Newsgroups: sci.research
Subject: Japanese Economic War (?)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 20:24:00 -0500

RS> I'm afraid I fail to see the relevance of this argument.
RS> The
RS> Japanese are not engaging in unfair practices by keeping all
RS> U.S.
RS> (and other 'foreign') companies out of their markets because
RS> the CIA
RS> overestimated the KGB years ago?  Come on!

I'm pointing out the similarity of the reasoning processes, not adducing an
argument about the Japanese from the CIA/KGB fallacy.  You need more practice on
reading comprehension... (You started the sarcasm [or flaming] here.)

RS> While I believe in a free market (as long as it is open to
RS> all)
RS> as well as free government, I fail to see how transferring
RS> the
RS> wealth of the U.S. to Japan at an incredible rate counts as
RS> our
RS> system "having the laws of mathematics on its side."  That
RS> transfer
RS> is in fact taking place at a rate that by the year 2000
RS> Japan will
RS> surpass the U.S. and become the wealthiest country on the
RS> Earth.

Your figures are considerably out of date.  The Japanese are having lots of
problems with "wealth transfer," in fact.  I recall an article about someone who
was selling them land in a rice-growing area of the South a few years back. 
When he was criticized for selling the "national wealth" of the United States to
foreigners, he pointed out that he had been buying and selling land in the area
for thirty years and the Japanese were right off the boat.  "Which of us do you
think knows what he is doing?" he said.  Well, the Japanese bought an awful lot
of American land at the top of the market a few years ago and are having plenty
of losses, both paper and realized, with a lot of tax money flowing to the US to
keep their assets afloat.  (Incidentally, the largest foreign ownership share of
US assets is British, not Japanese.  Wonder why we aren't worried about them? 
After all, they're a monarchy with a more pervasive feudal system and an active
left-wing party...)

RS> Ahh, the classic argument!  "I have the evidence, but don't
RS> feel
RS> like posting it!"  Most often this is used only as a last
RS> resort by
RS> someone who does not have a complete grasp of the topic on
RS> which
RS> they argue.

More flamage.  I refer you to any number of books by Milton Friedman, Ludwig von
Mises, Friedrich Hayek, along with dozens of articles from the Wall St. Journal,
Reason magazine, and publications by the Cato Institute, among loads of others. 
There is plenty of evidence on the side of classical Austrian economics; I just
don't plan to take up everyone's time and the net's bandwidth in posting it here
when there are plenty of public libraries for people to read it in.

RS> While I agree that the Japanese system is faulty in that it
RS> damages
RS> the world economy, I fail to see how an economic plan for
RS> the next
RS> 200 years (which Japan reportedly has) can be credited only
RS> with
RS> "short-term success."

I'm afraid I must be incredulous of a "200-year plan."  What plan invented in
1792 could possibly have envisioned the developments of the past twenty decades
in the industrial world.  The steam engine barely existed, there were no
railroads, no automobiles, no theory of electromagnetism, no knowledge of the
atom, barely any chemistry, not even steel as a construction material--
engineering was done with wood and masonry and rock.  I guess you could say that
that most visionary of Americans, Thomas Jefferson, had a 200-year plan: Give
the people freedom and a limited government and trust to their good sense and
ingenuity.  I don't think anything that the Japanese can dream up for their
200-year plan, other than some way to impose two centuries of stagnation on the
world, could possibly deal with the unimaginable developments of the next two
hundred years of the history of mankind.

RS> I sincerely hope that Americans will soon wake up to the
RS> economic
RS> threat from Japan in time to alter our laws in such a way as
RS> to
RS> become a mirror of their trade laws and thereby force them
RS> to make
RS> their policies fair.  Hopefully, they will one day

So we are to defeat the Japanese by becoming just like them?  Sounds more like
surrendering to their world view to me.  In a world without free trade, everyone
will become poorer.  Consult the works of David Ricardo on comparative advantage
for further details the relevant economic theory.

RS> discontinue their
RS> economic offensive and fully participate in free
RS> *multi*lateral
RS> world trade, which will be to the benefit of all.  Until
RS> that day,
RS> however, we must learn to look after ourselves and not
RS> naively
RS> depend on the benevolence of others.

Funny, I thought that is what I was arguing for--looking after ourselves in the
traditional individualistic American way.

Just one further comment:  The reason that Japan cannot become an effective
democracy until it changes its ways (or will change its ways as soon as it does
become a true democracy) is that the mass of Japanese consumers are paying for
the success of a few giant corporations and their managers.  As the original
posting pointed out, prices are kept high in the home market, middle class
Japanese live far more poorly than do comparable Americans, and the half of the
Japanese population without a Y chromosome are almost completely shut out of any
form of self-realization in their system.  To the extent that the US pressures
Japan, we give them an external bogeyman to blame for their problems.  A
free-trade policy by the US will leave that argument unsupported; we just have
to sit back and wait for the inevitable upheaval from within.  It already
happened in the former Soviet Union with the defense race of the early to
mid-80's; free trade is our most potent weapon against the managed traders of
the world.

Roger.Firestone@f349.n109.z1.fidonet.org