An Insight Contained in a Paragraph Written about the Economic Collapse of Japanese Electronics Companies May also Apply to the Republican Party’s Future in the United States — the Price of Narrowness

© 2012 Peter Free

 

24 December 2012

 

 

From world dominance to junk bond status — a cautionary cross-cultural parable?

 

Michael Penn wrote:

 

The hard truth is that Japanese electronics companies have done nothing more than tread water for a decade and a half, as Gerhard Fasol, founder and CEO of Eurotechnology Japan, points out.

 

National champions such as Sony Corporation and the Panasonic Corporation recently suffered the indignity of having their credit ratings lowered to "junk status" by Fitch, a move that may be followed by other ratings agencies in the near future.

 

Fasol observes that "All the board members are Japanese men in their 60s and 70s. All the core members are Japanese and anybody who is not Japanese is automatically a second-class citizen in these companies."

 

Michael Penn, The mighty downfall of Japan's tech giants, Al Jazeera (22 December 2012)

 

It does not take much imagination to recognize that the United States’ Republican Party has done essentially the same thing, when it comes to keeping up with the cultural evolution spawned by changing American demographics.

 

 

The moral? — These days, enforced homogeneity isolates

 

Isolation breeds irrelevance.