Socialism is state-controlled means of production, IIRC.
they're conservative, in the sense they don't like change, but that ain't nothin to do w/ Karl M
AFAIK, the means of production (large ones, not a one-man-tailor-shop) were never controlled by the workers, except maybe in the extremely short periods of anarchism.
But I think it's pretty normal to see Socialism as State-owned means of production. Trust your bureaucrats!
[0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Marxian-communism
I don't know if Capitalist is the best word for Japan, because those weird centuries-old Samurai families / companies are just an alien concept to Western-language. Yes, Zaibatsu is kinda-sorta like a Western Company or Corporation, but not really.
If I were forced to put Japan on the Capitalist vs Communist axis, I'd say the proliferation of Zaibatsu clearly put them towards Capitalist slant (ie: private entities who control large sums of wealth). But its very different than Western societies or our concept of companies. The values system of a Zaibatsu / Japanese century-old company is very different from the values system of a traditional American mega-corp.
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Going back to this topic: Nintendo itself was founded in 1889, during this rise of the Meiji Era and Zaibatsu (though I don't think Nintendo ever grew to the size large enough to be considered a Zaibatsu... it grew up and existed in the era of such beasts).
Due to the emphasis of longevity and company values, Japan has odd traditions. Such as the concept of adult-adoption, where some Fathers (often businessmen in charge of a 200, 300+ year old company) will adopt 20 to 30+ year olds with the expectation that these adults will take over a family business.
Does this make Japan more capitalist or socialist? Well, neither. Its just different and probably best to try to not bring Western axis (like Capitalism vs Socialism) to describe their society.
Japanese society from Meiji era onward was undoubtably influenced by the British (Japan studied the history of the other "industrialized island", and used Britain as the basis for their new government / theories). And later, when USA took over and occupied after WW2, Japan further was influenced by USA. As such, I really do think they're more capitalist if we had to pick capitalism vs socialism.
Instead of "my half-understanding of Ricardo means I'm sure this will make us all better off" free trade and laissez-faire domestic economic policies, they pursued lopsided (export-focused) trade, plus heavy government intervention and public-private partnerships aimed at accelerating technological development and reducing domestic technical competition among the zaibatsu, in order to make them more competitive in foreign markets. Their "miracle" economy spanning decades involved a ton of government guidance and spending and seemingly-weird shit like deliberately keeping domestic prices higher than they otherwise could have been—with the guidance part maybe being the most surprising bit, to those who've internalized certain limited ideas about what can and (surely!) cannot work well in economic policy.
It worked incredibly well and was the first draft of what would become the blueprint for the "Asian Tiger" economic strategy.
[EDIT] Big deviation in the postwar era and (kinda) up to today, I mean. Obviously it was doing some different stuff during and before WWII.
This gets confused for socialism because when action happens, everyone is on the same page and working to support the action. Before that point, there are lots of meeting and discussions to create harmony and make sure that everyone agrees with the action. Sometimes this is lead bottom up, workers will get an idea and circulate it to get everyone's buy in but without the upper management's approval, no one will try an idea for fear of causing offense. Which leads me in to how they are very authoritarianism, if the boss tells you a poster is blue not green, everyone will agree that it is blue. Only after the boss is gone will people stand around and question the edict.
If you look at how Toyota reacted to electric vehicles, someone did not like the idea or their pet project was fuel cells and that is the direction they took for a long time, rather than hedge their bets and split focus that is what they were committed to and now they are late to the EV party where they had a large head start with the Prius.
A job would look like a dead-end only if you hate it.
Kind of an extreme example, but it illustrates the point well: that one forgotten employee from the infamous reddit thread[0] who got hired, the company had a mismanagement shitshow, and he eventually ended up having no manager and no assignments/work for months. He realized they just forgot about him and continued showing up to work to just play games and relax by himself, all while collecting the paycheck for over a year. IIRC he mentioned enjoying this, but worrying about what could happen if they “unforget” about him. That situation was a classic example of a dead-end job, even though OP was having a good time at first.
P.S. The original threat wasn’t the most popular one, but the follow up to it with how he eventually got found out (about a year after the original post) was massive[1].
If you love your job, you wouldn't want to go anywhere else or "progress" in your career. BTW, what is that "progress" in a career? Endless better pay? Longer job title? More work? More difficult work? Switch to management (that's a different career to me)?
The example is not relevant. That's not a dead-end job. If there's no work, then that's no longer a job at all.
but there are a lot of other negative effects. being stuck in a dead-end job is a common issue for example.
of course, i am heavily generalising here, so grain of salt and all of that.