In Sweden our foreign affairs minister was murdered two days before a referendum if we should switch to Euro currency. It destroyed the final days of campaigning.
Also I think it is common with sympathy votes in situations like this, for the party close to the victim.
Opposition MP Jo Cox was murdered a week before the Brexit referendum. As a result the Remain side suspended campaigning briefly while some of the Leave side, especially online campaigns, continued.
Then Nigel Farage gave a tub thumping victory speech saying brexit had been achieved ‘without a single bullet being fired’. Which while technically true since it was not a shooting, still shows what kind of horrible man he is.
The bloke who killed the Japanese leader was ex Japanese Navy according to some internet claims.
Having watched the video, its interesting the security/body guards didnt really make much of an effort, so will other politicians including retired politicians around the world be feeling a little less secure?
I find the security/body guard situation interesting with different leaders, you see a big show of force with the US, China & Russia, but European leaders including the Queen of England are much more low key, like Shinzo Abe's.
Does this perhaps demonstrate heightened levels of surveillance in European countries, which then brings privacy claims into play?
I'm well aware of the level of surveillance in the UK, many businesses are involved and filters down into the community, where people see fit for accidents to occur. Many suicides are actually murder, but as the old saying goes, accidents happen!
In the Netherlands in 2002, controversial politician Pim Fortuyn was murdered 9 days before the election. It resulted in a landslide 26/150 seat first-time entry for his party into parliament (although it would probably have been quite large anyway).
I noticed a downvote; not sure why (and I'm not really bothered), but I could add that the word "controversial" is a neutral observation: people were either for him or against him at the time, there was very little middle ground.
God forbid someone would learn from these events and make necessary changes.
There’s a middle ground, the US approach of putting your head into the ground unless a donor can benefit financially isn’t necessarily true for the entire world.
That is why I wrote „excessive“.
There is a difference between instructing security personnel to be aware of gun violence and e.g. trying to justify weakening E2E encryption and omnipresent autonomous face recognition in public spaces.
> IMF affirmed that Japan's nominal GDP contracted by $1.8 trillion during 2012–2015 while real GDP contracted at an annual rate of 6.8 percent[58] in the second quarter of 2014, after the Consumption Tax hike came into effect in April. This fall is the worst since the devastating earthquake and tsunami disaster[59][60] hit Japan in the first quarter of 2011 when the GDP shrank by an annualised 6.9 percent.
So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami.
That said, he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake.
Note that Japan is in a savage demographic crunch, with a TFR well below replacement and an ageing population, which means the ratio of workers to dependents (the elderly) is dropping. Which in turn reduces average productivity and GDP. Actual population decline is deflationary and Japan's been in that situation since the start of the 1990s.
This isn't a defense of Abenomics, but a reminder that Japan has structural problems that can't be easily fixed (unless there's a huge sea-change in public opinion and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants -- which would be a first-time-ever thing).
Immigration is not one-stop solution to fix GDP because integration is huge cost that is rarely taken into account. And of course it doesn't at all address the real problem, that men and women no longer creates families.
This is typical of todays debate in the West, not solve the real issue, instead offer some sort of band aid solution and completely ignore the real issue.
Japanese is a population of about 126 million living on size of Norway, a country of 5.4 million inhabitants.
Immigration is probably the only thing right now that mitigates the problem of consecutive declining birthrates. AI and robotics aren’t there yet. Historically, while immigration does have some downsides especially if your system has a lot of entitlements, the pros outweigh the cons. Imo it’s a big reason why the US eventually surpassed Europe, and a large reason for slowing down our decline.
>Historically, while immigration does have some downsides especially if your system has a lot of entitlements, the pros outweigh the cons.
You have to be far, far more specific. Both real estate and the job markets are already suffocating the average young adult in most developed countries. Your solution proposes to put more pressure on both of those markets, for the sake of another population. Young adults aren't going to see the benefits of this for a long time. Younger generations likely won't for a good while, either.
Additionally, by pumping in more people from outside, you're specifically pressuring skilled workers who put more thought to popping out babies than just doing the deed. There will be some semblance of resentment potential parents feel they can't reasonably have kids in a country already squeezing them things out at the current population size, despite wanting to. You know, the exact same thing happening in most countries today.
Even if Japan doesn't have similar problems with RE, the population isn't exactly waiting for immigrants willing to accept poor work conditions and pressure other candidates to do the same.
>Imo it’s a big reason why the US eventually surpassed Europe
You just going to conveniently skip multiple events leaving Europe in shambles and setting the US up to be in prime position to take over the global economy?
> Both real estate and the job markets are already suffocating the average young adult in most developed countries.
> Additionally, by pumping in more people from outside, you're specifically pressuring skilled workers who put more thought to popping out babies than just doing the deed.
You’re blaming this solely or mainly on immigration? You’re also going to have to be more specific.
> You just going to conveniently skip multiple events leaving Europe in shambles and setting the US up to be in prime position to take over the global economy?
Even without the wars, the US already had a trajectory of supreme power. We had the natural resources & geographical advantages, as well as the size and quality of our population which was positively impacted by immigration.This is why the UK pondered going to war with us again.
The Soviet Union also had geography and natural resources. Didn't seem to help much. Japan had no natural resources. When they turned to free markets after WW2, the Japanese economy had a spectacular rise.
I disagree. Most of the Soviet Union’s land is uninhabitable let alone usable, but let’s ignore that. The Soviet Union also didn’t have the economic system, infrastructure, investment, and immigration to take advantage of it.
I’m also not sure how this weakens my argument that the US was destined to superpower status even without the world wars.
Operating under the US military umbrella, as a major US & EU trading partner, had its advantages.
Japan's resource scarcity combined with long-term political stability (like Britain, it's been spared invasion for well over 1,000 years) promoted highly-efficient industry. Post-war industrial policy emphasized efficient transportation (motorcycles and small cars), and electronics, which worked pretty well up through the 1990s.
Russia had been industrially-backward until well past the Communist overthrow (and had lost a war to Japan immediately prior to WWI). It has mineral resources but a small population, difficult trsnportation challenges, and a precarious food situation. The country itself is huge and multi-ethnic, with a legacy that tends to breed frictions.
I don't agree completely, some parts are just fantasy projections. Looking at an example of Switzerland, who for quite some time desperately relies on constant immigration to not end up in exactly same demographic and economic place as Japan.
Swiss simply don't want to have kids, and if yes its 1 max 2... Mentality is really not much pro-kids, system gives only bare minimum support and taxes you massively for things that are free everywhere around. Kindergartens costing you 12% of the income - if you are incredibly lucky/connected to actually get in. 12 weeks of paid maternity leave when friends back home have 3 years/kid, and after that a lot of pressure to come back to work. Being taxed more when actually being married compared to single couple, laws from more misogynistic era when only men worked and women stayed home.
I've read that Switzerland is consistently rated as the worst developed place to have kids when judged by conditions created by state/society.
So its more often than not immigrants, some naturalized over time, that have kids. Property prices are ridiculous long term, many Swiss never lived in their own property (even apartment) and never will, even in retirement (or they will buy something in Spain or Thailand and migrate to have a decent lifestyle).
Despite all this (and much more), society is fine. Somehow they still manage to keep up 'Swiss spirit' of running things smoothly (mostly at least, based on my recent experience with residence permits which was and still is rather Kafkaesque). The points you raise are just part of whole package and nobody whines about it. You must realize that owning your own property is not some basic civil right, and for some its more burden than blessing. Getting rid of that notion is actually quite liberating from my own experience, more time on more important things in life.
Also property market is set to conditions in which currently it doesn't make any sense to buy properties. Due to how ownership is taxed, you never own more than 35% of the property, perpetually paying interests. But interests only right now are higher than rental prices. and something tells me its not going down anytime soon.
I have several friends with small kids in Switzerland. Seen from inside, they say the system is not bad at all. They also lived in a country with 2 years of maternity leave and they preferred Switzerland overall.
While my small sample statistics contradicts you, for me it is good enough because I trust these sources (I know some of these people for over a decade).
Switzerland and Japan doesn't have land to sell, so it's not a good example for the ideal of home ownership.
Things run 'fine' because the immigrants and majority of swiss people have no foothold in the country. There is very little opportunity to sway the dial in their own favour, so the people who make the compromises and let go of everything are happy with it.
The problem of young people having economic problems seem to be rather orthogonal to immigration. Immigration, if done right, should create more wealth than the immigrants themselves consume. So there should be more wealth going around for the aboriginal population. That this wealth doesn’t reach the younger population seems like an orthogonal policy problem. A salient example that comes to my mind is policies restricting housing supply.
Europe turned to socialism much earlier than the US. While this started around 1900, Germany's situation can be instructive.
When WW2 ended, as we all know, Germany was flattened. Although Germany did start receiving Marshall Plan money, it was considerably less than Britain and France received. Germany's solution was to become a free market economy. The result was the "German Miracle". West Germany roared from flatline to the dominant economy in Europe.
Britain and France never really recovered economically. East Germany, under the communists, did very poorly.
West Germany's success continued until 1970, when Germany put socialists in power and the economy slowed down.
It's just another example of free markets working very, very well.
which markets are free? markets work well for things that are measured, not everything that matters is measured. Also worth noting, countries have the right to determine their own ways, irrespective of some dictionary defined word like 'markets'
The thing is if the idea is that women should equally participate in the labour market then child births will decline.
Thus if immigrants already has or adopts the Japanese way of living then child births will still be low.
Or if immigrants have high childbirths then women will not equally participate in the labour market, therefore that family only has one or fewer incomes in a high tax society that is designed for two persons per family taxable income, thus that family will probably be a net loss for tax payers.
> Imo it’s a big reason the US eventually surpassed Europe
When was that?
If I'm reading the stats correctly for Japan
1960 94 million, ~50% labour participation rate for women, ~4 million child births, ~1 million abortions
Today 126 million, ~80% labour participation rate for women, ~800 000 child births, ~150 000 abortions.
Accounting for social changes, birthrates would still be on the decline in developed countries due to declining year over year male fertility. ie if we outlawed abortion and women didn’t work, it would still be decreasing
You would still need immigration to make up for the losses
If Japan went from the current child birth rate to same same rate as Hungary then Japan would be almost be at equilibrium, Japan has the same child birth rate as Hungary ten years ago before Hungary added a tax credit program for new families.
Almost isn’t good enough. Our current economic system also demands growth and not stagnation. Immigration is still better which is one reason many European governments changed their stances on it.
Oh, so you want low skilled immigration to Japan like in Europe, not high skilled immigration. How would that help anything?
Sweden has about ~5 physicians per 1000 people, largest migration groups to Sweden, Syrians has a rate about ~1.3, Iraqis ~0.7, Indians 0.9, Pakistani 1.1, Somalis ~0.02.
And then you have other important public skilled professions like teachers & educators, law enforcement, health services etc.
Thus low skilled immigration increases shortages on high skilled professions.
Discussing such petty issues with strangers online must be very amusing. Torus wants to increase his local native population, Chaos regards all humans as capable to improve economical challenges. Until we unite as species I am afraid we are gonna just end up destroying each other and going back and forward discussing reasons why our fellow humans can't decide to move to another piece of land for x/y reasons in this small planet of ours...
Why can't we just give people the freedom to do whatever they want, society will sort itself out and everything may balance out in the natural order of things. One point is that unites both, right and left, is to make life a living hell to those who dont give importance to these petty issues and just wanna work together with others to make this globe a better living place for all...
Japan doesn’t like immigration at all. Even high skilled immigration is discouraged culturally. The second people realize that you’re not a tourist is when the Japanese stop smiling.
You still also need low skilled immigrants. Otherwise, you’re not going to have people do terrible jobs like mortician and meat packer positions to name just a few jobs that native Japanese are hesitant to do. Just to remind everyone, AI and robotics are still not there yet. Anti-immigration advocates, just like the brexiteers, fail to account for reality.
Thus you agree with me that integration is huge cost, because immigration will create big friction within the Japanese society and that is a cost.
