Each state is given two senators regardless of population.
Despite cities being the economic heart of the US and doing much better than rural areas, al of of policy making is driven by the economically backwards states.
This is actually a great argument for the rise of the city state - without a shared governance structure that has to balance interests of such different voting blocks, city states could set any rules they wanted within their borders and deal with the rural population strictly through the markets.
If we look toward Mexico, we can say the cities have an oversized influence in the politics and the frustration form the countryside can boil over into internal conflict.
Now, work culture, that's a different topic. They definitely could improve their work/life balance and their gender disparity, etc.
We like to complain so much about automation, but I think the main driver of our current economic woes is outsourcing. When Americans have to compete against people in countries that have $1/hr minimum wage, there's no way our lower class can compete. Not everyone has the skills or aptitude to make it to the middle or upper classes. Should they see a declining quality of life just so corporations can see larger profits?
> They definitely could improve their work/life balance and their gender disparity
Japan has a low amount of economic inequality and a high quality of life, so I see little reason why it should change. In most countries, it's still considered a fact that men and women are different. I think it may be your Western values determining what you think should change in a culture completely different from our own.
Japan is far from doing well. It's in recession now, its demographics profile is going down the toilet, they have a massive public debt that they can never hope to repay, and a social security system that's constantly in the red. It's not going to end well no matter how optimistic you are.
I don't think granting the countryside the power they have has contributed negatively to their economic outlook.
What I am saying is allowing the countryside an outsized say in the politics of the country writ large does not seem to have negatively affected the economy given the structural realities.
Although, granted, the countryside with their bloc keeps successfully thwarting any agricultural reforms (import tariffs). On the other hand, buy local and grow your own critical sustenance (cuz embargoes: see Qatar).
I'd rather have "make peace with your neighbors, promote commercial exchange instead of putting tariffs everywhere making eating fruits a luxury for 90% of your population".
Seriously, agriculture in Japan is retarded. Productivity is extremely low compared to any other developed country, and they use tons of pesticides (way more than anywhere else), because JA forces folks to use them if they want to sell in their right channels. It's just a big mafia at the national level.
If we were to make stuff at home, everything would be much more expensive (you would never get cheap smartphones like you have now) and the level of life would decrease sharply for everyone. Specialized regions for specific products, with proper exchange of goods is what has worked to make everyone richer in the end.
They're also in terms of a country more likely to live around cities, and much more densely since Tokyo is one of the, if not most, densely populated megacities.
I would say any economic power they do have is because of the density and progressiveness of their cities.
Can you expand on that a bit?
> ... to a farmer who refused to give up on a thankless, unrewarding career.
Why? How? What? Because food is relatively cheap? (Because supply is high?)
That said, farming is still a brutal business. For being an industry that determines whether hundreds of millions will live or die, farmers are typically faced with enormous debt burdens, long work days, and second jobs. It's a pretty screwed up situation.
And yes, for some reason society/civilization has a "market based" approach to food security. Why? Because it works better than the planned economy version. Maybe because it forces people to optimize, to make the hard choices of what do you really want, do what you're good at or do what you love.
That said, markets are not in a vacuum, so we can and we ought to help people. Not just farmers. Because every time we try to help them we end up helping "Big Agribusiness". And if some people want to do farming, but it doesn't make them enough, okay, we can think about that, but I don't see what that has to do with food security, which comes from big industrialized farms, environmental protection, land management, food safety regulations, distribution chain tracking and inspections and so on. (To help small farms, you need scale. You need to pack them densely, have them share equipment - usually the combine that used only at harvest is owned by a 3rd party, and so on. They need insurance for climate events like against flood, hailstorm, tornadoes/hurricanes, spring frostbite and so on. So you end up running a farmer-K12.)
One of the reasons America was organized the way it is, as a republic, and not a democracy, was to prevent a tyranny of the majority. And no racial, ideological, or religious minority is as necessary to protect as the minority that feeds all of us.
You're right, farmers can quit any time they like, and many have, and are. It's one of the forces driving the automation of agriculture. But we're not at a point where we can take the farmhand out of the equation safely, so let's give them some incentive to stay. While I agree that planned economies are dumb, because of the simple fact of information density, the government is also a market force, and we need to prevent government from working against the people who feed all of us.
Even if your reasoning is true it's not justification for a person living outside of the city or densely populated areas to have less of a vote in government. Everyone should have an equal vote, no?