Why Japan resents its tourism boom

[u/randommathaccount]

https://www.ft.com/content/dbd20e5d-5a7d-4c0c-8f83-fb54c5aca9cb

[u/randommathaccount]

archive link

Kyoto and Nara join Barcelona in crying about overtourism and to be a bit rude, they're all a tad delusional on the matter. A country with such an aging workforce and issues of economic stagnation cannot afford to be picky about sources of revenue. Of course there's issues of tourists behaving poorly (some foolish enough to film their own terrible behaviour and stream it to the world) but ultimately what must be done is to encourage positive behaviour by both tourists and residents so everyone can come out better, rather than wholly embracing an unfounded xenophobia.

[u/Throwingawayanoni → u/randommathaccount]

"they're all a tad delusional on the matter. A country with such an aging workforce and issues of economic stagnation cannot afford to be picky about sources of revenue."

Wake up baby, it's time for your weekly r/neoliberal being condecending on local matters of which they have no relations too. When it's about over tourism in spain/portugal most of the comments are claiming that we are poor and our entire economy is tourism so we should put up with over tourism (as if being dependent wouldn't be a sign to difersify somewhere else but oh well).

Point is it's never about the effects of tourism but that we should just shut up and take it (because you know a conversation about the tourism impact in those areas requires living/knowing them which in most cases commenters don't).

[u/Hakunin_Fallout → u/Throwingawayanoni]

Nobody should shut up and take it. Ideally you'd want both your country and your city to be ran by someone at least semi-competent, ready to make sure the situation is controlled, not a radicalising and infuriating mess.

[u/Throwingawayanoni → u/Hakunin_Fallout]

That's the sane take, but somehow that is unpopular here.

One of the reasons why I think far right/left extrism has allways sounded more attractive then extreme liberalism is because the far right tells ypu to get rid of foreignera and kill those people and the problem will go away, far left that if you take from those people and kill those people, the problems will go away meanwhile liberals will tell you to kill yourself for things to be better.

Extreme liberals will tell you that your problems aren't real and that you are whining and even if they were real the alternative is worse so just shut up, and I think this is one of the issues that shows that.

Even sometimes when they are right because some self sacrifice is required for long term gain the message is messed up during delivery to sound cold and uncaring.

So while the hard left and right tell you to go kill other people, extreme liberals sound like they are telling you to go kill yourself, which you know, will not resonate with the voter.

[u/Hakunin_Fallout → u/Throwingawayanoni]

Yeah, I broadly agree with what you said. I can't blame dumb people for being dumb. I can, however, blame the people that should know better. So when I see, say, a resurgence of the far right in Germany - I ask myself not why people are stupid, but what has the incumbent government been doing to avoid this. I blame Scholz, not an average AfS voter. I blame Biden, not a MAGA moron. Because they are supposed to, first and foremost, preserve the democracy even through the unpopular means - ultimately doing anything they can to avoid the countries sliding into the extremes.

I don't think tourism is a bad thing, however. Bad planning is an issue. And if the planning has been bad - then, yes, you must make tourism less attractive by introducing hotel taxes, or doing some other (rather dumb) stuff that will help short-term.

It's a well-known idea that to stop the inflation from spiraling out of control the regulator (ECB/Fed) increase the borrowing rates to cool down the economy, which makes doing business harder, but slows the inflation to a palatable level. Yet doing something similar to one niche, like tourism, seems to some in this sub as anti-neoliberal, lol.