I really liked making this video. I hope you enjoyed it too. For other videos on Japan, check out the playlist: th-cam.com/play/PLKtxx9TnH76RTpIBp5WGyun3Nn85sQxLK.html
I have lived more than a decade in Japan and spent a bit of time looking into their history. You did a magnificent job with this overview of the rise and fall of the zaibatsu.
@@Al-ng2wn Well their are plenty large family in Taiwan that gained overwhelming wealth during the Japanese colonial period, and the old family wealth distribution trusts called “ancestral worshipping committee”(祭祀公業) is still distributing massive wealth to the male descendent of the family, gained though their families mass assets, and due to the fact that the trusts was established during the Japanese colonial period(Japanese civil code at that time allows gender discrimination ), these Trust funds are still legally allowed to discriminate against their female family members to this day.
Usually oligarchies damage their own countries' interests. It's funny how Americans can clearly spot it when it happens to another countries but not in their own.
Really? Is it happening in the US? Can you draw a meaningful comparison between US oligarchies and the pre-WW2 oligarchies described here? Here's a hint: start with market capitalisation.
This kind of thing can happen at the local level also. In the (U.S.) town where I live there's a family that was known to be quite wealthy. They owned a bank, real estate companies, and land. The bankers and real estate people unfortunately played a little too wild with their assets, selling land parcels back and forth among themselves (sometimes on a daily basis) to push up the land values and let them reap the profits from so many sales where the selling price was always higher than the purchase price. Eventually that bubble popped, and the real estate and bankers ran out of money. The bank was close and the depositors almost lost their money (the bank was state insured, instead of being federally insured.) The real estate assets were sold off at market value, and that was the beginning of a major real estate and business boom. Tracts of land that had been empty for years while family members sold them back and forth among themselves were suddenly being developed. Businesses were built. Entire residential neighborhoods were built on land that had been unused. No one 'ate the rich', they ate themselves. The family's disaster turned into a boon for the community.
This is typically what happens. Unfortunately, there are greedy people even among those who aren't "rich" and they would rather demand that the government steal from private citizens instead of letting the inevitable over-extension by these companies/individuals happen.
One problem I have with this analysis, is that it completely ignores the fact that Japan's economic miracle began as soon as some of former Zaibatsu groups were able to rebuild their holdings as financial groups now known as Keiretsu. Must like the Zaibatsu of old, the Keiretsu utilizes vertical integration, where huge portfolios of major companies across different industries are owned and coordinated(supply eachother) by a few banking groups(most of which have Zaibatsu origins). Despite in some ways being more informal in nature, in the US they would be considered highly illegal trusts under the loosest definitions. The only thing that ever really changed was the shift in focus from a more closed economy, to an export-focus economy, and a large amount of foreign(chiefly US) subsidies and investment.
Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists. This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen? “Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?” Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
You have companies like Sony, Toyota, and Panasonic that all formed right around WW2 (or earlier, but took off closer to / a little bit after WW2) that started from humble beginnings in the 20th century that fit with what he's described in this video, no?
One of the aspects that I find fascinating is the fact that unlike many other countries who wanted to unseat their plutocrats, Japan firmly, steadily, maneuvered the decline in a way that left the plutocrats still quite comfortable by ordinary standards, but nowhere as rich as they had been. Nobody dragged them out of their homes and shot them, and they didn't even disband the companies, simply changed parts of the structure so that they were publicly held corporations instead of family-run business interests. The "we will compensate you with X amount of money.. on deposit and you can't touch it for the next 5 years" was brilliant.
this is because it was done for pragmatic reasons, due to the economic and social problems that the militaristic government had little problem identifying and little conflict of interest eradicating, as compared to the previous liberal and monarchist governments which had closer ties to the wealthy and personal stake in not solving these problems. it was not a revolution of people who felt that their hardships were from the elite class, those tend to be very bloody chaotic affairs. if the military govt. had not have done this, it's very possible japan could have had such a bloody lower-class revolution instead near the end or after the war.
I think there's an intereslng parallel between Japan's Breakup of Zaibatsu power and the UK's end to slavery. In the UK the Government compensated slave owners and traders when they outlawed slaving. Even my family was paid-out for the slaves they owned in Grenada and other parts of the Carribean. Fundamentally owning slaves for many owners was not motivated solely by racism, it was about controlling and exploiting labour for no impact on bottom line profitability. For the UK slave owners they didn't kick up and fight the government because their economic position and societal status was not changed. The same with how the Japanese managed the transition from the Zaibatsu conglomerate monopolies - compensation and respecting social position. Essentially because of both the UK and Japan's underlying social stratification and social hierarchy there was substantial social capital that the slave owners and the Zaibatsu families held, irrespective of the wealth. Compare this to the USA, where there was not a social status system underpinning the economics of aggregation of wealth. Any old poverty stricken nobody could go from ' Rags' to 'Riches' just with an idea or by going to a place and stealing land from Native American Tribes. The wealth and status of the slave owners was entirely dependent on the control and exploitation of slaves. No 'barons', No 'Lords', no 'earls', no long term intergenerational social capital to fall back on. It was a big contributor to the Civil War, both at the individual slave owner family level and at the Slave State political level. This is still true to this day. It's why wealthy Americans are so terrified of anti trust laws, government regulations and socialism. They violently resist any attempts at reducing wealth inequality because their only social status comes from money and accumulated capital. It's no surprise that the chief reason that the US Government is involved in so many countries through both direct intervention (invasions/war/world bank/IMF) and indirect (softer power influence - int'l taxation stuff/trade agreements/WTO/aggressive patent and copyright law) is because it is protecting the economic interests of American "entrepreneurs" and industrialists. These people, as Trump and his wealthy supporters proved, will turn against their fellow countrymen if there is any challenge to their wealth derived social status. Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook definitely need the Zaisbatsu treatment. Chinese Government is giving some 'guidance' to their tech giants at the moment.
@@bisiilki ：Ｃhinese method as a guidance? why not New Deal-ism? There are plenty of ideas in American school of thought, a lot of history of left popularism. If these cannot be done, then how is it possible for US government to achieve that level concentration of political power? Trump? but Trumpism is more like Putin's crony capitalism. China has a "Red-Patrician" class. If you don't belong to them and show signs of defiance, then you have trouble. corruption is part of growth stratage, Xi's family is rich. not rich rich. Where do you got the ideal that China offer a model of socialism? even Marxism is banned. For the patrician class , and CCP grip to power, any form of democracy has to be banned.
Locked in cash during a hyper inflation hike. That is the catch that sort of made the government responsible for confiscating wealth. Could be fair if they were kept as gold or other value-retaining-low-growth assets.
Yup. Wealth inequality leads to envy and bitterness which then led to civil strife and revolutions. If you don't want communists to ran around the country, the rich have no choice but to agree to redistribution of wealth and property. Plus, when monopolies are gone, small businesses and competitors will pop up and give way to new opportunities.
@@albertalmodal4331 According to adam smith who was writing what he saw succesful economies doing, yes. The state in capitalism needs to break up monopolies as it is natural but detrimental for them to form.
Hmmmm...it is like supporting entrepreneurialism and small business is the real driver of a capitalist economy. And allowing oligopoly industries to bribe and influence government to reduce competition and gain special favor is actually not really capitalist, it is just plain corruption.
If you read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you'll find he already argued that land owners have a vested interest in keeping their country less developed, as developed economies have much smaller profit rates.
@@eridaskunt1856 Okay I gather you probably don't read so I'll keep this short. Marxism isn't dogma. It isn't a religion. It isn't "feels based politics". Marxism is a scientific explanation for why capitalism will, inevitably, begin consuming itself. To oversimplify: In capitalism, profit is all that matters. Stockholders require growth, or else their stock loses value and they lose money. A product cannot be innovated forever. Eventually, it will become so efficient that the only options left become dividing the product to sell each piece individually (See Apple removing functions of their smart phones to sell them separately at inflated prices) or to engage in labor violations (forced overtime, cutting employee benefits, lower pay). Eventually, this becomes a society-wide issue, as it is right now (for their time, French peasants in the 1700s were wealthier than most American workers today). These labor violations do two things: they cause further efficiency in the creation of products, but they destroy the consumer-classes ability to purchase. This is why the housing, vehicle and education markets are getting buttfucked right now. The consumers simply cannot possibly afford them. This means the only people engaging with the economy are now middle-class and wealthy people, which is an increasingly small number of Americans. I do not have to explain why 80% of a country being unable to meaningfully engage in capitalism is a death sentence for capitalism. Once this gets bad enough, poor people will begin killing wealthy people. I am not saying this is a good or bad thing. I'm saying it's AN INEVITABLE thing. This is all the more likely as capitalism is also uniquely responsible for the impending climate disasters. There will be climate rebellions, and a lot of wealthy people who enabled the polluting companies for their own pocketbooks will die. A cursory glance at history tells you this is inevitable, and it is because of this country's blind worship of capitalism. That is the hyper-simplified basis of Marxism. "Capitalism has inherent contradictions that will cause it to consume itself, and the result will be terrible violence."
Except the whole thing was a temporary buffer and was done just to appease the US, who were there. MacArthur regretted not being able to get rid of the zaibatsu before he left. The seizure of assets happened but they just rose to power again, aided by ideas of tradition. Now, work culture is all consuming, in Japan, even to the point of abuse that drastically lowers productivity. You'll notice a lot of the names of the original Zaibatsu are still massive corps, known worldwide. This is not an accident, nor a coincidence.
But it's not much of a problem given that Japan is a highly developed country with very little poverty and no starving sergs. They've industrialized and diversified. Now the issue is that the country is so developed people are no longer having kids and the population is becoming old.
@@mrb152 This is the government narrative but it is only true if you squint. There are a lot of starving and homeless people and even a surviving caste system or three. Rural areas are being torn down by companies and the government. It's not all rosey as the offical messaging states.
@@mrb152 like in the rest of the developed world old people have blocked promotioin and raises for the young stagnating wages in the prosute of higher profits. this has lead to young people largly not having the money to have kids. there fore they don't have kids. the schools also frown apon dating at a time when a lot of people meet the persont hey will marry, and drive them to spend their peak reproductive years living at work to the point they even have to sleep in the office.
Yeah, I wouldn't blame not wanting to live in a country that's development hurts the working person on so many levels. Even if you do get the job, the comfortable life and the passive income, people still have to tolerate and live in their culture for that. Not to mention the labour practices.
I don't know what is more impressive: the levels of far reaching collusion in these extended families, or how effective busting them up was for improving Japan's economy afterwards. I like that we all know most of these family names despite the companies being mostly broken up. Another great video, I was really looking forward to this one after it was teased.
@@tacticlol I think it is. But where private property is unjustly acquired, or unjustly kept, society must find ways to deal with it. But fundamentally, private property is a human right.
@@prathameshdusane2619 Kawasaki and Mitsubishi are really good examples of companies that reformed their market and their image after a nasty period. Idk anything about the other one, though.
If Japan 'ate' their rich and came out stronger, why can't USA do the same ? The Jeff Bezos, the Elon Musks, the Bill gates, the George Soros, the Warren Buffets, all of them, must have all the wealth taken and re-distribute to all the Americans !
@@clocktower1164 Different circumstances and condition. During the industrial era, wealth are in concrete real asset and commodities, i.e oil, mines, factory, grains, rubber, etc. As such, they can easily be appropriated by greedy governments, either in taxes, backdoor dealing, government acquisition etc. Added to that, companies are more tied to the nation and so they cannot run by moving their factories elsewhere. Nowaday, in a more globalized and digital world, its easy to move your wealth, more so when most of of this wealth are intangible properties like brands, trademark and copyrights. If the American branch is closed, the European office can still function independently, if not, then the Asia Pacific office. Also, the video is a bit misleading. Japan didn't "eat" their rich but rather were forced by the American occupiers to break their monopolies. While I would support the breaking up of Amazon, Google and Facebook, the fact that the social media and tech in general rely of having volume to get profit mean that another Googld, amazon and Facebook will emerge anyway, just like the fall of Geocities and Myspace show us. The only way to prevent it would probably by going the China route by fragmenting the market into nations instead of one global market. De-globalization is the answer you want if you want to prevent tech monopolies by the rich.
Destroying old and lazy company structures by privatization led to more success for the economy. Decades later, destroying old and lazy company structures by nationalization led to more success for the economy. I see a pattern here :-)
Interesting stuff about early 20th century Japanese economy and politics (they are usually one and the same - don't let anyone fool you). I noticed that many Japanese companies prefer to be vertical. They want to control all aspects of the supply chain from raw resources, all the way to production of consumer products. Nintendo is a good example of that. When GC came out they decided to go with a disc system to compete with Sony and Microsoft's new consoles. Rather than go with a standard like CD or DVD, they created their own format and subsequently controlled the entire production of the discs. Some say that Nintendo does that in order to create false demand in the marketplace, and there might be something to that, but after watching this I realize that it was the way these plutocratic familial based organizations worked in Japan. It was a tradition built into the zeitgeist of Japanese manufacturing since, apparently, a hundred years prior. Excellent video BTW.
I worked for a gaming store for many years starting in 2004 and I can confirm your statements about Nintendo. At the time I wasn't aware of other major companies creating false demand through gimmicks. Nintendo also creates false shortages and puts a lot of effort into making sure the public believes there are shortages of new products. Then suddenly, at the last minute over the holidays, our stores would be flooded with their products. It seems many other large tech companies have learned to create false demand through gimmicks - namely Apple. I should add that the automotive industry is now doing the same thing. They have been claiming chip and vehicle shortages since 2020 as they desperately try to maintain inflated vehicle prices. In the meantime, there are reports of remote lots full of new cars due to overproduction and repos are at historic levels. The trick is to release inventory as slowly as possible to prevent prices from crashing. The same can be said of the residential real estate market in the USA. Again, just gimmicks by greedy corporations to squeeze every dime possible out of the working class.
@@baronvonslambert "It was on the Old Continent that the company experienced its first major successes at the end of the 1980s. In Japan, it was not a failure but the company did not carry much weight compared to Nintendo. We can say it today without detour: without England and France, the aura of SEGA would not have been the same" "If there is one generally known fact that is valid for the entire decade and a good part of the 1990s, it would be the following: microcomputers were much more successful than consoles as gaming machines in the most European countries. Although this statement cannot be generalized without a little research, it is certainly true for most large markets like Germany, France and the United Kingdom as well as smaller ones like Spain. or Italy. And this is also the case for a good part of Eastern European countries by definition because several of them did not officially discover consoles until the early 1990s." "Nintendo and SEGA, for example, could not then be considered strong brands in Europe because consumers were not familiar with these Japanese companies. Throughout the 1980s, they only achieved relatively low sales overall, even in countries in which their success was significant. SEGA was clearly a brand better known for their arcade machines and, as already mentioned, some of their computers which had reached Europe [Editor's note: Nintendo was best known for its Game & Watch]." The NES sold 8,56 Millions units in Europe (61,91 Millions worldwide ,34 Millions in North America ,19,35 Millions in Japan) while the Master System sold 6,8 Millions units in Europe (18 Millions worldwide ,8 Millions in Brasil ,2 Millions in the USA and 1 Million in Japan) The SNES sold 8,58 Millions in Europe (49,1 Millions worldwide, 23,35 Millions in North America, 17,17 Millions in Japan) while the Sega Genesis sold 6,9 Millions in the PAL Market (So Europe + other country like Australia ,Brasil etc ...) (39,7 Millions worldwide ,20 Millions in North America, 4,3 Millions in Japan) The N64 sold 6,75 Millions in Europe + Australia (32,93 Millions worldwide, 20,63 Millions in North America, 5,54 Millions in Japan) while the Sega Saturn sold 0,97 Million in Europe (9,5 Millions worldwide ,2,7 Millions in the USA ,5 Millions in Japan) The GCN sold 4,77 Millions in Europe (21,75 Millions worldwide, 12,94 Millions in USA + Canada, 4,04 Millions in Japan) while the Dreamcast sold 1,91 Million in Europe (8,06 Millions worldwide ,3,9 Millions in North America ,2,25 Millions in Japan) Nintendo still sold more than Sega in each generation of console in Europe .
The original Keiretsu families are still ruling the group secretly via subsidiaries in some of the group. Mitsui and Sumitomo still have strong family representatives that are still called as "Sachou" aka President, even though formally they aren't the president. The original family members will gather annually in Kyoto with all CEOs and presidents of their subsidiary for a planning meeting. It's not uncommon that public KKs in Japan are secretly owned by 1 entity/family well above the ownership rate that is allowed by the government. They have managed to do this by using various webs of companies. Zaibatsu/Keiretsu and Japanese military have long ties because most of them are former Samurai, both for the merchants and officers. For example, during the Russo-Japanese war, Admiral Togo received the intelligence report on the proximity of the Russian Baltic fleet from the Sumitomo and Mitsui Shipyard directors in Shanghai and Singapore. All military equipments in JSDF are still made by those Keiretsu until now, mainly license built. So it's not merely because they ate the rich, but the rich managed to fly below the radar (and mostly were spending their wealth in Japan) and had very strong connection with METI-JETRO-JICA aka Politicians and Bureaucrats.
Such a unique Japanese phenomenon. This certainly doesn't happen in Western countries at all. Western companies are definitely not owned by complex and opaque webs of investment management companies which are owned by wealthy families that trace back to medieval aristocracies.
