Part of the reason the USA is cutthroat and poorly run is because of how heterogeneous the population is and the frontier mindset that comes with that. Importing immigrants en masse is likely to cause a lot of social instability and isn't a decision that should be taken lightly.
Think about it, all the hallmarks of Japanese society, tradition, respect, how will those survive if there's a relentless onslaught of foreigners who do not understand or believe in those values. Part of what made Japan was their ability to guard themselves from foreign encroachment and only incorporate elements of western culture that worked for them.
> Importing immigrants en masse is likely to cause a lot of social instability and isn't a decision that should be taken lightly.
Look at it as an experiment. See what happens if you allow mass immigration. If you don't like the result, do what you'd do with any other policy - change it. ...Although I guess you'd be stuck with the immigrants you already imported. And they'd probably vote to continue immigration, as they have in the US.. in that sense, this is one policy choice that is largely irreversible.
Canada, most expensive housing on earth and 20% GDP per Capita decline in the last decade...
Sweden, constant riots and exponential increase in crime...
Edit - Canada is an OK place to live, it's definitely become far worse in my lifetime though (mainly because of affordability). The plus side is tons of nature, if you're into that (I live in a mountain town but if I leave this town it's for Europe, not anywhere else in Canada).
Before immigration, was Sweden one of the worst places? And immigrants saw how poorly it was doing, thought to themselves "we must help them", and moved there to do just that?
It's insane to compare the recent immigration policies of Sweden and Germany to the US. US still has some of the most stringent rules for who can come in regardless of what you hear in the news.
Heterogeneity is not a homogenous quality, it can vary with spikes or with smooth curvature of slow population inflows over decades.
> US still has some of the most stringent rules for who can come in regardless of what you hear in the news
How stringent can these rules be, when the US has 13.7% foreign born population (counting only 1st generation immigrants)? And how stringently can they be enforced, when 11.4 million of those immigrants are there illegally?
I don't know if a "frontier mindset" comes from a hetereogenous population in general -- the very phrase "frontier" suggests to me it's more likely to come from our history where one kind of people had a "frontier" they were pushing out between them and people they were taking land from by force -- where one society of newcomers was entirely replacing/absorbing another pre-existing society, by force, not just hetereogenous people within a society. Obviously a pretty extreme conflict, that might result in lasting dynamics and mindsets, but the conflict wasn't really the inevitable effect of hetereogeniety alone -- and is of course a very different history than Japan's, and will remain so no matter their contemporary immigration policies.
IMO, and IME, the secret sauce is their education curriculum.
Japanese schoolteachers and the Japanese school curriculum spend a lot of time drilling correct social behavior in the classroom. You are socialized to obey the rules. You are socialized to think its bad to not follow the rules. You are socialized into being cohesive with the group.
I mean there is more to this. Their society as a whole has decided this is an acceptable task for schools to undertake and participate in it actively. But it’s the machine that keeps it going.
Also bullying is a feature not a bug, despite all modern attempts to squash it.
I'm not talking about turning Japan into a bastion of liberty like the US with "give me your poor, your tired, your weak".
I'm talking about skilled workers that are willing to assimilate. I haven't taught myself Japanese for nothing. I'm not going to go over there and turn it into Texas.
As far as I'm aware Japanese immigration policy for skilled workers is relatively lenient, it's just not generally considered an attractive place to migrate to from places that generate a lot of migrants.
It's lenient for certain sectors--programming, engineering. Niche STEM stuff where English is expected as the uniting language. But for anything else, it can be very difficult to move there.
But that leniency only comes into effect when you prove without question that it's near impossible to source local talent to fill a job, and the Japanese are extremely educated, so you're usually going to find companies will hire domestically before gambling on someone from the west who's used to superior salaries in USD.
Even if you're the world's best, your salary will drop to about 1/2 or 1/3 of what you can make in the US.
> Part of the reason the USA is cutthroat and poorly run is because of how heterogeneous the population is and the frontier mindset that comes with that.
Well, you don't see too many homeless people or citizens failing to receive medical treatment or retraining if they fall on hard times. It's a compassionate society when it comes to care. I'm sure it's cutthroat in the business sense, but that's normal. The US is cutthroat in nearly every aspect where we should care for one another and prevent problems from existing--gun control, drug use, unemployment, basic housing, education (this is getting worse the more evangelicals influence it), etc.
> Part of the reason the USA is cutthroat and poorly run is because of how heterogeneous the population is
This is xenophobic at best and borderline racist.
The US govnt is fraught with disfunction not because people look different, but probably because it's a highly capitalistic society that limits the hands of government control over its citizens, which in turn cause the "poorly run" state that you're observing.
Think about it, all the hallmarks of Japanese society, tradition, respect, how will those survive if there's a relentless onslaught of foreigners who do not understand or believe in those values. Part of what made Japan was their ability to guard themselves from foreign encroachment and only incorporate elements of western culture that worked for them.