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Author Topic: Japan is dead.  (Read 15010 times)

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BobRobertson

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #15 on: September 03, 2009, 05:49:29 PM »

While I was in Japan around 2002, there was a book (in Japanese, unfortunately) which had a hacker free-market revolution, in which they take over the island of Hokkaido and, by dumping all the Japanese regulation and bureaucracy and basically going full-bore anarcho-capitalist, turn it into an economic powerhouse and live happily ever after.

I was so sad it was only in Japanese and I couldn't read the book itself.
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"I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it."
-- Thomas Jefferson, April 26th 1820

Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #16 on: September 03, 2009, 11:09:42 PM »

Really?  People in Japan are at least minimally aware of libertarian ideas?  I'd like to see the source on that...

For example, compare the size and quality of multilingual Wikipedia entries on Ayn Rand (EN/JA/ZH), Anarcho-Capitalism (EN/JA/ZH), or the Austrian School of economics (EN/JA/ZH), and other similar articles.  There are many reasons why the Japanese version should be better than the Chinese version: Wikipedia is blocked in mainland China, Japanese people should have better access to political books, the Japanese Wikipedia is generally 2.3 times bigger, Japanese kana characters are less compact so the text could appear longer, etc.  And yet the Chinese version blows the Japanese version away, not just in the length of those articles, but also in descriptiveness and links to similar articles!
« Last Edit: September 03, 2009, 11:11:15 PM by Alex Libman »
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Kevin Freeheart

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #17 on: September 04, 2009, 08:51:57 PM »

Quote
People in Japan are at least minimally aware of libertarian ideas?  I'd like to see the source on that...

Battle Royale.

Moral of the story? Trust the government, especially to educate your kids, everyone dies.
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Libman was setting you up. You see, he's a resident troll, which means that while I hate him passionately and wish him great harm, he's ONE OF OURS. You are a pathetic interloper who will fade away in a few weeks at most.

Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #18 on: September 05, 2009, 05:12:15 AM »

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Kevin Freeheart

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #19 on: September 05, 2009, 04:01:28 PM »

Good call on btjunkie, BTW. Always one of my absolute favorites.
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Quote from: John Shaw
Libman was setting you up. You see, he's a resident troll, which means that while I hate him passionately and wish him great harm, he's ONE OF OURS. You are a pathetic interloper who will fade away in a few weeks at most.

Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #20 on: September 05, 2009, 04:18:31 PM »

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"Do not throw rocks at people with guns." —Hastings' Third Law
"Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today." —Herman Wouk 

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Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #21 on: September 06, 2009, 01:12:47 PM »

From Slashdot -- Google Japan To Help Victims of Street View Abuse --

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After repeated concerns from Japanese citizens over "privacy rights" violations involving Street View and a probe by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Google Japan has announced that it will help victims of Street View photo abuse take action against offending sites.  Google Japan said it would send requests to the sites for removal of maliciously used Street View images. It will also potentially block the site from Google's search engine and consider legal action for those sites which ignore or refuse the request. Action to this extent against secondary-use abusers is reportedly a first in relationship to Google's Street View worldwide.

Idiots!  You can have government-enforced "privacy rights" or you can have liberty, not both.
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Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #22 on: September 08, 2009, 09:25:59 PM »

Peter Schiff vlog mentions Japan's recent shift toward populism:

[youtube=425,350]f1cJWccEifE[/youtube]
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Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #23 on: September 28, 2009, 05:35:29 PM »

[youtube=425,350]zgHqR-wCryM[/youtube]

[youtube=425,350]KgizIjUDNuU[/youtube]

 :?
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AbstractVagabond

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #24 on: September 28, 2009, 10:24:52 PM »

[youtube=425,350]zgHqR-wCryM[/youtube]

 :?

Been so long since I watched AMV Hell 3.
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Insert soapbox here.

Libertarianssuck

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #25 on: September 28, 2009, 11:27:59 PM »

japanese comunists?  *sigh*  I thought they were smarter then that...
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Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #26 on: September 29, 2009, 06:57:09 AM »

Been so long since I watched AMV Hell 3.

Ah, what the hell:

[youtube=425,350]3aTgINExt2w[/youtube]


japanese comunists?  *sigh*  I thought they were smarter then that...

Japanese people are not very smart, they just do what they're told.  The electronics industry, the car industry, video games, anime - all based on government planning.  Manga style was invented in a government R&D facility that puts out teaching manuals for school art classes.  Etc.

Declining population + xenophobic culture + highest corporate tax rate in the developed world + zero economic growth + a growing communist movement == kaput.

Goldman Sachs predicts by 2050 South Korea's per-capita GDP will be almost 50% higher than Japan's, and places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and especially Singapore will probably be at least twice that.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2009, 07:02:08 AM by Alex Libman »
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Libertarianssuck

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #27 on: September 29, 2009, 12:29:56 PM »

Second time I've heard the word xenophobia glad it was on here so I could look it up before forgetting to. As for everything else you've said I had no idea. I actually never really took a close look at the Japanese government now that I think about it. I'm an anime/manga fan and was immersed in the cultural aspect when I was studying there. It seemed like everyone put a lot of time and effort in studies so I guess I took the stereotype at face value. Although classes I attended weren't too difficult I wondered if they made it easier for me or if that was really the level they were studying at.
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Alex Libman 15

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #28 on: October 13, 2009, 11:35:26 AM »

From BBC -- Organ donation in Shinto --

Quote
The Shinto faith is very much bound up with the idea of purity, and the wholeness of the physical body.