@@1schwererziehbar1 Some do, especially the Swiss. Italian families have faded. Rothschild still have annual meeting. You can be expelled from the family if you don't attend the meeting. They will share their experience on business, life and everything on that meeting. So other family members can learn from mistake and success of others. They also have their own internal financial planning and capital/loan access to grow their family assets and business through internal lending to their own family members. They have the access to cheap credit but they have to return it to the family funds with low interest. Just to show their responsibility to other members. I'm not going into the conspiracy theory side because it's mainly BS. Since there were 2 world wars in Europe. It was harder for othe families in other European countries to maintain the business. Sweden had a chance, but 1970s socialist policies messed them up. Families had to give ownership to the union who couldn't manage business at all. Therefore triggering 1970s Nordic Stagflation. In America, Johnson family has similar gathering like Rothschild, but smaller. There are other families that are not on Forbes list, mainly because they will sue Forbes to keep them out of it. Stealth wealth is the best wealth.
@@KindaJadedish Asano family still have several foundations, Yasuda clan is still functioning, Furukawa is still there (5th generation head of the family had died in 2018, but his son Junichi took his place. His mother Noriko is the aunt of the current emperor) but some have changed their names to Nakagawa (common Japanese name), Ito family is still strong politically. The current diet member and former minister of defence Taro Kono is one of the grandchild of the main branch. but it's getting harder to identify them because many family branches from the original main branch have changed their family name to fly below the radar or due to marriage. And as you can see, they have managed to gain links to the Imperial and political families as well.
Manchuria actually became a testing ground to nurture new companies outside of the influence of the Zaibatsu. The IJA that ran things was suspicious of the zaibatsu but knew the talent of private entrepreneurs was necessary. Thus Yoshisuke Aikawa, the founder of Nissan, was tapped to help establish the Manchurian Industrial Development Company.
And the results was Manchuria producing only 2% as much iron as expected and the colony being a resource drain for its entire existence, as virtually all colonies where.
@@Rangerage Not that I can find easily, was 7 years ago I did a small project in college on the matter and had to compare the output that they got during the 1930s with what the projections where. However it being profitable would be shocking given just about the only colonies that where profitable where South Africa and a very small handful of others during the colonial period. Colonies in general are a drain.
@@aaronhpa Actually the Spanish had one of the worst cases of it which is why their empire fell generations before WW2 did the British, French, Italians, Dutch, Belgians and Portuguese in.
Good info. But I think you downplayed WWII. Most countries go bankrupt when they fund huge militaries. Japan bet on the war, and they lost their industrialization progress as a result of misguided warmongering.
Yeah. Japan did well post war with everyone working hard on a (more) level playing field. But it's difficult to claim high taxes were the cause of this when the county had just been literally levelled with firebombing and nukes!
many countries decided to go to war as the last resort before they become too poor to start a war. yes it is a huge gamble always been since ancient times.
As an American, I am always very interested in the stories of countries with which we have been at war. Japanese products have been incredibly important to America since shortly after WWII. We respect their engineering and their standards, and if we all could find such appreciable value in our earthly neighbors, the world would be a better place.
Greetings from Germany. After a war, there is always the question of "how do we win the peace". After WW2, humanity got it mostly right, and the conflicts were really over after 1945. Unlike WW1, where everything started again soon after. Or the middle east today, where peace is essentially a short timeout between two wars.
I'm sure others have pointed this out, but in the very beginning there is a minor mistake when you labeled Tokugawa Ieyasu the "first Shogun." He was the first Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, but the first Shogun of Japan was way back in 1192.
@@eldermoose7938 I ask around if someone wants some nice Recommendations, whetever it's about the Topi of Science or Atheism or Socialism or just the vague 'Concept' of 'Tackling Issues'.
@@riks081 Do you sometimes stop, think for a second, and realize you shouldnt write something cause it would massively-embarass-yourself at least thx to the common sense rule ‚Rude=Ebarassing; Extra-Bonus is given if it’s your first-ever comment to someone’? At least?
Breaking up large concentrations of wealth isn't just an implementation of socialist principles, but can also unleash underutilized resources and actually increase overall growth and wealth of a nation. Wealth concentrations can act as productivity sink, like a cancer that consumes resources, through rent-seeking behavior. At a certain point, a large corporation or an extremely wealthy family functions equivalently to a parasitic entity and the monopolistic prices they charge are are effectively a tax. But unlike a government, the taxes don't go towards national security, public services, or social programs, and also unlike a competitive market, the profits aren't reinvested into innovation, they, instead, go into the bank accounts of the wealthy who often decide not to lend that money since the interest is inconsequential to them or the capital is itself locked in the form of hard assets that are largely unproductive (e.g. art, luxury vehicles, large tracts of land, and mansions). So, there isn't just a socialist case against dynastic wealth, there is also a market-based argument against it.
Yep. As an extreme example, imagine 90 cents out of every dollar generated by a city's economy just goes into a bank account and sits there. There's very little left to spur spending, etc. That's the problem when you have very wealthy people who keep most of the profits and, instead of spending it, just put it in the bank. It's really bad for the economy.
Observations correct, conclusions less so. Wealth does not sit in a bank account, it is always lent out for economic purposes even if the owner does not wish it. Privately owned monopolies will always be more productive to society than state owned monopolies. Luxury good production will always be more beneficial economically than more national security, public services or social services. Those are all overhead to running our national enterprise and those cost should be kept to a bare minimum. More government spending is not better, its the exact opposite.
That's why we need to incentivize productive investments and entrepreneurs. When government regulations throw off the risk-reward metric of entrepreneurs the result is for people to hoard wealth in the most liquid form. Liquidity and complex investments do not go together. If you try to tax this wealth rather than encourage spending it will simply look for an even more liquid offshore place to hide. There is no scenario where Bernie Sanders busts open the billionaire'ss banks and everyone gets to share the spoils.
Japan had a very centralized economy during the early 1900s Zaibatsu era, and it was government restrictions on who can own businesses that gave the Zaibatsu their monopoly status, allowing them to get so powerful.
If you look back a bit on who it was forming the gov't, and how the Zaibatsu had come about, basically it was a slightly opened-up ruling class protecting their own after the country did away with the rank of Daimyo. The Tokugawa leadership class (those nimble enough to adapt) were the class in charge under the Meiji. Zaibatsu had been based in specific fiefs, one per fief, run by Daimyo. Meiji opened that up to action on the national scene. The Daimyo had the habit of recruiting talented people from almost all class strata, which kept them from stagnating.
@@DragonSlayer6398 The point he is making is that government restrictions are used to create most monopolies. It is very rare for a monopoly to form without government regulations being involved. There is really only one situation where that can happen, some types of businesses become more efficient the bigger they are and eventually one company becomes so much cheaper and better than all of their competitors that all of the competitors pretty much die out. Amazon is a good example, nobody wants to pay an extra $20 in shipping and wait an extra week to buy off of another site when Amazon can deliver it for free the same day it is ordered. Those types of monopolies are not really a big problem in the same way that government supported monopolies are. Government created monopolies like internet and cell companies in Canada suck because they can charge as much as they want and don't have to worry about being efficient because nobody else is allowed to compete with them due to government restrictions. The you end up paying $300 a month for a cell phone plan with 1GB of internet because you need a cell phone and there are no other companies. When you compare that with a "natural" monopoly where one business is just better than all of the others you can see how one is more problematic than the other. Obviously the company supports politicians or does other shady stuff to get the laws passed by the government, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a natural result of government regulation. Recently some state government (backed by John Deere) was trying to get regulations passed to ban other companies from repairing tractors so farmer would be stuck overpaying the manufacturer to fix it instead. Usually these types of regulations are pretty popular with most voters because they are pitched in a way that makes it sound good for people by the government, and people are generally ignorant, sometimes they will play on peoples spite towards large companies and pitch them that way. Instead of saying "we want to extort farmers" they will talk about "dangerous" shady third party repair places that will destroy your equipment, or crazy farmers supercharging their tractors with parts that increase emissions and destroy the environment. Then most voters think that sounds good and the regulations pass. Or Sherwin-Williams invests to produce paint that doesn't contain VOCs before any other company and then lobbying the government to ban paint with VOCs "for peoples health". Then the government says the big mean companies want to put poisonous VOCs in your paint and they are here to protect you and you go overpay 90$ for your next gallon of paint at Sherwin-Williams because no other store has that product yet. A lot of the time it isn't even corruption and the government gets nothing out of it. Most politicians are about 90 years old and dont know how to send an email. It isn't hard to convince them of pretty much anything.
@DragonSlayer6398 Business men making political donations is inevitable. It's the politicians' responsibility to not allow that to influence their decisions
There’s still plenty of rich in japan. In fact the old nobility just got into business and became conglomerates. There’s still plenty of poor Japanese living in tiny apartments only able to afford cheap ramen.
Yep this You wont ever see any new players getting big in Japanese market at all Its all rigged in there no wonder their tech growth is stagnated unlike korea,China
Japan's CEO to employee compensation ratio is still ten times lower than the United States while going back and forth with China as the second or third largest economy in the world
Japan's off-book compensation is way different though. Like for many companies even organize which apartment their employees live in. And for CEO's this can mean company private jets for personal travel etc.
@@metagde6402 S Korea is likely to reach the same point. Imo, only advantage they have is willingness to shift to paperless work and good UX/UI design in most of the software they use and in their websites. Also, corporate boards are more receptive to customer base criticisms. Most companies in Japan are unproductive because they do or have the opposite. Japanese websites and UIs in hightech machines are generally stuck in the 2000's in terms of design. You'd think this won't do harm. If you look at their tech, they don't have good user-friendly tech made by them. So they don't export their tech when they're supposed to be up there in terms of hightechness. Add the fact that their bureaucracy has so much bottleneck, and it's a recipe for stagnation. They're not innovating in the right places, at least South Korea does that, but Korea has a different set of problems, related to unemployment and labor rights. Things have been escalating in that area over recent years, and if Moon doesn't deliver which he won't, it will only get even worse over time.
The Zaibatsu was used for war production, it wasn't necessarily Japan "eating the rich" but more converting their economy to a post-war economy. The Zaibatsu was centralised on purpose for this reason of war production
similar to what china is doing, they have big state owned companies and they have public companies runned by ccp agents. the communist party gathers wealth from investments and sales all around the world but have tight control over expenditure. as such money availae in the market became scarce and econimies outside china suffers. they are now hoarding raw materials with the money they have gathered. more big companies will eventually suffer and be forced to sell to chinese owned corporates like what we have seen with many once famous and top corporates. wont be far from the day everything is produced and owned by china.
The model being followed here is the model of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. That was their main proposal. Dismantle the globalist capitalists and regulate those businesses to promote only the good of the country.
Amazing ! I work in japan IN marunoichi in one of those buildings on the left of the imperial palace gardens. The level of depth in the video is appreciable ! Thanks 👍🏽
@@randomrandom316 tbh: first time I watched it, I felt enlightened. Just like after watching “The secret of Oz” by Bill Still (When I first learned that 99% of money is created as credit by banks). But 2nd time I watched “Princes of the Yen” I started to be confused: it’s like playing Victoria 2 - after you carefully constructed all your factories and production lines for 80 years you just switch to a libertarian party, and half your economy goes belly up, disrupting everything you had spent 80 years building: the whole premise of the video only makes sense as a switch of ideology - as if they really suddenly started believing that using window-guidance was wrong and thus had to be ended, because the wizards / princes who used it were going to die and did not trust anyone from the next generation to use it competently, and thus the steering of the ship had to be switched from careful manual steering to autopilot. Not seeing that capitalism on autopilot leads to disaster. I still don’t get it. What is the alternative why they did it? Central Bankers must be the steward of their economies - how could they just willfully produce boom and bust cycles? It also leads to a concentration of wealth: assets change hands for a dime on the dollar. How is the structure afterwards any better than before? Sure: assets end up with the strongest hands / the richest families with the deepest pockets, but how is that a better result than what they had with window-guidance? They wrecked their hand-woven economy for more globalization? I still don’t get it. Did they sell out to an international class of private bankers? Goldman Sachs all over again? That the US Empire and their tools at the IMF continue to work on world domination is expected, but why did the Central Bankers in Japan help? How is their loyalty not with their country but with all Central Bankers over the world? What are they the stewards of, aside from their own power? Power for what? What would you need a one world government for, if it’s not working for the people in the end anyway? Edit: I just rewatched it, and the “grab the central bank snakes by the head” images are really strong towards the end. I find it quite ironic, considering how their power applied correctly was shown to produce better living conditions and high equality in post-war Japan at the start. They could do good things with reasonable goals, but instead they fight an ideological war no matter the suffering for generations in between... - the most important question is: what is newly created money used for, how much is created, and who has the power: and by the end it’s all on its head: the power question dominates, the boom and bust are just means to get and keep the power, and the most important question: what it is used for in society seems no longer relevant. It’s perverted, rotten from the head. We need a reform of money creation. Money reform movements have sprung up in all countries, yet they are so weak.
Wonderful - that's nice to hear. Some people don't reflect on such, own, things and prefer looking at things in the outside. I just wanted to point in that direction in case you wondered - maybe a bit silly to this in a medium like this..
It was not the case that we sponsored it as much as it is that we punished the families who had owned it and used it to wage war against us. There's a difference.
It's also messed up that the US utilizes 3-4% of it's land, but land is still unaffordable. I got that figure from a Google search, so if it's wrong, blame the gewgol.
@@josephdestaubin7426 From what I've read on this matter, SCAP very intentionally supported the reforms, to abate marxist sentiment in Japan. In Latin America, these reforms never took place, and were actively fought against by the US backed oligarchs. Which would partially explain, why Latin America is still to this day, so sympathetic to socialist/marxist ideals. The people want to break up the control of the oligarchs and have some economic prospects.
you missed a big point in your video. the disbandment of zaibutsus was driven by USA. as part of their surrender agreement, usa demanded japan dismantle its zaibutsus and fracture the companies up. it wasn't driven by the Japanese government as much as demanded by the occupying allied forces. as they saw the zaibutsus modelled on western banking families as direct causes of japan's ww2 ambitions and abilities. imperialism and capitalism always went hand in hand.
I just wrote this exact argument too. I'm not against redistribution when it becomes absolutely necessary, but the problem is that "eating the rich" requires a government much more powerful than the rich, which will then go on to oppress the people just as the rich elite did before them.
@@noop9k An empire that was built and collapsed within a single human lifetime. Imperialism and capitalism might go hand in hand, but imperialism and communism do not.
@@Emidretrauqe Empire called Russia existed for about 300 years and only lost some of the colonies by now. Bolshevik regime fell because commie economy couldn't work without capitalists sponsoring it and Reagan put a stop to it. Chinese economy will collapse too as soon as the other countries stop pumping it with money.
I applaud your research. However, I think your conclusion that the dissolution of plutocrats in Japan led to Japan's economic rise in the '60s and '70s is a bit glib. There are important facts left out of your analysis. Conventional interpretation of this rise accepts that it occurred due to the agreements reached with the U.S. post war and the status of its decimated infrastructure. Japan rebuilt its industries to a modern standard whereas obsolete factories predominated in the U.S. and elsewhere. Furthermore, Japan was more receptive to the consumer than U.S. industry at the time. Japan strove to build better products; the Made in Japan label became synonymous with quality. Further, because the U.S. and its allies were wary of a rearmed Japan, the U.S. absorbed the cost of defending Japanese interests. Avoiding the costs of raising and maintaining a military allowed Japan to invest its assets elsewhere. The conventionally accepted factors explaining Japan's post-war economic rise are more convincing. Whether the breakup of the businesses and assets of the Japanese ultra rich had a significant effect on Japan's economic growth is questionable.
@Jo Actually yeah this is accurate. But comparatively the video’s point is far more dumbfounding. I would have sworn this was a Socialist channel and not an Asia focused channel but it seems to be the latter. People seem to think Zaibatsus don’t exist anymore; they do. They’re just smaller. But despite us supposedly eating the rich our country is still super capitalist in culture lol. I think it’s the 70s/80s bubble that did that.
Yea seriously there was a luck friggin more that happened post war. I mean virtually every democracy supported by the US post war became wealthy within a few decades. South Korea actually was poorer than North Korea but now it’s one of the richest economies in the world.
This video also completely ignores that Nazi Germany and fascist Japan both used the "Eat the rich globalists" to gain control of previously independent private industries and direct their money and objectives into the political objectives of their ruling parties- both of which were exceptionally psychotic and murderous. I honestly expected this to be a warning message and lol'd at this video's idiotic conclusion. This kid might want to go back and read the 1940s section of his history book. He must have skipped that part.
Lord thunderin' Jezuz you're a good researcher!!!... I'm around your channel a lot... blows me away every time (and this is old stuff).. that graph at 15:47, who'd think to look for or include that? where'd u get it? It tells the story so clearly.
Yes, this highlights the fact that capitalism can be beneficial for a nation as long as it is not allowed to be completely self serving for the families involved. Just like when corporations were first formed in England, they were allowed by the King to exist as long as they served the overall interests of the people. Today's corporations need the same throttle. If they don't serve the public interest they should be dissolved.
The early corporations in western history were chartered for only a limited time and not intended to exist in perpetuity like today's. They were meant to fulfill a certain objective that required a lot of capital to undertake, then have the profits distributed and the assets liquidated once the charter was complete.
The corporations are the government in North America. To actually change things you would have to destroy how modern politics works and eliminate any and all electoral rules that get in the way of proportional representation for each area.
Thank you so much for this video! It's only sad that the channel targets Asia only, as I would love to see the Brazilian history of the same period being told this way.
Interesting video that does a good job of summarizing a large topic in 18 minutes. The Japanese nation and peoples are most remarkable and it is very hard to explain all of the factors that have led to their success. Personally, the narrative on ‘eating the rich’ does not explain very much. I would place much more importance on group solidarity and the sturdy hierarchical structure of society. They were also fortunate to have exceptional leadership at key points on recent history. The problem with that is when you have less able leadership (see the Pacific War) the results are disastrous. Though the societies are very different, this is similar to Germany. Bismarck would never have been so stupid to start WW2, but the system he built required future Bismarcks to hold it all together. As we know, Bismarcks are in short supply.