It is interesting that you admit that Japanese society is anti-immigration and yet you push this as solution to their problem. That is elitism.
> You still also need low skilled immigrants
Another alternative is to increase salaries, but immigration does the opposite, pushes wages down, especially for low income jobs.
Problem is that low income jobs is net loss in payed taxes in high tax welfare states, because the tax they put in is lower that the benefits they get, thus the more low skilled immigrants you bring the higher the taxation must be, but too high taxes will have a negative effect on general employment and business.
Believing that low skilled jobs is something beneficial for an advanced society is like believing that handing out shovels to dig holes is net beneficial in world with excavators.
What a society becomes rich on is processing either goods or services to something of higher value and preferably in multiple steps, not flipping burgers at minimum wage.
>Immigration is probably the only thing right now that mitigates the problem of consecutive declining birthrates.
No it isn't. It's fairly simple to increase declining birthrates in the west, there just isn't the political will do do what would be necessary to accomplish that (ie: Prohibit female education, abortion, birth control, kill the welfare state, etc...)
If you just make it easier to have kids, people will have them. It's hard to justify bringing a child into this world when both would-be parents have to work to make ends meet and they can't afford childcare.
Having kids is quite easy. Most of my colleagues that don't have any kids got into this situation because they pursued careers (long live the corporations selling dreams about careers) and then at 40 years old they figured out they cannot have kids anymore, even with fertility treatments they now afford. The younger ones that are still age 25 to 30 strongly believe it is too early for having kids and they postpone that for another 10-15 years.
Having kids is easy for a man. For a woman, it is anything but.
And women’s freedom to choose when and how many and who to have children with is what has caused birthrates to decline.
From what I can tell, women have been eating the true costs of birthing and raising children since forever. Now they can choose the terms under which they are willing to subject themselves to the risks and effects of childbirth, breastfeeding, and child rearing, so the “free” market should help see what the appropriate price will be.
Of the women that have kids and I talked to, none complained that having kids is not easy. I know women that after having the kid they planned for, decided to have 2 or 3, even 4 and it was their decision, not their husband's. The only women I heard complaining about having kids are the ones that have none, which is a bit strange - they have only second hand experiences, if any, of having kids.
Yes, now the future of the human race is practically at the hand of the women only. So far it is not going well, as a society and as a race.
> The only women I heard complaining about having kids are the ones that have none, which is a bit strange - they have only second hand experiences, if any, of having kids.
This is an implicit confirmation bias; of course more of the women that don't want kids will have no kids.
No, they won't. Even in developed countries where having children is financially manageable, people do not want kids. Less than 2 on average. The wealthier, the less kids. It's a consistent international conclusion.
When people do not NEED kids to survive, they'll have few or even none.
This is an important point, but I do believe there's truth to both arguments. The common wisdom in developed countries is that you don't have kids until you're financially stable, and increasingly financially stable includes education and career building through your prime reproductive years for both potential parents. And your point, kids were an asset in an agrarian society without machinery, they're not assets in our modern industrialized societies. I think there are more factors, one is the perceived state of the world as a worse place than before, true or not, and another is the increasing control that external entities like the state exert on the internal workings of families. That's not exhaustive, but I do think overall the incentives to start families are just no longer there, so people are doing less of it.
I agree that modern society is not set up to encourage having children as well as that people start about a decade too late with it.
But still, even in societies with excellent maternity leave and child support, people do not have more children.
Why not? Because things like "free child support" in reality are a clever distraction. It's not there to help you have a large family, it's there so that the parent keeps working full-time.
It doesn't really solve anything. There's no point in having a (large) family if you can't be with your family.
It doesn’t matter. The birth rate will still drop. Accounting for ALL social issues including “making it easier to have kids”, the birth rate will still drop because male fertility keeps dropping in any country that’s reached a certain level of industrialization. This includes BOTH developed and developing nations. There’s no definitive culprit, but many researchers believe male infertility is being caused by the endocrine disrupters that leech from plastic products that we use for food applications.
Then we should reform our economic system, endless growth is not viable, especially if you take into account climate and environmental issues. Again, band aid solutions does not work in the long run. We need to adress the real issue.
That’s really easy to say, but much harder to execute. Japan has been in stagflation for decades now. They still haven’t addressed the issue. The reason is because there’s current no known solution for it since centralized planning doesn’t work. If anyone has both the capabity & incentive for finding this answer, it would be them.
Immigration is still the logical choice until the solution is found.
And yet as someone young and skilled and keen to spend time living/ working there there's really no readily available visa options (unless I formally marry my de facto spouse)
Immigration won't solve the long term declining birthrates because it's a globally systemic problem. Moving people from one country to another won't actually solve the population decline globally - which is needed to support the broader global financial trade markets that have propped up the golden financial age we've experienced over the last 70 years.
"The End of the World is Just the Beginning" has been a great read so far (about halfway through it as of this comment) and the author, Peter Zeihan, dedicates a significant portion of the book to discussing the problem of population decline in-depth.
Obviously our economies are going to need to find a way to adapt to declining populations within the next few decades, and there's something to be said for countries like Japan being ahead of the curve there, but at this stage it's hard to see how they can adapt quickly enough without avoiding significant economic disruption.
The point is whether is has more immediate benefits than costs. My sense is that it usually does (immigrant population contributes more economically that what they cost in taxes), at least in the countries I've checked. The exception might be countries that accept a huge amount of refugees (I dunno, just speculating)
If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide it.
It depends entirely on what kind of immigration you are talking about, there are empirical evidence that certain type of immigration can be beneficial, but it also exist empirical evidence of the contrary, thus making a general claim is not possible without looking at the specifics, i.e. which immigrant group to what country and in what time.
Is there really no other way to go around demographic ratios except by importing young people? Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
There are other solutions of course, like automation. With technology we can do more work on less time, and that is something we have done since the industrial revolution. It is a bit bizarre that on technology forum this is not go-to answer.
Automation will put more money into the pockets of people who own the companies, IP and capital. Everyone else did not get much from it for a while and got more and more burden of education to work in that automated workplaces shifted on them.
That would require productivity growth, which requires investment and training, rather than profit extraction from cash cows.
The West has got very used to living off cash cows.
The other option is to invest abroad, and repatriate the profit. Which is something else Japan has done, the Chinese are doing, and the West seems to have forgotten how to do.
>The other option is to invest abroad, and repatriate the profit.
In other words, colonialism. I wouldn't say the West "has forgotten"; they are still extremely good at it with careful financial engineering, they can operate it without looking like slave drivers.
The problem is there is only so many places you can invest and the west has burned enough bridges where any sovereign nation is incredibly careful when taking money from the west.
> Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
we can make any kind of economy we want (its a human invention after all) which then makes the answer a lot more political (there are many intertwining interests that don't want/cant change)
Economics is not a human invention. It is a discovery, a study of the feedback mechanisms that lead to certain distributions of resources. When you pretend otherwise you get mass famine.
We usually try to create rules of trade and property rights that prevent things like famine and violent conflict. This is because certain sets of rules would inevitably lead to these things. What rules produce the most stability and health are not known, figuring those out is a process of discovery, it is not up to people which rules work and which rules don't because what actually works with regard to distribution of resources depends on how the natural world works.
> what actually works with regard to distribution of resources
isnt economics much more than just distribution of resources? and distribution to what end? "what works" largely depends on what your trying to achieve, no?
for example, we could say that china is doing economics much better than the west (growing faster, better infrastructure, better education, more dynamism etc), if you wanted to say "what works" but im not sure most people here would want to follow that path...
i feel there is an inherent political aspect that arises in economics that is being ignored... but maybe im just crazy?
Economics is not more than just the distribution of resources, no. The goal is to have efficient distribution of resources so that people can have the things they need within their means if possible, and to find new ways to process resources to produce things that make peoples lives better.
What works is largely about what you're trying to achieve, which is why when you see people trying to achieve things other than what I said, you wind up with mass famine, forced migration, shortages, and unnecessary expense. You see these things because they're not trying to avoid these things, they have other goals in mind.
There is a political aspect to economics, in that those who want to siphon resources away from efficient distribution and towards their goals will use political machinery to coerce a population. You see this in many instances, ranging from holodomor to artificially inflated drug prices in the US.
The economic problem Japan faces is temporary while the demographic change from immigration would be permanent. It makes sense that the Japanese are avoiding it.
Opening to immigration would lead to cultural genocide of Japan. Eventually those immigrants would (rightly) want equality and would introduce their own customs, traditions, and myths, etc. They’re better off preserving their way of life than destroying it so make believe numbers look better.
It's not about making numbers look better, it's about ensuring that your people don't become destitute. It's an unfortunate fact that when one third of your population is able to work (naïve example of parents all having 1 child for a generation) then each worker has to feed 3 mouths, 3.5 if they also have one child (the other parent still has two parents but shares the burden of the child). That's will full labor force participation. It's not viable no matter what social or economic system you have.
demography is a problem in todays day and age, japan is a small island, and it is over populated, it just is a correction
the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
demography is a problem in todays day and age, japan is a small island, and it is over populated, it just is a correction
the dude probably just was against the American military base that is being built
their government also said they'd ignore the result of a referendum vote, wich emphasis the idea that japan is no longer a sovereign country and instead is an American vassal that's getting used in preparation of the great pacific war
> and they start actively trying to attract younger immigrants
Well that certainly won't happen with higher taxes (unless the benefits outweigh the costs for the immigrants). They must get data to build their Laffer curve.
The Laffer Curve is completely useless for practical economics. Beyond the obvious (if we actually have 100% taxation that won't work) its role is solely to enable politicians, and particularly US politicians, to pretend that somehow cutting taxes (a benefit to their wealthy donors) will break even or increase income, even though in fact it does not.
Economics for skilled workers, which are pretty much the only people getting into Japan via work, isn't the issue. Quality of life is very similar for skilled workers in most of Europe and Japan.
The problem is still the immigration process itself, the (work) culture, and the language. Japan still hasn't made the process as easy as pre-COVID, and it wasn't that easy to begin with pre-COVID.
Before joining my current job, I was interviewing for a position at one of Toyota's R&D spin-offs. While they made a stellar job at selling the company (and ensuring all immigration support, from language classes and professional assistance for the process of moving and finding a home), in the end I opted for a lower-risk, lower-friction option because I have a pre-teen daughter and moving countries is a bit stressful, especially crossing such a cultural chasm.
It's still something I would contemplate at a later stage - I actually enjoy jumping cultures.
They could probably attract millions of Westerners tomorrow if they really wanted. Whether or not that's a good idea / they'd like the influx is another question. But, they could do it without changing anything except their insanely difficult immigration schemes.
Abe did that. It's very easy to immigrate to Japan. The reason this succeeded is that nobody in the country noticed, which is why you don't know about it.
It's not that attractive to Westerners if only because wages are low so you can't pay off those student loans.
(Immigrate as in get into the country on a work visa, not as in get permanent residency - that's doable on a "highly skilled professional" visa though.)
What are you comparing with? Wages are not that low relative to the remainder of the developed world and student loans aren't that high outside the US. The US is the main outlier here, not the other way around.
Wages of English teaching are lower than jobs you can get in the US. Or for that matter tech companies, though it's fine if you work for an international company.
English teaching is a pretty obvious low-barrier outlier. Otherwise, you're confirming the US as your main point of comparison, without realizing the US is the primary outlier here. Compare the US to any other developed country and it becomes fairly evident why.
It is? Last time I checked a few years ago it was still rather onerous and was only easy for very highly skilled individuals, not just normal professionals.
You’re probably looking at the requirements for early access to permanent residency.
Work visa’s for skilled work categories in Japan aren’t particularly hard to come by. You just need a qualification or a few years relevant work experience.
You can still get in if you get a work visa, and it's not that difficult to get one if someone wants to employ you. (If you have a four year college degree.)
The Laffer Curve is a bit of a myth which relies upon fixed exchange rate, fixed amount of money thinking.
That doesn't apply in the real world.