Organ transplantation is comparatively rare in Japan because the body after death is impure according to Shinto tradition.

Shinto traditions also state that interfering with a corpse brings bad luck.

Families are concerned that they might injure the relationship between the dead person and the bereaved (known as the itai) by interfering with the corpse.

This means that many followers of Shinto oppose the taking of organs from those who have just died, and also would refuse an organ transplanted from someone who has died.

That's stupid.  Don't expect them to stay on top of the national life expectancy charts for long...
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AL the Inconspicuous

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Re: Japan is dead.
« Reply #29 on: October 31, 2009, 06:02:18 AM »

From AP via Google -- Japan tech giants slump as SKorean rivals rebound --

Quote
Asia's technology giants are showing mixed signs of recovery, with Japan's electronics makers set to languish in the red this year while South Korean companies rebound sharply from a global industry slump.

Their diverging fortunes show the strides South Korea has made against Japan in recent years as they compete fiercely for global market share in consumer electronics like flat-panel TVs, cameras and mobile phones. That South Korea's currency has become relatively weaker than the yen of late has only provided an extra edge by making its exports more competitive.

On Friday, Sony Corp. became the latest Japanese technology heavyweight to report red ink last quarter, racking up 26.3 billion yen ($289 million) in losses as plunging sales of its core electronics products eclipsed healthy demand for its PlayStation 3 game consoles and Michael Jackson hits.

While smaller than expected, the loss underlined Sony's hardships as it cuts staff and costs to weather the global slowdown and sliding prices of gadgets. The company, based in Tokyo, is now forecasting a 95 billion yen ($1 billion) loss compared with the initial projection for a 120 billion yen loss.

The new forecast is marginally better than the 98.9 billion yen loss it suffered the previous fiscal year.

In contrast, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. said quarterly profits tripled to a record.

The country's biggest corporation and a world leader in consumer electronics earned 3.72 trillion won ($3.14 billion) in the three months ended September, compared to 1.22 trillion won a year earlier.

Samsung's result was not an exception for South Korean electronics companies. LG Display Co., which competes with Samsung in LCDs, announced record quarterly sales and a 90 percent surge in net profit. LG Electronics Inc., another rival, said it recorded all-time high quarterly sales for flat screen TVs and mobile phones.

Besides Sony, the performance of other Japanese electronics makers paled next to Samsung's.

While faring somewhat better than Sony, Panasonic Corp. barely managed to creep back into the black with quarterly net income of 6.1 billion yen ($67 million), its first profit in a year. That was down 90 percent from the previous year, despite recovering demand for refrigerators and washing machines.

Still, it too projected a loss for the year, though narrower than initially forecast at 140 billion yen ($1.5 billion) compared to 195 billion yen.

Japanese rival Toshiba Corp. stuck to its forecast for a 50 billion yen ($549 million) loss for the fiscal year. It eked out a small quarterly profit of 100 million yen ($1.1 million) on cost-cutting and higher sales of memory chips. That marked a reversal from a 26.9 billion yen loss the same period a year earlier.

One main difference between Sony and Samsung results stems from a more favorable exchange rate against the dollar for South Korea's currency, the won.

The other is that Samsung has its own in-house flat-panel TV production, while Sony gets its panels through a joint venture with Samsung, so its costs are greater and ability to make innovations in liquid crystal displays considerably slimmer.

Sony Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda said cost cuts were on track, but a quick turnaround in its TV operations would be tough.

"It would be difficult for us to achieve Samsung's profitability in TVs just by competing in hardware," he said at a briefing, citing the South Korean rival's attractive products as well as the weaker currency.

Sony needs to roll out more futuristic models such as the 3-D TVs planned for next year to one-up Samsung, Oneda said.

Sony fell behind Samsung in liquid crystal displays, partly because it had grown too complacent about its success in old-style cathode ray tube TV sets.

The strong yen has hurt because it makes Japan's products more expensive in foreign markets and lowers profits made overseas. The dollar had traded at above 100 yen last year but has hovered at 90 yen levels lately.

Sony's quarterly sales plunged nearly 20 percent to 1.66 trillion yen ($18.2 billion) from 2.07 trillion yen the same period the previous year, dragged down by sluggish consumer spending and the rising yen.

Sony's movie division lacked major theatrical releases, except for "District 9" and "Julie & Julia" during the latest quarter, and sank into an operating loss, as sales slid 30 percent, according to Sony.

Still, a recent price cut was a boon for the PlayStation 3 machine, and Sony sold 3.2 million PlayStation 3 machines around the world during the latest quarter, compared to 2.4 million the same period the previous year. Sony hopes to sell 13 million PlayStation 3 consoles for the fiscal year through March 2010.
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