It was filmed back in 1870s what u mean it's a historical? Was a live documentary smh ... Kennedy in 1955 is quoted to have said "The Last Samurai is my favorite Historical Artifact from pre war Japan." Later they re released this epic historical record using modern digital image editing to add full colorization and to brush the central characters face to look like Tom Cruise. This was done by Hollywood in a Joint Effort with Japan's imperial family (who own the rights to the original document). This was done both to mainstream acceptance of Japanese culture, and to help fund Palace renovations, as well as to help Restore an abandoned temple at the foot of Mt Fuji. One interesting piece of trivia is that most of the original footage was allegedly filmed by the great grand father of Lebron James. As taking footage during war time was considered a risky business, Hollywood decided to use recently freed slaves with minimal training instead of well trained and professional Jewish filmographers. This unconventional choice went a long way to racially integrating the social and cultural institutions of Las Angeles. The Director of this amazing film (original footage) was none other than the Father of George Patton. He taught his son much of what he learned from the Japanese, most notably in the Arts of War.
I recently discovered your channel and I subbed off the first video - keep up the great work! Would love to see some videos on the Philippines, their post war economy and maybe even something on the Ayala Corp. Cheers!
Thank you. Many in America have no idea what is even happening in their own country. But a history lesson from other countries might put it al in perspective for them. And both Japan and Germany are fine examples. This was a great video, and as always, the more you learn about the Japanese, the more you admire them.
Indoctrination is a helluva jesus.. drug I mean. The age of conservatism is easy to indoctrinate people into nationalism and obeying, all countries in general have this behavior, even asians, doesnt really require "religion", only requires its behavior that comes from religion.
I don't have the expertise to judge the accuracy of this report, but it was certainly well-done and fascinating. Thanks for presenting critical subjects it would behoove us seriously to evaluate.
Actually it’s out of context- there’s a video ‘bushito of Japan’ or ‘should we save bushito’ you can probably find it faster because I’m at work. Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists. This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen? “Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?” Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
Very interesting. As far as I understand Korea did not have the same thing done to their equivalent companies. So even though their economy may be expanding it is extremely depending on a few massive business conglomerates. This concentration of power leads to a lot of corruption in Korea and not enough competition in the domestic market.
Actually that’s because it’s missing context Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists. This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen? “Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?” Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up…. So yeah if you teleport a nation 250 years into the future and then remove 250 year old businesses with new ones you do get good results… until you get WW2 happening because that’s what the government was pushing for
SK doesn't really have resources to fall back on and Japan profited a lot from high tech industry that's waned now. But SK does have a huge corruption issue and always has
The video was informative and well structured. It was a little dry however. You should look into putting in some kind of bgm to help with that. But that's just my opinion, either way good video.
After the war the Japanese economy was in pretty rough shape. The idea seemed to be reduce the control of industry by a few but not go as far as to make the economy worse.
The Zaibatsu and the rich who ran them were a drain on Japanese society. The Keiretsu system that replaced them is far from perfect, but it is more aligned in the interests of the Japanese nation as a whole than the old system. The original families still have some influence and are "president" (Sachou), but don't have absolute power and certainly nothing like the power they had pre-WW2. Post-WW2 left them quite comfortable, but far less wealthy than they were. The Japanese government under their export division, MITI built Japan up into a successful nation, and effectively ran the nation. They were by no means perfect, but it at least was being done for the collective well-being of the nation as a whole, as opposed to a small number of rich people. Reading through some of these comments, I think that many of the more economically conservative types are very uncomfortable at the "potential lesson" that it has for the US and other Western nations. A small oligarch runs the nation for its own benefit and effectively turns the nation into a kleptocracy. Monopolies such as those as Comcast (a major internet service provider that effectively holds monopoly) are examples. You could argue the same is true of a lot of Silicon Valley as well. I think that one of the reasons why China may end up overtaking the US right now is that they understand this quite well and Xi Jinping seems quite willing to do what he thinks needs to be done.
There is much evidence dispelling the mythologized account of MITI's role in the expansion of the Japanese economy specifically: www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/JapanandtheMythofMITI.html The article notes much more foundational properties of the 50s/60s Japanese economy, like a smaller portion of private sector output being taxed to support the public sector, as more likely causes of its growth: >>"The fact that the tax burden is unusually low by the standards of other developed countries may alone be a significant factor in the explanation of the high rate of private saving and investment in Japan." From 1951 to 1970, while Japan's real GNP was growing at an average of 9 percent per year, total national and local taxes (excluding social security) fell from 22.4 percent of national income to 18.9 percent. This left more money for people to save and invest. Compare Japan's situation with the United States, where the proportion rose from 28.5 percent to 31.3 percent. Interestingly, Japan's two decades of greatest postwar growth were also its decades of lowest taxes. During the seventies, as Japan's taxes rose to 22.8 percent of national income in 1980, real GNP growth declined to only 4.8 percent. Higher taxes weren't the only reason for this deteriorating performance, of course; oil price increases also contributed. This graph demonstrates how much lower social welfare spending used to be in Japan: ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun
@@AminCad If you read the article that you linked - the issue I have is that there is high savings. That was government policy. It was not voluntary. The author of that article seems to be one of those conservative types that doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that a big government played a big role in Japan's growth, but even he has to admit that high savings was responsible. In regards to social spending, the purpose is not so much growth as much as it is shared prosperity. When nations experience strong economic growth, conservatives generally want to increase inequality by making the rich richer and screwing over the working/middle class, whereas the left wants to uplift the working class. Inequality has actually risen in Japan with the failing economic prosperity, and that is an impediment to growth. Even so, Japan remains a more egalitarian society than the US and it's actually fallen since the peak. Another problem is that there should be a consistent pattern of "small, low tax government". All of the big growth from East Asia - Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (if that's a nation), and now China, have had large governments that took a very controlling manner over industry. So no, I read through the article, it sounds more like "small government fiscal conservative cope" rather than a real case against a government with a strong industrial policy. I see a lot of very similar cope these days in trying to explain China's growth as well, which flies in the face of Western economics.
@@crazyelf1 "That was government policy. It was not voluntary. " Something being government policy is not mutually exclusive with it being voluntary, and in the case of the policy that encouraged high savings, it was not. People were free to choose whether to save or not. They had the added incentive to save because some savings policies had tax exemptions. So the government had removed a disincentive to save created by nonvoluntary taxation. "In regards to social spending, the purpose is not so much growth as much as it is shared prosperity. " Well, rising social spending is going to hurt economic development, and nothing helps the poor as much as economic development. The left wing political narrative simply doesn't want to contend with this fact, so it engages in a lot of evasion and mental gymnastics to avoid doing so. "conservatives generally want to increase inequality by making the rich richer and screwing over the working/middle class" Sounds like you're another victim of indoctrination by the government-employed class. It's the government linked sector of the economy that benefits most from rising social welfare spending: www.hoover.org/research/california-state-government-workers-earn-143000-twice-much-private-sector-workers# And it's the one that spreads these absurd conspiracy theories to vilify a free society and those who champion it.
@@AminCad "Something being government policy is not mutually exclusive with it being voluntary, and in the case of the policy that encouraged high savings, it was not. " The Asian governments have a policy of suppressing consumption. It's a way to increase the amount of money for capital goods. It's not voluntary in the sense that paying one's taxes is not voluntary. It's part of the industrial policy that they used. If it were a weak welfare state that caused growth, a lot of third world nations have a weak welfare state. Why don't they have the growth levels that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc, had during their rapid growth period? Why don't they outperform China today? Social spending is necessary simply because high inequality is a drag on growth. In the next couple of decades, we are going to see the US in rapid decline and China, although the rate of growth is slowing as the nation gets wealthier, overtake the US. China is going to do it with a "big government".
@@crazyelf1 "The Asian governments have a policy of suppressing consumption. It's a way to increase the amount of money for capital goods." Japan didn't have a consumption tax in the era being discussed, so there was no policy to suppress consumption. People naturally save when there is little social welfare spending, because they look to themselves, instead of a large unwiedly state, to be their safety net. The inverse relationship between social welfare spending and the savings rate is well studied phenomenon, and so the only way in which Japan encouraged savings is by NOT disincentivizing it with misguided social welfare programs. "If it were a weak welfare state that caused growth, a lot of third world nations have a weak welfare state. Why don't they have the growth levels that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc, had during their rapid growth period?" 1. Many of them do. There is a strong inverse correlation between government spending and economic growth, and the largest component of government spending is social welfare spending. This component has already been widely observed to produce the fewest positive economic returns. 2. Of course low social welfare spending levels is not the ONLY factor that contributes to economic development. The Asian Tigers had many other factors working in their favor as well. But low levels of social welfare spending was one of the biggest, if not the biggest one. "Why don't they outperform China today?" China has very low social welfare spending levels as a percentage of GDP, much lower than the US and most other OECD countries. "Social spending is necessary simply because high inequality is a drag on growth." This is nothing more than an article of faith, so you can cling to your discredited social democratic narrative. China produced more billionaires than any country on Earth over the last 30 years, and simultaneously produced massive economic and wage growth for the masses. "China is going to do it with a "big government"." China only began to grow rapidly when it embarked on massive pro-market reforms: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
So a big take away from this (and other historical examinations) is that it's better to create an environment where more spontaneous and meritorious market forces can determine the accumulation of commercial power, rather than a state-dominated economy essentially handing the keys over to a handful of families.
Still, the auctioning off process is probably essential for any state-controlled industrial system, so being an important step (Japan did experience some of the best growth in the world 1890-1930), perhaps the question becomes A: how to better handle the initial privatization process, and B: failing that, make sure you can restructure the political economy away from their exclusive control, at some point in the medium-term future, which ofc Russia has failed to do.
it is one if the ironies in modern economic debates, because communists demand the most government involvement their systems end up functionally working like monarchies, socialists, who demand less government involvement than communists, create systems that functionally work like mercantilist systems, and as these two groups push for more government regulations in originally fairly capitalist systems they create systems with more mega corporations and fewer small buisnesses.
@@vidard9863 my guy I'm not sure you know what either communism or socialism is. All of the "communist" nations you are thinking of are socialist nations. The "socialist" nations your likely thinking of are capitalist "social democracies" There are no communist countries. Every country that is run by communists calls themselves a socialist nation. It's us westerners who can barely speak our own language that label them communist. Communism is the mode of production in which there is neither class, state, or monetary exchange. Socialism, is the transitionary state from capitalism to communism. It's when the working class seizes the state, and then uses the power of the state to seize the means of production. And works towards developing those means of production to the point of satisfying the material requirements for communism. The state of socialism is not the desired end state of being and is definitely a system marked by numerous contradictions due to it having adopted the inequalities of capitalism.
For some reason, West Germany recruited nurses and miners from Korea. Their earnings were repatriated to Korea. The S. Korean government used this inflow of currency to help finance the early construction of its steel industry. See 5 minute and 41 seconds portion of this video: th-cam.com/video/bJ0hMr5TSkI/w-d-xo.html
@Matthew Park Your explanation makes sense. The video I posted says the repatriated wages were used to guarantee loans. So it makes sense that West Germany would have made the loans.
@Matthew Park Incorrect. The biggest influx of capital came from the US when S. Korea helped the US fight the Vietnam War, which is what jump-started the Chaebols and infrastructure spending under Park Jung Hee. Japan similarly got a windfall during the Korean War.
@Matthew Park Wrong, the Philippines was doing quite well in the 50s and 60s until when Marcos stiffled the free market by installing cronies to run the economy and began procuring a shit ton of debt. Also unlike South Korea and Japan, the Philippines was and is still dealing with a Maoist and Jihadist insurgencies which didnt help.
Sumitomo group. One of the big 4. They are a huge company, second largest real-estate company by volume in Japan, second largest titanium company, 3rd biggest steel producer by volume, 4th biggest glass producer by value. Glass is of course much more different from steel and titanium.
So capital concentration leads no monopolies that leads to inefficiency. At the start a company's verticalization seems to be an asset, but as the company grows it squeezes out competition, leading to fewer players which leads to inefficiencies. Those compound, creating a bloated entity, capable of killing off what could replace it, and at best being stuck in a local maximum.
Excellent History lesson, is been a trend through time in most countries that when a few people control and have the power to steer the economy, they will do it for their own benefit to the detriment of the country and humanity in general, we saw it in Italy with the Medici, in England with the Devons and Suttons or the US with the Robber Barons of the time Vanderbilt, Ford, Carnegie. To much power, combined with greed with no depth and a total disregard for fellow humans and you have the dark side of what can become of Humanity.
"Greatly reduced " basically means still rich. In the "good old days," America corporations were taxed at 60 %. People now complain the economy but do not vote to increase corp. taxes. The adage about history being forgotten is true. Thanks for posting.
@@floydlooney6837 Yes and instead of passing down their savings from their low taxes to customers (Trickle Down Theory) Corp.s keep the extra money for the Corp.
@Remy HocAge Which has everything to do with meaningless government regulation, creating the issue to begin with. Your arguing low corporate tax doesn't work when less government involvement does work. Corporations love rules and taxes. Means nobody else can get big enough to play the game with them. Sound familiar?
too much ignorance, first Corporate tax is stupid, as you cannot tax corporations, you are taxing the customers. Better to tax them directly, it is much more reliable and honest. Floydlooney6837 is correct. Trickle down is NOT removing tax from corporations, that is ignorant, it IS investment, when investment occurs then the entire economy improves at all levels, like it did under Reagan, until Bill Clinton sent it to china, where is has been doing quite well, the average living standard for chinese citizens has exploded. Trump did it for a short time when he lowered the repatriation tax, that is how he earned record government revenues until the democrat covid lockdowns. and lastly, when the government is doing it's job, it eliminates monopolies, Disney buying Lucas Marvel and FOX, should NEVER have been allowed, nor them having Disney Plus. Soon that will be broken up, it needs to be very soon. without real competition, everyone loses.
@@MrMichaelBCurtis Disney taking on that much debt was also stupid. Government should not bail them out.
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This is an excellent video. But it left a wrong impression. The centralization and modernization of Japan actually increased financial burden of the country. The previous samurai class despite enjoyed privileges, also lowered the burden of commoners in defense services. Once military service became commonplace, war became total and everyone must pay and bleed.
Actually it’s missing more context Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists. This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen? “Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?” Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
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@@mattslowikowski3530 I don't remember one time the Russian had a conflict with Japanese Samurais.
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@@silent_stalker3687 You need to study the history of Japan under Tokugawa shogunate . It was by no means a time of no development. Business flourished. Arts flourished. The famous Japanese painter KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI lived under that era. And he combined western style with eastern style in his work - which means information flowed freely and cultural exchange happened.
In the small town of Montesano, the local government also own all the local restaurants. That is due to the fact that they deny any and all permits/applications for new food businesses to open up within the city limits. They’ve done somewhat of the same thing with the town of Elma, the next town over which extended the amount of dining establishments they can have a monopoly on. They allowed a Starbucks and Burger king in order to avoid any prying eyes into their scheme even though it’s a well known secret, and they put the two right next to each other and in a terrible area to get to.
This was outstanding man thanks for sharing! I love coming across random videos from people I haven’t heard of before and learning so much! You got a new sub for sure! I look forward to watching more of your videos.
Unquestionably one of the most informative videos about Japan that I have ever had the pleasure to watch. Kudos to you. Lunch is on me if I ever get to Taipei, where you are.
thank you, love your posts. The part about "acquire and master western technology" did not start under MITI, it started right away in 1870, and was the driving characteristic of the Meiji restauration. ...so it can be argued that the post-WWII export oriented industrialist economy would have happened under the Zaibatsi just as well.
Already by the 1920s was Japan outcompeting Britain and America in certain economic sectors (innovation, market prices). Then, the 1929 crash happened and followed with the "ABCD" countries turning to protectionism, essentially dooming Japanese growth. The imperialist "Co-prosperity sphere" was not only seeking resource extraction, but to penetrade literal barriers at the behest of Japanese export-industrial interests.
dude that was fucking brilliant ty! ive lived in japan now 10 years, an american.. this is the first time ive gotten some real understanding of important japanese financial history, very eye opening, very interesting. the one thing you didnt really mention here that you hinted on, was the zatsu companies, were the ones who were creating the war mongering, and the invasions, and wars etc. the govt realized this, and took them out because of this. just curious why you didnt touch a bit more on this?
Wonderful! This episode tells some of the secrets of the early success of the Japanese. But Japan is too sticky a nation now to move forward swiftly. This is a competitive world, even for the once miraculous Japanese.
Japanese companies have stashed away huge amount of cash and assets that keeps growing and doesn't invest much in anything. That is the big problem for Japan. Majority of Japanese business man have such a mentality of hoarding for difficult times ahead.
Japan's economy is structured poorly and always has been in the post war era. Their miracle recovery in the post war era had a lot to do with foreign capital and the construction boom. Sure, a centrally planned economy can do amazing things in the short term. But eventually the bill has to be paid. The 30 years of stagnation and plummeting birth rates (people don't have kids when they work themselves to death and don't even earn anywhere close to Western incomes) is cost of the fast growth of the post war time frame.
Interesting, although making the Japanese technology drive the result of "eating the rich" is really far-fetched. 1. You don't get a large population of electronics-wise people merely by transferring the economic decisions from oligarchs to the administration 2. The viedo itself shows that the zaibatsu had succeeded in adapting to dwindling rent revenues, and aggressively diversifying their businesses Thus I did not watch anything in the video that indicates that the zaibatsu could not have fueled growth based on exporting electronics. There is an argument to the geography, history and culture of the japanese people being responsible for this adaptation capability. And yes the Meiji experience would prove that the japanese society responds well to changes brought by a centralized authority. It doesn't mean this is the only way they can succeed.
