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bouzane on 12 January 2013
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Mr Khan said:
bouzane said:
@ Mr Khan

I guess we'll just have to disagree. I strongly believe that we must remain ever vigilant to the very real dangers of corporatism and fascism that exist in modern day society. As I study history I see that nothing ever changes, at least not meaningfully. We still have masters who continually attempt to improve their slave farms and they rarely have any concern for those that live on said farms. I do not trust them and I do not encourage anybody to place any amount of blind faith in those who rule us.

As far as Japan goes, sure, it's a peaceful society at the moment. The thing is, human civilization is not static, it is dynamic. The economic collapse that Japan faces will be catastrophic and I shudder when I think about what will happen to them when the banks shut the pipeline of credit that props up their failing economy. Without the flow of credit Yugoslavia, a formerly peaceful and prosperous nation, disintegrated into a dreadful civil war. Japan has a far, far worse debt problem and it is painfully evident that they will never be able to correct this issue. If the banks decide to pull the rug out from under them what would happen? Imagine if they had to create a balanced budget by slashing healthcare and eliminating many social programs overnight. Just imagine if the cuts didn't stop there. Imagine if they were unable to acquire the capital needed to prevent shortages in raw materials or even food. People become awfully restless when they're starving and the Japanese are just as capable of violence as any other human being.

The credit crunch in Yugoslavia was merely the removal of duct-tape holding together a country that wasn't supposed to be, due largely to political imbalances in favor of ethnic Serbs. Greece, with less ethnic homogeneity than Japan, hasn't had anything anywhere remotely resembling the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.

What you're describing simply will never happen. If anything, global economic collapse based around sovereign debt is likely to just lead to the countries declaring Sovereign Debt Jubilee, where everyone just writes off everyone else and starts over again.

Japan's healthcare wouldn't really fall that badly anyway, as their healthcare is government run but largely funded outside the government budget, as you still have to make insurance payments commensurate with your level of income, but those are just insurance payments, and can't be diverted to, say, farm subsidies (which are a huge problem in Japan anyway)


I didn't know that about Japanese health care. That being said, I was not proposing that Japan develop ethnic divisions, I was merely pointing out that extreme economic hardship would result in serious issues and yes, large scale violence. Japan's debt is unpayable and as it continues to balloon outward, it becomes evident that it is not a worthwhile investment. Japan is being sustained by outside sources and if that ever changed then they would be screwed. If every nation wrote off their debt and started over then Japan would still be completely unable to balance their budget leading to serious hardship. Also, what if there were serious economic issues that arose elsewhere or worse yet, large scale war? Either one of these scenarios or any other situation that would threaten the flow of credit could prove disastrous to the Japanese. It is not desirable for an economy to remain on perpetual life support, this really is not sustainable, at least not forever.