Non-unionized corporate labour forces combined with reduction in competition of industries in Western culture has allowed for significant abuse by said non-unionized corporations. Japanese culture is different, there is an honour and loyalty code there. Loyalty doesn’t mean shit in Western culture, less than shit on North American side of Western culture.
That would be my educated guess.
The egregious CBS and Paramount merger that allowed the Trump administration to coerce them into getting Colbert fired is just another example of this decay in western corporate culture. But, I can’t be the only one who has witnessed employee firings being used by executive management as a means to show that “they can make the hard decisions” to shareholders, with a manufactured context to make it look like this is a positive and necessary thing rather than just game move so they can get that bonus, raise, and/or promotion. Much of the time, these people didn’t do anything wrong, nor did they cease to become useful: it’s just that I’m the manufactured story, this became the case, and they pretend like letting these people go is painful for the executive.
In short, we suffer corporate systemic psychopathy.
And if I may get political for a moment: break up the corporations (Teddy) and/or legitimize unions (Franky). Elizabeth Warren championed both directions, and she would have won if the Bernie Busters hadn’t teamed up with the Conservative Democrats to shut her down when she got too popular. It was perhaps the largest propaganda campaign by far from the faux-leftists who, at the time, comprised the Bernie or Bust cult.
In other words, it’s not Nintendo or Japanese exceptionalism. It’s the profound weakening of western economics. The extreme freedoms can lead to rapid growth, but then a few bushes overthrow, and everything else rots and dies… including all the lower branches of the giant corporate bushes, even while the upper echelons are green and lush.…. We don’t need mergers, we need chainsaws.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