I ask around if someone wants some nice Recommendations, whetever it's about the Topi of Science or Atheism or Socialism or just the vague 'Concept' of 'Tackling Issues'.
You get a large proportion of educated people by... spending resources on educating them rather than on making a small group of people richer than god.
I love your point especially no.1 because I would say that Japan got lucky that Sony's success literally pioneered/spearheaded this electronics export revolution. Had they not taken a risk and made a product so compelling with those small radios, Japan's miracle would have been very different.
Anti-trust and de-monopolization laws are already on the books in the US. Its almost of if the people setting up the system knew what they were doing. Now if we could only get our government to actually enforce those rules instead of accepting bribes to look the other way. Lefties want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I for one have no interest in giving an already corrupt government more money and power.
1:20 Tokugawa Ieyasu wasn't the first Shogun. There's disagreement who first held the title but the first Shogun who was also the de facto ruler of the country was Minamoto no Yoritomo.
@@rowbearly6128 Pretty obvious he meant "first Tokugawa Shogun". Also just because someone have a bit of humor doesn't mean the criticism was not taken.
None of these tech companies can be compared to these families very different model none of them was that rich to begin with they made it themselves not as a family business... and the attacks are targetting members of a different faction... this is political infighting and china is doing a bad job at it... look at the losses
@@h3egypt You do need to understand the basis of the Chinese govt is not Capitalism but Socialism. They stepped in to prevent any company from growing into out-of-control, not unlike the anti-trust law.
@@h3egypt No, what’s happened there is what capitalism should do and stop monopolies happening. Much like the UK should have done, instead of whinging about say the high streets drying for years the government there should have smashed Amazon down but didn’t.
This is a fantastic documentary! It brings to light an aspect of the Japanese economy about which I had no idea - and I’ve read lots about Japanese history. Congratulations on the great research you did for this video and on the way you put it together!
The consequences given are without any data, pure conjectures. Impossible to say whether family control would have been any worse for Japanese economy. As we know, Chaebols were key to growth of Korea.
@@jolopopo6442 video shows how the government created Zaibatsus because it couldn't create wealth. No government can create wealth, it has to be a private enterprise. Feudal societies lacked merit structures, but now Capitalists have taken thale rule of Zaibatsus. Every country (not just few) should indeed have Capitalists. How rich they get should be left to their abilities.
Nope, I like the static pictures !, Makes me focus more on the narration and eggs me to listen more attentively. Which I think is more important than distractingly moving pictures.
Really enjoyed this video. Totally reminds me of the book ‘How Asia Works’ by Joe Studwell. This however gave a lot more colour to how this redistribution of wealth kicked off in Asia, and really set the scene for how the rest of Asia would shaped by the economic processes demonstrated in Japan.
I read, enjoyed and learned a lot from that book but doesn't seem to aline with this video. Studwell argues the first step must be land reform which this American seems reluctant to support.
it is a thoroughly false narrative, that ignores secret societies like freemasonry, monarchy, and the petrodollar. Petrodollar is like a machine: a modern economy needs oil. oil is sold only in US dollars. to get US dollars you need to sell stuff in US dollars or borrow them from World Bank. this makes the US financian entities the global hub for merchandise. Oil is controlled through OPEC cartel. Arab monarchs controlled by the Holy Roman Empire - Elizabeth 2 von Saxe Gotha, queen of UK is of the Wettin family, emperors of Holy Roman Empire. Duke of Kent, cousin of Elizabeth 2 is the GM of freemasonry in UK. So the mechanism, the machine, the circuit is, Japan's economy has been fused to the economy of the West - a generic term deisgnating the Empire, the Republic, the Banks, Guilds, Military orders aso. So the reason no.1 for Japan's export was the need of the West of setting up a manufacturing colony in a 2nd or 3rd world. Japan proved to be too small for what the West needed, so they set up other colonies, with China being the most successful. The idea that "Japan(who dafuq is "Japan") ate "her" rich" is a caricature for kids. read Il Principe by Machiavelli. Japan is the families. All territories are administered by certain families. The history of Japan is the families of Japan were brought into submission to the families of Europe.
It's always about how the government can keep everything together. A corrupt government lets other countries treat their people like slaves. A neglectful government allows the free market to own most of the wealth, property, and jobs. A responsible government makes sure companies don't drain their resources and affect standard living conditions.
Yes! Best video ever. This is why Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Russia will never get rich - wealth remain stagnant in the hands of the elite. These families spend their time and effort keeping the poor down so that there is no competition to their conglomerates.
Exactly. America got so succesfull in the first place, because of the massive decentralization the country went through. Monopolies hurt the economy, and monopolies dont work. China sooner or later is gonna figure that out, but right now, we gotta fix up our own countries.
The point you're trying to make starts to fall apart in the broader context of the American occupation and the Cold War. Japan never ate its rich, the US did. The US took down the aristocracy and the oligarchs to destroy the power base that enabled Japan to be an Empire. The devastation from the war and the complete dismantling of Japan after WWII resulted in the Japanese people living in complete destitution for five years. Things only changed when Korean War spurred Japanese industry because it was more convenient and cheaper for the United States to just buy certain things from Japan than to make it themselves. The complete loss of China and the near loss of South Korea caused the United States to reevaluate its policy of combating communism, and a prosperous Japan looked to be the best route for the most strategic country in East Asia. These special privileges that enabled Japan to rise so much were rescinded in the 1990s. This was one of the contributing factor for the complete stalling of Japan's economy for the last three decades.
@TacticalMoonstone they had no choice, they had dumped massive low cost products subsidized by the government in the us, destroyed or acquired us competition and then raised prices. The Us tolerated this during the Cold War. Once the Soviets disintegrated, Japan had to face the consequences.
@@Pqndchannel Face the consequences? Nobody forced Americans to buy their shit, competition shouldn't be banned, especially if it's from an unsustainable economy, that's just an opportunity. America just acted as if it was capitalist while pushing socialism across the world, fully willing to sell out it's own people to earn profits for special interests.
Not only that, but most of the Zaibatsu families eventually regained prominence within the economy as the US transitioned away from direct rule of Japan. The only thing that really happened was that capital was reallocated based on American geopolitical goals, but the same sets of oligarchs retained political power.
Facinating how the occupation {partially) inadvertently set the stage for an economic growth model that set the stage for East Asian development...during the 60s and 70s economic development theory was focused on the need for "capital formation" but in fact it was the equalization of income distribution that gave Japan a fresh start..
Are you trying to say that the "need for capital formation" and capitalism, in general, weren't the reason for the economic development in most East Asian countries? Because then you would be kind of wrong. Because throughout the 60s and 70s state capitalism and capital formation is actually what led to Japan's economic miracle (not to forget US aid obviously), equalization and income distribution was never major concern that led to the development. It was more of a bonus aftermath.
this is different from eat the rich. This is actually just called anti-trust or competition and alternatives. This is a Libertarian idea. Eat the rich is different as that is more accurately put in with Chinese Maoist communist where you actively get rid of anyone in the upper class and middle class, then seize their property for the state to be redistributed--often not fairly. A monopoly does the same damage regardless of whether it is owned by state or owned privately or by conglomerates.
I'm seeing a lot of comments that are saying "no, really, 'eat the rich' can mean peaceful reform! Trust me!" It's awfully looking like gaslighting to me.
The heads of the Zaibatsu were, '...sucked like meat from an Alaskan king crab leg at a boiling crab restaurant in Southern California' has to be the clumsiest metaphor I've ever heard. A smile for your simile! : )
Very impressive research you did over there, this is one of best videos of yours, I almost have no clue what's happened to Japanese economy in the past, but this impressed me more, how well organized their country were specially the government, it wasn't playing negative role like the rest of 3rd world countries(since i live in one).
because the 3rd world leader treats themself as the new colonial master. The problem is they have ideological control whether it's nationalism or religious fervor. It's a total joke, especially after the end of the cold war when all of sudden the oligarch decided to adopt popular vote-democracies to dup people even more and kept some religious fanatics as their pets to draw votes.
@@hilmansudirman9857 I don't what's happened I post reply but either it was deleted or YT hide it, anyway looks this is not the place to discuss something like this, since many don't like saying the truth.
Fascinating video as always. You mentioned a parallel to Germany's industrialists. You should read Vampire Economy, it outlines the role of the industrialists in the German wartime economy and I suspect a similar thing went on in the Japanese economy. Keep up the amazing videos!
but isn't it ironic how during the catch-up strategy, the government "created" super-star companies that were basically government-backed monopolies run by the same zaibatsu that were removed a few decades earlier?
So... what exactly did it do for Japan again? I wish you spent more time talking about the actual effects hinted at in the title, the answer kinda got lost in the rest of it. The whole video was spent explaining the history of how the families got so wealthy in the first place, how and why the government did something about it, and how it effected the families and their companies. It was 2/3 of the way through before you even mentioned breaking up the trusts; it just seemed like a lot of this could have been left out or quickly summarized. To me, the history behind it is greatly secondary to the actual effects, which you hardly even talked about in your misleadingly titled video. The history isn't particularly useful because it can never be replicated, but the greater results and implications can be replicated, which could prove very useful in places that still have massive trusts and insurmountable financial inequality, which includes many places indeed, including the US. Did all that tax money improve the lives of ordinary Japanese citizens? Did the trust-busting help lower prices for consumers and ease competition? Was the government able to offer any new programs or benefits? If you didn't want to talk about this stuff, that's fine, but you should have titled your video to reflect the fact that you just wanted to talk about the context behind it.
There was a ton of interesting information in that video, but it did very little in the way of making a case for "what eating the rich did for Japan". If anything the many many other factors touched on in this video make it exceptionally unclear. Also, hyperinflation. The thing the video credited with most of the wealth destruction isn't a good thing for anyone, and I would assume not intentionally done just to stick it to the rich. It sounds more to me like the country was terrible mismanaged and screwed up it's whole economy and monetary system including but not limited to that of the wealthy, then managed to bring it back later. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to justify theft from the wealthy or just a weakly supported piece of click bait.
The problem is the real rich aren’t even listed and you can’t find them. Sure you can get Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Page, Brian, and Ellison, but what about the house of Saud, Rothschild, Putin, Assad, or Mubarak because they aren’t ever mentioned in wealthiest people lists strangely
Thank you for this brilliant, thorough yet concise exegesis of Japan's rise from it's humiliation at the end of the rural/feudal Tokugawa Period, though the Meiji Restoration, up through to the present day. Reminds me, in a good way, of the year I spent in my Far Eastern Civilization class at the University of Chicago in 1979-1980. Again, thank you. (I've subscribed.)
I really liked that this video answered its premise in a satisfying way. The conclusion I can draw from this video is that Japan “eating its rich” prospered in the long term by focusing on the export market that elevated Japan’s standing in the world and led to levels of GDP wealth previously unknown to it. To put it another way the Japan we know today wouldn’t exist if the zaibatsu families had been allowed continue increasing wealth inequality. There’s a certain Economics channel that I won’t mention by name that prides itself on Explaining things that rarely ends its analysis videos with a conclusion I can hang my hat on. But even worse can be a bit sloppy with its data and analysis.
Actually no it doesn’t. Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists. This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen? “Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?” Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up…. So unless we’re gonna be opened up to the world 250 years ahead of us instantly that isn’t happening.
Being a vital forward base, repair shop, and the huge logistics storage area needed to support the UN fighting needed to free South Korea from North Korean aggression led to strict practicality in getting Japan back to work. The time allowed for slow, Utopian musings about how the future was to be organized had disappeared.
Thank you for the video. it was great. I can't help to wonder what's going on in Japan in the political realm at the same time, especially when they start to even out the inequilty, the political figures at that time. Thank you again
I really liked making this video. I hope you enjoyed it too. For other videos on Japan, check out the playlist: th-cam.com/play/PLKtxx9TnH76RTpIBp5WGyun3Nn85sQxLK.html
Maybe Chaebol and Keiretsu might interest you. Also why Taiwan yet to be taken over by large business family?.
Excellent video once again. Thank you for sharing.
I have lived more than a decade in Japan and spent a bit of time looking into their history. You did a magnificent job with this overview of the rise and fall of the zaibatsu.
Very rare to find well researched info such as this, thank you!
@@Al-ng2wn Well their are plenty large family in Taiwan that gained overwhelming wealth during the Japanese colonial period, and the old family wealth distribution trusts called “ancestral worshipping committee”(祭祀公業) is still distributing massive wealth to the male descendent of the family, gained though their families mass assets, and due to the fact that the trusts was established during the Japanese colonial period(Japanese civil code at that time allows gender discrimination ), these Trust funds are still legally allowed to discriminate against their female family members to this day.
Usually oligarchies damage their own countries' interests. It's funny how Americans can clearly spot it when it happens to another countries but not in their own.
You would think many would notice this in their cable/ISPs and rail.
Crony Capitalism: A system in which denial is the second largest source of renewable energy.
New Deal Americans were a different breed from boomers
Really? Is it happening in the US? Can you draw a meaningful comparison between US oligarchies and the pre-WW2 oligarchies described here? Here's a hint: start with market capitalisation.
@@jordankidd4443 bro we are owned by a handful of companies.
This kind of thing can happen at the local level also. In the (U.S.) town where I live there's a family that was known to be quite wealthy. They owned a bank, real estate companies, and land. The bankers and real estate people unfortunately played a little too wild with their assets, selling land parcels back and forth among themselves (sometimes on a daily basis) to push up the land values and let them reap the profits from so many sales where the selling price was always higher than the purchase price. Eventually that bubble popped, and the real estate and bankers ran out of money. The bank was close and the depositors almost lost their money (the bank was state insured, instead of being federally insured.) The real estate assets were sold off at market value, and that was the beginning of a major real estate and business boom. Tracts of land that had been empty for years while family members sold them back and forth among themselves were suddenly being developed. Businesses were built. Entire residential neighborhoods were built on land that had been unused. No one 'ate the rich', they ate themselves. The family's disaster turned into a boon for the community.
The real question is why the family failed to employ their assets and instead blew asset bubbles.... Similarly - the Fed for the last 50 years...
@@phezzanfnord1089 because it's easier to blow bubbles than create value
@@phezzanfnord1089 short term gains
This is typically what happens. Unfortunately, there are greedy people even among those who aren't "rich" and they would rather demand that the government steal from private citizens instead of letting the inevitable over-extension by these companies/individuals happen.
Them eating themselves is just desserts
One problem I have with this analysis, is that it completely ignores the fact that Japan's economic miracle began as soon as some of former Zaibatsu groups were able to rebuild their holdings as financial groups now known as Keiretsu. Must like the Zaibatsu of old, the Keiretsu utilizes vertical integration, where huge portfolios of major companies across different industries are owned and coordinated(supply eachother) by a few banking groups(most of which have Zaibatsu origins). Despite in some ways being more informal in nature, in the US they would be considered highly illegal trusts under the loosest definitions. The only thing that ever really changed was the shift in focus from a more closed economy, to an export-focus economy, and a large amount of foreign(chiefly US) subsidies and investment.
Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists.
This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen?
“Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?”
Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
i agree Jonas, that really is a glaring oversight considering the direct influence and active participation then and now
You have companies like Sony, Toyota, and Panasonic that all formed right around WW2 (or earlier, but took off closer to / a little bit after WW2) that started from humble beginnings in the 20th century that fit with what he's described in this video, no?
what did you expect? this video is propaganda, of course they would leave out convenient facts
I agree. The 'Reverse Course' is very pertinent to this history and the reforming of the zaibatsu into keiretsu.
I remember as a child “Made in Japan “ meant low quality but by the 80’s it meant high tech.
For me it's "My woman from Tokyo" turned up to 11.
Do you think things gonna be the same with "made in china"?
@@cozysummer possibly if the world continues to tolerate their stealing and copying technology.
Doc Brown is that you?
I give the Sony Walkman and Discman for example.
One of the aspects that I find fascinating is the fact that unlike many other countries who wanted to unseat their plutocrats, Japan firmly, steadily, maneuvered the decline in a way that left the plutocrats still quite comfortable by ordinary standards, but nowhere as rich as they had been. Nobody dragged them out of their homes and shot them, and they didn't even disband the companies, simply changed parts of the structure so that they were publicly held corporations instead of family-run business interests. The "we will compensate you with X amount of money.. on deposit and you can't touch it for the next 5 years" was brilliant.
this is because it was done for pragmatic reasons, due to the economic and social problems that the militaristic government had little problem identifying and little conflict of interest eradicating, as compared to the previous liberal and monarchist governments which had closer ties to the wealthy and personal stake in not solving these problems. it was not a revolution of people who felt that their hardships were from the elite class, those tend to be very bloody chaotic affairs. if the military govt. had not have done this, it's very possible japan could have had such a bloody lower-class revolution instead near the end or after the war.
I think there's an intereslng parallel between Japan's Breakup of Zaibatsu power and the UK's end to slavery. In the UK the Government compensated slave owners and traders when they outlawed slaving. Even my family was paid-out for the slaves they owned in Grenada and other parts of the Carribean. Fundamentally owning slaves for many owners was not motivated solely by racism, it was about controlling and exploiting labour for no impact on bottom line profitability. For the UK slave owners they didn't kick up and fight the government because their economic position and societal status was not changed. The same with how the Japanese managed the transition from the Zaibatsu conglomerate monopolies - compensation and respecting social position. Essentially because of both the UK and Japan's underlying social stratification and social hierarchy there was substantial social capital that the slave owners and the Zaibatsu families held, irrespective of the wealth.
