Comments by "David Ford" (@davidford3115) on "How does JAPAN want to be a COUNTERWEIGHT to CHINA? - VisualPolitik EN" video.

Forgive me but what border dispute does Japan have with South Korea? If you are referring to the Dokodo/Takeshima dispute, that is a rather minor spat over a few rocks that barely rise above sea level at high tide. I do agree with most of your other points. Only observation I will make is that the rural areas of Japan are not particularly conducive to building large factors and the like. 75% of the country is steep mountainous terrain which is why the population is concentrated on the Kanto Plain around Tokyo as well as the other lowland metro areas.
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@zilari3662 Actually, as an American, i trust the Japanese with Nukes. They know firsthand the cost of engaging in a nuclear arms exchange and so I have every faith that they would not cross that bridge unless their existential existence is on the line. WW2 showed that while the US COULD wipe the Japanese off the map, we did not once they laid down their arms. Indeed, the US was VERY magnanimous in victory, much to the shock and surprise of the Japanese who were told we would devastate the country during the short occupation. so long as they harbor no ill will towards the US, that existential threat that might trigger a nuclear armed Japan would never be crossed by the US. Hence, the US would see no threat from Japan having nukes.
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I too look forward to the day that Japan and South Korea can let bygones be bygones and stand united against the Dragon pretending to be a Panda. And I also agree with you that just because the West has become decadent on its largess doesn't mean it is weak. Though it remains to be seen how long that lasts with the current leadership of the West.
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@zilari3662 Taking your example, Japan is NOT likely to use Nukes against China unless the CCP goes nuclear first. Hence, it will be China that would be "first use". And if China uses them first, NOBODY in the world would condemn Japan for retaliating in kind.
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@headoverheels88 Indeed. As one foreign commentator observed, not since WW2 has the US put its full effort into a war. We have ALWAYS fought with one hand tied behind our back, often using our off-hand. Most people don't realize that.
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TV Tropes page "Japan takes over the world" has a breakdown of the plight of Japanese workers today under the analysis tab. Short version is that Japan's lost decade, which the US is now replicating, resulted in zombie banking institutions, and the labor force being chronically under employed such that the sons of men who worked 40 years for the company cannot build a career because they end up changing jobs every couple of years due to a lack of steady work at those institutions.
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@baronvonlimbourgh1716 You ignore the other factors that came into play during those times. First, you had the post-WW2 economic boom cause by the labor pool as well as resources no longer being sent to the war machine. Second, the culture was less frivolous and more focused on savings rather than consumption. Again, this is a result of Great Depression and War rationing. When people save, there is more productivity. Rather than just regurgitate slogans, try actually understanding the underlying principles and not pretend taxes rates occur in a vacuum.
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@Kabup2 Agreed. The Indonesians have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps because nobody outside can do it for them. The problem with Indonesia is the same as many other third world nations: plagued by corruption, borderline despotism, and internal ethnic strife. Look at their decades long war with East Timor and you understand much of what is going on in the rest of that country.
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@JohnLee-db9zt History is a great predictor. The problem is that too many people draw the wrong conclusions based on it. Taking Japan's example, you had MANY officers such as the entire Japanese Navy officer staff who were adamant about NOT going to war with the US. Yamamoto is often quoted about how much of a fool's errant it would be, as well as precisely how long they would have the initiative before it all came crashing down. So, to your point, while the Japanese ethno-nationalists were extreme, they were by no means the majority. They were simply the ones who held the power in a feudalist society. Japan is no longer the Feudal stratified society it was in the 1940s.
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@Nucl3arDude That sounds good in principle, but smacked face-first into certain cultural proclivities of East Asia. First and foremost, employees are expected to show up before their immediate supervisor and remain at work until after that supervisor leaves. In practice, that means that the junior most in a corporation is expected to arrive as much as three hours before the senior executive arrives. And will remain there as the mid level manager slowly trickle out according to rank in the company after the senior leadership leaves. The West has a radically different perspective of work hours than Koreans and Japanese do. Appearances are everything, so even if one is very productive and gets all of their work done, rather than go home early, they are expected to find something to make themselves look busy until the boss goes home.
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@plendafuture7451 As John F. Kennedy pointed out, the Chinese brushstroke for "crisis" consists of two parts: Dagner + opportunity.
