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Now you seem to be attributing safety in Japan not to monoculture but to /Japanese/ culture. Fair enough.

Yes I wasn't careful enough in my writing. I mean to say that monoculture allows you to optimize around your values. Lowest common denominator sounds too judgmental but I mean it in the set-theory kind of way. I probably should just have said "common values".

what would happen if 10 million Japanese moved to Bangladesh, making it more multicultural? Would it be a less "efficient" culture?

Yes, I think there would be certain generalizations that you could no longer depend on being true. I don't know what they would be. Maybe it would be better, maybe worse. Maybe it would be you would have to order a wider variety of food at your wedding to make everyone happy. I don't know. I would say that's a reduction in efficiency.

I am aware of racism here and I don't think it's good. I don't think Japanese companies are economically efficient but they pretty good at reflecting Japanese values. I eat a restricted diet and it's an inconvenience that people assume that I just eat the standard issue Japanese cuisine. A lot of people complain about that but I understand why it is that way.

I don't see what is so controversial about what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that having to always be tolerant for the way other people do things trades something off compared to living where everyone already does things mostly the way you would.



I think I grok your meaning of "efficiency" now; I'm definitely not suggesting you are an intolerant person.

I would politely challenge, however, the idea that there's roughly equal virtue between Brooklyn-style embraced diversity vs Japan-style conformity. Not only does multiculturalism have a genuine moral attractiveness, which should not be dismissed, it makes for a stronger, more resilient country over the long term. Fresh ideas, fresh values, fresh labor, fresh taxpayers, fresh consumers, fresh inventors and indeed fresh culture are stengths that have been indispensable in allowing the U.S. to overcome its many deep (and often chronic) flaws and attain the level of economic and cultural success that it has. Similarly, a tendency toward xenophobia has hampered Japan's many intrinsic strengths, which have nevertheless been strong enough to set the country as an (oft misinterpreted) example of How To Win.

TLDR: Monoculture is a harmful, false optimization at the national level (though quite useful within, say, an apartment, church or startup incubator).


This reminded me of a quote from Shirow Masamune's Ghost In The Shell:

"No matter how powerful we may be fighting-wise, a system where all the parts react the same way is a system with a fatal flaw. Like individual, like organization. Overspecialization leads to death."




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