Compare this to the USA, where there was not a social status system underpinning the economics of aggregation of wealth. Any old poverty stricken nobody could go from ' Rags' to 'Riches' just with an idea or by going to a place and stealing land from Native American Tribes. The wealth and status of the slave owners was entirely dependent on the control and exploitation of slaves. No 'barons', No 'Lords', no 'earls', no long term intergenerational social capital to fall back on. It was a big contributor to the Civil War, both at the individual slave owner family level and at the Slave State political level.
This is still true to this day. It's why wealthy Americans are so terrified of anti trust laws, government regulations and socialism. They violently resist any attempts at reducing wealth inequality because their only social status comes from money and accumulated capital. It's no surprise that the chief reason that the US Government is involved in so many countries through both direct intervention (invasions/war/world bank/IMF) and indirect (softer power influence - int'l taxation stuff/trade agreements/WTO/aggressive patent and copyright law) is because it is protecting the economic interests of American "entrepreneurs" and industrialists. These people, as Trump and his wealthy supporters proved, will turn against their fellow countrymen if there is any challenge to their wealth derived social status.
Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook definitely need the Zaisbatsu treatment.
Chinese Government is giving some 'guidance' to their tech giants at the moment.
Truly genius. Our only hope is that we can do this now to the oligarchs all over the world especially in the USA.
@@bisiilki ：Ｃhinese method as a guidance? why not New Deal-ism? There are plenty of ideas in American school of thought, a lot of history of left popularism. If these cannot be done, then how is it possible for US government to achieve that level concentration of political power? Trump? but Trumpism is more like Putin's crony capitalism. China has a "Red-Patrician" class. If you don't belong to them and show signs of defiance, then you have trouble. corruption is part of growth stratage, Xi's family is rich. not rich rich. Where do you got the ideal that China offer a model of socialism? even Marxism is banned. For the patrician class , and CCP grip to power, any form of democracy has to be banned.
Locked in cash during a hyper inflation hike. That is the catch that sort of made the government responsible for confiscating wealth.
Could be fair if they were kept as gold or other value-retaining-low-growth assets.
It seems breaking up monopolies can be pro-capitalist. Not necessarily socialist
It's like a forest fire. Occasionally you have to burn away the accumulated overgrowth in order to let new life and new diversity flourish.
Yup. Wealth inequality leads to envy and bitterness which then led to civil strife and revolutions. If you don't want communists to ran around the country, the rich have no choice but to agree to redistribution of wealth and property.
Plus, when monopolies are gone, small businesses and competitors will pop up and give way to new opportunities.
Breaking up monopolies is supposed to be what a "real" capitalist economy would do, if I remember correctly.
@@albertalmodal4331 According to adam smith who was writing what he saw succesful economies doing, yes. The state in capitalism needs to break up monopolies as it is natural but detrimental for them to form.
Hmmmm...it is like supporting entrepreneurialism and small business is the real driver of a capitalist economy. And allowing oligopoly industries to bribe and influence government to reduce competition and gain special favor is actually not really capitalist, it is just plain corruption.
If you read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, you'll find he already argued that land owners have a vested interest in keeping their country less developed, as developed economies have much smaller profit rates.
Ma man predicted all that during his days?
@@unknowninfinium4353 yea, but capitalism is good tho.
@@eridaskunt1856 Okay I gather you probably don't read so I'll keep this short. Marxism isn't dogma. It isn't a religion. It isn't "feels based politics". Marxism is a scientific explanation for why capitalism will, inevitably, begin consuming itself.
To oversimplify: In capitalism, profit is all that matters. Stockholders require growth, or else their stock loses value and they lose money. A product cannot be innovated forever. Eventually, it will become so efficient that the only options left become dividing the product to sell each piece individually (See Apple removing functions of their smart phones to sell them separately at inflated prices) or to engage in labor violations (forced overtime, cutting employee benefits, lower pay). Eventually, this becomes a society-wide issue, as it is right now (for their time, French peasants in the 1700s were wealthier than most American workers today).
These labor violations do two things: they cause further efficiency in the creation of products, but they destroy the consumer-classes ability to purchase. This is why the housing, vehicle and education markets are getting buttfucked right now. The consumers simply cannot possibly afford them. This means the only people engaging with the economy are now middle-class and wealthy people, which is an increasingly small number of Americans. I do not have to explain why 80% of a country being unable to meaningfully engage in capitalism is a death sentence for capitalism.
Once this gets bad enough, poor people will begin killing wealthy people. I am not saying this is a good or bad thing. I'm saying it's AN INEVITABLE thing. This is all the more likely as capitalism is also uniquely responsible for the impending climate disasters. There will be climate rebellions, and a lot of wealthy people who enabled the polluting companies for their own pocketbooks will die. A cursory glance at history tells you this is inevitable, and it is because of this country's blind worship of capitalism.
That is the hyper-simplified basis of Marxism. "Capitalism has inherent contradictions that will cause it to consume itself, and the result will be terrible violence."
@@YamiSilaas More generally, Marxism is the attempt to describe events/history through the lens of its participants' material conditions.
@@miguelzavaleta1911 Marx is flawed.
Except the whole thing was a temporary buffer and was done just to appease the US, who were there. MacArthur regretted not being able to get rid of the zaibatsu before he left. The seizure of assets happened but they just rose to power again, aided by ideas of tradition. Now, work culture is all consuming, in Japan, even to the point of abuse that drastically lowers productivity.
You'll notice a lot of the names of the original Zaibatsu are still massive corps, known worldwide. This is not an accident, nor a coincidence.
But it's not much of a problem given that Japan is a highly developed country with very little poverty and no starving sergs. They've industrialized and diversified. Now the issue is that the country is so developed people are no longer having kids and the population is becoming old.
@@mrb152 This is the government narrative but it is only true if you squint. There are a lot of starving and homeless people and even a surviving caste system or three. Rural areas are being torn down by companies and the government. It's not all rosey as the offical messaging states.
@@mrb152 like in the rest of the developed world old people have blocked promotioin and raises for the young stagnating wages in the prosute of higher profits. this has lead to young people largly not having the money to have kids. there fore they don't have kids. the schools also frown apon dating at a time when a lot of people meet the persont hey will marry, and drive them to spend their peak reproductive years living at work to the point they even have to sleep in the office.
❤thank you for explaining historical context to Japanese corporation's and development.
I think you should make a video about it.
Yeah, I wouldn't blame not wanting to live in a country that's development hurts the working person on so many levels. Even if you do get the job, the comfortable life and the passive income, people still have to tolerate and live in their culture for that. Not to mention the labour practices.
I don't know what is more impressive: the levels of far reaching collusion in these extended families, or how effective busting them up was for improving Japan's economy afterwards.
I like that we all know most of these family names despite the companies being mostly broken up.
Another great video, I was really looking forward to this one after it was teased.
It helps to be flexible and undogmatic. Private property is not some sacred covenant with the creator.
@@tacticlol I think it is. But where private property is unjustly acquired, or unjustly kept, society must find ways to deal with it. But fundamentally, private property is a human right.
@@prathameshdusane2619 Kawasaki and Mitsubishi are really good examples of companies that reformed their market and their image after a nasty period. Idk anything about the other one, though.
If Japan 'ate' their rich and came out stronger, why can't USA do the same ?
The Jeff Bezos, the Elon Musks, the Bill gates, the George Soros, the Warren Buffets, all of them, must have all the wealth taken and re-distribute to all the Americans !
@@clocktower1164 Different circumstances and condition. During the industrial era, wealth are in concrete real asset and commodities, i.e oil, mines, factory, grains, rubber, etc. As such, they can easily be appropriated by greedy governments, either in taxes, backdoor dealing, government acquisition etc. Added to that, companies are more tied to the nation and so they cannot run by moving their factories elsewhere.
Nowaday, in a more globalized and digital world, its easy to move your wealth, more so when most of of this wealth are intangible properties like brands, trademark and copyrights. If the American branch is closed, the European office can still function independently, if not, then the Asia Pacific office.
Also, the video is a bit misleading. Japan didn't "eat" their rich but rather were forced by the American occupiers to break their monopolies. While I would support the breaking up of Amazon, Google and Facebook, the fact that the social media and tech in general rely of having volume to get profit mean that another Googld, amazon and Facebook will emerge anyway, just like the fall of Geocities and Myspace show us. The only way to prevent it would probably by going the China route by fragmenting the market into nations instead of one global market. De-globalization is the answer you want if you want to prevent tech monopolies by the rich.
Destroying old and lazy company structures by privatization led to more success for the economy. Decades later, destroying old and lazy company structures by nationalization led to more success for the economy. I see a pattern here :-)
Yep, germany its the biggest eu economy because it specializes in medium size companies for specific products.
69th like
@@eddiemarohl5789 Now do 420 funny man.
Tragedy of the commons anyone?
@@santiagoperez2094
Except for the "defence" industry.
Rheinmetall.
Interesting stuff about early 20th century Japanese economy and politics (they are usually one and the same - don't let anyone fool you). I noticed that many Japanese companies prefer to be vertical. They want to control all aspects of the supply chain from raw resources, all the way to production of consumer products. Nintendo is a good example of that. When GC came out they decided to go with a disc system to compete with Sony and Microsoft's new consoles. Rather than go with a standard like CD or DVD, they created their own format and subsequently controlled the entire production of the discs. Some say that Nintendo does that in order to create false demand in the marketplace, and there might be something to that, but after watching this I realize that it was the way these plutocratic familial based organizations worked in Japan. It was a tradition built into the zeitgeist of Japanese manufacturing since, apparently, a hundred years prior. Excellent video BTW.
And once upon a time in the late 1980's, Nintendo had an actual monopoly on the video game market.
I worked for a gaming store for many years starting in 2004 and I can confirm your statements about Nintendo. At the time I wasn't aware of other major companies creating false demand through gimmicks. Nintendo also creates false shortages and puts a lot of effort into making sure the public believes there are shortages of new products. Then suddenly, at the last minute over the holidays, our stores would be flooded with their products. It seems many other large tech companies have learned to create false demand through gimmicks - namely Apple. I should add that the automotive industry is now doing the same thing. They have been claiming chip and vehicle shortages since 2020 as they desperately try to maintain inflated vehicle prices. In the meantime, there are reports of remote lots full of new cars due to overproduction and repos are at historic levels. The trick is to release inventory as slowly as possible to prevent prices from crashing. The same can be said of the residential real estate market in the USA. Again, just gimmicks by greedy corporations to squeeze every dime possible out of the working class.
@@baronvonslambert "It was on the Old Continent that the company experienced its first major successes at the end of the 1980s. In Japan, it was not a failure but the company did not carry much weight compared to Nintendo. We can say it today without detour: without England and France, the aura of SEGA would not have been the same"
"If there is one generally known fact that is valid for the entire decade and a good part of the 1990s, it would be the following: microcomputers were much more successful than consoles as gaming machines in the most European countries. Although this statement cannot be generalized without a little research, it is certainly true for most large markets like Germany, France and the United Kingdom as well as smaller ones like Spain. or Italy. And this is also the case for a good part of Eastern European countries by definition because several of them did not officially discover consoles until the early 1990s."
"Nintendo and SEGA, for example, could not then be considered strong brands in Europe because consumers were not familiar with these Japanese companies. Throughout the 1980s, they only achieved relatively low sales overall, even in countries in which their success was significant. SEGA was clearly a brand better known for their arcade machines and, as already mentioned, some of their computers which had reached Europe [Editor's note: Nintendo was best known for its Game & Watch]."
The NES sold 8,56 Millions units in Europe (61,91 Millions worldwide ,34 Millions in North America ,19,35 Millions in Japan) while the Master System sold 6,8 Millions units in Europe (18 Millions worldwide ,8 Millions in Brasil ,2 Millions in the USA and 1 Million in Japan)
The SNES sold 8,58 Millions in Europe (49,1 Millions worldwide, 23,35 Millions in North America, 17,17 Millions in Japan) while the Sega Genesis sold 6,9 Millions in the PAL Market (So Europe + other country like Australia ,Brasil etc ...) (39,7 Millions worldwide ,20 Millions in North America, 4,3 Millions in Japan)
The N64 sold 6,75 Millions in Europe + Australia (32,93 Millions worldwide, 20,63 Millions in North America, 5,54 Millions in Japan) while the Sega Saturn sold 0,97 Million in Europe (9,5 Millions worldwide ,2,7 Millions in the USA ,5 Millions in Japan)
The GCN sold 4,77 Millions in Europe (21,75 Millions worldwide, 12,94 Millions in USA + Canada, 4,04 Millions in Japan) while the Dreamcast sold 1,91 Million in Europe (8,06 Millions worldwide ,3,9 Millions in North America ,2,25 Millions in Japan)
Nintendo still sold more than Sega in each generation of console in Europe .
Or like Apple and their stupid proprietary cables.
That's a ridiculous claim.
That's just cherry-picking.
There are many exceptions.
In fact, there are more exceptions.
Really interesting and informative video. Appreciate the effort and time that's been put into making this!
The original Keiretsu families are still ruling the group secretly via subsidiaries in some of the group. Mitsui and Sumitomo still have strong family representatives that are still called as "Sachou" aka President, even though formally they aren't the president. The original family members will gather annually in Kyoto with all CEOs and presidents of their subsidiary for a planning meeting. It's not uncommon that public KKs in Japan are secretly owned by 1 entity/family well above the ownership rate that is allowed by the government. They have managed to do this by using various webs of companies.
Zaibatsu/Keiretsu and Japanese military have long ties because most of them are former Samurai, both for the merchants and officers. For example, during the Russo-Japanese war, Admiral Togo received the intelligence report on the proximity of the Russian Baltic fleet from the Sumitomo and Mitsui Shipyard directors in Shanghai and Singapore. All military equipments in JSDF are still made by those Keiretsu until now, mainly license built.
So it's not merely because they ate the rich, but the rich managed to fly below the radar (and mostly were spending their wealth in Japan) and had very strong connection with METI-JETRO-JICA aka Politicians and Bureaucrats.
Such a unique Japanese phenomenon. This certainly doesn't happen in Western countries at all. Western companies are definitely not owned by complex and opaque webs of investment management companies which are owned by wealthy families that trace back to medieval aristocracies.
@@1schwererziehbar1 Some do, especially the Swiss. Italian families have faded. Rothschild still have annual meeting. You can be expelled from the family if you don't attend the meeting. They will share their experience on business, life and everything on that meeting. So other family members can learn from mistake and success of others. They also have their own internal financial planning and capital/loan access to grow their family assets and business through internal lending to their own family members. They have the access to cheap credit but they have to return it to the family funds with low interest. Just to show their responsibility to other members. I'm not going into the conspiracy theory side because it's mainly BS.
Since there were 2 world wars in Europe. It was harder for othe families in other European countries to maintain the business. Sweden had a chance, but 1970s socialist policies messed them up. Families had to give ownership to the union who couldn't manage business at all. Therefore triggering 1970s Nordic Stagflation.
In America, Johnson family has similar gathering like Rothschild, but smaller.
There are other families that are not on Forbes list, mainly because they will sue Forbes to keep them out of it. Stealth wealth is the best wealth.
I noticed sumitomo and a name Yamasa seems to transact a lot of houses in the US. Do you know any other family names that have grown like this?
@@KindaJadedish Asano family still have several foundations, Yasuda clan is still functioning, Furukawa is still there (5th generation head of the family had died in 2018, but his son Junichi took his place. His mother Noriko is the aunt of the current emperor) but some have changed their names to Nakagawa (common Japanese name), Ito family is still strong politically. The current diet member and former minister of defence Taro Kono is one of the grandchild of the main branch.
but it's getting harder to identify them because many family branches from the original main branch have changed their family name to fly below the radar or due to marriage.
And as you can see, they have managed to gain links to the Imperial and political families as well.
@@saltymonke3682 This begs me the question. How do you know all of this, how did u study?
Manchuria actually became a testing ground to nurture new companies outside of the influence of the Zaibatsu. The IJA that ran things was suspicious of the zaibatsu but knew the talent of private entrepreneurs was necessary. Thus Yoshisuke Aikawa, the founder of Nissan, was tapped to help establish the Manchurian Industrial Development Company.
And the results was Manchuria producing only 2% as much iron as expected and the colony being a resource drain for its entire existence, as virtually all colonies where.
@@ZontarDow Do you have any citation for that? Japanese investment in Manchuria was extremely profitable from what I am aware of.
@@Rangerage Not that I can find easily, was 7 years ago I did a small project in college on the matter and had to compare the output that they got during the 1930s with what the projections where. However it being profitable would be shocking given just about the only colonies that where profitable where South Africa and a very small handful of others during the colonial period. Colonies in general are a drain.
@@ZontarDow spanish weren't
@@aaronhpa Actually the Spanish had one of the worst cases of it which is why their empire fell generations before WW2 did the British, French, Italians, Dutch, Belgians and Portuguese in.
Good info.
But I think you downplayed WWII. Most countries go bankrupt when they fund huge militaries. Japan bet on the war, and they lost their industrialization progress as a result of misguided warmongering.
Yeah. Japan did well post war with everyone working hard on a (more) level playing field. But it's difficult to claim high taxes were the cause of this when the county had just been literally levelled with firebombing and nukes!
many countries decided to go to war as the last resort before they become too poor to start a war. yes it is a huge gamble always been since ancient times.
Putin is now doing this to the Russian people.
As an American, I am always very interested in the stories of countries with which we have been at war. Japanese products have been incredibly important to America since shortly after WWII. We respect their engineering and their standards, and if we all could find such appreciable value in our earthly neighbors, the world would be a better place.