In a floating exchange rate system with a financial system, such as the one Japan has, the currency is essentially a closed system. Yen can't go anywhere else, and you can't use it for anything real outside of Japan.
That means that government spending is matched by the sum of taxation + non-government saving, and it is the spending that causes the taxation and saving, not the other way around.
What the curve says then is that people net save less in the middle of the curve - which generally means they are borrowing too much because they are not earning enough to maintain their standard of living.
The Laffer curve is an overly simplistic model that supposes government revenue is a function of income and sales tax revenue. This simply isn't true: Japan has control over its own money supply and can issue bonds. Nor are workers attracted to/barred from an emigration destination solely by tax -- other issues such as relative standard of living come into play.
Abenomics was not likely a good idea at the time nor in retrospect, but a lot of the GDP contraction has less to do with monetary policy and far more to do with cultural/social policies that the population embraces - government-sanctioned or not.
Very low birth replacement rates, very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale, Sony et al being beaten by Intel to the correct Silicon Valley model, and so forth all contribute to contracting GDP quite a bit.
EDIT: This is not to say I think Japan has the wrong idea or whatever; I agree that chasing GDP is not some end-all be-all thing. I'm just saying that while I don't regard Abe as a genius economist, I don't think it's too fair he get a ton of blame either given that his country's demographics, social model, and other factors likely contributed far more towards the inertia of a shrinking economy.
> very strict immigration laws (basically anti-immigration RE: chances at citizenship), long history of nationalistic behavior regarding homegrown consumed goods rather than taking advantage of trade economics of scale
These are all things that Abe’s government and policies strongly supported.
Happier than average, but that average includes countries wracked by war, poverty and corruption.
Edit: the 2022 World Happiness Report ranks Japan at 54th out of 146 with a score of 6.039 normalized to 0.67, an improvement, and is now comparable to Mauritius, Uzbekistan and Honduras.
Do you really place so much stock in happiness surveys as an objective measure of reality? Particularly when the subject itself, happiness, is so subjective.
I would choose "very well educated". IMO you can't really judge happiness without an appreciation for different ways to be happy. I'm probably myopic in my idea of happiness because I haven't had children, but I'm pretty sure that a many people who have had children but not an education are as well. http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html
"Happiness" is subjective, but suicide is as objective an expression of un-happiness as it gets. It's just an icky and emotional topic nobody wants to acknowledge.
I have a good laugh when free shit is used as an indicator of happiness though. Prisoners get free food, education and healthcare. The state will even take your children off your hands. Working is optional. Prison surely must be the happiest place on earth!
A society where 1% live in hell and commit suicide and 99% are perfectly content, is more happy than one where 100% are just happy enough to not off themselves and no more.
This reminds me of the short story by Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", wherein Omelas, an ecstatically happy utopia, depends for its existence on the torment of one single child, kept in a basement dungeon. Citizens can view the child any time they please. Some never do, some only once, some quite often. Some, very few, after viewing the child, leave the city forever.
That to me looks only like an observation, not an argument in favor of anything in particular.
Personally speaking, I would not be happy if 1% of my fellow citizens were tormented so that I along with my 99% cohort could be happy, paradoxical as that is.
Let's use the observation to understand what's happening in our respective societies and make things better for everyone.
Inequality is low in Japan but the people in general are not that rich these days and are getting poorer; it's a big problem. On the other hand, unemployment is significantly better than in 2010 - most of the cultural things you used to hear about Japan like crazy fashion were because all the young people were unemployed and had nothing better to do than stand around in Harajuku. And the famously low birth rate is up again and higher than other Asian countries. A lot of that is due to Abe's policies. (The last one gets all the memes.)
Happiness is not just an economic thing. It's also culture, and that takes generations to fix.
From an economic standpoint, Japan has a high standard of living. Good medical system, plentiful and cheap food, affordable housing, quality education, few crime and an endless amount of job vacancies.
On the other hand... the air quality has been awful this year..but you cannot have everything perfect in any country.
So was I, but the other responder is actually right, it's lower than US and "After peaking in 2003, suicide rates have been gradually declining, falling to the lowest on record (since 1978) in 2019."
Japan is notorious for recording things as "accidents" that are not accidents. Especially if it helps the police or family save face. This also applies to other things, like an artificially low homicide rate.
You’re looking at nominal GDP measured in USD over a period when the value of the yen fell significantly relative to the USD.
If you look at the trend you can clearly see the nominal GDP fell back down to trend after a massive spike during the high yen period post-GFC.
I lived in Japan most of that period and no one thought of it as a recession. Unemployment fell to essentially zero, the stock market boomed, the lower yen was welcomed and ultimately “real” (PPP) GDP rose.
There’s a reason Abe was able to serve as PM for so long in a country otherwise notorious for cycling switching leaders.
Those numbers are wildly misleading. The Q2 2014 GDP drop was 1.7% but this is largely because consumers brought forward consumption of big ticket items to Q1 - where the economy grew by 0.8%.
The economy ACTUALLY only shrank by 0.1% in 2014 but then grew by 0.4%,0.2%,0.5% the following three years, which is actually a lot for Japan.
You don’t even know that any other policy would be better, because we can’t rewind and retry. And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy.
"And economy is not everything - I don’t think Boris Johnson became unpopular over the economy."
But the economy is a very basic, essential thing.
If it is bad, things are indeed bad for many people, which counts more to them than the great politic.
Johnson would not have to worry about anything, if the UK's economy would be running smoothly. Which it does not and the brexit is basically still unsolved and a great feeling of insecurity remains. This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
> This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
I can't tell if you aren't aware he resigned or if your meaning here is that you figure Johnson will stand, be re-elected by his MPs and then pretend everything is back to normal, presumably while continuing to leak MPs to both by-election defeats and defections.
I wouldn't put it past Boris to attempt such a thing, but my guess is that it would be humiliating. There are dozens of MPs who'd back Boris in the hope of some reward, but far more see this as a useless cause and want to be first in line for a ministerial job under one of his rivals who might survive a general election.
> This might finally bring him down, not all the scandals.
He resigned yesterday, he's been brought down. But it wasn't really the economy, I think, as much as people harbouring hopes of being PM getting sick of being made to look idiots by his constantly changing stories.
He's still Prime Minister until he's replaced. Which is probably inevitable, but like in all horror movies you need to make sure the monster is actually dead before your relax.
> he was not the only one supporting this policy, and nobody deserves to die for a mistake.
if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake, and cannot have blame placed on those who made the decisions under incomplete information.
That isn’t how you defines a mistake. To flip the logic, if you know something is a bad idea and do it anyway that’s not a mistake either, it’s intentional.
> if it was only known after the fact that it was a mistake, then i dont think you can call it a mistake
Mistakes are by definition only known to be mistakes after the fact. If you know before you do something that it’s going to fail then it is not a mistake.
Poker players are trained to think a decision was a mistake only if the expected value of the decision was negative, not if the outcome happened to be negative. This is good because it removes the chance component from the outcome when evaluating the quality of the decision making process.
Whether that’s a good definition or not of ‘mistake’, it’s extremely context specific. Considering the outcome of Abenomics and the generally used notion of ‘mistake’, still strikes me as valid to call it a mistaken program in retrospect.
It's context independent and can be applied anywhere. It's the maxim of not factoring in good or bad luck when evaluating the quality of a decision that's made under incomplete information (such as not being able to see the future). Simple and sensible.
> Considering the outcome of Abenomics and the generally used notion of ‘mistake’, still strikes me as valid to call it a mistaken program in retrospect.
Fair enough. I was commenting in the abstract, I have no view on Abenomics.
No, it only works in artificial environments where you get to sample a bunch of outcomes under the same decisions, with a known fixed probability distribution, to work out to an overall net positive.
Economic policy is anything but this, a wrong decision can have catastrophic events where you don't get to make more than one decision, probability distribution is extremely complex and ever changing, and you need to account for that. You definitely don't want to apply artificial game logic.
It can only be applied rigorously in artificial environments where distributions are known or where distributions can be easily sampled from.
But the mindset/maxim can and should be applied everywhere. If an economic policy had bad outcomes because of bad luck, and the unlikely adverse event was appropriately considered as a possibility when the decision was initially made, then the sheer bad luck shouldn't count against the decision when we are retrospectively evaluating it.
>If an economic policy had bad outcomes because of bad luck, and the unlikely adverse event was appropriately considered as a possibility when the decision was initially made, then the sheer bad luck shouldn't count against the decision when we are retrospectively evaluating it.
No, you need to weigh the severity of bad outcome. If you play Russian roulette for 100M - you don't say "excellent opportunity - 5/6 chances I walk away with 100M". No ammount of money is worth that kind of risk to me.
It is a common pitfall to attribute both the good stuff and the bad stuff to whoever is in power at the time. We like to forget that success and failure are to large extent dependent on current context (economical, societal and so on).
This is why, for example, CCP and Putin enjoy popular support: if people’s quality of life has improved, they must be onto something!
Improving %metric% thanks to general development and despite the dictator in power is very much a thing, just as declining %metric% could have been the best possible outcome.
If anything, the idea that either the Chinese population is unhappy and repressed, or that we can't possibly know what they think, that is an assumption. Or rather, an eternal myth perpetuated by undying stereotypes.
> The work began in 2003, and together with a leading private research and polling company in China.
Knowing that studies like this must have government oversight, and that study was performed by a company in China, can you really trust the data of the study?
My point is that we really do not know what is happening in China because we have very little visibility in China. Everything is censored and the CCP tells us what they want us to think.
Now the people could very well be happy, and love the CCP, and not be repressed. But in reality we literally have no idea because anytime anyone speaks out in China its censored.
And yet the protests inside China are very real. The criticisms online are very real. The fact that they change policies is very real. Censorship isn't omnipotent, China isn't North Korea. Or do you think every single Shanghai lockdown protester has been rounded up? Do you still remember the Evergrande protests? Are all those people in jail?
The Harvard survey was anonymous. Or do you think they're lying and they secretly recorded every participant's personal information so that they can punish them to answering wrong? If so then why did 4% answer unsatisfied? Did they have a death wish? Have all those people been jailed? And why was satisfaction rate for lower governments much lower? Won't those people get into trouble with e.g. the local police department or the mayor?
Yes protests happen and I’ve seen the videos of the students who protested the changes to collage mergers get beaten by police and social media posts of the violence getting censored from Weibo.
I guess all the leaked photos and videos of the Shanghai lockdown that were censored and removed from Weibo never happened tho. The animal abuse. Staged food supply videos. Suicides. Forced removal. Covid camps partially built with no beds or showers. Office buildings converted to covid bed. People stuck in offices and restaurants during lockdown, delivery drivers who refuse to enter Shanghai for fear of being forced to stay once they deliver supplies. I guess because it was all removed from WeChat and Weibo it all never happened.
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Of course some people have to be dissatisfied. They can’t have a report that states 100% love for the CCP. You make it sound like I think the CCP is stupid.
The survey being anonymous doesn’t change the fact that company doing the survey is beholden to the government. The survey cannot occur without government oversight. And it’s done by a Chinese company. That means every piece of information goes over the desk of The Central government before it ends up at the ash center.
The Central government doesn’t care about the lower government. The lower governments get thrown under the bus all the time. It’s about protecting The Central government.
Anyway it’s clear that you’re pro CCP so there’s no point in debating this with you because you’re just going to use any excuse possible to justify the actions of the CCP.
I am not "pro CCP", nor am I "justifying all their actions". I am pro-"treat China fairly" and I am protesting wrong assumptions and projections.
You miss the point regarding censorship and you focus too much on it. I am saying that protests, censorship and the changing of policies in response to protests (despite censorship) are all real at the same time.
So no of course those events did not factually disappear because there was censorship. What I am protesting is your notion that the entire population is being fooled and has no idea what's going on and that there aren't any societal discussions about government and policies. This is false. If you check for example Whats On Weibo then you can see that there are very often very active discussions and that people are aware of government screwups. Even state media has reported on what went wrong in Shanghai.