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@badluck5647 Japan, Germany, and Italy are not the same countries as they were 80 years ago. Japan is very liberalized, Germany is effectively neutered, and Italy, well, is just Italy without Mussolini.
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@olajong2315 Comparing modern Japan to Imperial Japan is an apples to oranges false analogy. The culture is significantly different. Nice anachronism on your part.
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@baronvonlimbourgh1716 And where did that consumerism stem from? RESPONSIBLE spending resulting from the hardships for which I mentioned. 1950s Americans were not running up massive credit debt on day-to-day luxuries like we are today. They could splurge here and there because they were managing what they had so they could afford those consumerist goods. Again, for someone who complains about others, you show a distinct lack of knowledge about nuance and details that completely blows your neo-communist premise completely out of the water. You accuse us of re-writing history when that is exactly what you are doing with your half-truths that lack CONTEXT.
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Not everyone in your list wants to live in peace. Tell me, have you actually met a Wahabbist from the Saudi Kingdom?
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The 1980s was the start of the "lost Decades" which the West seems hellbent on replicating.
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Indeed. That is Keysian neo-Marxist economics. And just like its predecessor, does more harm than good. Art Laffer proved that. So did Karl Meneger, Fredric Hayek, and Fredric Bastiat Baistait.
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Just like China's "State Capitalism" is just Maoist communism with accountability that punishes the nepotism that infests all systems. The end result is still the same: Soviet communism and all of its horrors.
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Yeah, their lost decade seems to be the one thing the West has become really good at emulating. And that is NOT a good thing.
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@lyampetit144 At this point, I would the US was like Belgium. A few months WITHOUT the US government operating would do wonder for us. "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." -Thomas Paine.
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@prometheusjackson8787 "Higher Wages"? You realize the minimum wage in 1950 was $0.75? Not all of that 2,000% increase is attributable to inflation. For someone who claim to be intelligent, you show a distinct ignorance of objective hard fact.
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@prometheusjackson8787 "Not relevant for 30 years"? The Chinese Communist Party begs to differ. But keep putting your foot in your mouth, please. It only makes you a laughingstock.
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@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Yeah, but how much of those business taxes were covered by TARIFFS? That is the dirty little detail you left out. Tariffs don't cover domestic business transactions, only international trade. And repeating your same slogan doesn't make you educated, it makes you a broken record (logical fallacy). You are guilty of what you accuse the rest of us. You are the one re0writing history according to your neo-communist THEORY which fails when it meets hard economic data.
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@prometheusjackson8787 And you are too foolish to realize that just because China claims to have "free trade zones" doesn't mean that they are. It is a gimmick referring to tariffs, not actual free markets. When 90% of the companies are "State Owned Enterprises" that means they are effectively organs of the government. Basically, Soviet Communism by another name. Good job, you have just proven to everyone you are a good little soviet that regurgitates talking points on cute like Pavlov's Dog.
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@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Yes, they are. Tariffs are NOT placed on individual people bringing their possessions across national boundaries. It is levied on corporations carrying bulk good across boundaries. Congratulations, you show you have zero knowledge on the subject. You clearly have no economic experience because you are regurgitating Debunked Keynesian platitudes on cue like Pavlov 's dog. Karl Menger, and Fredrich Hayek completely disprove all of your theories and is backed up by hard data. Indeed, Art Laffer confirmed everything they described and time and again it is validated.
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@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Not everything you read online is true. Any smuck can post anything. Go to the original paper sources. Anyone someone says "I read it online" I automatically discount it as hearsay and with good reason. A physical copy of Encyclopedia Brittanica is more reliable than anything you find online.
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Wealth redistribution never works. Giving something for nothing kills productivity and stifles economic growth. Japan was badly mismanaged in the 80s due to corporate cronyism, and the government intervening hasn't helped the problem, only prolonged it much like FDR's policies prolonged the Great Depression. Keysian economics is just Leninist-Marxist theory repackaged and rebranded. But it still failed spectacularly as Art Laffer's curve has proven time and again.