Greetings from Germany. After a war, there is always the question of "how do we win the peace". After WW2, humanity got it mostly right, and the conflicts were really over after 1945. Unlike WW1, where everything started again soon after. Or the middle east today, where peace is essentially a short timeout between two wars.
The idea that Zaibatsus are no longer around is purely fiction. They are perfectly alive and kicking, and larger than ever before.
Yep, it's like the idea that slavery and Jim Crow ended in the US. It just has a different name now.
@@kj_H65f what's it called now?
@@What-he5pr the republican party
@@AH-vc3hb oh no, please tell me how.
@@What-he5pr 13th amendment, 6th word And redlining
I'm sure others have pointed this out, but in the very beginning there is a minor mistake when you labeled Tokugawa Ieyasu the "first Shogun." He was the first Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, but the first Shogun of Japan was way back in 1192.
Minamoto no Yoritomo founder of the kamakura shogunate
@@eldermoose7938 I ask around if someone wants some nice Recommendations,
whetever it's about the Topi of Science or Atheism or Socialism
or just the vague 'Concept' of 'Tackling Issues'.
@@loturzelrestaurant jeez, get over yourself
@@riks081 Do you sometimes stop, think for a second, and realize you shouldnt write something cause it would massively-embarass-yourself at least thx to the common sense rule ‚Rude=Ebarassing;
Extra-Bonus is given if it’s your first-ever comment to someone’? At least?
@@loturzelrestaurant honestly your first comment was cringe and embarrassing.
Breaking up large concentrations of wealth isn't just an implementation of socialist principles, but can also unleash underutilized resources and actually increase overall growth and wealth of a nation. Wealth concentrations can act as productivity sink, like a cancer that consumes resources, through rent-seeking behavior. At a certain point, a large corporation or an extremely wealthy family functions equivalently to a parasitic entity and the monopolistic prices they charge are are effectively a tax. But unlike a government, the taxes don't go towards national security, public services, or social programs, and also unlike a competitive market, the profits aren't reinvested into innovation, they, instead, go into the bank accounts of the wealthy who often decide not to lend that money since the interest is inconsequential to them or the capital is itself locked in the form of hard assets that are largely unproductive (e.g. art, luxury vehicles, large tracts of land, and mansions). So, there isn't just a socialist case against dynastic wealth, there is also a market-based argument against it.
Yep. As an extreme example, imagine 90 cents out of every dollar generated by a city's economy just goes into a bank account and sits there. There's very little left to spur spending, etc. That's the problem when you have very wealthy people who keep most of the profits and, instead of spending it, just put it in the bank. It's really bad for the economy.
So smart capitalism is the solution
Observations correct, conclusions less so. Wealth does not sit in a bank account, it is always lent out for economic purposes even if the owner does not wish it. Privately owned monopolies will always be more productive to society than state owned monopolies. Luxury good production will always be more beneficial economically than more national security, public services or social services. Those are all overhead to running our national enterprise and those cost should be kept to a bare minimum. More government spending is not better, its the exact opposite.
A timely point right now, right here in N. America and it's current "Supply Chain" and ongoing concentrations of extreme wealth.
That's why we need to incentivize productive investments and entrepreneurs. When government regulations throw off the risk-reward metric of entrepreneurs the result is for people to hoard wealth in the most liquid form. Liquidity and complex investments do not go together. If you try to tax this wealth rather than encourage spending it will simply look for an even more liquid offshore place to hide. There is no scenario where Bernie Sanders busts open the billionaire'ss banks and everyone gets to share the spoils.
Japan had a very centralized economy during the early 1900s Zaibatsu era, and it was government restrictions on who can own businesses that gave the Zaibatsu their monopoly status, allowing them to get so powerful.
And who do you think it was paying the government to make those beneficial decisions?
@@DragonSlayer6398 Please provide some source or piece of useful information. I'm not here to answer your silly questions.
If you look back a bit on who it was forming the gov't, and how the Zaibatsu had come about, basically it was a slightly opened-up ruling class protecting their own after the country did away with the rank of Daimyo.
The Tokugawa leadership class (those nimble enough to adapt) were the class in charge under the Meiji. Zaibatsu had been based in specific fiefs, one per fief, run by Daimyo. Meiji opened that up to action on the national scene. The Daimyo had the habit of recruiting talented people from almost all class strata, which kept them from stagnating.
@@DragonSlayer6398 The point he is making is that government restrictions are used to create most monopolies. It is very rare for a monopoly to form without government regulations being involved. There is really only one situation where that can happen, some types of businesses become more efficient the bigger they are and eventually one company becomes so much cheaper and better than all of their competitors that all of the competitors pretty much die out. Amazon is a good example, nobody wants to pay an extra $20 in shipping and wait an extra week to buy off of another site when Amazon can deliver it for free the same day it is ordered. Those types of monopolies are not really a big problem in the same way that government supported monopolies are.
Government created monopolies like internet and cell companies in Canada suck because they can charge as much as they want and don't have to worry about being efficient because nobody else is allowed to compete with them due to government restrictions. The you end up paying $300 a month for a cell phone plan with 1GB of internet because you need a cell phone and there are no other companies. When you compare that with a "natural" monopoly where one business is just better than all of the others you can see how one is more problematic than the other.
Obviously the company supports politicians or does other shady stuff to get the laws passed by the government, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a natural result of government regulation. Recently some state government (backed by John Deere) was trying to get regulations passed to ban other companies from repairing tractors so farmer would be stuck overpaying the manufacturer to fix it instead. Usually these types of regulations are pretty popular with most voters because they are pitched in a way that makes it sound good for people by the government, and people are generally ignorant, sometimes they will play on peoples spite towards large companies and pitch them that way. Instead of saying "we want to extort farmers" they will talk about "dangerous" shady third party repair places that will destroy your equipment, or crazy farmers supercharging their tractors with parts that increase emissions and destroy the environment. Then most voters think that sounds good and the regulations pass.
Or Sherwin-Williams invests to produce paint that doesn't contain VOCs before any other company and then lobbying the government to ban paint with VOCs "for peoples health". Then the government says the big mean companies want to put poisonous VOCs in your paint and they are here to protect you and you go overpay 90$ for your next gallon of paint at Sherwin-Williams because no other store has that product yet. A lot of the time it isn't even corruption and the government gets nothing out of it. Most politicians are about 90 years old and dont know how to send an email. It isn't hard to convince them of pretty much anything.
@DragonSlayer6398 Business men making political donations is inevitable. It's the politicians' responsibility to not allow that to influence their decisions
There’s still plenty of rich in japan. In fact the old nobility just got into business and became conglomerates. There’s still plenty of poor Japanese living in tiny apartments only able to afford cheap ramen.
Yep this
You wont ever see any new players getting big in Japanese market at all
Its all rigged in there no wonder their tech growth is stagnated unlike korea,China
Japan's CEO to employee compensation ratio is still ten times lower than the United States while going back and forth with China as the second or third largest economy in the world
Japan's off-book compensation is way different though. Like for many companies even organize which apartment their employees live in. And for CEO's this can mean company private jets for personal travel etc.
@@shazmosushi You don't think large-cap American companies also do that for their CEOs on top of the tenfold compensation? 'Cause they do.
@@metagde6402 S Korea is likely to reach the same point. Imo, only advantage they have is willingness to shift to paperless work and good UX/UI design in most of the software they use and in their websites. Also, corporate boards are more receptive to customer base criticisms. Most companies in Japan are unproductive because they do or have the opposite. Japanese websites and UIs in hightech machines are generally stuck in the 2000's in terms of design. You'd think this won't do harm. If you look at their tech, they don't have good user-friendly tech made by them. So they don't export their tech when they're supposed to be up there in terms of hightechness. Add the fact that their bureaucracy has so much bottleneck, and it's a recipe for stagnation. They're not innovating in the right places, at least South Korea does that, but Korea has a different set of problems, related to unemployment and labor rights. Things have been escalating in that area over recent years, and if Moon doesn't deliver which he won't, it will only get even worse over time.
The Zaibatsu was used for war production, it wasn't necessarily Japan "eating the rich" but more converting their economy to a post-war economy. The Zaibatsu was centralised on purpose for this reason of war production
similar to what china is doing, they have big state owned companies and they have public companies runned by ccp agents. the communist party gathers wealth from investments and sales all around the world but have tight control over expenditure. as such money availae in the market became scarce and econimies outside china suffers. they are now hoarding raw materials with the money they have gathered. more big companies will eventually suffer and be forced to sell to chinese owned corporates like what we have seen with many once famous and top corporates.
wont be far from the day everything is produced and owned by china.
The model being followed here is the model of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. That was their main proposal. Dismantle the globalist capitalists and regulate those businesses to promote only the good of the country.
The end of the script where you voice changes back to more causal always makes me chuckle. Great stuff 10/10
Amazing ! I work in japan IN marunoichi in one of those buildings on the left of the imperial palace gardens. The level of depth in the video is appreciable ! Thanks 👍🏽
Watch “Princes of the Yen” for the post-war story, and the role of the central bank in it.
th-cam.com/video/p5Ac7ap_MAY/w-d-xo.html
I saw it some years back and have practically forgotten all of it, thanks for reminding will watch it again.
I watched that... It was one of the few times that I forgot I was pedalling on an exercise bike for like an hour...
@@randomrandom316 tbh: first time I watched it, I felt enlightened. Just like after watching “The secret of Oz” by Bill Still (When I first learned that 99% of money is created as credit by banks).
But 2nd time I watched “Princes of the Yen” I started to be confused: it’s like playing Victoria 2 - after you carefully constructed all your factories and production lines for 80 years you just switch to a libertarian party, and half your economy goes belly up, disrupting everything you had spent 80 years building: the whole premise of the video only makes sense as a switch of ideology - as if they really suddenly started believing that using window-guidance was wrong and thus had to be ended, because the wizards / princes who used it were going to die and did not trust anyone from the next generation to use it competently, and thus the steering of the ship had to be switched from careful manual steering to autopilot. Not seeing that capitalism on autopilot leads to disaster.
I still don’t get it. What is the alternative why they did it? Central Bankers must be the steward of their economies - how could they just willfully produce boom and bust cycles? It also leads to a concentration of wealth: assets change hands for a dime on the dollar. How is the structure afterwards any better than before? Sure: assets end up with the strongest hands / the richest families with the deepest pockets, but how is that a better result than what they had with window-guidance? They wrecked their hand-woven economy for more globalization? I still don’t get it. Did they sell out to an international class of private bankers? Goldman Sachs all over again? That the US Empire and their tools at the IMF continue to work on world domination is expected, but why did the Central Bankers in Japan help? How is their loyalty not with their country but with all Central Bankers over the world? What are they the stewards of, aside from their own power? Power for what? What would you need a one world government for, if it’s not working for the people in the end anyway?
Edit: I just rewatched it, and the “grab the central bank snakes by the head” images are really strong towards the end. I find it quite ironic, considering how their power applied correctly was shown to produce better living conditions and high equality in post-war Japan at the start. They could do good things with reasonable goals, but instead they fight an ideological war no matter the suffering for generations in between... - the most important question is: what is newly created money used for, how much is created, and who has the power: and by the end it’s all on its head: the power question dominates, the boom and bust are just means to get and keep the power, and the most important question: what it is used for in society seems no longer relevant. It’s perverted, rotten from the head. We need a reform of money creation.
Money reform movements have sprung up in all countries, yet they are so weak.
lol, I did a ctrl-f to see if anyone mentioned it in the comments. Highly recommend the watch, it's easily searchable on TH-cam.
Fascinating! It made me realize how little I know about Japanese history.
The question is: Do you know much about your history?
@@danibot3000 I know my history pretty well. I've lived it. For the very early years I can ask my mother.
@@danibot3000 how is that relevant
Wonderful - that's nice to hear. Some people don't reflect on such, own, things and prefer looking at things in the outside. I just wanted to point in that direction in case you wondered - maybe a bit silly to this in a medium like this..
@@pjacobsen1000 《 The History of Peter Jacobsen: An Inner Retrospective Vol. 1》
It’s messed up that the US sponsored land reform in Asia, but when Latin American governments tried it Uncle Sam dropped the hammer.
It was not the case that we sponsored it as much as it is that we punished the families who had owned it and used it to wage war against us. There's a difference.
It's also messed up that the US utilizes 3-4% of it's land, but land is still unaffordable. I got that figure from a Google search, so if it's wrong, blame the gewgol.
@@josephdestaubin7426 From what I've read on this matter, SCAP very intentionally supported the reforms, to abate marxist sentiment in Japan.
In Latin America, these reforms never took place, and were actively fought against by the US backed oligarchs. Which would partially explain, why Latin America is still to this day, so sympathetic to socialist/marxist ideals.
The people want to break up the control of the oligarchs and have some economic prospects.
US: Say it with me, *inhales*, COMMIEESSSSS
@@fusion9619 it’s misleading, far more nuanced and complex.
you missed a big point in your video.
the disbandment of zaibutsus was driven by USA.
as part of their surrender agreement, usa demanded japan dismantle its zaibutsus and fracture the companies up.
it wasn't driven by the Japanese government as much as demanded by the occupying allied forces.
as they saw the zaibutsus modelled on western banking families as direct causes of japan's ww2 ambitions and abilities. imperialism and capitalism always went hand in hand.
I just wrote this exact argument too. I'm not against redistribution when it becomes absolutely necessary, but the problem is that "eating the rich" requires a government much more powerful than the rich, which will then go on to oppress the people just as the rich elite did before them.
But USSR being an brutal oppressive empire is totally not a problem..
@@noop9k An empire that was built and collapsed within a single human lifetime.
Imperialism and capitalism might go hand in hand, but imperialism and communism do not.
@@Emidretrauqe Empire called Russia existed for about 300 years and only lost some of the colonies by now. Bolshevik regime fell because commie economy couldn't work without capitalists sponsoring it and Reagan put a stop to it. Chinese economy will collapse too as soon as the other countries stop pumping it with money.
Excellent video once again. Thank you for sharing.
I applaud your research. However, I think your conclusion that the dissolution of plutocrats in Japan led to Japan's economic rise in the '60s and '70s is a bit glib. There are important facts left out of your analysis.
Conventional interpretation of this rise accepts that it occurred due to the agreements reached with the U.S. post war and the status of its decimated infrastructure. Japan rebuilt its industries to a modern standard whereas obsolete factories predominated in the U.S. and elsewhere. Furthermore, Japan was more receptive to the consumer than U.S. industry at the time. Japan strove to build better products; the Made in Japan label became synonymous with quality. Further, because the U.S. and its allies were wary of a rearmed Japan, the U.S. absorbed the cost of defending Japanese interests. Avoiding the costs of raising and maintaining a military allowed Japan to invest its assets elsewhere.
The conventionally accepted factors explaining Japan's post-war economic rise are more convincing. Whether the breakup of the businesses and assets of the Japanese ultra rich had a significant effect on Japan's economic growth is questionable.
Yeah, this exactly. It’s as if the whole-ass war that happened is being ignored.
@Jo Actually yeah this is accurate. But comparatively the video’s point is far more dumbfounding. I would have sworn this was a Socialist channel and not an Asia focused channel but it seems to be the latter. People seem to think Zaibatsus don’t exist anymore; they do. They’re just smaller.
But despite us supposedly eating the rich our country is still super capitalist in culture lol. I think it’s the 70s/80s bubble that did that.
Yea seriously there was a luck friggin more that happened post war. I mean virtually every democracy supported by the US post war became wealthy within a few decades. South Korea actually was poorer than North Korea but now it’s one of the richest economies in the world.
@@mrb152 The US made them modern world, if not for them you all still be poor. even the USSR are saved be the US number of times after the war.
This video also completely ignores that Nazi Germany and fascist Japan both used the "Eat the rich globalists" to gain control of previously independent private industries and direct their money and objectives into the political objectives of their ruling parties- both of which were exceptionally psychotic and murderous.
I honestly expected this to be a warning message and lol'd at this video's idiotic conclusion. This kid might want to go back and read the 1940s section of his history book. He must have skipped that part.
Lord thunderin' Jezuz you're a good researcher!!!... I'm around your channel a lot... blows me away every time (and this is old stuff).. that graph at 15:47, who'd think to look for or include that? where'd u get it? It tells the story so clearly.
Did it make them full? (sorryy... )
They were pretty fat, and as we can see, there was enough to feed a nation.
Yes but they got hungry again an hour later
Yes, this highlights the fact that capitalism can be beneficial for a nation as long as it is not allowed to be completely self serving for the families involved. Just like when corporations were first formed in England, they were allowed by the King to exist as long as they served the overall interests of the people. Today's corporations need the same throttle. If they don't serve the public interest they should be dissolved.
The early corporations in western history were chartered for only a limited time and not intended to exist in perpetuity like today's. They were meant to fulfill a certain objective that required a lot of capital to undertake, then have the profits distributed and the assets liquidated once the charter was complete.
The first corporations came from many city charters, and it was only by the will of the people that they were given the power that they had.
Corporation and Capitalism are not the same, you are confusing the terms.
The corporations are the government in North America. To actually change things you would have to destroy how modern politics works and eliminate any and all electoral rules that get in the way of proportional representation for each area.
capitalism is always beneficial
Man your videos are really something else. This is a very interesting subject. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this video!
It's only sad that the channel targets Asia only, as I would love to see the Brazilian history of the same period being told this way.
