of the Easter Island culture … a wealthy productive society that once thrived on Easter Island in the South Pacific but then used up all the resources of the island until nothing was left and it destroyed their society and they disappeared.
I mean, misery is extremely relative. One of the paradoxes of Japan, thanks to its extremely conservative immigration policy and hyper-competitive economy, is that they’ve made a genuinely beautiful country to live in but one in which foreigners can’t stay and most natives can’t enjoy it. This population of NEETs who failed the cut-throat academic setting lack the resources to live a comfortable middle class existence. Meanwhile, the new guest worker program simply brings foreigners in to crush the wage labor out and dispose of them. Only foreign tourists, wealthy labor aristocrats, and the handful of small business owners who figured out how to survive get to enjoy Japan for what it is.
But, like, it shouldn’t be a miserable place to live. The amenities are world class. The country’s ecology is well-preserved. The education system rivals international peers. They’ve got advanced industry, mass transit, modern health care, spectacular recreation, a population large enough to keep the ball rolling indefinitely without going Easter Island on their own turf, and excellent placement adjacent to other post-industrial powers.
All they need to do is reform their abysmal work culture. But the work culture has become a tulpa they’re convinced creates the beatific conditions, rather than a cancer that’s destroying it.
+1 for correct understanding of “tulpa”. We need to be aware of our ideas and ideals we create and sustain. Not all tulpas are what we envision. They are, otoh, all teaching spirit-guides.
Beautifully articulated!
what does this mean
I think they may be referring to the archaeological history of the Easter Island culture … a wealthy productive society that once thrived on Easter Island in the South Pacific but then used up all the resources of the island until nothing was left and it destroyed their society and they disappeared.
oh the debunked ecocide hypothesis
Oh, what actually happened sounds way more like where the US is headed.
Almost all true except this part. The Japanese education system is actually pretty bad compared to most Western countries.