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@futureshocked First, economic analysists have confirmed that FDR's policies made the Great Depression worse, not better. Government NEVER creates anything except debt. FDR's government spending only took resources from productive areas and wasted them in places that produced very little return on investment. It was World War 2 that brought the US out of the Great Depression, that is a FACT. The 1980s prosperity is fake? Art Laffer again proves you wrong. As does Fresrick Hayek. The Reagan tax cuts, modeled off the JFK tax cuts prove beyond a reasonable doubt that LESS government taxation creates wealth while more taxation kills it. And the Trump tax policy confirmed and validated the Reagan-JFK economic policies. I agree that debt-based economics made BANKERS and SPECULATORS wealthy because they were extracting and pillaging the economy without actually adding anything of value. That has nothing to do with less government, that is actually a result of MORE government reward such behavior via bail-outs and printing money. Read Thomas Jefferson and the problem with banking institutions. There is a reason why most cultures consider Usury to be an evil practice. Killing the golden goose NEVER pays out in the end. Sure, it may make you feel better depriving the Zaibatsu or Chaebols, but it only makes things worse in the long run. Why? Because those oligarchs end up controlling government when the government tries to take their assets. This is just as true of Japan as it is in the US. Oligarchism only exists BECAUSE governments regulate. Without government regulation, there would be no need for oligarchs to seize control of the government.
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True, a vote for Trump in 2016 was a middle finger to the establishment power mongers. It just happened to result in one of the most productive and economically saucerful periods in American history until it was killed by the liberal establishment regaining power. And the backlash against that will be even greater than the one that originally put Trump in office. "I fear our efforts are for naught, for we have awakened a sleeping giant, AND FILLED HIM WITH A TERRIBLE RESOLVE," -Admiral Yamamoto, "Tora, Tora, Tora".
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@vorynrosethorn903 Well, there is a very good reason why most of the ancestors of Americans today got out of Europe. The Feudal families who ruled back then are still effectively running things today with very little change in the stratification of society.
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@vorynrosethorn903 The nobility lost everything or they simply married into the "new money" so as to maintain the status quo? The dirty little secret is that marriage among the nobility was never about love, only about power. The nouveau riche wants the legitimacy of noble status, even if titles are meaningless, while the old guard landed gentry view such marriages as a way to maintain their lifestyles. When push comes to shove, nothing has really changed.
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@H J DANGER as well as opportunity. Destruction is part of the nature of chaos. And without that destruction there would be no opportunity. Now, I do agree that pure chaos (ie entropy and enthalpy) is nobody's friend and is truly an "equal opportunity" agent. But one can take that into consideration when planning and minimize the harm as best they can while capitalizing on the opportunities.
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@dragonesryan282 I was stationed in South Korea from 2009-2011. I saw a much different presentation of Korean history than you imply. Yes, they are obsessed about the 35-year brutal occupation by Japan. But beyond that, there is a certain pride, not victim mentality in Korean history. particularly their defeat of the Japanese in the Imjin War over Hideyoshi.
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There is a major difference between Japan and Nordic countries. Namely, Japan doesn't have the oil deposits the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians have. Or have you forgotten that they fought WW2 because of their lack of native oil sources?
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@vorynrosethorn903 I am inclined to agree. Both the American Right and American Left care more about holding onto power than to right by the people. And while I cannot speak for Europe's left-right dichotomy, the fact that the same selected few families running the country in dynastic succession despite having an electoral process, I am also inclined to view those hereditary Republics with the same skepticism.
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@jxz107 You are probably correct on all of those counts. Sakhalin Island is the more intriguing issue. As per the Treaty of San Fransisco, the Japanese have zero legal claim at this time because its southern reaches were capture in war, even though those conquests predate control of the Kuril Islands. And when Japan did occupy it, Koreans were settled there. South Korea and Japan together taking that Island from Russia would be quite the odd-couple situation. That is assuming that Red China doesn't try to take it first since it is considered part of "outer Manchuria".
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@astrahcat1212 Agreed on almost all of those points. And Thomas Jefferson warned about the bankers acting like gamblers. He saw Alex Hamilton (father of the US Federal Bank) doing exactly that in conjunction with Henry Knox in Massachusetts sparking Shay's Rebellion. And then repeating that same dirty game in Pennsylvania with the Whiskey Tax, begging "big Daddy Washington" to save him. Same story since antiquity; wannabe feudal lord abusing the peasants and merchants who butter their bread by manipulating currency and the markets.
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Yeah, in many ways their political system is similar to the UK's Constitutional Monarchy. Though unlike Queen Elizabeth, I don't think the Emperor has the power to dissolve the government and force the Prime Minister to form a new one with new elections.
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