Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)
tsangchungshu.medium.com
tsangchungshu.medium.com
They meet regularly to discuss local events, repairs, but mostly the matsuri (summer festival) and the bonenkai (the booze event of the end of the year). But they are also the ones who tell you who to support for elections. This year the local kumicho (head of kumi) came to give us leaflets for a city hall candidate, which surprised me because I know he dislikes the guy. But the boss of the "super-kumi" supports him so he gave lip-service to that. Knowing that this is the supported candidate by the local kumis will win a lot of local voters.
Another thing to understand is that seniority is very respected in Japan. I have seen a 63 yo man defer to a 65 yo because he was his "sempai". I don;t know if all the kumis are like that but ours is pretty much based on the assumption that the elder can boss around the younger.
That can explain why the conservative party is so well entrenched.
People polled in that article claim that they base their appreciation on managerial qualities and personal advantage, but from what I have seen, they get these opinions from their own social environment.
Doing so has really showcased one thing that I truly like about Japan: people tend to take care of their communities.
This starts from a young age: even in grade school, kids are responsible for cleaning their schools, and for serving lunch to other kids.
Back when Mom was alive, I asked her about why we didn't do this in the US -- she was a school-board member -- and it boiled down to: "The parents will sue us for a gigantic list of reasons, the union representing the janitors will sue us because having students clean violates our work contract with the janitors, it probably violates child-labor laws, and the media will eat us alive for all of the above reasons."
In the case of my neighborhood, we have a communal trash area, and there's a rotating roster for which household gets to handle cleaning that trash area for any given week.
I am heavily incentivized to ensure this area stays clean, as it is immediately in front of my house. :)
Even when I was living in a high-rise, where trash was handled by the building, we had a "floor coordinator" -- also a resident -- that handled a number of things, including emergency drills. The coordination of which was assigned to me after I slept through the first one, thus ensuring that I would not make that mistake again.
In our case it culminated with a PE teacher of the local school who was hitting the students members of his kendo club and sent one to the hospital. And the discovery that all the parents of the club members knew about that.
Yes, if there is one thing I would like to take from the Japanese school system it is the cleaning of the classroom and serving of lunch, but if that meant also importing the sempai-kohai system and the bullying culture it enables, forget about it.
Besides, while I'm not a fan of the whole sempai-kohai thing, it's not like bullying isn't absolutely rampant in US schools which wholly lack that cultural mechanism.
It does prompt the question: what education systems do you favor?
But I find it weird that education can't reinvent itself radically. The system we have was based around a scarcity of books and a need for the production of standardized workers.
I suspect the education system's main constraint is not the needs of kids but the possibility/will of the current teachers.
Long version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education
Short version: The existing system is good for those who win at it, so they have no incentive to change it. The important thing about schools is not education, but certification. Spend five years doing difficult but ultimately meaningless tasks at school; the school will certify you "this person is smart and hard working and obedient", and the employers will prefer you to people without such certificate.
Improving education would go against the goals of the current system. Imagine that you can make learning 100% fun -- how would you now distinguish between obedient people, and those who are only doing it because it is fun? Imagine that you can explain things in a way that literally everyone could easily understand -- how would you now distinguish between really smart and average people?
The fact that many kids fail at school is a feature, not a bug. The purpose of the school is to select elite employees. Their knowledge is less important than their character traits (intelligence, hard work, obedience), because if you employ the right kind of person, they can learn everything they need at work. Make no mistake, even startups who want to disrupt everything, don't want to have their own workplace disrupted by the same personality type.
So... if you want to be an employee, and you are smart, hard working, and obedient, the current school system is great, because it will give you a certificate that gives you an advantage over your competition. If you want to be an employer, the current school system is great, because it will certify for you the kind of employee you want. And if you are neither rich nor smart, the system works against you, but that's okay because your opinion does not matter.
montessori has all the things you liked above and more.
cleaning up after yourself, and serving food, working with various household tools are apart of the curriculum. they are not just chores, but already in kindergarten kids are learning these things playfully.
kindergarten age kids are interested in the adult world, so for them, cutting fruit is an interesting activity just like learning to count. i can trust our kids with sharp knives and scissors, because they learnt how to handle them.
i don't know about the older levels, but cleaning up the classroom would be a natural continuation of kids cleaning up after themselves.
Education reinventing itself radically needs a goal. The current (public) system has evolved to be frugal, which is a real consideration.
Oh no it hasn't.
California averages $12k per student on an annual basis. Illinois averages $15k per student. Both are more than the median for private schools, and in a private school, you're getting a smaller classroom size as well (average of 19 vs 25 students).
Now, this wouldn't be a problem if the results were in-line with costs, but they aren't, not by a country mile -- public schools drastically underperform, and by a wide margin.
