Japan
Stagnation, demographics, finance and industry, and what the rest of the world reads into them.
FilterEveryone, all time23 from 15 people
- NS
Noah Smith quoted
Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter
Their wordsFrench food and Japanese food are like electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force -- at high enough energies, they're the same thing.
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals
Their wordsFrance, and the rest of Europe, could learn a lot from Japan.
- 2 weeks earlier
- NS
Noah Smith quoted
Their wordsthe 2020s should be an absolute flowering of Chinese pop culture like the 90s were for Japan, but it won't, because CCP censorship is just bad enough to make Chinese pop culture boring af
- 2 weeks earlier
- NS
Noah Smith quoted
Their wordsIn other words, “Confucian” is lazily applied to Japan as a racial category, rather than any kind of a useful description of the culture and society.
- 3 days earlier
- PL
Pieter Levels quoted
Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs his internet startups alone
Their wordsI think we should use this kinds of data to completely turn around Europe's immigration policy: - We should have super easy inflow for immigrants from countries whose previous immigrants have shown low crime rates You're from Japan? Just fly here and you can stay forever - We should then almost completely ban any inflow from countries whose previous immigrants have shown high crime rates with instant deportations
- 2 days earlier
- AS
Anthony Sculimbrene quoted
Lawyer and everyday-carry gear reviewer who publishes scored knife
Their wordsInterestingly, in Japanese culture, wabi-sabi represents the same conceptual space as "beauty" does in Ancient Greek thinking.
- 2 weeks earlier
- NS
Noah Smith quoted
Their wordsIn the 70s and 80s, Japanese companies could get cheap plentiful bank loans to develop new products and explore new markets. Today, they can't. Innovation is downstream of finance.
- 6 days earlier
- PL
Pieter Levels quoted
Their wordsI think most high skilled Europeans are happy to pay (even high) taxes That is, if the government does a great job like Singapore or Dubai or Korea or Japan and most things work well You pay the government for a service and you get safe cities, great public services and great healthcare back
- 8 weeks earlier
- JB
Josh Barro quoted
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics
Our readingEuropean countries are wealthy enough to afford widespread air conditioning, comparable to Japan.
Their wordsEurope is not actually poor. Japan is about as wealthy as Europe, and almost all Japanese homes are air-conditioned. Europeans could afford to air-condition their homes (and their hospitals!) just like the Japanese do.
↗Europe Needs Air Conditioningjoshbarro.com 1st of 3 in this piece
- 10 days earlier
- LT
Lip-Bu Tan quoted
Chief executive of Intel since 2025
governmentsemiconductorsinfrastructure
Their wordsJust I explained to President Trump, TSMC when they started they have the Taiwan government as a shareholder. If you look at Japan, you look at Singapore, this is the infrastructure US government get to provide the support.
↗Re-engineering the Semiconductor Supply Chain with Intel CEO Lip Bu Tanyoutube.com 1st of 16 in this recording
- 6 months earlier
- BP
Brian Potter quoted
Structural engineer and writer
Their wordsSweden, for instance, is often praised for its high adoption of prefabricated construction, but since the 1990s Sweden has had roughly flat construction labor productivity, even as it has made more extensive use of prefabrication.
↗Stagnant Construction Productivity Is a Worldwide Problemconstruction-physics.com 1st of 3 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
- DH
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Our readingA country is primarily for its native people
Their wordsThere's absolutely nothing racist or xenophobic in saying that Denmark is primarily a country for the Danes, Britain primarily a united kingdom for the Brits, and Japan primarily a set of islands for the Japanese
- 7 weeks earlier
- JW
Jack Weatherford quoted
Anthropologist and author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
Their wordsBut there actually, I think there's a very, very good reason for invading Japan. Several. The main one was to cut off the supply of sulfur. They needed it for gunpowder in the South Song. They lost their sources in northern China when they were driven out. They got it from Japan. It was a great source.
↗Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476youtube.com 17th of 22 in this recording
- JW
Jack Weatherford quoted
Their wordsBut I think Japan had defeated the Mongols. I would say. Japanese deserve credit for that victory. And then the sinking of the ships was more caused by the typhoon.
↗Jack Weatherford: Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire | Lex Fridman Podcast #476youtube.com 18th of 22 in this recording
- 6 months earlier
- DP
Dylan Patel quoted
Founder and chief executive of SemiAnalysis
energysemiconductorsnuclear power
Their wordsSo, Japan has a law which you're allowed to train on any training data and copyrights don't apply if you want to train a model, A. B, Japan has 9 gigawatts of curtailed nuclear power. C, Japan is allowed under the AI diffusion rule to import as many GPUs as they'd like.
↗DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters | Lex Fridman Podcast #459youtube.com 31st of 44 in this recording
- 13 days earlier
- OK
Oliver Kim quoted
Development economist and economic historian who writes…
Their wordsThe Japanese empire reached far deeper into its colonies than any European empire ever did in Sub-Saharan Africa.
↗No, South Korea Was Not Poorer Than Kenya in 1960global-developments.org 3rd of 8 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
- AE
Alice Evans quoted
Senior lecturer in international development at King's College London
Their wordsThe key difference wasn't policy - it was demographics. Japan's working-age population is shrinking.
↗Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world 1st of 11 in this piece
- 8 weeks earlier
- BP
Brian Potter quoted
Their wordsShipbuilding is labor intensive, and we see a repeated pattern of it moving to countries with low-cost labor: from Britain to Japan, then to Korea, then to China.
↗Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?construction-physics.com 6th of 8 in this piece
- 7 months earlier
- DW
Dan Wang quoted
Writer and analyst of Chinese technology and industry
Their wordsAs I’ve written in each of my previous letters, the party’s strangling of free expression has rendered China into a pitiful underperformer relative to Japan and South Korea in the creation of cultural products.
- 3 weeks earlier
- AV
Austin Vernon quoted
Engineer and investor who writes quantitative posts…
Their wordsLabor costs are not an excuse!
↗Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuildingaustinvernon.site 1st of 4 in this piece
- 19 months earlier
- OB
Olivier Blanchard quoted
Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund
Their wordsJapanese macroeconomic policy is often characterized as a failure, with the central bank unable to achieve its inflation target, a low growth rate, and debt ratios steadily rising to reach more than 170% for net debt and 250% for gross debt. I think it should be seen instead as a qualified success, with the use of aggressive fiscal and monetary policies to compensate for very weak private demand: Output has remained close to potential.
↗Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu All 22 from this book
- 117 years earlier
- NI
Nitobe Inazō quoted
Japanese agronomist, diplomat and writer (1862 to 1933)
Our readingChivalry is as native to Japan as the cherry blossom and is still a living moral force there
Their wordsChivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware that we are still under its potent spell.
↗Bushido, the Soul of Japan (tenth revised edition, 1905)gutenberg.org All 7 from this book
- NI
Nitobe Inazō quoted
Their wordsUnder the régime of feudalism, which could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind.
↗Bushido, the Soul of Japan (tenth revised edition, 1905)gutenberg.org All 7 from this book