Fair point. What if you start completely naked, with no master and no connections? As a banker, I see two main paths for "Outsiders":

1. *The "Inheritance" Route (Muko-yoshi / M&A):* As I mentioned, you can inherit an existing engine. In Japan, "Shinise" with no successor often legally adopt talented outsiders as CEOs (Muko-yoshi). Or, you can buy the company. My job is often matching these "Old Trust" with "Young Energy".

2. *The "Newcomer" Route (Startup Support):* If you want to build from zero, the system actually protects you. Depending on the municipality, there are massive subsidies for startups. For example, "0% interest" and "0 guarantee fees" for the first 5 years.

    Culturally, we have a soft spot for the "Shinzan-mono" (Newcomer) who works hard. If you humbly present yourself as a beginner, the community and local government often step in to support you.
    Japan is strict with "Rude Outsiders," but surprisingly warm (Humanity) to "Sincere Beginners."

I understand your pessimism. Looking at the demographics, Japan seems to be in a "Game Over" state. I live in rural Gunma, surrounded by *empty houses (Akiya) and elderly people*, so I feel this reality every day.

However, living right in the middle of it, I have started to see it differently. Japan is running a global experiment: *"How to sustain a civilization without growth."*

As you said, if the world is finite (Zero Sum), then "Scale or Die" will eventually stop working physically for everyone. Every country will hit the same wall. We are just hitting it first. We are the *test subjects* to see if humans can mature into a "Steady State" or if we just collapse. I am here to document the result.

I doubt this is the reason. The fertility crisis is generally true of all developed, consumerist societies, including those you could call sloppy.

It is consumerism that is a culture killer and a fertility destroyer, and Japan is very consumerist. Consumerism reshapes a culture in its own image. Careerism and delayed pregnancy? Motivated by desire for money to consume. Limiting children? Motivated by the desire to restrict expenses on children so they can be diverted toward consumption. The habits consumerism instills makes the long game unattractive, because it takes away from your consumption now. Nothing is greater than consumption. Consumption is "status". Consumption is our god, but a nihilistic one that leads us toward death: personal, physical, familial, social, spiritual, and cultural.

If I were a satanic figure bent on destroying the human species, I would reach for consumerism without batting an eye. I would watch with satisfaction, relish, and verve as the human race liquidates and defiles itself.

Indeed, the way out of that is also broad collaboration, sometimes not peaceful or clean.

And the last century showed that this also works at a large scale, we all got a lot richer as a global community by letting poor countries develop and doing business with them, instead of exploiting them to death.

Yes, strongly believe this is the case. The corrupt leaders are rarely chosen by the people; they are installed by foreign powers. There are many cases you can dig into which are absolutely atrocious; like people getting paid big money by western leaders to assassinate their friends to take power and pass laws which facilitate the extraction of resources by foreign corporations.

Like the story of Thomas Sankara's assassination by his trusted childhood friend Blaise Compaoré is quite disturbing. It seems like Compaoré was leader for a very long time and is still in politics... I cannot think of a more morally deprived individual. If game theory was as claimed; nobody should want to work with such deeply disloyal and psychopathic individual. It's just like I say; people have a strong tolerance, even attraction to abusers. If you look at the real story, you notice this pattern over and over... but we are so badly gaslit about such things (aka 'PR') that we don't notice.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/thumbnail/self-reported-t...

Pretty clear trend: low-trust societies have low gdp and high-trust societies have high gdp, regardless of resource distribution. Africa/South America are resource rich, japan/iceland are resource poor.

I didn't mean it so literally. Having robust taxation and well supported institutions is what I mean by "broad collaboration" and an effective "culture", as in a social operating-system a set of values and habits, that continually support and self-heal such constructions.

I don't meant that everybody should be nice, and that poor countries are somehow culturally nasty, absolutely not. Real collaboration cannot be just founded on morals and good faith, it's not sustainable, it's more about incentives engineering.

In terms of references, the main one that comes to mind is the economics Nobel price from 2024: "for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity".

> the number one way to avoid corruption is to pay public servants handsomely such that the job rivals the private sphere

if this is true, then the public servant would earn only till he becomes rich equivalent to private sphere job. but nope, they go all the way in.

My point (and Plato's) was rather that some people will definitely cheat, because it's locally rational, and it's actually better for everyone if they are "classy" about it and don't flaunt it too much. A minority will get away with terrible things, but somewhat bounded by conspicuousness, and at least the majority remains blissfully (willfully?) unaware and propping up the civilized system which is so much better for all of us.

It is quite a cynical point of view of course. It's a hard balance, when it gets bad sometimes it's better to air the dirty laundry and go through the pain of purging those cheaters.

But the worse thing is to have people be loud and proud cheaters, which is happening more and more. That's a deadly virus to a civilized society, everyone starts thinking they are dumb for not cheating, and we quickly go back to the dark ages.

It's a bit like calling out the bank for being a fraud because they don't have all the money in a vault, and rushing to get your cash out. If people start taking the red pill and shouting that society is just a game of pretend, which it kind of is, then our very real prosperity can vanish overnight.

> For example, Christians turning a blind eye to certain negative character traits of God as he appears in the old testament.

If I were to extend your analogy, the problem in modern world has become aggresive. E.g. you have committed a crime or fraud. Everyone else has proved decisively and beyond doubt that you have committed fraud such that it has become common knowledge. yet the justice system isn't acting. In a sense, you are taunting and teasing me, "what you gonna do about it?" This is inviting violence. The guy killing insurance company CEO has exactly this line of thinking.

> Evolution does not work maximizing individual success.

Yes it does. In fact, unless you want to get nit-picky about intra-gene, inter-allele selection, that is _exactly_ what it does.

But it does? What do you think it optimizes other than individual fitness?

I think I understand the GP pretty well. Cheating, or defection in the language of evolutionary theory, is subject to frequency based selection, meaning it is strongly selected against if its frequency is too high in the population. It's not a stable strategy.

It can be a winning strategy for a few individuals in a cooperative environment, yes, but it breaks down at a point because the system collapses if too many do it.

And yet, cooperative systems are common and stable, which is my point.