I know why, but find that immaterial next to the outcome, which is this weird sort of social Darwinism which sorts students into roughly two buckets: "wealthy with a largely successful peer-group" and "poor with a largely unsuccessful peer-group".
For Americans that have never spent time in Japan, Korea, or Switzerland for that matter, they are nominally clean in a way that is rare-nigh-on-extinct in the US.
In Japan, seeing trash on the ground or graffiti are both very uncommon. Moreso now than when I moved here a decade ago, especially in Tokyo, but the toilet at my local public park is cleaner than the one I last used when I visited a hospital stateside.
The problem with volunteering is that you only get volunteers. When everybody grows up learning that community care is their responsibility, and not just "somebody else's job", there are some big benefits to a society as a whole.
Instead of asking "Which party do you prefer?" They realized that almost no party preference was expressed, except for the LDP, the ruling party and usually as an opposition to it.
They discovered the categories of focus in the electorate instead of shoehorning a grid into it.
Of course you don't really want to do it when you compare countries, and you open yourself to a ton of bias when you do manual analysis, but I think it is good once in a while to do such a thing to allows insights that may have been missed to show up.
I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. There's not even such a thing as a single "European politics". Just compare France, where President Macron's party « La République En Marche ! » was founded in 2016, and Germany, where CDU and SPD used to be in binary opposition, but lost so much support that they had to form a coalition government together to stay in power.
The article mentions that
> existing research shows that party loyalty, insofar as it is understood in the US and Europe as a sense of identification with a “team”, is almost unknown in Japan.[6] The Japanese World Values Survey team even went so far as to drop the standard question on party loyalty from their poll as it was “not relevant in Japan”
so I went to look for the World Values Survey. https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp Their website is some terrible session-based thing where you can't link to anything, so here's the path you need to follow: "2017-2020" → "Select all" → "Next" → Enter "Q98" as the variable → click on "Show" in the search result → select the "Maps" tab → select "Not a member".
The percentage of people who're not in a political party in Japan is 94.4%, with the closest European countries being Denmark (94.7%) and Germany (93.5%). The US is the country with the lowest percentage of non-party members at 49.9%. I think it's pretty clear who's the odd one out here.
It feels like they're comparing different things though. In the US, they use voter registration / party identification as "membership", while they use actual membership in other countries. My grandmother always used to vote for the Social Democrats in Germany, certainly identified with them, but was never a member. She wouldn't show up as a party member here, but she would if she did the same in the US. It seems "true believers" would be the better metric to compare to the US party affiliation.
Also, it's amazing how bad that website is built. Thanks for the bread crumbs to follow.
Indeed, it’s meaningless to compare party “membership” in the US to being a real, card-carrying, dues-paying member of an organization in another country.
European parties can probably count on a higher level of active participation, but when it comes time to vote or donate, party membership definitely matters.
Party meetings in European political parties often involve checking you off against a membership register that in many cases is secret (not shared with the government in any way), and often e.g. requires you to be up to date with membership dues to have access to the meetings. Membership subjects you to rules, including behavioural, and commitment to a shared aim, restrictions on support for other parties, and the like. You can be subject to disciplinary hearings, and can be expelled. For many parties e.g. publicly expressing support for another party can be an expulsion ground. Some parties will do things like check your social media in advance of granting membership. Many have rules that requires a waiting time from you have been a member of another party before you can be admitted, etc.
You would not get more than a tiny fraction of the people who are registered Republicans or Democrats to subject themselves to that.
At the same time many of these parties certainly reach far outside their membership for donations, and none but the very smallest rely only on their members for votes.
I think they meant another dimension than you. I've looked into the underlying value systems in the US and Germany as part of my phd, and the underlying moral frameworks are essentially identical: there are two basic ideas of how a society should look like (the progressive and the conservative idea), and what each idea consists of is almost identical (modulo country-specific weights).
* criminal justice: redemption vs. retribution
* social safety: more of it, and collectively organized vs. less of it, and individually organized
* abortion/women's rights: pro women vs. contra abortion
* environmental protection: important vs. unimportant
* education: focus on equal opportunities for all vs. focus on elite institutions
and so on.
The actual parties differ of course, and the overton window of "mainstream" political views certainly do. But the underlying moral dualism has the same two poles.
But those can mostly be explained within each moral framework (e.g. social conservatism is keeping the us vs. them mentality: "no social benefits for immigrants" or similar).
Keep in mind these are not totally coherent, precisely defined theories, but instead are formed subconsciously by growing up in a particular social environment.
And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. The article does not, for example, make the claim that in Japanese criminal politics there isn't a debate between redemption and retribution but rather that positions of the individual politicians in this debate will not correlate very much with their party allegiance.
