MISCmedia for 12/7/00
Unmade in Japan?

IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE sometimes that American business interests and their wholly-owned pundits and commentators once feared a go-go Japanese economy, to the point of calling for protection against their imports (especially autos).

Now, the once-feared "Japan Inc." is reeling. The nation's government has gone from scandal to scandal.

In "New Economy" tech industries, Japan leads the world only in video monitors and video games.

In autos, Nissan has only now come back from years of fiscal struggle. Mazda got eaten up by Ford. Some speculators think Honda will disappear next, as the industry consolidates to a dozen or fewer worldwide giants.

The Stateside anime fan cult notwithstanding, Japan's takeover of entertainment went awry. Matsushita/Panasonic gave up on its investment in MCA/Universal. Sony's purchases of the (previously separately-owned) Columbia Pictures and Columbia Records has proven problematic at best.

The Japanese invasion of some of America's most prestigious urban real estate, such as NYC's Rockefeller Center, went away when the country's domestic corporations and banks started to slide. Even worse, some of the more annoying "triumph of the inevitable" US corporate advocates crow that Japan can't ever again become an economic dynamo. Not unless it gives up its entire economic way of life.

You know the drill by now. Dump that central planning. Hack away at "lifetime employment," health care, and other worker perks. Slash government spending, especially on anything that might help people. Stop protecting domestic producers or farmers. Adhere strictly to the IMF/World Bank party line. Don't even think about doing anything the NYSE or NASDAQ wouldn't approve of.

The premise behind all this, as you know, is that not only is capitalism the only possible way to run a society, but that the tyranny of financiers and "The Market" is the only way possible way to run capitalism. I don't buy it. People (and nations as groups of people) have multiple needs, many of which are neither most effectively nor most efficiently served by a monomaniacal obsession with The Bottom Line or The Stock Price.

Additionally, different economies and economic systems have different cycles of "up" and "down" periods.

Japan had a "down" period a year or two back, due partly to nepotism-related monetary troubles in neighboring Asian countries, and U.S. capital rushed in to exploit it.

If the U.S. system has a "down" period (and some indicators say we might be at the start of one), and there's no other (more paternalistic or more careful or more long-term-minded) system out there, who'll bail us out?

TOMORROW: The next MISCmedia book project.

ELSEWHERE:

• James Fallows, in a piece written before Election Day, on how the Internet has (and hasn't) changed politics....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Remembering the good old days of computer nerddom.
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• Parts one, two, and three of our WTO-anniversary piece.
• The pioneering electronic music of Raymond Scott.
• A parable in how not to face potential unemployment.
• A short list of of people who aren't automatically better than you.
• A short list of of Things I Like.
• The Net newscast of complete disclosure.
• How Seattle's big newspaper strike might affect the local media landscape.
• Our fictional sullen barista keeps a secret.
• Target comes to town.
• The coming post-Napster chaos.
• Imagining what could not even possibly be entertaining.
• Hollywood gets even more scared and stupid.
• Why people write, and read, book reviews.
• We meet some of our new fictional alter egos.
• Imagining what might happen if bigtime sports went coed.
• The war on drugs as a drug.
• The election aftermath.
• Should we pity the San Franciscans yet?

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