Interesting video that does a good job of summarizing a large topic in 18 minutes. The Japanese nation and peoples are most remarkable and it is very hard to explain all of the factors that have led to their success. Personally, the narrative on ‘eating the rich’ does not explain very much. I would place much more importance on group solidarity and the sturdy hierarchical structure of society. They were also fortunate to have exceptional leadership at key points on recent history. The problem with that is when you have less able leadership (see the Pacific War) the results are disastrous. Though the societies are very different, this is similar to Germany. Bismarck would never have been so stupid to start WW2, but the system he built required future Bismarcks to hold it all together. As we know, Bismarcks are in short supply.
“I’ve never seen such discipline”-the last samurai. The attitude of the common people is the core how a certain system works.
The last samurai is not an accurate history movie.
@@23Lgirl putting it mildly...
It was filmed back in 1870s what u mean it's a historical? Was a live documentary smh ... Kennedy in 1955 is quoted to have said "The Last Samurai is my favorite Historical Artifact from pre war Japan." Later they re released this epic historical record using modern digital image editing to add full colorization and to brush the central characters face to look like Tom Cruise. This was done by Hollywood in a Joint Effort with Japan's imperial family (who own the rights to the original document). This was done both to mainstream acceptance of Japanese culture, and to help fund Palace renovations, as well as to help Restore an abandoned temple at the foot of Mt Fuji. One interesting piece of trivia is that most of the original footage was allegedly filmed by the great grand father of Lebron James. As taking footage during war time was considered a risky business, Hollywood decided to use recently freed slaves with minimal training instead of well trained and professional Jewish filmographers. This unconventional choice went a long way to racially integrating the social and cultural institutions of Las Angeles. The Director of this amazing film (original footage) was none other than the Father of George Patton. He taught his son much of what he learned from the Japanese, most notably in the Arts of War.
@@tasunkewitka8769 this has me dying right now hahahahah.
@@horelpit7 happy to help!
I recently discovered your channel and I subbed off the first video - keep up the great work! Would love to see some videos on the Philippines, their post war economy and maybe even something on the Ayala Corp. Cheers!
Thank you. Many in America have no idea what is even happening in their own country. But a history lesson from other countries might put it al in perspective for them. And both Japan and Germany are fine examples. This was a great video, and as always, the more you learn about the Japanese, the more you admire them.
get me out of here 😩 I'm aware
Indoctrination is a helluva jesus.. drug I mean.
The age of conservatism is easy to indoctrinate people into nationalism and obeying, all countries in general have this behavior, even asians, doesnt really require "religion", only requires its behavior that comes from religion.
We’re aware that’s it’s the greatest.
I guess this is what they meant by a rich and filling meal.
I don't have the expertise to judge the accuracy of this report, but it was certainly well-done and fascinating. Thanks for presenting critical subjects it would behoove us seriously to evaluate.
Actually it’s out of context- there’s a video ‘bushito of Japan’ or ‘should we save bushito’ you can probably find it faster because I’m at work.
Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists.
This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen?
“Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?”
Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
Very interesting. As far as I understand Korea did not have the same thing done to their equivalent companies. So even though their economy may be expanding it is extremely depending on a few massive business conglomerates. This concentration of power leads to a lot of corruption in Korea and not enough competition in the domestic market.
Actually that’s because it’s missing context
Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists.
This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen?
“Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?”
Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
So yeah if you teleport a nation 250 years into the future and then remove 250 year old businesses with new ones you do get good results… until you get WW2 happening because that’s what the government was pushing for
SK doesn't really have resources to fall back on and Japan profited a lot from high tech industry that's waned now. But SK does have a huge corruption issue and always has
Imagine if England Industrialized during the 1400s!!!
We would be so advanced! Space colonies in the 1800s!!!!!!
The video was informative and well structured. It was a little dry however. You should look into putting in some kind of bgm to help with that. But that's just my opinion, either way good video.
After the war the Japanese economy was in pretty rough shape. The idea seemed to be
reduce the control of industry by a few but not go as far as to make the economy worse.
The only reason why I recognize any of this is because of Hearts of Iron 4.
Is that a game?
@@antpoo yes
Computer games are great tools for learning history. I learned a lot from Age of Empires.
@@fanllawf I learnt a lot about trade and war from that game also, including the ancient ppls.
hahah my freind plays that all the time :)
The Zaibatsu and the rich who ran them were a drain on Japanese society. The Keiretsu system that replaced them is far from perfect, but it is more aligned in the interests of the Japanese nation as a whole than the old system. The original families still have some influence and are "president" (Sachou), but don't have absolute power and certainly nothing like the power they had pre-WW2.
Post-WW2 left them quite comfortable, but far less wealthy than they were. The Japanese government under their export division, MITI built Japan up into a successful nation, and effectively ran the nation. They were by no means perfect, but it at least was being done for the collective well-being of the nation as a whole, as opposed to a small number of rich people.
Reading through some of these comments, I think that many of the more economically conservative types are very uncomfortable at the "potential lesson" that it has for the US and other Western nations. A small oligarch runs the nation for its own benefit and effectively turns the nation into a kleptocracy. Monopolies such as those as Comcast (a major internet service provider that effectively holds monopoly) are examples. You could argue the same is true of a lot of Silicon Valley as well.
I think that one of the reasons why China may end up overtaking the US right now is that they understand this quite well and Xi Jinping seems quite willing to do what he thinks needs to be done.
There is much evidence dispelling the mythologized account of MITI's role in the expansion of the Japanese economy specifically:
www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/JapanandtheMythofMITI.html
The article notes much more foundational properties of the 50s/60s Japanese economy, like a smaller portion of private sector output being taxed to support the public sector, as more likely causes of its growth:
>>"The fact that the tax burden is unusually low by the standards of other developed countries may alone be a significant factor in the explanation of the high rate of private saving and investment in Japan." From 1951 to 1970, while Japan's real GNP was growing at an average of 9 percent per year, total national and local taxes (excluding social security) fell from 22.4 percent of national income to 18.9 percent. This left more money for people to save and invest. Compare Japan's situation with the United States, where the proportion rose from 28.5 percent to 31.3 percent. Interestingly, Japan's two decades of greatest postwar growth were also its decades of lowest taxes. During the seventies, as Japan's taxes rose to 22.8 percent of national income in 1980, real GNP growth declined to only 4.8 percent. Higher taxes weren't the only reason for this deteriorating performance, of course; oil price increases also contributed.
This graph demonstrates how much lower social welfare spending used to be in Japan:
ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun
@@AminCad If you read the article that you linked - the issue I have is that there is high savings. That was government policy. It was not voluntary.
The author of that article seems to be one of those conservative types that doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that a big government played a big role in Japan's growth, but even he has to admit that high savings was responsible.
In regards to social spending, the purpose is not so much growth as much as it is shared prosperity. When nations experience strong economic growth, conservatives generally want to increase inequality by making the rich richer and screwing over the working/middle class, whereas the left wants to uplift the working class.
Inequality has actually risen in Japan with the failing economic prosperity, and that is an impediment to growth. Even so, Japan remains a more egalitarian society than the US and it's actually fallen since the peak.
Another problem is that there should be a consistent pattern of "small, low tax government". All of the big growth from East Asia - Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (if that's a nation), and now China, have had large governments that took a very controlling manner over industry.
So no, I read through the article, it sounds more like "small government fiscal conservative cope" rather than a real case against a government with a strong industrial policy. I see a lot of very similar cope these days in trying to explain China's growth as well, which flies in the face of Western economics.
@@crazyelf1
"That was government policy. It was not voluntary. "
Something being government policy is not mutually exclusive with it being voluntary, and in the case of the policy that encouraged high savings, it was not. People were free to choose whether to save or not. They had the added incentive to save because some savings policies had tax exemptions. So the government had removed a disincentive to save created by nonvoluntary taxation.
"In regards to social spending, the purpose is not so much growth as much as it is shared prosperity. "
Well, rising social spending is going to hurt economic development, and nothing helps the poor as much as economic development. The left wing political narrative simply doesn't want to contend with this fact, so it engages in a lot of evasion and mental gymnastics to avoid doing so.
"conservatives generally want to increase inequality by making the rich richer and screwing over the working/middle class"
Sounds like you're another victim of indoctrination by the government-employed class. It's the government linked sector of the economy that benefits most from rising social welfare spending:
www.hoover.org/research/california-state-government-workers-earn-143000-twice-much-private-sector-workers#
And it's the one that spreads these absurd conspiracy theories to vilify a free society and those who champion it.
@@AminCad "Something being government policy is not mutually exclusive with it being voluntary, and in the case of the policy that encouraged high savings, it was not. "
The Asian governments have a policy of suppressing consumption. It's a way to increase the amount of money for capital goods. It's not voluntary in the sense that paying one's taxes is not voluntary. It's part of the industrial policy that they used.
If it were a weak welfare state that caused growth, a lot of third world nations have a weak welfare state. Why don't they have the growth levels that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc, had during their rapid growth period? Why don't they outperform China today?
Social spending is necessary simply because high inequality is a drag on growth.
In the next couple of decades, we are going to see the US in rapid decline and China, although the rate of growth is slowing as the nation gets wealthier, overtake the US. China is going to do it with a "big government".
@@crazyelf1
"The Asian governments have a policy of suppressing consumption. It's a way to increase the amount of money for capital goods."
Japan didn't have a consumption tax in the era being discussed, so there was no policy to suppress consumption.
People naturally save when there is little social welfare spending, because they look to themselves, instead of a large unwiedly state, to be their safety net. The inverse relationship between social welfare spending and the savings rate is well studied phenomenon, and so the only way in which Japan encouraged savings is by NOT disincentivizing it with misguided social welfare programs.
"If it were a weak welfare state that caused growth, a lot of third world nations have a weak welfare state. Why don't they have the growth levels that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc, had during their rapid growth period?"
1. Many of them do. There is a strong inverse correlation between government spending and economic growth, and the largest component of government spending is social welfare spending. This component has already been widely observed to produce the fewest positive economic returns.
2. Of course low social welfare spending levels is not the ONLY factor that contributes to economic development. The Asian Tigers had many other factors working in their favor as well. But low levels of social welfare spending was one of the biggest, if not the biggest one.
"Why don't they outperform China today?"
China has very low social welfare spending levels as a percentage of GDP, much lower than the US and most other OECD countries.
"Social spending is necessary simply because high inequality is a drag on growth."
This is nothing more than an article of faith, so you can cling to your discredited social democratic narrative. China produced more billionaires than any country on Earth over the last 30 years, and simultaneously produced massive economic and wage growth for the masses.
"China is going to do it with a "big government"."
China only began to grow rapidly when it embarked on massive pro-market reforms:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
Loooved this video specifically. Very well done!
So a big take away from this (and other historical examinations) is that it's better to create an environment where more spontaneous and meritorious market forces can determine the accumulation of commercial power, rather than a state-dominated economy essentially handing the keys over to a handful of families.
Still, the auctioning off process is probably essential for any state-controlled industrial system, so being an important step (Japan did experience some of the best growth in the world 1890-1930), perhaps the question becomes A: how to better handle the initial privatization process, and B: failing that, make sure you can restructure the political economy away from their exclusive control, at some point in the medium-term future, which ofc Russia has failed to do.
Thx for the summary.
Yes, less federal government, less lobbyist control.
it is one if the ironies in modern economic debates, because communists demand the most government involvement their systems end up functionally working like monarchies, socialists, who demand less government involvement than communists, create systems that functionally work like mercantilist systems, and as these two groups push for more government regulations in originally fairly capitalist systems they create systems with more mega corporations and fewer small buisnesses.
@@vidard9863 my guy I'm not sure you know what either communism or socialism is. All of the "communist" nations you are thinking of are socialist nations. The "socialist" nations your likely thinking of are capitalist "social democracies"
There are no communist countries. Every country that is run by communists calls themselves a socialist nation. It's us westerners who can barely speak our own language that label them communist.
Communism is the mode of production in which there is neither class, state, or monetary exchange.
Socialism, is the transitionary state from capitalism to communism. It's when the working class seizes the state, and then uses the power of the state to seize the means of production. And works towards developing those means of production to the point of satisfying the material requirements for communism. The state of socialism is not the desired end state of being and is definitely a system marked by numerous contradictions due to it having adopted the inequalities of capitalism.
I believe there is a fascinating story about Korea's industrialization involving the government and the popular mobilization of capital.
For some reason, West Germany recruited nurses and miners from Korea. Their earnings were repatriated to Korea. The S. Korean government used this inflow of currency to help finance the early construction of its steel industry. See 5 minute and 41 seconds portion of this video:
th-cam.com/video/bJ0hMr5TSkI/w-d-xo.html
@Matthew Park Your explanation makes sense. The video I posted says the repatriated wages were used to guarantee loans. So it makes sense that West Germany would have made the loans.
@Matthew Park Incorrect. The biggest influx of capital came from the US when S. Korea helped the US fight the Vietnam War, which is what jump-started the Chaebols and infrastructure spending under Park Jung Hee. Japan similarly got a windfall during the Korean War.
The Philippines was the second richest country in Asia after Japan in the 1960s
@Matthew Park
Wrong, the Philippines was doing quite well in the 50s and 60s until when Marcos stiffled the free market by installing cronies to run the economy and began procuring a shit ton of debt.
Also unlike South Korea and Japan, the Philippines was and is still dealing with a Maoist and Jihadist insurgencies which didnt help.
Sumitomo group. One of the big 4. They are a huge company, second largest real-estate company by volume in Japan, second largest titanium company, 3rd biggest steel producer by volume, 4th biggest glass producer by value. Glass is of course much more different from steel and titanium.
... and I like their tires.
The brake system on my 1992 GT-R is from Sumitomo lol.
Dunlop's Asian motorcycle tires are made by sumitomo, mind blown!
So capital concentration leads no monopolies that leads to inefficiency. At the start a company's verticalization seems to be an asset, but as the company grows it squeezes out competition, leading to fewer players which leads to inefficiencies. Those compound, creating a bloated entity, capable of killing off what could replace it, and at best being stuck in a local maximum.
Nice abstraction 👍
kind of sounds like local governments / political positions that have a near steady revenue growth but little accountability except for politics.
Excellent History lesson, is been a trend through time in most countries that when a few people control and have the power to steer the economy, they will do it for their own benefit to the detriment of the country and humanity in general, we saw it in Italy with the Medici, in England with the Devons and Suttons or the US with the Robber Barons of the time Vanderbilt, Ford, Carnegie.
To much power, combined with greed with no depth and a total disregard for fellow humans and you have the dark side of what can become of Humanity.
"Greatly reduced " basically means still rich. In the "good old days," America corporations were taxed at 60 %.
People now complain the economy but do not vote to increase corp. taxes. The adage about history being forgotten is true. Thanks for posting.
Corporations just collect taxes from their customers
@@floydlooney6837 Yes and instead of passing down their savings from their low taxes to customers (Trickle Down Theory) Corp.s keep the extra money for the Corp.
@Remy HocAge Which has everything to do with meaningless government regulation, creating the issue to begin with. Your arguing low corporate tax doesn't work when less government involvement does work. Corporations love rules and taxes. Means nobody else can get big enough to play the game with them. Sound familiar?
too much ignorance, first Corporate tax is stupid, as you cannot tax corporations, you are taxing the customers. Better to tax them directly, it is much more reliable and honest. Floydlooney6837 is correct. Trickle down is NOT removing tax from corporations, that is ignorant, it IS investment, when investment occurs then the entire economy improves at all levels, like it did under Reagan, until Bill Clinton sent it to china, where is has been doing quite well, the average living standard for chinese citizens has exploded. Trump did it for a short time when he lowered the repatriation tax, that is how he earned record government revenues until the democrat covid lockdowns. and lastly, when the government is doing it's job, it eliminates monopolies, Disney buying Lucas Marvel and FOX, should NEVER have been allowed, nor them having Disney Plus. Soon that will be broken up, it needs to be very soon. without real competition, everyone loses.
@@MrMichaelBCurtis Disney taking on that much debt was also stupid. Government should not bail them out.
This is an excellent video. But it left a wrong impression. The centralization and modernization of Japan actually increased financial burden of the country. The previous samurai class despite enjoyed privileges, also lowered the burden of commoners in defense services. Once military service became commonplace, war became total and everyone must pay and bleed.
So it's trading prosperity for military service. Also, the Samurai class represented a dying way of war. Even Russia beat them.
was the last financial overthrow after ww2?
Actually it’s missing more context
Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists.
This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen?
“Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?”
Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
@@mattslowikowski3530 I don't remember one time the Russian had a conflict with Japanese Samurais.
@@silent_stalker3687 You need to study the history of Japan under Tokugawa shogunate
. It was by no means a time of no development. Business flourished. Arts flourished. The famous Japanese painter KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI lived under that era. And he combined western style with eastern style in his work - which means information flowed freely and cultural exchange happened.
In the small town of Montesano, the local government also own all the local restaurants. That is due to the fact that they deny any and all permits/applications for new food businesses to open up within the city limits. They’ve done somewhat of the same thing with the town of Elma, the next town over which extended the amount of dining establishments they can have a monopoly on. They allowed a Starbucks and Burger king in order to avoid any prying eyes into their scheme even though it’s a well known secret, and they put the two right next to each other and in a terrible area to get to.
What county what state?
@@paularatadba5835 Grays Harbor County, Washington State
This was outstanding man thanks for sharing! I love coming across random videos from people I haven’t heard of before and learning so much! You got a new sub for sure! I look forward to watching more of your videos.
Unquestionably one of the most informative videos about Japan that I have ever had the pleasure to watch. Kudos to you. Lunch is on me if I ever get to Taipei, where you are.
thank you, love your posts.
The part about "acquire and master western technology" did not start under MITI, it started right away in 1870, and was the driving characteristic of the Meiji restauration.
...so it can be argued that the post-WWII export oriented industrialist economy would have happened under the Zaibatsi just as well.