Why? In my understanding the overton window is a sliding frame on an axis, so it makes no statement about the axis, only about the position on the axis.
> And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen.
Yes, that is what I have understood from the text, too. I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency there (how are people able to make moral decisions without them, i.e. integrate their behaviour with their sense of identity?), though just as in the west the ideology and the actual political practice can obviously differ widely.
I guess it's a technical and semantic objection: A (one dimensional) window by necessity has two endpoints, and "pole" is a word that defines a point. Your use of pole is however more in the sense of direction rather than endpoint; an axis is a direction and as such can be defined by any two points along it and no set of points have such a privileged position that they warrant the label "pole".
> I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency
Again, it's a statement about how parties are organised and not about how people in general believe the world works. Though I suppose this circumstance also implies there is a fairly dominant agreement on the essentials of the world-view.
It is a bit interesting to read such an outsiders perspective though, as an outside impression can be a useful basis for self-reflection.
From that nonsense, it becomes even more foolish to assert that Japan (a G8 nation and the 3rd largest economy in the world) is not "functional" by focusing exclusively on it's economy.
Taking a purely economic view of these things is to misunderstand what is happening. Sure, it's an economic stagnation/downturn when new jobs aren't created, but more important than the money is the loss of the things those jobs produced in society outside of their economic impact: tools, art, research, creativity.
Japan's current population growth rate is around -0.2%.
It's safe to say that the "evaporating population" hypothesis and it's hypothetical cataclysm on the arts doesn't make much sense nor has any bearing on reality.
> Taking a purely economic view of these things is to misunderstand what is happening. Sure, it's an economic stagnation/downturn when new jobs aren't created, but more important than the money is the loss of the things those jobs produced in society outside of their economic impact: tools, art, research, creativity.
Your "purely economic view" strawman doesn't pass muster. For starters, GDP reflects transactions and economic activity, and money is just the unit of account used to perform those transactions.
You can describe it as a form of a Ponzi scheme, the idea is that we must increase populations so we can continue living on the current living standard, not a future increased living standard.
What would it take to get to an improved living standard according to the this ideology? Doubling of populations? Tripling?
Not necessarily. The drive to keep a positive population growth rate is the need to provide resources to maintain the older segment of the population without draining the resources of the economically active population, aka work force.
In a more and more high skilled society, increasing population can have the opposite effect, do everyone have the skills and knowledge to operate in high skill society? If not, who will feed them?
Combine this with automation and old truths about increasing population to maintain standard of living falls apart.
On top of that, what the lockdowns has showed us is that many jobs are not actually needed for having a functioning society.
Another one-party democracy that worked well, at least for a few decades, is Singapore.
So maybe there is no conflict, but it is hardly functional.
-Suicide rates are roughly the same.
-Fertility rate was actually lower for a time - currently slightly higher.
-People work considerably more hours per annum.
-Average apartment sizes are lower.
I take such statistics with a grain of salt.
I think that currently they aren't significantly different in this regard than the rest of the developed world.
My anecdata from southern and eastern Europe says that things like stable employment and housing are hard to come by among the Ys and Zs and these are both major hurdles towards starting a family.
The US, though, is vastly more heterogeneous. There are aspects that are far worse and aspects that are far better. And you can choose. There are infamous high-crime neighborhoods with gang problems; you don't have to live in them. Meanwhile want a job making very good money and with flexible hours and a boss that treats you like an equal? non-existent in Japan.
Just because STEM graduates in the US can aspire to live in a comfort bubble due to their access to a cushy job, that does not make it an example of a well-functioning society by no means.
It makes absolutely no sense to claim that a country has a well-functioning society if it happens to have a hand full of ultra-rich billionaires while the whole population suffers to barely make ends meet, let alone have a shot at a decent life.
The US is much, much richer than any remotely comparable entity. Americans do not live the lives of grinding poverty you imagine. The only country or region that consumes more per household is Hong Kong[1]. A comfortable life in the US is available to much, much more of the population than STEM graduates as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
The US is 5th in the ranking of median income adjusted to PPP.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
> Americans do not live the lives of grinding poverty you imagine.
Some people in the US might live well-off, but more than 10% of its population struggles below the official poverty rate.
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...
Over 40% of the US population isn't even capable of supporting an emergency 400$ expense.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-em...
I suggest you try to take a look outside your bubble to learn how a high percentage of the US population struggles with poverty on a good day.
Would the average person rather live in, say, Belarus or Nebraska?
Not OP, but I would guess the simplest formula is to total up (Heath care - gun violence). i.e. the more likely you are to have health care for whatever happens to you, and the less likely you are to get shot, the better.