I am also protesting the notion that the existance of propaganda must mean everything is fake. No. Yes maybe a few staged food supply videos exist, but food supply is very real! My family and acquaintances have had them. Propaganda is more like marketing than some brainwash scheme with nothing real behind.
You then proceed to make some big assumptions about how government works. No, not everything goes through central! Do you really think that the central government has time to micromanage the entire country? Chinese governance is very decentralized.
Businessmen who have had contact with the central government often think that just because they got approval from the foreign minister that everything is then taken care of, because of their own misconception that everything in China is top-down tightly cobtrolled. They then get confused by why nothing happens. The foreign minister then gets confused about why the businessmen don't talk to local governments directly, because the minister doesn't control those things.
Likewise you seem to have some implicit assumption that any censored Weibo posts have been reviewed by government. No: government sets some rules on what's not allowed and then platforms have to do the censorship themselves. Censorship does not equal direct government disapproval, and more importantly censorship has little relationship with whether government addresses grievances or not. Stuff can be censored and policies can be changed to address grievances, all at the same time.
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Again, I am not "pro CCP". I am pro-"treat China fairly".
If CCP screws up then they deserve to lose legitimacy. You mention e.g. badly built quarantine camps as if I would be okay with that. Of course not. Of course beating people is not okay, but I protest the notion that beatings happen on a regular and systematic basis as opposed to incidentally. Here in the Netherlands police beatings also happen but nobody uses individual cases to paint the larger narrative that the Dutch police beats all protesters.
When one makes assumptions about China based on stereotypes and downplaying what many Chinese people say, that is not being fair. When anti-CCP sentiment is being hijacked to attack Chinese people (we're in a cold war after all), especially when the reasoning was flimsy in the first place, that's not being fair.
For ** sake, today's China is literally the best 30 years out of 3000 years. Can't westerners be happy for us for a change instead of continuing to perpetuate the stereotype that we're all oppressed? China is not USSR. China is not North Korea.
As long as there is more food and toys than before, people stand by the regime that happened to be in power at the time and took the credit. People forgive lies, privacy and freedom violations, obvious policy failures and everything else.
This is a western perspective that I think is a bad fit for China. Valuing freedom and privacy etc as the ultimate goal is a western value, not a Chinese one. To most Chinese, those are merely nice to have, ranking below many other things such as unification, safety, order, health, etc. Chinese "forgive" govt privacy violations in the same way westerners "forgive" the govt for not introducing filial piety laws.
People don't "forgive" policy failures, they just tend to have a more nuanced understanding of the whole than the west does. For example Mao is considered good in some ways, bad in others, whereas we in the west are fixated with painting a figure as wholly good or wholly bad, nuance be damned.
On top of it all, the west has an implicit assumption that China will automatically become great if only we kick out all the bad guys (= CCP). No, things aren't that simple, just look at Chinese history.
> ranking below many other things such as unification, safety, order, health, etc.
I got a similar vibe from talking to some Russians. Freedom is not important, it’s warranted that it’s limited, we’re not the West, we value it less. I suspect it’s Stockholm syndrome, a consequence of a self-preservation instinct.
Many Westerners don’t approve of their governments—their countries have comparatively prospered for a while, and now it feels like the growth has stopped. By contrast, in some other countries the generational memory of significant hardship and poverty is very fresh, and quality of life is still on an upward trend from historical lows.
Of course people in these countries value things like safety, order, health very highly.
Unfortunately, in some of these countries—this includes both Russia and China—the upward trend coincided with oppressive governments. This led to citizens rejecting values like freedom of action, thought and speech (which is a requirement for individual moral growth—if people live under strict rules imposed by someone else, they don’t have to form any rules of their own), considering such values “foreign” and “not suited to their culture”.
> China will automatically become great if only we kick out all the bad guys (= CCP)
I would never say it’s so simple. There would be a downturn due to uncertainty, and the unfamiliar degree of individual freedom combined with suffering moral values/inexperience in making choices (an outcome of oppression and surveillance) would certainly cause a dip in quality of life.
However, I believe a society where everyone has access to information, a country that treats its own citizens as adults and trusts them, a country where policies are not set by a few self-selected humans with the first-order goal to maintain own power (humans are fallible, and power corrupts), would after growing pains prosper much more.
I don't know much about Russia so I won't comment on it. However I would strongly caution against comparing Russia with China. The two countries are very different. Comparisons based on superficial knowledge (e.g. "both countries are 'authoritarian police states' so property A of Russia probably applies to China") tends to be wrong more often than right.
Anyway, my answer to your post has two components: a philosophical one and a practical one.
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Philosophical:
To call it Stockholm Syndrome is an overly simplistic reading which ignores thousands of years of Chinese philosophy, tradition and history, which have had a profound impact on today's attitude. Chinese philosophy and paradigms are very different from western ones and they do not easily map to each other.
A couple of things I forgot to mention in the list are sovereignty and responsibility.
Sovereignty is valued not only by China, but by many global south countries because of experience with imperialism. For many, sovereignty ranks higher than "freedom": yes maybe there are freedom problems, but in the end they're our problems, and we'd rather own these problems than having outsiders interfere, supposedly for our own good. This actually ties a lot into the practical component, so I'll get back to this point later.
Responsibility is a huge philosophical component that's nearly absent in western philosophy. The basic ethical concept of Chinese social political relations is the fulfilment of the duty to one’s neighbour, rather than the claiming of rights. It has been this way for thousands of years. This does not mean rights haven't existed: they have existed in a more philosophical form rather than legal form. For example you keep calling the Chinese govt "oppressive", but traditional Chinese thought says that it's the ruler's responsibility to care for the well-being of its people, and that the people have the right to revolt if the ruler fails to do so. This is in fact exactly what have happened time and again in thousands of years. The modern ruling class understands this as well: they are incentivized to do a good job because ultimately the stability of the nation depends on it, even though it is not codified in formal texts and legal systems as westerners would approach it.
Responsibility is also considered a two-way street. Rulers work in the interest of people, but people also have obligations towards rulers (beyond basic things such as paying taxes). Western societies focus on rights, on what the state isn't allowed to do to individuals, but classical Chinese philosophy focuses on obligations that people have towards each other, including the rulers but also towards neighbors, family, etc.
Furthermore, China is a collectivist society. China emphasizes collective rights more than individual rights. This means that individual rights are sometimes violated if that's what's necessary for the greater good, a practice that western societies would frown upon.
TLDR: China is a society built more on responsibility rather than freedom. One must not underestimate how different Chinese paradigms are from western ones. I suspect I'm further along the Dunning-Kruger effect line than you. It's easy for people to draw early (and wrong) conclusions about China based on superficial knowledge about China. But the more I learn about China and the impact of classical Chinese thought, the more I think "western understanding of China is even more wrong than I thought" and "we know absolutely nothing"
(https://fourweekmba.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/dunning-k...)
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Practical:
Having western ideals of freedom etc is fine. Unfortunately, in the context of foreign relations, such ideals deviate so far from practice that they can even be actively harmful.
The west has preached freedom and democracy for more than a century. But in the 19th and 20th century they invaded China while preaching these values. The birth of the CCP was directly triggered by the fact that the "free" US gave Tsingdao — a German colony — to the Japanese rather than back to China, in direct violation to earlier promises. These sort of scandals taught China that sovereignty matters more than anything: foreigners don't have our best interest at heart no matter what they say; and there is no freedom, no equality, no prosperity, until we have sovereignty.
These sorts of things aren't just relics of the past. The west still likes to sanction or invade all sorts of countries based on flimsy evidence: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and more. Many European countries gave dirty looks to the US for its invasion of Iraq, but none of them sanctioned the US for it, while happily joining Syria and Afghanistan a few years later. All while preaching to value democracy and freedom. Nobody seems to care about Yemen. Only when the war gets too close to home, do people suddenly care.
This does not mean the ideal of freedom is wrong. But how can one expect other societies to take these ideals seriously when the teachers violate them all the time? In an ideal world, the west practices what they preach.
In the past, I've often looked at western reports about China taking "authoritarian measures" on this and that, not being free enough, not allowing western activists in to promote freedom, etc. I used to think: "why does it look like the Chinese govt is wary of foreign activism? We don't live in the imperialist 19th century anymore, the world is at peace and the west has good intentions nowadays".
Then I learned about CIA color revolutions, how the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, what the US did to China in the aftermath of WW2, NATO's recent involvements in wars, etc. And then I think "aw crap, the Chinese govt was right all along".
Until recently, I thought the EU was more sincere about human rights than the US (NATO involvement in wars notwithstanding). And then I read this tweet by Ursula von der Leyden, who calls Abe Shinzo a "great democrat".
https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1545339439458750464
Uh, what? Abe Shinzo has a history of denying Imperial Japan war crimes, and is directly mentored by his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, the "butcher of Manchuria". That's a bit like Merkel having Henrich Himmler as mentor, and Merkel visiting Hitler's grave every year while calling him a war hero.
I don't personally care that much about Imperial Japan war crimes (though my grandmother would, because she fled Japanese butchers while she was a child), and I get that Japan is an ally, and I get that dead people deserve some level of respect. But still: EU, you don't have to pretend that a man with such a problematic past is an entirely wholesome person with no stains. Chinese and Korean social media are on fire for the past few days because they both think "good riddance".
With the EU apparently only having "values" when it suits them geopolitically, happily looking the other way when confronted with allies' crimes, how can one take these values seriously?
It’s true that in one case there’s no elections and in the other case the elections are most likely rigged, so it’s hard to know for sure.
I base this on discussions I had with people from both countries (numerous in real life, as well as some online, including here), there are enough anecdata points for me to form this opinion.
I just moved to Taiwan after spending 10 years living in Singapore. I've not met a single person from China in Singapore who liked the CCP. I can't comment on Russia because I honestly don't think I've met anyone in person from Russia. I wouldn't take online as an indication of anything tho as people from China always say in person they would never admit out loud because they fear for their family.
I'm Chinese and I'll have to disagree with the idea that Chinese "fear speaking up". That is a stereotype. China isn't that sort of place. There are 500 protests a day — not to overthrow the government, but to ask them to do better or to address grievances. Criticisms are all over the place if you look online.
Most likely you were just in a community with people who are unhappy about China. I live in Netherlands and most Chinese here (specifically: those who came from the mainland) are supportive of China. Those from Taiwan or who were born here are a mixed bag.
> I live in Netherlands and most Chinese here (specifically: those who came from the mainland) are supportive of China.
I don't think I've met a person in Singapore who wasn't supportive of China. They all love their country, and why wouldn't they, beautiful country, people, food, culture. But what I said was they don't like the CCP. You can hate the CCP and still love China.
None of the Chinese people I know, love the CCP. They may have an opinion on whether China is well-governed but for the most part they don't care who's in charge as long as they do a good job. Agreed with your notion so far.
But that notion doesn't go very far, because a large part of that notion is detached from the reality of how that notion is abused. 9 out of 10 people that I've met spout the "love Chinese people hate CCP" line, only to continue with spouting borderline racist stuff like "Chinese can't innovate/steal our tech" or "why do so many diseases come from China". Furthermore, "hating the CCP" in practice translates to actions that harm not only the CCP, but also the Chinese people as a whole, and most people have absolutely no problem with that. Chinese people are considered a sacrificial pawn who should gladly offer themselves up for the noble fight against the CCP. People slap the "CCP spy" label on Chinese scientists, engineers, students, etc, completely without proof, and voila — you now have a justification to attack Chinese people behind a fascade of "standing up against the CCP".
The pro-China people that I know here get angry whenever they see another article that claims that China is performing $HUMAN_RIGHTS_ABUSE. They don't care about CCP specifically, but many such allegations merely pay lip service to the notion that they're only attacking the CCP. If you look past the fascade then in practice they're attacking China and the Chinese people, because such accusations are used to justify sanctions against China, Chinese companies, entire Chinese provinces, depriving normal people of their livelihood, all with either very little proof or very misrepresented facts.
