Rising Sun was written when a lot of people were worried that Japan would overtake the US as an economic power. We all know how that turned out. It's also why I'm sceptical when people talk about China being the next economic superpower.
Frankly, the age of democracy is over, and we now have the age of the permanent civil service. The good news is, it is almost certainly an improvement. China, Japan and Singapore are run exclusively by their civil services (democracy in the latter two is an irrelevant sideshow), and they are run much better than most western countries, or at least with more long term strategy. In fact, pretty much everything wrong with Japan can be blamed on the idiot government trying to save face by not admitting reality. The USA would be pretty well served, IMO, by taking control of budget away from congress and giving it to - well, almost anyone. The GAO, maybe. The Fed, the SEC, the commerce dept, anyone, so long as they're not elected. Being accountable to the electorate turns out to be the worst idea ever for people who are actually trying to do their jobs. It means never being able to admit you're wrong.
I don't mind if they keep parliament/congress around for show but they're going to go the way of the Queen of England - a figurehead, kind of a sounding board for the people, a super-ombudsman. A hundred years from now we're going to look back and wonder how we ever could have been so mad to think that giving politicians the reigns of power could ever have been a good idea.
Japanese Govt, like that in Singapore and South Korea, is characterised by the extreme strengths of their bureaucracies. It would be fair to say that the Japanese Diet, their government, is basically a peer to the JR railway company or MOFA. Imagine if in the USG, all the departments basically operated at the level of the DoD or Dept of State - frankly at the same level as congress. Congress can declare war on the DoD, sure, but would only do so under the most dire circumstances. In practise they cooperate.
Well, in Japan, that's how it is. Basically, the government could probably, if it came down to it, fire the heads of the bureaucracies, but it won't come to that and never has. They are peers for all practical purposes. They are like competing departments in a large corporation. You might think that is a recipe for wastefulness and corruption, and you would be absolutely right, but in a crazy sort of way they keep each other honest, somewhat, and it's better than Fox News making all your decisions.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some fanatical Japanophile - I don't even live there anymore. But man, at least they can get at least some stuff done. In the west we could not even dream of having a 50-year high speed rail plan. Just think about that. What does that say about us? Look, we're not a dystopia, but we're still basically coasting on past success. The car is still moving, but it's slowing down. Maybe we ran out of gas, or maybe we're so caught up in fight about which way to drive we can't even put our foot on the accelerator.
Corporations that lose the ability to invest in or even think about the long term go out of business. I don't believe countries are any different. We are going to have to change, radically, or we'll simply be taken over - it's only a matter of time.
China's economic central planning has worked so well to date because they have had larger, more successful economies to plan against--the U.S. and Europe. They have focused on exports, infrastructure, and exfiltration of intellectual property, in the hope of creating the foundation for a strong domestic economy.
Whether it will work remains to be seen. The 20th century clearly taught the world that central planning cannot maintain a consistently strong domestic economy; innovation happens too slowly. China's greatest challenge will be the transition to a more open and permissive society that is capable of bootstrapping its own innovations. This could be a very difficult transition for them culturally. Central planners very rarely give up their control and power peacefully.
Key word here is "free". America's self-defeat will come from its misunderstood idea of "freedom" - really, just a self-centered attitude that hampers cooperation.
The last few decades of research in psychology and neuroscience are pointing at all sorts of issues with that part.
Whereas in most democracies the party in power always has to worry about the next election.
If that's not a good point against it I don't know what is.
moldbuggery.blogspot.in
Not that his point is valid, but he did say economic superpower and the USSR was certainly not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#The_Case_for_S...
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/comm...
For one, Japan never had more than 50% of the US population. For their GDP to have eclipsed ours, their average citizen would have had to produce and consume twice as much as the average US citizen. The Japanese are highly productive, but not that much.
China on the other hand has four times our population. It's an entirely different dynamic here, and somewhat uncharted territory. No comparison.
I'm not an expert in economy, just a Civilization V player :) but I think these examples are very different. China is, simply put, orders of magnitude bigger. Even at a lower efficiency, they could output so much more "stuff", in any field of activity.
At this point, the only way they could go down in flames (or stay crawling at a low level) is self-sabotage via shortsightedness, bad decisions, cultural taboos, etc.
Ah China, Like religion, a topic about which people who have no idea about are comfortable making grand, utterly wrong statements.
China's GDP is about 50% bigger than japans, its exports are about 2.5 times japans. The idea that china is too big to fail is ludicrous. It might be possible to argue though, that its too big to succeed
On the one hand it's already succeeded - second largest economy in the world and all that.
But from an economic development point of view, that's a very interesting question. Can China solve its development problems, which are numerous - development of the entire country not just the 30% of the population on the coast, governance of that unprecedented mass of people, and rapidly ramping environmental problems?
Careful, that sword has two edges.
I was referring to its potential - population, territory, resources.
One order of magnitude, anyway.