Welcome to SIJ.
My name is Richard Posner, an American who was born and raised in New York. After more than 42 years in Japan as a businessman and educator, I can still sense that Japan is more than a has-been economic juggernaut in the Far East.
It has the obvious potential to reverse fortune in the coming decades. This archipelago has a stable infrastructure, an educated citizenry and an obvious need to tear down the immigration walls as its population continues to dwindle as Baby Boomers retire and pass on.
China – the supposed economic heir apparent in Asia – can exist as an important player in the international sphere but it will never dominate under its strict, authoritarian governance which seems hellbent on excessively surveilling it’s population while smashing down freethinkers holding big dreams unfavorable to their draconian government.
For several years I have been saying what I wrote above, and now it is time for Japan to shine (with foreign collaboration) in utilizing all of its human capital and 21st-Century technologies available to most who live here.
In Japan, vast swathes of rural towns and villages – outside of large metropolitan areas – are often neglected and abandoned by young adults heading for greener pastures in urban centers. But this mass exodus is where the opportunity lies for foreigners to fill the vacuum by starting venture companies, by repurposing beautiful Japan’s breathtaking countryside areas with Silicon Valley-type enclaves and resorts for workers therein, and to thus revitalize these blighted areas with a new-age flavor and a scent of cash and people flowing in.
So, I welcome all people who can see this vision and want to participate (in some manner) in, what I believe, can become a resurgence of a Japan powerhouse. Despite unyielding depopulation and an uncomfortable dependence on foreign physical resources, Japan is still in the race.
Welcome from Success in Japan to a resurgence in Asia of a democratic-leaning nation (Japan) which will encourage and promote a flow of ideas and profitable ventures without excessively being overseen by bloated, disinterested, self-serving government bureaucracies.
This, my planetary compatriots, is my win-win proposition for the ages. I humbly defer to effective, liberal-leaning people and institutions wishing to set a template for business and infrastructure for the entire Planet Earth which will definitively benefit the common man NOW rather than supplement a wage-slave’s crumb somewhere down the vague road.
Let us march toward a people’s capitalism with a healthy sprinkling of assistance to the unseen many, who have been perpetually planted on the treadmill of mediocrity at best and enslavement at worst. The world is infinitely abundant when the empowering hand of lifting up the forgotten and oppressed is center-stage and always at the ready.
“Do not wait for a change of environment before you act; get a change of environment by action. You can so act upon the environment in which you are now as to cause yourself to be transferred to a better environment. Hold with faith and purpose the vision of yourself in the better environment, but act upon your present environment with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”
― Wallace D. Wattles
Richard Alan Posner