National cultures are less alike than we mostly prefer to think. Japan's present reflects upon Japan's past, which is long and deep and rich even if one would like to say that it went off the rails a century ago. America has no past for the present to reflect off. 250 years are nothing. We do not have traditions; we have defaults.
joe_mamba•12m ago
More like Japan is a nation of the Japanese people where maintaining national values and tradition comes first, while the US functions as the world's largest economic zone where making money any way you can get away with trumps any forms of culture or identity, so they each optimize for different things and get different outcomes.
mathverse•12m ago
Japan's decline is not a result of late stage capitalism but their inability to adapt and change cultural expectations and norms.
It's decline stems from favoring bullshit work over efficiency, change and adaptation.
corroclaro•8m ago
Are we not rapidly trending thither in the west as well?
joe_mamba•6m ago
We are in a decline too, we just lie to ourselves that we're "better" than Japan due to the fiscalisation tricks to pump up bullshit metrics like GDP graph and the DOW "are booming", as if that means anything to the average worker who lives paycheck to paycheck in a big city and hears gunshots at night in the background.
everdrive•7m ago
>It's decline stems from favoring bullshit work over
FrankWilhoit•28m ago
joe_mamba•12m ago