05.16.08
Posted in Governance at 2:15 am by diantus
The often praised Asian Business Model that is often pointed to by critics of American and European laziness as the reason why the Pacific Rim will bury the west has started showing another side. Japan, the original home of the salaryman and the 120 hour work week and made famous by businessmen who would commit suicide rather than be useless to his company, is facing the first demographic crisis in modern history.
While American and European economists concern themselves with aging populations and the threat posed to economies by the growing burden on state pension systems, none of them are looking at a set of problems quite like Japan now faces: Japan is running out of children.
While it might be tempting to place the majority of the blame for this on sociological causes, few have mentioned the possibility that outrageously long working hours in high-stress environments keeping families apart for the bulk of their lives might be having an adverse affect on efforts to maintain the population. The expectations for a Japanese worker for much of Japan’s modern history was to work until they let you go home, without complaint, spend much of your free time at various corporate functions, and go home, usually drunk, to a wife and child that you didn’t really know. Moreover, as more and more women entered the workforce, the inability for traditional family structures to hold together was eroded further.
It’s little wonder then, that people stopped having children. There wasn’t enough time in the day. While the bulk of Japanese workers might not be in the direct employ of the mammoth mega-corporations that dominate their economy, the expectation created for employees by those firms serve as the business model for the bulk of Japanese companies hoping to remain competitive.
A similar pattern is emerging in Korea, where the operation model of large firms is lifted directly from Japan. Similarly, Korea is experiencing declining birthrates, though nothing quite like Japan. While a general reduction in population is needed throughout much of this region, the birth rate should be kept just below replacement, and not so low as to ensure a general lack of workers into the future.
The lesson to be gleaned is this: the Asian labor model is not something to be admired. Even the people who live with it don’t like it (I’ve asked). It is simply the expectation – like wearing a tie to a ballet. This doesn’t make it right, or even efficient. Moreover, the long term consequences could be devastating.
The truth is this. The Asian business model is based upon long held cultural beliefs about the importance of static hierarchies. In a competitive global capitalist system, this way of thinking can be brutally inefficient and inflexible. When properly managed, it can accomplish some incredible things – but only so long as the goal is obvious to all – it is similar to centralized state driven economies this way. When an economy reaches a certain point; when innovation is the key to further development; when the accumulated wealth needs to be distributed instead of accumulated for further investment; this starts to crack because it strips the bulk of personal freedom out of the equation. If people don’t have time to develop personally, they won’t. All the money in the world won’t fix that.
As I have suggested again and again. Economies should be designed to serve the needs of people; people should not simply serve the needs of their economies. It might seem like a needless distinction, but it make all the difference in the world. This problem goes well beyond children of course. Consider how many totally unfulfilled retirees are now wondering about their wasted lives, with nothing left from a lifetime wasted in dark and stuffy offices.
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05.09.08
Posted in Politics, Current Events, Governance at 1:17 am by diantus
As the democratic primary draws to a close, it is all but certain that the next president will be Barack Obama. Personally I couldn’t be happier. Obama offers the tantalizing opportunity for a real and genuine change in the tone of Washington and a break from the harsh ideological divisions that have characterized American politics for the recent past.
That being the case though, how do we now deal with the legacy of the past eight years? After all, they have been uniquely divisive. The Bush administration has such low opinion ratings at this point that to many of us, it seems like little more than a bad dream. But it did happen. And while Americans might be keen to forget about it, we will be haunted by what was done for decades to come. What needs to be said and talked about by pundits and scholars alike is how we begin to make amends to the world and to ourselves.
Millions have died or had their lives destroyed as a direct result of policies put forth by the Bush White House. The authority and openness of the office of the president has been abused and betrayed by constant cover-ups and secrecy. The privacy and independence of the average citizen has been stripped away through the use of executive orders. The president and his administration have blatantly and openly endorsed torture. They have betrayed our allies, strengthened our enemies, ruined our economy, laid waste to our environment, sold out our educational system, kidnapped foreigners, and murdered hundreds of thousands using our sons, daughters, and friends as implements of unbridled aggression. And they have done it all in our name.
There really isn’t any debate about the particulars of these events. They have all happened. The invasion of Iraq was illegal; the destruction of its cities is thereby criminal. The lack of a plan for reconstruction compounds these crimes by being negligent. The creation of a system of illegal incarceration is tantamount to state kidnapping, and the destruction of documents that relate to the drafting of policy on torture and prosecution means that we will never know how much really went on or who was really guilty. This administration has committed more crimes against the constitution and against our national conscience than any I can recall from my own life and from history. They should be in prison, not preparing for retirement. What’s worse is that they have admitted to many of the particulars, baldly admitted to it. And no one cares.