I agree with William Gibson: "People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary." - https://twitter.com/greatdismal/status/385249887891111936
It's a case of what exactly you view as "Freedom". Are medical bankruptcies freedom?
YMMV, you are welcome to choose otherwise. But I put it to you that this costs vs. benefits is a valid, consistent and informed point of view. If you're asking "Why would you?", then that's why.
What in the world does that formula have to do with freedom? If anything, you are trying to maximize for security with it, which is generally in opposition to freedom.
As for bankruptcy, it depends on whether you are talking about chapter 7 or chapter 13. Just kidding, that question was nonsense too. I think you're just trying to shoehorn zingers into the response.
So you're saying that employees who don't dare leave the corporate job because they really depend on the company's healthcare plan are more free. Cool.
> medical bankruptcy ... was nonsense too. I think you're just trying to shoehorn zingers
Great zinger yourself, bro.
You're welcome to equate a growing precariat who are vulnerable to exploitation as "Freedom", but don't expect that opinion to be universal.
So if I read between the lines it seems your ideal is some kind of "freedom from want" ...but only when it comes to want of healthcare. You're still cool with needing a corporate job for food, clothing and shelter? And you left out the other factor in your equation, which was gun-related stats. I'm still not seeing a coherent definition of freedom there. Still sounds like you want security to me.
Heathcare is a good example, but it's hardly the only want. It's worth raising when comparing countries, because it's a notable difference: different flavours of state run or state mandated healthcare is common in the developed world, USA being notable exception, and universal coverage gives people more ... "independence" if you like a different word to freedom.
I think you're assuming an entirely false dichotomy between "security" and "freedom". Along these lines https://www.adammcfarland.com/2017/10/18/would-universal-hea... https://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/why-medicare-for-a... Not to mention the entire notion of "precariat" - e.g. zero-hours contracts are means of control, yet they arise from lack of job security. So lack of security leads to lack of freedom, and presence of security (of healthcare, of income, of whatever) leads to freer choices in these cases.
The original question was "Why would you give up on freedom" not "define freedom!" and I'm not going to focus on a debate on parsing the definition of "freedom", or drawn back into the assumption that there is a single definition, which I rejected above. As far as I am concerned, that is a nonsense-making, derailing tactic.
But losing or gaining healthcare will be a consideration when I decide where to live. Regardless of a "coherent definition of freedom", that is a big Quality of life factor that I will look at. As I mentioned here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26660947
I honestly don't know where this "freely spend the wealth of other people" thing came from. If it's about heathcare, then it's a particular extreme political framing, to which I strongly disagree, but that seems to be missing the point.
> rest of the safety net is obviously more important to that agenda than the difference between voluntarily buying health insurance versus being forced to pay for it.
If you're saying that healthcare access isn't an important issue in the developed world today - in the midst of a pandemic and given the disparities - then again, hard disagree; to the extent that IDK, maybe something is very wrong with your thinking. Maybe it isn't important for you and you can't extend your view past that?
> no one in a undeveloped country or primitive lifestyle is ever free, apparently
My first issue with that is the binary framing, "free or not", no shades or grey or qualifiers, no degrees or kinds.
Then, I have the ability to contemplate changing jobs, changing locations, taking holidays in faraway places, so if you're asking "is this more free than a person in undeveloped country who doesn't have those choices?" It's self-evidently: yes of course.
Access to healthcare is not that different really. Nor is access to education. Or if (true story) you're relatively well off, in a third-world country, and you're going to live with private security, electrified fences, alarm systems etc. You're getting security, but you're less free to come and go. You feel it, constantly. You'd be freer if the crime rate was lower, and the crime rate would be lower if there was less abject poverty. Join the dots.
I am not going to move to Japan for a number of reasons (language and ethnicity for a start) and sure that society isn't either objectively perfect without corruption or prejudice, or perfect for me. So I don't feel the need to defend Japan here (I hope to visit Japan some day!)
However I have seriously considered moving to places in the USA, and I assure you that the question "what is the gun violence to healthcare ratio of that state?" was one of the first questions in my mind. It seems relevant, even though you did not raise it. Both guns and healthcare are representative of a group of related features of the society, of which they are only the most noticeable examples.
You do realize this is a pretty condescending and closed-minded statement to make no?
It's been said that any developing country going through accelerated economic improvement will have their birth rates reduced by quite a bit. That doesn't make it their society any less functional than say the NRA vs mass shootings, or political gridlocks between parties.
And last I heard Japan was opening up to foreign sources of labour. They are slowly changing their minds and adapting.
US politics is other extreme, there is no communication, because society loves conflict! It will get started whenever and wherever possible.