Already by the 1920s was Japan outcompeting Britain and America in certain economic sectors (innovation, market prices). Then, the 1929 crash happened and followed with the "ABCD" countries turning to protectionism, essentially dooming Japanese growth. The imperialist "Co-prosperity sphere" was not only seeking resource extraction, but to penetrade literal barriers at the behest of Japanese export-industrial interests.
@@c.m.bellman5721👍
South Korea is a good example of an export oriented industrialist economy that still maintained their Zaibatsu (chaebols).
This channel has an impressively diverse knowledge of the eastern countries. How long has the moderator been living in Taiwan?
@Stellvia J Hoenheim Yes the Republic of China, with it's capital in Taipei.
@Stellvia J Hoenheim Get out, bot.
@Stellvia J Hoenheim What is China?
@Stellvia J Hoenheim 50 cent army joins the debate
@Stellvia J Hoenheim No they're in Taiwan, not West Taiwan
What type of books do these TH-camrs read??? I find this type of topics so amazing.... would highly appreciate any book recommendation
Ikr... But if you search deep enough they make themselves evident. A free JSTOR account could provide you with all these interesting views
@@mwanikimwaniki6801 what is jstor account??
dude that was fucking brilliant ty! ive lived in japan now 10 years, an american.. this is the first time ive gotten some real understanding of important japanese financial history, very eye opening, very interesting. the one thing you didnt really mention here that you hinted on, was the zatsu companies, were the ones who were creating the war mongering, and the invasions, and wars etc. the govt realized this, and took them out because of this. just curious why you didnt touch a bit more on this?
Thanks for making this video! It was very interesting!
Wonderful! This episode tells some of the secrets of the early success of the Japanese. But Japan is too sticky a nation now to move forward swiftly. This is a competitive world, even for the once miraculous Japanese.
Japanese companies have stashed away huge amount of cash and assets that keeps growing and doesn't invest much in anything. That is the big problem for Japan. Majority of Japanese business man have such a mentality of hoarding for difficult times ahead.
@@boycottnok1466 Because "Deflation"
Japan's economy is structured poorly and always has been in the post war era. Their miracle recovery in the post war era had a lot to do with foreign capital and the construction boom. Sure, a centrally planned economy can do amazing things in the short term. But eventually the bill has to be paid. The 30 years of stagnation and plummeting birth rates (people don't have kids when they work themselves to death and don't even earn anywhere close to Western incomes) is cost of the fast growth of the post war time frame.
@@boycottnok1466 I think the West is falling into this situation also.
@@joseph1150 foreign capital is insignificant in Japanese History, you are totally wrong about it
Interesting, although making the Japanese technology drive the result of "eating the rich" is really far-fetched.
1. You don't get a large population of electronics-wise people merely by transferring the economic decisions from oligarchs to the administration
2. The viedo itself shows that the zaibatsu had succeeded in adapting to dwindling rent revenues, and aggressively diversifying their businesses
Thus I did not watch anything in the video that indicates that the zaibatsu could not have fueled growth based on exporting electronics.
There is an argument to the geography, history and culture of the japanese people being responsible for this adaptation capability.
And yes the Meiji experience would prove that the japanese society responds well to changes brought by a centralized authority.
It doesn't mean this is the only way they can succeed.
I ask around if someone wants some nice Recommendations,
whetever it's about the Topi of Science or Atheism or Socialism
or just the vague 'Concept' of 'Tackling Issues'.
You get a large proportion of educated people by... spending resources on educating them rather than on making a small group of people richer than god.
@@louisholden5127 Dismantling the Zaibatsu and starting a mass education policy are two different, unrelated things.
I love your point especially no.1 because I would say that Japan got lucky that Sony's success literally pioneered/spearheaded this electronics export revolution. Had they not taken a risk and made a product so compelling with those small radios, Japan's miracle would have been very different.
Anti-trust and de-monopolization laws are already on the books in the US. Its almost of if the people setting up the system knew what they were doing. Now if we could only get our government to actually enforce those rules instead of accepting bribes to look the other way. Lefties want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I for one have no interest in giving an already corrupt government more money and power.
Yet another great contribution to knowledge. Thank you John!
Great content! Thank you for this!
1:20 Tokugawa Ieyasu wasn't the first Shogun. There's disagreement who first held the title but the first Shogun who was also the de facto ruler of the country was Minamoto no Yoritomo.
My bad. Cancel this video.
@@Asianometry Actually very serious mistake. Really makes your credibility to drop.
@@Asianometry Come on man, that was constructive criticism. Don't be resentful of correction, it's how we all learn.
@@rowbearly6128 Pretty obvious he meant "first Tokugawa Shogun".
Also just because someone have a bit of humor doesn't mean the criticism was not taken.
He meant first Shogun after Sengokujidai.
Seemingly some similarities to China's recent moves on the large tech companies
None of these tech companies can be compared to these families very different model none of them was that rich to begin with they made it themselves not as a family business... and the attacks are targetting members of a different faction... this is political infighting and china is doing a bad job at it... look at the losses
@@h3egypt watch china video about tech on this channel
@@h3egypt You do need to understand the basis of the Chinese govt is not Capitalism but Socialism. They stepped in to prevent any company from growing into out-of-control, not unlike the anti-trust law.
@@fanllawf they stepped in because the tech entrepreneur's are friends with the Jiang zemin faction... Xi is just trying to consolidate his power
@@h3egypt No, what’s happened there is what capitalism should do and stop monopolies happening. Much like the UK should have done, instead of whinging about say the high streets drying for years the government there should have smashed Amazon down but didn’t.
This is a fantastic documentary! It brings to light an aspect of the Japanese economy about which I had no idea - and I’ve read lots about Japanese history. Congratulations on the great research you did for this video and on the way you put it together!
Great video, but you NEVER let us know what they tasted like! (Very interesting choice of words for the video description!
The consequences given are without any data, pure conjectures. Impossible to say whether family control would have been any worse for Japanese economy. As we know, Chaebols were key to growth of Korea.
yeah we should definitely have a few super rich families leading countries…
@@jolopopo6442 video shows how the government created Zaibatsus because it couldn't create wealth. No government can create wealth, it has to be a private enterprise. Feudal societies lacked merit structures, but now Capitalists have taken thale rule of Zaibatsus.
Every country (not just few) should indeed have Capitalists. How rich they get should be left to their abilities.
@@jolopopo6442 Thats already how it works anyway
Chaebols were not really a key to South Koreas growth when it grew when half the economy was in State hands during the Park Era from 1961-1980.
Hey there! I suggest adding some movement to your pictures like a slow zoom instead of have it static!
Thanks for the tip.
Nope, I like the static pictures !, Makes me focus more on the narration and eggs me to listen more attentively. Which I think is more important than distractingly moving pictures.
Really enjoyed this video. Totally reminds me of the book ‘How Asia Works’ by Joe Studwell. This however gave a lot more colour to how this redistribution of wealth kicked off in Asia, and really set the scene for how the rest of Asia would shaped by the economic processes demonstrated in Japan.
Also landed flat on its face after the kicking off.
@@max4750 Why are you so mad about this video stfu 🤣
I read, enjoyed and learned a lot from that book but doesn't seem to aline with this video.
Studwell argues the first step must be land reform which this American seems reluctant to support.
it is a thoroughly false narrative, that ignores secret societies like freemasonry, monarchy, and the petrodollar.
Petrodollar is like a machine: a modern economy needs oil. oil is sold only in US dollars. to get US dollars you need to sell stuff in US dollars or borrow them from World Bank. this makes the US financian entities the global hub for merchandise. Oil is controlled through OPEC cartel. Arab monarchs controlled by the Holy Roman Empire - Elizabeth 2 von Saxe Gotha, queen of UK is of the Wettin family, emperors of Holy Roman Empire.
Duke of Kent, cousin of Elizabeth 2 is the GM of freemasonry in UK.
So the mechanism, the machine, the circuit is, Japan's economy has been fused to the economy of the West - a generic term deisgnating the Empire, the Republic, the Banks, Guilds, Military orders aso.
So the reason no.1 for Japan's export was the need of the West of setting up a manufacturing colony in a 2nd or 3rd world.
Japan proved to be too small for what the West needed, so they set up other colonies, with China being the most successful.
The idea that "Japan(who dafuq is "Japan") ate "her" rich" is a caricature for kids. read Il Principe by Machiavelli.
Japan is the families. All territories are administered by certain families.
The history of Japan is the families of Japan were brought into submission to the families of Europe.
Great video, John. Let me know when you are back in SoCal and we can grab a bit.
It's always about how the government can keep everything together.
A corrupt government lets other countries treat their people like slaves.
A neglectful government allows the free market to own most of the wealth, property, and jobs.
A responsible government makes sure companies don't drain their resources and affect standard living conditions.
Underrated comment
Yes! Best video ever. This is why Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and Russia will never get rich - wealth remain stagnant in the hands of the elite. These families spend their time and effort keeping the poor down so that there is no competition to their conglomerates.
Exactly. America got so succesfull in the first place, because of the massive decentralization the country went through.
Monopolies hurt the economy, and monopolies dont work. China sooner or later is gonna figure that out, but right now, we gotta fix up our own countries.
Interesting stuff. Time to subscribe 😀
The point you're trying to make starts to fall apart in the broader context of the American occupation and the Cold War. Japan never ate its rich, the US did. The US took down the aristocracy and the oligarchs to destroy the power base that enabled Japan to be an Empire. The devastation from the war and the complete dismantling of Japan after WWII resulted in the Japanese people living in complete destitution for five years. Things only changed when Korean War spurred Japanese industry because it was more convenient and cheaper for the United States to just buy certain things from Japan than to make it themselves. The complete loss of China and the near loss of South Korea caused the United States to reevaluate its policy of combating communism, and a prosperous Japan looked to be the best route for the most strategic country in East Asia. These special privileges that enabled Japan to rise so much were rescinded in the 1990s. This was one of the contributing factor for the complete stalling of Japan's economy for the last three decades.
@TacticalMoonstone they had no choice, they had dumped massive low cost products subsidized by the government in the us, destroyed or acquired us competition and then raised prices. The Us tolerated this during the Cold War. Once the Soviets disintegrated, Japan had to face the consequences.
@@Pqndchannel Face the consequences? Nobody forced Americans to buy their shit, competition shouldn't be banned, especially if it's from an unsustainable economy, that's just an opportunity. America just acted as if it was capitalist while pushing socialism across the world, fully willing to sell out it's own people to earn profits for special interests.
@TacticalMoonstone Puppet states generally can't disagree with the master state.
Not only that, but most of the Zaibatsu families eventually regained prominence within the economy as the US transitioned away from direct rule of Japan. The only thing that really happened was that capital was reallocated based on American geopolitical goals, but the same sets of oligarchs retained political power.
Facinating how the occupation {partially) inadvertently set the stage for an economic growth model that set the stage for East Asian development...during the 60s and 70s economic development theory was focused on the need for "capital formation" but in fact it was the equalization of income distribution that gave Japan a fresh start..
Are you trying to say that the "need for capital formation" and capitalism, in general, weren't the reason for the economic development in most East Asian countries? Because then you would be kind of wrong. Because throughout the 60s and 70s state capitalism and capital formation is actually what led to Japan's economic miracle (not to forget US aid obviously), equalization and income distribution was never major concern that led to the development. It was more of a bonus aftermath.
this is different from eat the rich. This is actually just called anti-trust or competition and alternatives. This is a Libertarian idea.
Eat the rich is different as that is more accurately put in with Chinese Maoist communist where you actively get rid of anyone in the upper class and middle class, then seize their property for the state to be redistributed--often not fairly.
A monopoly does the same damage regardless of whether it is owned by state or owned privately or by conglomerates.
came here to say essentially this, thank you for saving me the time
I'm seeing a lot of comments that are saying "no, really, 'eat the rich' can mean peaceful reform! Trust me!" It's awfully looking like gaslighting to me.
The heads of the Zaibatsu were, '...sucked like meat from an Alaskan king crab leg at a boiling crab restaurant in Southern California' has to be the clumsiest metaphor I've ever heard. A smile for your simile! : )
This video's title is misleading. Japan didn't "eat their rich"; they had their rich's wealth forcefully taxed and redistributed BY ANOTHER COUNTRY.
Very impressive research you did over there, this is one of best videos of yours, I almost have no clue what's happened to Japanese economy in the past, but this impressed me more, how well organized their country were specially the government, it wasn't playing negative role like the rest of 3rd world countries(since i live in one).
because the 3rd world leader treats themself as the new colonial master. The problem is they have ideological control whether it's nationalism or religious fervor. It's a total joke, especially after the end of the cold war when all of sudden the oligarch decided to adopt popular vote-democracies to dup people even more and kept some religious fanatics as their pets to draw votes.
@@hilmansudirman9857 I don't what's happened I post reply but either it was deleted or YT hide it, anyway looks this is not the place to discuss something like this, since many don't like saying the truth.
me: surely he's not talking about literal cannibalism?
also me: could be, Japan has some crazy stories
Thank you for an informative, detailed video.
Thank you very much for this, I've been interested in the Zaibatsu for quite a while and this video gives a lot of context I didn't know
Fascinating video as always. You mentioned a parallel to Germany's industrialists. You should read Vampire Economy, it outlines the role of the industrialists in the German wartime economy and I suspect a similar thing went on in the Japanese economy. Keep up the amazing videos!
but isn't it ironic how during the catch-up strategy, the government "created" super-star companies that were basically government-backed monopolies run by the same zaibatsu that were removed a few decades earlier?
It seems we need to do a little Eating The Rich here also~!!! Great video and very informative~! New Sub.
The speed at which Japan adapted was impressive, only the smartest peoples can pull this off.
So... what exactly did it do for Japan again? I wish you spent more time talking about the actual effects hinted at in the title, the answer kinda got lost in the rest of it. The whole video was spent explaining the history of how the families got so wealthy in the first place, how and why the government did something about it, and how it effected the families and their companies. It was 2/3 of the way through before you even mentioned breaking up the trusts; it just seemed like a lot of this could have been left out or quickly summarized. To me, the history behind it is greatly secondary to the actual effects, which you hardly even talked about in your misleadingly titled video. The history isn't particularly useful because it can never be replicated, but the greater results and implications can be replicated, which could prove very useful in places that still have massive trusts and insurmountable financial inequality, which includes many places indeed, including the US. Did all that tax money improve the lives of ordinary Japanese citizens? Did the trust-busting help lower prices for consumers and ease competition? Was the government able to offer any new programs or benefits? If you didn't want to talk about this stuff, that's fine, but you should have titled your video to reflect the fact that you just wanted to talk about the context behind it.
There was a ton of interesting information in that video, but it did very little in the way of making a case for "what eating the rich did for Japan". If anything the many many other factors touched on in this video make it exceptionally unclear.
Also, hyperinflation. The thing the video credited with most of the wealth destruction isn't a good thing for anyone, and I would assume not intentionally done just to stick it to the rich. It sounds more to me like the country was terrible mismanaged and screwed up it's whole economy and monetary system including but not limited to that of the wealthy, then managed to bring it back later.
I'm not sure if this is an attempt to justify theft from the wealthy or just a weakly supported piece of click bait.
amazing commentary thank you!
A lesson for the rest of us: eat the rich; or rather: give them a massive haircut once in a while...
Very true -- don't want to get indigestion.
but first we need to invade China
The problem is the real rich aren’t even listed and you can’t find them. Sure you can get Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Page, Brian, and Ellison, but what about the house of Saud, Rothschild, Putin, Assad, or Mubarak because they aren’t ever mentioned in wealthiest people lists strangely
@@Wogix26 prob cause they write the lists
@@Retrofire-47 that and the most effective form of control is to never be known. If something goes bad it wasn’t them.
Thank you for this brilliant, thorough yet concise exegesis of Japan's rise from it's humiliation at the end of the rural/feudal Tokugawa Period, though the Meiji Restoration, up through to the present day. Reminds me, in a good way, of the year I spent in my Far Eastern Civilization class at the University of Chicago in 1979-1980. Again, thank you. (I've subscribed.)
I don't think you know what the term "exegesis" means.
I really liked that this video answered its premise in a satisfying way. The conclusion I can draw from this video is that Japan “eating its rich” prospered in the long term by focusing on the export market that elevated Japan’s standing in the world and led to levels of GDP wealth previously unknown to it. To put it another way the Japan we know today wouldn’t exist if the zaibatsu families had been allowed continue increasing wealth inequality.
There’s a certain Economics channel that I won’t mention by name that prides itself on Explaining things that rarely ends its analysis videos with a conclusion I can hang my hat on. But even worse can be a bit sloppy with its data and analysis.
Actually no it doesn’t.
Japan had 250 years of no war- but because people were afraid to stand out because it was very traditionalist and absolutists.
This also meant for no developments for 250 years until they were conquered- which then lead into all types of shake ups and… yeah 250 year old stuff being removed- what do you think would happen?
“Hey let’s hunt with muskets and see how many deer we can bag- what’s that sound?”
Twin mini guns mounted on helicopters winding up….
So unless we’re gonna be opened up to the world 250 years ahead of us instantly that isn’t happening.
This is in incredibly interesting, thank you!!!
Being a vital forward base, repair shop, and the huge logistics storage area needed to
support the UN fighting needed to free South Korea from North Korean aggression led
to strict practicality in getting Japan back to work. The time allowed for slow, Utopian
musings about how the future was to be organized had disappeared.
i read a book by a toyota family member and he basically said japan was saved by the korean war
Thank you for the video. it was great. I can't help to wonder what's going on in Japan in the political realm at the same time, especially when they start to even out the inequilty, the political figures at that time. Thank you again