It’s not about “love”. (Few people in respective countries love Biden or Boris Johnson either.)
There is popular support for the government (that means, people are not looking to reelect or overthrow the government) because people think the government did good (a.k.a. did not screw up enough). But the government may have, in fact, screwed up; it just successfully manipulated popular opinion and benefitted from economic context.
It has also screwed up in the most fundamental way, by preventing people from peacefully replacing it (meaning the first key objective of any of its policies is to ensure it maintains power).
You fail to recognize your life may have improved despite the policies, not necessarily thanks to them; meanwhile, those policies may have degraded individual moral values such that the only thing keeping the country from descending into chaos is total surveillance, all the while benefiting the ruling elites.
Agreed with the first part about love and what popular support means. That was also my point.
As for the rest: what is the point of what you say? "May" have successfully brainwashed people. "May" have had nothing to do with successes. Even if those are true, what do they have to do with the point of whether Chinese people fear speaking up? Their truthiness don't negate the fact that anti-CCP sentiment is being actively hijacked to attack China and its people, and few people seem to care despite putting up a fascade of "loving the Chinese people and only hating the CCP". That is one of my major grievances about China discussions.
Same point as it was in my original comment. If X was in charge during a good trend, it’s a human fallacy to post-rationalise the past as if the good trend was happening because of X being in charge (and even turn X’s downsides into X’s benefits), even if the good trend happened despite X being in charge. That’s how many Xs stay in charge while being objectively unworthy of it; especially those Xs that can use a combination of force and politics play.
Regarding “loving Chinese people and hating the CCP”, I am disinclined to blame the Chinese people, much like I am disinclined to blame the Russian people—they are bombarded with misinformation from young age and are given limited individual choice. (Also one of the reasons I’m inclined to blame the respective regimes.)
Yes, good times' correlation with a ruler may be total coincidence. But then again, it may not. You're strongly suggesting that the correlation is almost certainly total coincidence.
But in this case, it's easily refuted by looking at data. India and the PRC started at roughly the same time, same population and same GDP. (Actually PRC had it worse than India, GDP- and infrastructure-wise.) Now compare them today. Chinese are not inherently smarter than Indians.
Heck, look at emerging democracies in the past 30 years. Which ones have grown like China and have been able to give their citizen good lives? Not one. If you look at South Korea and Taiwan, then you see that most of their growth and development came during a time when they heavily relied on industrial policy — the same strategy that China today employs.
Thus, there is a strong case to be made that China's success is for a significant part contributed by its government. To believe otherwise and ignore the data is to just cling onto the hope that the CCP should not have any legitimacy.
Regarding blaming Chinese people for being "bombarded with misinformation": so say so is to remove Chinese people's agency. We aren't mindless drones, we can have a legitimate opinion that's different from yours, for legitimate reasons.
Furthermore, there is a power problem here. If you say that you blame the Chinese people, then you leave people like me no choice but to become more supportive of the CCP. Because foreign actors won't act in the best interest of China: they claim they do ("freedom", "democracy", etc) but at the end of the day we empirically observe that the actions that foreign governments take, harm not only the Chinese state and the CCP, but also regular Chinese people. Despite all its faults, CCP is the only party that actually stands up for the interests of the Chinese civilization.
Disclaimer: I make no comments about Russia. Just China.
am intimately familiar with the same dynamic regarding Russia recently.
What you are saying is basically the same as saying war in Ukraine and oligarch money laundering merely justifies sanctions against ordinary Russians, Russian companies, depriving normal people of their livelihood, blahblah.
No. They are kleptocrats, both Xi and Putin, using violence against own people and posing tangible threats to free societies elsewhere. If you want to alleviate those threats yea unfortunately ordinary people will get affected, no way around it.
They can revolt but they won't. I know first hand how many people in Russia support Putin because they enjoy a nice lower-middle-class lifestyle now, incomparable to miserable lives of their parents. They thank Putin for that obviously.
What's important to remember is that it does not make them bad people, same as supporting Xi doesn't make Chinese bad people. The support is a consequence of propaganda, lack of education and so on, which is not individual's fault. If they are hurt economically, it's not because they are the ones targeted.
I don't know much about Russia so I won't comment on that. However I am skeptical about any comparisons people make between China and Russia. China and Russia are very different. People often make comparisons because they're just projecting, assuming that just because both have the reputation of being "authoritarian" that reasoning applied to Russia can be transferred to China.
So not commenting on Putin. But saying that Xi is a kleptocrat is 1) an opinion, and 2) doesn't match the reality of many opinions in China and why people have that opinion, and 3) doesn't match the actual facts of how he came to power or what he does on a daily basis (as opposed to MSM representation of his persona). That is not helpful for a fact-based discussion.
If the Chinese govt screws up badly enough, there will be a revolt. It has happened tons of times in the past 2000 years and it will happen again.
You attribute Chinese opinion too much to propaganda. Many who cross over the firewall are disillusioned: they assumed that China is full of propaganda and that the west is a beacon of truth and free speech, only to find out that western media lies a lot about China and that Chinese media has been more truthful than they thought. Chinese opinion about things are also far more nuanced than you give it credit for.
Don't just copy-paste your assumptions about Russia onto China. China deserves to be analyzed on its own, using non-western paradigms.
It's entirely possible to oppose unfair characterizations of China and its system, and to recognize that the current government is on a whole doing a good job, without being supportive of (nor being opposed to) Xi specifically.
>So, his economic policy might have been as bad as an earthquake + tsunami.
That's an odd take considering Japan's economy has been contracting for 25 years. Can you be specific on how his economic contractions was different than those those before (or after) him?
Japan is much more complicated than that and apply capitalist measures of success isnt doing it justice
- Demographic crunch, as mentioned. The country not descending into uncontrolled decline may already been a decent achievement
- Focus on quality. This is unique to Japan and runs counter capitalist growth stories. Japanese consumers value quality. a lot. But it’s bad for business in the growth sense, you don’t need to buy a new fridge for 10-15 years because it works and isn’t made obsolete artificially, Japanese consumers are happy, growth : consumption metrics are not.
Quality is just not captured as a variable in the western / American way of looking at economic health. Not having train delays, having great customer service, no forced obsolete products, high reliability in services and products are not reflected / incentivized in that model - they don’t exist but that’s not how Japan works.
Japan has issues, quite a few, but it’s not nearly the hellhole American economic publications love to make it out for decades now. It may be a nightmare scenarios for the get rich quick dudes with US MBAs, but quality of life is pretty decent for a country this far down the demographic curve.
We can only really judge how they fared when America enters that demographic slope.
> The first thing that pops into my mind is "Abenomics":
I don't think you get assassinated for economic policies (unless you really impoverish a large section of the population). I think it's more likely he got assassinated for some fairly random loony reason by someone unhinged or for his non-economy related right wing policies (e.g. on defense and foreign policy).
Interest rate hikes enacted to fight inflation also raise a currency in the forex markets. (Because holding said currency gives you relatively better yield vs before the hike.)
A currency is a tool of the economy controllable by a central bank, not a competition (otherwise everyone would
d shoot for high deflation).
The instantaneous exchange rate between two currencies does not give any information about the strength or weakness of the economies that operate on those currencies.
Violence in Japan is so low, something like that is just outside their normal reality. It's more likely to see some malfunctioning tech, than experience a real gun fired. And with all the smoke, that's what people probably thought at first, that some tech went haywire.
Until I was 42, I had never seen a real gun except on the belt of a police officer. I lived near an Army barracks for a decade and never saw a soldier carrying a gun.
In my twenties one of the crazy types at work brought a very realistic replica gun to work. He's the type that in some countries would bring a real gun to work, but here... it was just a toy to freak people out with.
His strange proclivities weren't what really freaked me out. The toy gun did. I could name the manufacturer instantly when I saw it. I knew how every part worked, and what every part was called. I could operate it without difficulty or confusion. I knew that it had a grip safety, a manual safety, and a trigger safety. I knew what all of those meant. I knew how to reload it, and what to do to release the slide from its locked-back position.
It was like... a dragon.
We've all seen dragons on TV and read about them in books. We can describe a dragon in detail. We can talk about their behaviour, their capabilities, and their nature. Most of us can name specific dragons.
But they're a thing of myth, not something real.
Until some guy brings a dragon to work and you realise that they aren't just figments of our imagination.
Somewhere out there, there's a country where every second person has a dragon like we have dogs here.
There must be a lot of fires there instead of just... barking.
> My friends and I decided to stop going to large events. How sad is that?
Up to your risk tolerance. I would recommend that if the gun risk from large events is too much for you that you might also want to refrain from driving.
In the same vein, I was discussing police responses to mass shootings on Twitter, and was quite surprised to find Wikipedia took me to a disambiguation page when looking up “[random small town] shooting”: https://twitter.com/samziz/status/1544460684829904896
I was a couple of time in japan, and I felt always super save everywhere, even middle in the night somewhere in the city. I even felt much saver in Japan than at home in Switzerland.
> It's more likely to see some malfunctioning tech, than experience a real gun fired. And with all the smoke, that's what people probably thought at first, that some tech went haywire.
What the hell did he shoot him with it, a relic musket from a Sengoku Jidai display? I don't think I've ever seen or heard anything like that outside of military battle reenactments, with all that smoke it sounds like a cannon more than a gun.
Abenomics would always end up this way, Japan has been facing an ACTUAL existential crisis since the end of the bubble era. You know you messed up when you made these people go from Karoshi to assassination.
You're forgetting that he also had to make his own ammo. A black powder shotgun is the easiest firearm to make from scratch if you have that constraint.
Technically true, but looking it up, it seems the last PM was killed in 1936. Additionally, in the 192x and 193x many high ranking politicians died, of which were many PM or former PM.
I think this comment is irrelevant. I would not explain this unresponsiveness in this way. The video is truly one of the weirdest videos I've ever seen.
I had that same thought watching the recent Chicago shooting footage. I have never heard a rifle in real life, they certainly don't sound like movies and if I had been sitting nearby it would have taken me a while to tell this is a flee situation.
For context, out in the open country in a relatively flat area one can *easily* hear most centerfire rifles from 1-2 miles away and often much further. Shotguns are lower pressure and generally aren't as loud, and handguns even quieter still just due to the substantially reduced energy levels.
Firearms, particularly rifles, are so loud that there's just a qualitative difference in the sound that's impossible to capture with standard audio gear.
Perhaps someone can make a comparison to lightning or firework shells, which are relatively common detonations of similar loudness. Difficult to characterize in words an explosion, though. In all cases, higher frequencies attenuate faster, so one nearby tends to 'crack' and one distant, 'boom'.
I've spent a lot of time in life around all sorts of explosions, gun fire (everything from modern to old, including machine guns, cannons, etc.).
(My dad was Kent Lomont - google him for stories - he was one of the world's largest machine gun and destructive device dealers, and he/we shot everything from all of history all the time).
There is a distinct difference between gun shots and fireworks. There is a distinct difference between all sorts of guns (I can tell the difference between many, and certain guns, even full auto, have distinct patterns and noises).
For example, a Thompson machine gun (old Tommy guns from gangster movies) have a lower rate, "bup-bup-bup" sound of a certain frequency (.45 ACP caliber, Cutts compensator on the barrel, somewhat short). A Ma Deuce (.50 BMG large machine gun, very common) is a more rapid, lower, really impressive bang. A 22 pistol is a smaller pop. An A4 machine gun has a different rate, different (.308 or similar). Someone shooting a non-machine gun of the same caliber, trying to go at the same rate, never has the same mechanical precision at the rate. A mini-gun is just a constant buzz, like a saw, and terrifying once you see what it can do and associate that noise with that level of destruction. A .44 magnum is different than .357 magnum. Each is very distinct once you've heard/shot them enough.
But no good way to describe :)
I'm not sure how to explain it. But there is a place you can get some glimpse - video games and accurate war movies used to come to my dad's place to record all day, requesting this or that gun, which he would have and know how to work, with whatever rare or weird ammo was needed. Their sound guys would know how to record the noises well.