This debate then lies at the very soul of America. It is about us, and what sort of country this really is. We tell our children that America is the land of the free. We teach them that our flag has always flown in the name of justice and the downtrodden. We tell them that our virtues are those of truth, equality, the pursuit of happiness. We tell ourselves that we are a force of decency and hope in the world. What do these things mean? What is it in our spirit that demands we act not like the stalwart defenders of freedom, but instead that we abuse our strength for the sake of the manliness of vengeance?
Ask yourself: what is it about America that you love? Is it the memories of friends and family? Is it the pride you feel remembering our brave soldiers as they stood strong against the Nazis and bravely took the fight to the Japanese? Is it the genius of our scientists and their countless breakthroughs in biology, computers, and physics? Is it the cheeseburger?
Or is it the black and white image of a smart bomb as it explodes an earthen hovel in a Kabul suburb, killing everyone inside? Do you feel a swelling of pride when a M1A1 drives over a taxicab that is the sole source of income for an Iraqi whose family was killed the week before? Do you admire your country when thousands of refugees flee the bombers and artillery barrages that rain down on their homes? If so, yours is a very different America than mine.
In the end though, you may very well be proven right. After all, the aggressive and the murderous will very likely destroy the introspective among us. But before you go singing the praises of our aggression, remember the virtues you pretend to hold dear. Remember that America claims to stand for something. Then, remember that we have betrayed all of that in the name of vengeance, and that we have to deal with that before the healing can start. Remember that you have abandoned your wits to god and country, and that America was meant to be about more than that.
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05.02.08
Posted in Current Events at 8:59 am by diantus
I’m feeling uninspired today. That said, I hope you’ll bear with me during this update.
I live in one the world’s most congested countries. It is so difficult to get around on the roads here, that an entire industry has grown up motorcycle delivery men; everything from water, to computers, to carpeting. It’s amazing in a scary kind of way. But anyways, these guys can get to where they want to go. They do this by zipping in between the millions of cars that clog the roadways here. In other words, the biggest obstruction on the roads here are cars – the very things that the roads are designed to move are the biggest reason that no one can actually get anywhere.
Since most drivers in cities like Seoul and Beijing and New York are effectively parking in the streets for hours at a time everyday, it makes one wonder exactly how much carbon is pumped into the atmosphere everyday from idling engines. While I was pausing to think about this, I looked across the intersection and beheld a Hummer. That’s right; a big red Hummer in the middle of Seoul – a city in a country that is a bit short on opportunities for off-roading.
The car is an American status symbol. The automobile is the very symbol of America’s success and wealth. By mass producing it and creating a model of development that was built on mass production of heavy industrial goods, we created the foundation of modern civilization. We can look at this as the greatest accomplishment of our nation – we have impressed on everyone else that the car is the ultimate symbol of independence and wealth. Even if all you get to do is park this environmental wrecking ball on the street while it’s running all day. So all around the world, they buy them. They buy them by the millions. Everyone in China wants one. Already, Beijing has the worst traffic on the planet. It’s hard to comprehend.
Lets look at it another way. Burning a gallon of gas adds about 20lbs of CO2 to the atmosphere. That means that a 15 gallon tank dumps about 300lbs of the stuff into the air by the time you have to fill up again. Now, supposing that the measure of economic maturity is car ownership per capita (you laugh, but every single western country sees this as an important mark of development, because auto manufacturing is often central to national development plans – see Ford, Hyundai, Honda, Peugeot, and VW for more information), lets think about China again. That’s approximately 3.163*10^11lbs of carbon (316 trillion, if that’s easier) every time they need to fill up.
I can only hope that you don’t read this page of mine if you don’t accept that global warming is a fundamental and highly dangerous fact of life (if you still haven’t done so, please kill yourself because you’re dragging down the rest of the class). While you may have reservations about the severity of the problem, surely you can understand that this figure I have just conjured is a problem. This is how human environmental impact works. It’s not just one person – it is the combined efforts of millions – or in China’s case, billions.
The problem is that the two conversations that are ongoing about environmentalism and economics never really come together. It is, in fact, rather lopsided. I read a lot of magazine, journals, and books by very smart people. None of them have adequately put development and the environment together. The two sides live in totally separate worlds. Economists who are talking about growth are simply wrong, because they are assuming that the world can handle having to dig up a scientific calculator every month to calculate emissions. They assume that the oil will be there. Coal companies assume that we’ll still be able to breathe when they convince our governments to allow for further exploration of this abundant fuel source. Yes, its abundant, but its dangerous.
At what point does the understanding that all this growth is literally killing us connect with the fact that our whole economic model is slaved to that very idea? Capitalism depends on continuing cycles of growth; Environmentalists assume that you have to make solutions function within the context of the global-capitalist system. What no one is getting is that while economics might be the basis of human activity, all economies are irrevocably tied to the environmental limits imposed by their surroundings. Unless we dramatically remake some of our basic assumptions, we’re going to learn this the hard way.
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