Hacker News Reader

Comment by jzelinskie | Hacker News Reader

>you decide to leave your job and start a business with your college buddies

I know the point they were trying to make in the article, but the primary reason this doesn't happen in Japan is the cultural fear of failure rather than the system being broken. Once you're in, the nanny corporation will take care of you for the rest of your life. Once those corporations are in, the government will take care of them for the rest of their life. Risk mitigation is what's most highly valued; because of this fact, not all capitalistic logic can be applied, despite the system appearing fairly capitalist.

View on HN

>Once you're in, the nanny corporation will take care of you for the rest of your life.

The flip side of that is if you quit you will never be offered another salaryman job. By anyone. I wouldn't start a business in Japan unless I was already unemployed.

Is this really true? (I have no idea, it just sounds so implausible that I feel like I have to ask.) Is there any good reading on this topic?

This one is a good read: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

According to another HN user the unemployment rate is only 3% so it doesn't appear to be that bad. Those 3% may not include discouraged workers though.

I'd raise my eyebrows at that 3% stat. Spend a week in Japan and you'll see that it isn't a 50-50 ratio of women: men commuting to work. Are all those housewives classified as employed?

People who don't have a job and aren't interested in getting one, like housewives, are not included in unemployment numbers. What is measured is how much of the labour force is currently unemployed. If you're not in the labour force, you're neither employed nor unemployed. You're just not covered by those particular statistics, just like children and pensioners.

If you're interested in how large a fraction of the working age population is employed, see employment rate.

Yeah, it's true. Read the article pkaye linked. There are some odd (to US eyes) implied agreements when you take an office job in Japan. The biggest is this: the company is expected to keep you on until you retire. In return you're expected to not quit, ever. To quit is to betray the company.

It's not like nobody ever gets laid off or quits. But that's the expectation.

>I know the point they were trying to make in the article, but the primary reason this doesn't happen in Japan is the cultural fear of failure rather than the system being broken. Once you're in, the nanny corporation will take care of you for the rest of your life.

The Japanese job for life is pretty much gone now:

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/sep2009/ca20090...

My take on 19th century Japanese modernization was that Japan industrialized but never really shook its feudal cultural inertia.

The corporations can't take care of their employees forever, so does the government can't take care of the corporations forever.. Wouldn't they not want this to hit a dead end?

The rationale is that the more successful divisions of corporations support the existence of less successful divisions, and more successful corporations support the existence of less successful corporations.

This is socialism -- social ownership of risk. The rising tide lifts us all.

There are fewer winners and fewer losers, and it's only sustainable when everybody buys into it and nobody gets greedy or envious. Such success is only seen in homogeneous societies, and Japan is largely homogeneous.

Conversely, this is the reason for Europe's clinging to socialism for the better part of the last century (homogeneous society), and it will most definitely change over the next one. Europe will start to look more like Canada and the US -- a melting pot of sorts -- and maintaining a Euro-centric identity will be far more difficult as many scramble to align themselves with a nation-centric identity. A strong EU that leans to the right is inevitable, and national identity will fall by the wayside as they come to the crushing realization that national identity doesn't put food on the table or keep the lights on when you have already given up so much.

> Conversely, this is the reason for Europe's clinging to socialism for the better part of the last century (homogeneous society)

Europe is a continent with 50ish countries and dozens of widely spoken languages. It is in no way a homogeneous landmass.

> a melting pot of sorts

Which it has been since folks started invading, warring and immigrating across the continent thousands of years ago.

> maintaining a Euro-centric identity will be far more difficult as many scramble to align themselves with a nation-centric identity.

There hasn't been a dominant Euro-centric identity across Europe, however. Current trends in politics favoring the messages from conservative (or very conservative) parties is interesting news for the pundits to discuss. Different countries in Europe have been quite conservative and quite liberal over the last century, but they all are nations first (as is evidenced by how difficult it can be to effect change through the European Council/Parliament.

> A strong EU that leans to the right is inevitable

Unfortunately I'm not sure this can be concluded from the preceding arguments.

  Martin: Yes, [the Napolean prize] is a NATO award given once every
          five years: gold medal, big ceremony in Brussels, £100 000. The
          PM's the front runner this time. It's for the statesman who's
          made the biggest contribution to European unity.
  Sir Humphrey: Since Napoleon. That is if you don't count Hitler.

It's a joke, but has some truth to it: there isn't a single homogeneous society, but each country did become much more homogeneous in the post-war, after millions were "returned" (often against their will) to their countries of origin. And social democracy was and is the de-facto model in most countries, even if occasionally threatened.

> national identity will fall by the wayside as they come to the crushing realization that national identity doesn't put food on the table or keep the lights on

You know, every other nation in Europe has a period in history when they were persecuted and being deliberately destroyed, both physically and psychologically. Sometimes for hundreds of years. We've got "killing fields" and battlefields everywhere - please, do take into an account a legacy of more than 2000 years of non-stop, all-out wars - and more than one such a field was created specifically for people of one nationality. On the other hand, almost every single nation in Europe has a (mostly real! but sometimes imagined) "golden age" in their history they can cling to; a period where that nation was (possibly a part of) a global superpower.

Given that, I don't believe nationalism is going to die just because people are getting hungry. I mean, lots and lots of death, torture, persecution, as well as preaching, propaganda, and education didn't kill nationalism - why do you think lack of money would? Some European nations are practically built upon martyrdom and, if anything, it made European nationalism even harder to leave behind, change or even soften a little.

> Europe will start to look more like Canada and the US

I'm repeating myself here, but discarding more than 2k years of history is dangerous when making predictions about the future. Europe already was a melting pot of cultures for a while, back when nation-states were not fashionable yet. A few times, at that, in different ages. Never once did this make Europe a peaceful continent or made nationalism disappear.

US and Canada are unique in that, historically, it's a bunch of people getting together and promising to leave the past behind. That, of course, doesn't take into account American natives, but whatever: that's NOT happening in Europe. You'd have to demolish most of the cities to destroy thousands of buildings and sculptures still, remainding Europeans about just how heinous their neighbour is or just how just was their neighbours massacre. And that's the easiest part, because then you'd have to destroy and eradicate a good part of culture and art. And then, after a couple of generations under heavy propaganda, maybe you'd have a place roughly comparable with US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com