So many video games, especially ones that are trying to be historically accurate, will give you a taste, but none really capture the loudness.
It used to be you could go to the Knob Creek machine gun shoot twice a year and hear them, but even then you'd not learn different ones well since they all fire at once.
Or, if you're really interested, there are many places you can rent different guns, including machine guns, and hear the differences.
My first time firing a shotgun I was surprised it didn't sound anything like the video games I grew up playing (Doom, Duke Nukem, etc). In games they have a bassy boom with a lot of reverb while in reality it's a loud crack. At least that was the experience with my shotgun. I'm not sure how much it varies from model to model.
I’m always surprised by how different auto accidents sound in person. Movie and TV audio just don’t pick up the low frequencies you hear and feel in person.
Different ammos/guns produce different sound levels. A subsonic 22LR can be incredibly quiet. Black powder guns (as it seems to be the case here) are loud and produce a lot of smoke.
Uh, no. Guns are really, really loud. Much louder than you get from TV and movies, which after all can't play sounds loud enough to damage your hearing.
As someone with tinnitus that started a decade ago after listening to some loud music over headphones, I strongly recommend everyone to not watch anything "at a painful volume".
Excellent comment. The audio in that scene is stunningly effective. I can’t think of any other gun fight scene in cinema that gets anywhere near close to that level of realism
Exactly. Shooting a simple tiny slow 9mm (classic pistol cartridge, used ie by cops/military everywhere) has in indoor range such a blast you feel the3 shockwave in your guts. Even with hearing protection its a very intense experience that you need to get used to. You simply don't get anything similar elsewhere, unless some big fireworks blast very very close to you.
Not using ear protection constantly around guns will degrade your hearing significantly and permanently.
Key words were “indoor range” and firing the gun yourself (so right next to you). A shot fired down the block in an open-air city with trees and fences and irregular sonic shapes will be so loud.
Guns are very loud close up, but even a moderate distance and especially in an urban setting where sounds bounce all over the place and get partly diverted, they rapidly seem a lot less noisy. I live in a place that just a few years ago had regular gun battles just blocks away from my home and while you learned to rapidly identify the specific sound from things like firecrackers, it wasn't especially loud unless you heard it from very close by.
This isn’t about firing guns. It is about hearing a gun fired some distance away from you in an open-air urban setting. Has that ever happened to you? I have unfortunately been in that situation multiple times due to the neighborhood I used to live in. It really does sound like a clap, not a bang, but much louder. But not deafening loud as Hollywood would have you believe (unless it goes off right next to you).
Echoing what the other commenter said, this is entirely inaccurate. I grew up hunting and even random deer rifles are just so much louder than even Hollywood is willing to show.
Living in a country where gunfire is very common, the opposite starts to happen: even when you hear what you rapidly realize isn't gunfire but only somewhat similar (firecrackers, cars backfiring, etc), your first reaction is to assume gunshots or automatic rifle fire before assessing what you heard more carefully.
That shouldn't actually matter too much. If the projectile went supersonic, there would still be a sonic boom. If it didn't go supersonic, I'd actually expect it to be louder than a subsonic round from a production firearm due to less efficient design. (kind of how revolvers are almost always louder than pistols, due to the fact that the chamber isn't completely sealed, so pressure can start escaping before the projectile leaves the barrel)
But judging by the clip, the projectile didn't go supersonic, just based on the sheer power of it (Abe collapsed instantly). You could get hit a dozen times with a small energy projectile and still stay standing (for a couple of seconds at least).
> You could get hit a dozen times with a small energy projectile and still stay standing
I don't think so - the main reason (apart form saving weight) why we have small fast projectiles in rifles (instead of huge heavy balls like before) is hydrostatic shock. Also faster bullets penetrate armor better but that's another topic.
Projectile crossing certain speed threshold (for mostly liquid bodies we all have) will produce massive temporary cavity in the body, and shockwave from this will ripple through surrounding tissue. Imagine 7.5mm wide bullet blasting 10-15cm hole within the body, although entry point is not much bigger than bullet.
Just watch any shooting video with ballistic gels, they do tend to slow it down to see how much damage bullet is doing.
Any organ will become mushy pieces and goo. Even currently standard military 5.56mm is capable of this from close distance, if its not slowed/fractured by some big bones. And they are phasing it out for bigger and similarly fast (if not faster) cartridge for all these reasons.
Aren't speakers the limitation here? I'm not sure in what way movies or TV aren't realistic, but I'm pretty sure your speaker has less of a punch than a gun.
Video shows the guy standing on the far side of the busy road behind Abe, and the perp was taken down about half way across it. The loud boom and smoke resembled a car backfiring much more than any gun, so not really surprised the lack of immediate alarm. Kids backfiring sports cars would be a commonplace rebellious act in Japan.
Apparently some of the people that were close to the shooting in Highland Park during the Fourth of July initially thought that the gunshots were fireworks.
It makes me think of, funnily enough, a scene in an anime.
In this scene, set in a utopian, crime-free society (at least on the surface), a woman is beaten brutally in a public square in front of a large crowd. The people in this crowd just... stand and watch. They get their phones out and record it.
It is reasoned by one of the main characters that they act this way because they simply cannot process what is going on. The concept of this happening is so divorced from the reality they live in, it provokes little to no fear/horror/disgust/whatever response in them.
Something to this effect really happened in New York City (if memory serves) which led to Good Samaritan laws which protect people trying to help someone in need from being prosecuted if the person needing help dies or things go south in general.
The Wikipedia page is a bit better in giving the actual details in which the story is incorrect, and without the extended editorialising (though the final sentence is quite nightmarish even in its blankly factual wording):
> Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence of events. Investigation by police and prosecutors showed that approximately a dozen individuals had heard or seen portions of the attack, though none saw or was aware of the entire incident.[67] Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware Genovese was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack. Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide had taken place; some thought what they saw or heard was a domestic quarrel, a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar when Moseley first approached Genovese.[8] After the initial attack punctured her lungs, leading to her eventual death from asphyxiation, it is unlikely that Genovese was able to scream at any volume.[68]
And some slightly overlapping details in an article from which it quotes:
> The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.
I think a lot of it comes not from worrying about being prosecuted, but in some situations you don't want to/can't help because you're worried about endangering yourself.
I know some people (usually men) are expected to be 100% selfless and run in to be defenders, but not all of us feel that way.
It could also be the culture is unaccustomed to random gun violence so the people realized it was a targeted hit that posed little to no danger to themselves.
I imagine ordinary people (even most police) aren't legally able to carry a gun in Japan. Simply watching and recording is about all they can do in that scenario.
> Psycho-Pass, is a really good anime in terms of society and crime
At it's core it's an exploration in Bentham, Mill's view of Society, warped into some dystopian technocratic utopian ideal of what it should be.
Sadly, to appeal to the masses and get it on screen it had to be tied into some cop-drama, the first seasons were good, with good philosophical examination, but the movie in Netflix and following seasons were utter garbage. I've tried re-watching them, and other than re-hashing the cop plot it was pretty lame.
I highly recommend to first 2 seasons to techno utopians who have a very shallow and superficial understanding o the Human psyche and think that 'AI solves that' type hand wringing doesn't always end up like this. We Humans are the apex predator for a reason, and people who don't examine the Human condition and try to engineer society from an ivy tower always forget that.
The CCP is the best example of a Psycho-pass analogue and the mere fact that this latest hack reveals they are a more advanced Stasi-like police state with poor OPSEC shows just how feckless these things are in practice. Sadly, the consequences are real: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hongkong various African countries.
With that said, read this [0] as a primer and stick to the first 2 seasons in Japanese sub if you do give it a watch and end it with the movie if you MUST in order to spare yourself the disappointment of the latter parts.
People nearby clearly do. The people near the camera probably have no idea what happened. In most countries, gun crime is uncommon and people would just be confused what had just happened.
Can second this. I'm from a country where gun crime is non-existent for the average person and was visiting a friend in their home country. We were in a bar when firecrackers started going off. I turned and looked and just sort of stood still while watching this man shoot at 2 people. By the time I realized what was happening my friend was already over the wall taking cover and shouting at me to get over the wall too. It's a very weird experience if you're not used to guns and gun crime.
The crime rate is not linked to gun crime rate in that country as the guns are completely illegal. Even 10 gun deaths per year is virtually impossible if guns are totally banned - where are these guns coming from?
At the same time there is violent crime, just not with guns.
To add to the rarity of gun violence, there is sismic risk and people try to ubderstand what's the current danger before reacting.
For instance if the smoke came from something bursting because of a starting earthquake, avoiding the surrounding building and regrouping in a clear zone would be the right course of action.
Japan has some super strict gun laws. The onlookers probably had no experience with firearm violence and didn't know to run away. More of a deer in headlights kind of shock when they saw the smoke.
I guess "ghost gun" violence like this will become more normal in countries with restrictive gun laws as societies break down when the effects of climate change are really felt.
I'm as cynical and prone to doomsaying as much as anyone but there's nothing new in assassination attempts the world over and I don't think it's helpful to imply we're all gonna be dealing with mass 'ghost gun' violence due to climate change. Like, maybe, or maybe not.
Perhaps I'm making a stupid assumption here but isn't almost all gun violence (outside the US) committed with unregistered and/or homemade weapons? Doesn't seem like anything unusual/new to me as a European.
I also don't see the relationship with climate change.
The deadliest terror attacked in Europe at Utøya, Norway was carried out with a gun that the terrorist was a registered owner of. He had imported a high capacity magazine from a he US, as those are illegal in most of Europe.
But gun violence in Norway related to gangs is mostly from stolen guns. A terrorist however may not have a criminal network to use in order to obtain a gun. This they may have to go through the much slower legal route.
A large percentage of gun violence even inside the US is committed with unregistered weapons. The only events that see international media play are the mass event shootings at malls and such; these guns tend to be registered.
More "typical" gun violence is committed regularly, and not with AR-style rifles (more typically 9mm carbines which are regulated as handguns in the US, as well as actual handguns).
Mostly unregistered/stolen, hardly homemade. AK-47s might be an exception since there are kits available online, official ones mostly from the US, but given how easily they're obtained in certain areas of the world I imagine there are loads of them smuggled by less official sellers from around the world.
I think we're more likely to see drones rigged with explosives as a go-to method for political assassinations. Guns aren't that hard to make, but getting close enough to use one is another matter.
Yeah, I'm really envious of US citizens with all their hands on experience with active shooters. /sarcasm
I'd much rather be in a low-gun apocalypse than a high-gun one. Because I can run away from a guy with a knive, but not from a gun.
Also, what I never understood: no matter how many guns I carry, I still die to a single bullet in the back. So why should I feel saver in a high-gun environment?
As an American I've never understood the "good guy with a gun" theory either. Murderers do not generally announce their intent and instances of violence being prevented, as opposed to eventually brought to an end, by other shooters are rare enough to be news events. Certainly they are much less common than mass shootings. Where I live I've never seen anyone strolling around with their guns on display, but when I see someone announce their enthusiasm for the 2nd Amendment I don't perceive a peace keeper. I perceive someone trying to antagonize and dominate liberals. I perceive it as a threat directed at the people without guns.
I should say rather that I have an understanding of the "good guy with a gun" theory, but it is that it is a public excuse which sounds better than other motivations. It sounds better than "I just like guns" or "I like to get my way by threat when I can't get it by persuasion" or "I am gratified by the fear and anxiety of my enemies", etc.
The bad guy with a gun has already shot someone. The good guy can put an end to the violence in some cases, but almost never before the bad guy has harmed someone. In societies where guns aren't ubiquitous it's the bad guy with a knife or a brick versus the good guy with a lawn chair. It's still the case that the bad guy can cause some damage before he's stopped, but it isn't as much damage, and it's less likely, because you can run away from a knife and dodge a brick.
Fine, in some cases the bad guy with a gun hasn't shot someone. In some cases the guy with a knife or brick has injured someone. What is the balance? It is easier to shoot someone than it is to stab them or brick them. If you succeed, the damage is much greater in the former case than the latter. This isn't just speculation. This is borne out by evidence. In the UK there is a lot of knife violence. It is much less lethal than our gun violence. This isn't because UK thugs are less competent. It is because it requires less competence to injure someone grievously with a gun.
> Fine, in some cases the bad guy with a gun hasn't shot someone. In some cases the guy with a knife or brick has injured someone. What is the balance? It is easier to shoot someone than it is to stab them or brick them
At point blank it’s easy. Once it’s at range and for pistols it’s a matter of practice.
It’s why rifles tend be used by soldiers; it’s easier to aim with, train, and be accurate with.
It’s a matter of geometry. It’s also highly conspicuous (unlike handguns).
Okay. Say you’re injured and not dead: If size isn’t a deterrent, then wouldn’t an armed good samaritan be able to do more to help than an unarmed?
What if the individual goes after more victims?
But whether a person is being stabbed and bleeding to death, knocked out, or shot incapacitated: They’re unable to run, nevermind help.
At that point they’re at the mercy of the attacker and the people around them.
What I’ll concede is that a gun also enables a lot of individuals to be an attacker: Equalizing goes both ways.
I’ll also concede that in the ideal world we’d have phasers to stun; but as far as I know even beanbag guns and similar are not meant for civilian use. I wish it weren’t this way, but even stun guns and tasers are illegal in places like NYC.
The "good guy with a gun" theory is that having everyone armed will prevent violence because the murderers will fear lethal punishment. Evidence shows this to be false. Many murderers either are not thinking that far ahead or are suicidal. So the net result is that more of the populace can exercise lethal violence if their inner moral governor fails -- they're drunk or irrational or having a bad day or whatever. So we have a lot more gun violence. Sometimes, rarely, a good guy with a gun cuts the violence short, so we have one more body, but societies with fewer guns have less gun violence. That is empirically true. It is the absence of opportunity, not the fear or punishment, that reduces gun deaths.
What I don't understand is why anyone would think this would be different, or why anyone would continue promoting this theory when evidence, logic, and common sense show it to be false.
There, I've laid all my cards on the table. I'm completely candid. Now explain to my why I'm wrong. Show how I'm willfully ignorant.
> The "good guy with a gun" theory is that having everyone armed will prevent violence because the murderers will fear lethal punishment. Evidence shows this to be false.
also, historically in the (wild) western us in the 1800s, lots of people had guns, didn't stop the violence, in fact it was just a way of life until things got cleaned up with actual policing etc
In most other countries, training encourages the use of lethal force as a last resort. In Germany (pop. 84M), in 2015, a total of 101 rounds were discharged by police for the entire year:
I haven’t looked at any data but I imagine Japanese and German police don’t get attacked and killed and shot at the rates seen America. A lot of American police officers die each year so that probably plays into the officers using more force
Eye-balling it, on average about one-third were shot. The biggest single outlier was COVID in 2020, but otherwise the causes and their percentages seem fairly steady.
The other side of the equation, people killed by police:
Violent crime is generally very rare in Japan, but particularly gun violence is near nonexistent. There have been years in recent history where firearm offenses number in the single digits.
He had security. The guy got apprehended immediately after. Clearly they weren’t trained to deal with guns and/or were incompetent to not be aware of their surroundings.
Nobody even moved after first shot, they were frozen in astonishment. Not something you expect from guys protecting retired yet powerful ex-PM and party leader.
There's no contradiction there. Voters would not submit to the horrors we perpetrate around the world, were we not subject to constant fear- and hate-mongering from corporate media. The horrors we perpetrate on ourselves are sort of a ricochet, because isolated desperate males are subject to the same media gaslighting as voters are, and they simply cut out the intended side-effect of further enrichment for Raytheon.
Might sound like hyperbole but it isn't entirely untrue depending on what you believe should be the State role in supporting its society. The US is just really weird when looking through the lens of other Western developed countries...
And I say that coming from a society that's completely influenced by the American Way Of Life™ (Brazil), visiting the US multiple times and then moving to Sweden has really opened my eyes on how damn bizarre the US can be. It's more similar to Brazilian society (conservatism, sexism, violence, car-centric, so on and so forth) than to any other peer country to the US.
I immigrated to Germany from Turkey and I witness through the media that sometimes people in some parts of the US behave very similar to the ones in Istanbul, with all the bad and good things associated with it.
I've grown up being exposed to the American culture that's sold everywhere else, but after the weird events in politics I started paying more attention and it's disappointing me.
State failure means loss of control over territory. Not conservatism or violence or car-centricity. It’s completely untrue to say the US is a failed state.
> A failed state is a political body that has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government no longer function properly.
Depending on the philosophy you believe on what should be the role of the State the US has traces of failing on basic conditions and responsibilities to its citizens.
It’s a sign of a poor understanding of both history and federalism.
Historically states have always controlled the election process. The amendment for direct election of senators, and changes necessitated during Reconstruction and 20th century Civil Rights legislation are the exception not the rule.
States are not administrative districts of the Federal government. They are political entities which in many cases preceded the Federal. government.
That one party has support more broadly across states while the others support is more concentrated explains that one would more vigorously assert federalist tendencies.
Historically states abused all of these powers. The Senate was a national disgrace even more so than by modern standards, fully dominated by machine political power brokers and regressive politics.
When that era was ended, the states systematically abused that power to exclude black and Latino voters. In some places that extended to Catholics and Jewish communities.
The play on nostalgia and ancient precedent is nothing more than a vacuous and flimsy veneer on supporting discrimination and exclusion. Reactionaries are always talking a big game about high and mighty principles, but delivering the same old machine politics in a new skin.
It doesn't look like it from up close because it happens over decades, but if you take a step back it's actually happening frighteningly fast. The decline and fall of the Roman empire took about 250 years. With the way things are going in the US it'll be done in less than a hundred.
Actually yes. There are parts of the US that behave like the developed world with gun crime rates comparable to commonwealth countries and Western Europe. The parts with high gun crime rates are full of people who for whatever reason can't handle guns. Usually guns are illegal in these parts of the country to try to help them, although it doesn't really work.
EDIT: Yes, there is actually a slight negative correlation between gun ownership and gun violence by state if you run the data (rather than just eyeballing it.) Gun violence highly correlates with a different trait in the population.
I don’t think your assertion about locality of gun crime and gun laws in the US is consistent with the data. (Not trying to make an assertion as to whether such laws are effective here)
States like Louisiana and South Carolina have the highest rates. Maryland is a state with high rates and also more stringent gun laws, but New York and California are pretty far down the list
He was still a powerful figure in .JP politics and was speaking at a campaign event when he was shot. He served something like 6 consecutive terms and only left office for health reasons, but he was still trying to push agendas through.
Other than that, who knows. I'm sure that various US politicians like Nixon and Reagan still have enemies even though they are both long since in the ground.
Shinzo Abe was a far right nationalist racist and Japan War Crimes negationist. He inserted revisionist propaganda in history school manuals.
He was generally anti foreigners, anti equal rights.
He was a member of the crazy nationalist cult Nippon Kaigai that wants a return to the prewar status of the godly emperor and profess Japanese Yamato's pure race superiority. Look that up.
Wikipedia :
"Shinzo Abe [0] was affiliated with the openly ultranationalist organization Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference). He was considered a right-wing populist and ultra-conservative within the LDP, and some media and books referred to him as a far-right politician. According to Professor Dominique Tasevski, his legacy can be defined by nationalism, historical revisionism, and a deterioration in Japan-South Korea relations."
"Nippon Kaigi [1] believes that "Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers; that the 1946–1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate; and that killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 Nanjing Massacre were exaggerated or fabricated". The group vigorously defends Japan's claim in its territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands with China, and denies that Japan forced the "comfort women" during World War II. Nippon Kaigi is opposed to feminism, LGBT rights, and the 1999 Gender Equality Law."
He was still politically active, by publicly pushing his agenda, and by exerting his influence on other cabinet members as a senior leader of the ruling party.
my first guess is that it was a militarist gunman who was unhappy with not-enough-militarism from Abe, and, there must be a social group associated here, everything is social, including being a militarist. real information welcome
I think the parent is answering OP's question - which is about the _gunman_'s justification. The parent explaining behavior is not the same thing as the parent defending or justifying it.
Japan's stance of war crimes has been a point of tension between Japan and its East Asian neighbors.
These are matters of nationalism and affect forward looking geopolitical outcomes.
Following WWII, a tribunal was held in Tokyo along the lines of trying German war criminals. You can imagine how celebration of what others perceive to be German war criminals could lead to conflict.
Beyond the still active politician arguments: terrorism and revenge. Also the kind of people who do this thing often aren’t really driven by things most of us would call rational.
Still a powerful political figure. Comes from a very influential political family - grandfather and father were both politicians. His brother is the current minister of defense.
He's still a powerful political figure. He even might have chance to become a candidate or influencing the decision on who gonna be candidate from his party.
Reading through history books I had thought, wow what crazy times - A Global pandemic (Spanish Flu), revolutionary technology (Aeroplane, etc.), Killing of influential people and then war.
We are halfway there and signs don't look good. Am I being too pessimistic?
I don't think WWII happens without WWI and the interregnum clearly contributed to igniting WWII in many ways. Conditions after WWI never fully cleared to a period of world peace. More like, world divisions and clashes outside of global war. Then fascism and the Nazi rise, etc.
Edit-to be clear, this is a good moment to reflect on the tendencies towards war in the current era. It's the time to push back. Certain forces are clearly pumping out "accelerating" propaganda via the internet. Those same forces clearly have territorial disputes in mind along with global aspirations. The time to counter them is now, before WWIII fully ignites.
Historically we have lived in fairly anomalous times. However, we entered the nuclear age which changed a lot of things. So I’m still unsure if it’s an illusion or the new reality.
Of course when it comes to nukes the dark reality is that everyone has to be successful at not using one (because then they are all used) every single day for eternity. That seems impossible and an eventuality.
I know what you're saying but nuclear weapons have been used. There's no guarantee the use of one or two will lead to all out nuclear destruction (yes, I know the WW2 situation was unique). But if only one was detonated in war tomorrow that would be the third such use, not the first.
I don't see how it's irrelevant, it set the precedent for their use. They have been used, that's done and dusted, any use now will be the third use in war. If you think precedent is important, that's not irrelevant at all.
I'm a bit concerned tbh. I've read a lot about how NSDAP in Germany and league leaders in France reused old ideas from their adversaries (anarchist and communists) to sell themselves as 'concerned citizens'.
I'm reminded of the saying (sorry I don't remember a good quote, but one is from Farscape): "fear at the prospect of death while calm shepherds its certainty."
Interestingly, some sources are reporting he was shot with a improvised shotgun. These are very easy to make if you can acquire bullets -- a strong pipe, a nail and a cap are all you need. Where did he procure bullets from though, I wonder?
I work with an old guy who set out to make his own "shotgun" when he was 9. He took a piece of plumbing pipe with an end cap, drilled two holes near the end for the electrodes (pencil lead), and then packed it with a few hundred match heads and some BB's. He ran wire from the electrodes to his safety spot behind a berm, and touched it off with a battery. It blew apart his target, and he said the smoke could be smelled across the entire farm.
If a 9 year old could figure it out in the 1950's, I'm sure an adult, hell bent on murder, could figure it out today.
The picture also clearly shows that the security person apprehending him has a gun holster strapped to his belt, but he doesn't seem to be wielding it (it could be in his left hand, which is behind the gunman's back, but the holster is on his right-hand side and his right hand is visibly empty). And it seems he's only trying to grab him, possibly to tackle him to the ground so he can't attack anyone else.
Note that the other people are also wearing a mask. Wearing masks during flu season was already a thing prior to the pandemic in many East Asian countries, especially Japan. Also note that he's wearing it incorrectly (his nose isn't covered), refuting whatever point you think you're making.
You are deceived by the fact that Japanese people aren't fully on the obesity bandwagon yet and plenty of them have teenager-like slim builds well into their 40s.
If you look at his hair, it is graying already quite a bit.
FWIW while guns are extremely regulated here in Japan, they aren't flat out illegal or "unobtainable". I'm no expert wrt bullets but I imagine if there's a way to procure a gun, people must be able to buy bullets too. From there, you just need a bit of smuggling around/blackmarket stuff.
Some years ago in Denmark, at a European championships shooting sports event, I met a Japanese competitor who mentioned that they must return every single spent casing from their previous purchase of ammunition before being cleared for a new purchase. He underlined that it's causing a lot of trouble in certain shooting disciplines, with marksmen ending up manically searching for their empty casings at the range, and that even the Japanese military is subjected to regulations forcing them to leave not a single spent casing around. Unlike how it's done in every country here in Europe, they apparently regulate/count ammunition sales down to each individual cartridge.
The correct term is a CARTRIDGE. The bullet is the projectile attached at the end. Perhaps he used home-made black powder (since people reported dense white smoke), but how he fashioned primers or something else to ignite it with is beyond me.
Yes, and it wasn't 3d printed like the "scary" stories we keep reading about. If you start banning 3d printers you may as well ban Home depot or anywhere you can buy a metal pipe.
It's worth mentionning that the shooter targeted Abe because he was "dissatisfied" with him.
Japan is a country with an abysmally low voter turnout.
So, it may be a consequence of this (cultural?) issue that dissatisfied people don't think of using their vote to change the system, and feel they are only left with violent means.
PS: I'm not trying to justify this murder, of course I'm horrified of it. But I'm saying that the actions to take in order to lower the probability of recurrence of this kind of tragedy includes pushing more people to go participate to ballots.
I feel there is a lot of repression in Japan and while acts like this shouldn't be condoned, it's worth having the conversation about why these things occur.
Sure the guy is "nuts, unhinged" or whatever, but I get that you might be onto something, how on earth is change possible in Japan with such a dominant force in power. It's so dominant it feels like bullying towards younger people who most policies aren't geared towards helping.
Even the fact it's so hard to get mental healthcare is part of failing government policy.
Sadly, I know that for sure, no one will ever question anything, it will hardly be discussed and the guy will be executed as soon as possible. It will be busy as usual.
You're right. Maybe the guy with the homemade shotgun just shot the ex-PM by accident while trying to engage in unrelated gun crimes at a public appearance of the ex-PM -- or maybe he wanted to shoot him for non-political reasons (scorned lover?). We can't know for sure that this was a targeted political assassination attempt.
You are comparing a list of presidents to a list of any Japanese politician, the wiki page you linked has mayors, governors, diplomates and at least one business man, and a few people who died before the US was founded.
And he's comparing a list of US president assassinations to absolutely nothing. So why are you calling my comparison out, when it's directly refuting his claim?
Show me the source showing the US has more assassinations than anywhere else in the world. Because a list of 4 assassinated Presidents over 300 years doesn't make that obvious to me.
Thanks in advance for your no-doubt quick cooperation to cite sources.
The American president also immediately becomes ultra famous the second they're elected in a way that most leaders don't, so they're definitely bigger targets regardless of America's crime rate.
Japan has a rather long history of political violence.
"levels of gun crime" is an irrelevant metric here. It was not even an actual gun (which probably illustrates how hard it must be to find a firearm in Japan).
This represents a complete failure by Abe's "SP" protection team. Even after shots fired, nobody has a gun in their hand (note the holsters visible in some photographs). Everyone is in day-dream mode not paying attention. The guy just walks up and fires two shots with nearly a two second spacing. Two. Whole. Seconds.
Even after this happen - they decide to tackle him! They don't know he's not wearing a suicide belt or has more shots to fire. The whole thing is just stupid. Head will roll.
Outside of US and some select places (India, UK etc, which have active terrorism threats), people don't know gun violence on a day to day basis. Violent crimes involving guns in Japan are very very rare. The response takes a few moments to register.
If a meteoroid suddenly crashed in front of your car while you were driving, would you switch off the engine & inspect the paintjob & fenders? Probably not. It's a situation which you know can happen statistically but you're not prepared to respond in a flash.
Security team gets trained on which threat model? The one that actively persists for the politicians.
In that sense, they would be more on the lookout for a knife attack or some physical assault instead of guns. Things needing proximity. The possession of firearms in Japan is very strictly controlled.
Edit: my dad in his early career worked in counterterrorism ops. He would be prepared to deal with someone bearing a firearm, but would I blame him for a lapse if a person came prepared with nerve agent? probably not.
On the Japanese TV news, the report said about 15 yards - but definitely not in proximity.
With a bunch of cameramen & reporters nearby in a open-air election campaign settings, in a country where private gun ownership is near non-existent, would you immediately suspect something to be a improvised gun?
The cartridges being homebrew with slug shots, the first shot was described more as electric substation going off, some malfunctioning sound equipment etc - not the shotgun type gun report. The second shot around 1.5-2 seconds later had sufficient smoke discharge to be identified as firearm (Information quoted in Wikipedia). The sounds caught on video clip is significantly different for loud sources (e.g. try comparing aircraft engine sound on YT with your recollection of live sound). Hence its harder to know how it sounded like & assess for yourself
I will wait to know more about the assassin motivations, but i am afraid the the situation right now might become worse worse than the situation during "Les années de plomb" (Leaden times? I don't know if this translate well in English, from a German movie i think).
I was also initially thinking that. But I’m skeptical it’s a lone wolf. “A man in his 40s” is literally the type of people Yakuza coerce and blackmail to do their dirty deeds. Maybe that guy owed them money as well.
Might seem weird at first, but Yakuza gain nothing at hitting high profile people. Established groups already have plenty access to politicians, and small potatoes won't benefit from the chaos and extra scrutiny that will come out of this.
agreed, big Yakuza groups like the yamaguchi-gumi have public office buildings and operate fairly openly. Heck I've heard of members going to local school fairs with booths. It's a bit different than what we in the west think of as a crime organization.
there's a half-decent documentary about it on Netflix. I take it with a pinch of salt, as a lot of the doc was presented by Yakuza themselves, but the impression I got was that they're more like shady business consultants that probably have something dodgy going on behind the scenes
they're only allowed to continue to exist because of Japan's laws on cultural conservation
Interesting. The traditional take is: they answer needs that can’t be solved legally and enter business areas that have more risks than returns for normal people.
It’s familiar when looking at the prohibition period in the US for instance, where the mafia basically became an alcohol distribution network the day it was prohibited. Same in Japan: there’s laws on sex work, drugs, minor labor, gambling, money laundering, etc.
Yakuza groups will look at these laws and find the niches where regular businesses would be navigating minefields and blow up a thousand times, or where people will pay money for services only the yakuza can offer, and eventually abuse loopholes where they can take the money with low risk of anyone going after them.
Also the History of Japan podcast by Isaac Meyer has a good episode on the Yakuza, and several other episodes document how they have been involved with a lot of Japanese history.
Frustration from impotent politics could be strong in society. With influence of mass/social media, that infect us with fear you can find many reasons.
Also someone once severed his finger and mailed it to Abe, because because he didn’t visit Yasukuni shrine (where several war criminals are enshrined) one year. The Japanese far-right are … peculiar.
>Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
I always thought this was a weird rule because that means your calling out of my calling out is _also_ inappropriate, which I don't think it is in this context.
The relevant distinction is that Abe was assassinated by a Japanese national, not by a foreign national, so in this instance there will be no catalyst for escalation and payback.
Gavrilo Princip wasn't a foreign national, he was Bosnian which was then (at his birth and in 1914) ruled by Austria-Hungary, one of the many ethnic groups that composed the empire. He was part of a Bosnian revolutionary group that was helped/sponsored/trained by Serbia, so there's a foreign connection, but he wasn't a foreigner.
> I ask my fellow Americans in near disbelief: have you become so desensitized that this news does not move you?
I learned it the hard way that politics is getting to be a taboo topic slowly. (And criticizing politicians too). Why engage in sharing something which leads to heartburn? Discussing here is venting. It doesn't change anyone's viewpoint really.
Some may argue that "in the spirit" of HN's scope of curiosity & knowledge sharing, this is OT - but at the same time there are political issues being posted everyday. Its a hit or miss that the post/comment gets downvoted or flagged. I would generally want to post objectively without using any personal opinions.
As a Japanese resident, its a dark day for all of us. As someone aware of Abe's gray side, I am very opposed to several of his political positions - but assassination doesn't improve anything. Its a despicable violent act. Plus, it suddenly brings the whole question of security angle in Japanese society. Guns are rare & violent crimes more so. Things evolve very quickly as kneejerk reaction in Japan. In US people are more sensitized to shootings - but several countries don't experience it, and do not know how to react to it. That's Japan's dilemma in the coming days. I expect lot of insensible security measures slowly getting in place because of this event.
Japanese are risk-aware, gentle people today. The shock is palpable everywhere. Condolences are due where they should be. So yeah, its a dark day in general for the country & thank you for empathizing with them who feel the loss.
I understand the impulse to mourn victims of any senseless crime, but a war crime denier is not someone I personally believe we should spare any tears for. Certainly advocate for society to move past assassinations, but there are lots of deaths more deserving of your mourning.
I think this misses the point. The assassination was an assault on Japanese democracy and could have destabilizing and unpredictable consequences. Terrible day.
Abe is the most important Japanese politician (or maybe the only important Japanese politician) in the last 10 years, so you don't need to describe him by one thing you read on Wikipedia.
Though I think Taiwan would like him as he's one of the best in the area at resisting China's invasion threats.
I’ve kept up with him for years. His importance is irrelevant. Does this mean we now write only good things of Putin or Xi just because they’re important? Context still matters.
The Taiwanese, like most of Asia, are also not fond of Japanese war criminals or their supporters.
Btw I don’t appreciate personal insults, especially when you pair them with weak arguments.
How do you figure? I and most of Asia (except China and the Koreas) don't think much of old, dead, buried Japanese war criminals. Sure, they came to our country and massacred our people - but they only did it for 4 years and left. The western Colonial regimes lasted for centuries.
And Abe was very supportive of Asian alliances and economic partnerships, unlike many other LDP politicians.
Which genocides has Abe done? He was a nationalist PM once and then a (relatively) liberal PM a second much longer time. It's very silly to compare modern Japan to a dictatorship.
Taiwan is not "like the rest of Asia"; it's only China and Korea that are mad about Japan. And in his second premiership Abe stopped Yasukuni Shrine visits, apologized to Korea, started a fund for descendants of comfort women and quietly suppressed anti-Korean hate groups at home.
This is a list of things other people did. (what's his grandfather got to do with it?) Everything I mentioned happened after 2014.
However, he didn't do enough for median incomes (for a rich country the people are all generally kind of poor) or for women, who are more employed now but still underemployed and don't have nearly enough access to childcare.
No, because that is one of his legacies and my response answers your question. He’s the equivalent of a German politician who condones and worships Nazi war criminals.
> I'm frankly shocked looking at the top level comments I've read so far.
> I ask my fellow Americans in near disbelief: have you become so desensitized that this news does not move you?
Not desensitized, but infantilised beyond belief, including here on HN.
The encouragement to run away, and shelter from "scary world" and outrage produced people who cannot hold a serious adult conversation about war, death, and personal duty for longer than a few minutes.
You either get completely emotionally deaf types like the top poster, or, on the opposite, types who outright descend into hysteria.
> People read HN comments looking for information and intelligent perspectives, not to engage in group-pantomime. We all know that sad things are sad.
No matter what your viewpoint on Abe, that comes off a bit insensitive considering he was just assassinated. Unless he was a terrorist, you could perhaps empathize with the loss of a human life under violent act.
Unless he was a terrorist, you could perhaps empathize with the loss of a human life under violent act.
I do. I can still understand why people are up-voting every other type of comment because expressions of grief are the least unique/useful/informative type of comment on a tragedy.
RIP Abe, you weren't the greatest but nobody deserves to go that way.