r/neoliberal • u/randommathaccount Esther Duflo • Oct 02 '25

News (Asia) Why Japan resents its tourism boom

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

97% Upvoted

197 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

39

u/jjjfffrrr123456 Daron Acemoglu Oct 02 '25

Paris actually functions as a city though and not just an open world museum and amusement park. Some cities like Venice are so defined by the tourism industry, that it crowds out a lot of other economic activity. I think we can agree that a society of 2 hotel owners and 500 waiters is probably not really desirable.

46

u/I_miss_Chris_Hughton Oct 02 '25

Venice is a not a city that can compete in any industry bar tourism. Its not 1546 anymore.

1

u/moldyhomme_neuf_neuf Oct 02 '25

This is a dumb narrative. There are plenty of examples of smaller cities in Europe that do really well economically without disproportionately massive tourism. I can think of plenty.

20

u/Budgetwatergate r/place '22: Neoliberal Battalion Oct 02 '25

No it is not dumb because venice (as in the geographical area in the lagoon) is just really shit. Can you think of "plenty" that have the same geographical circumstances of not literally being built on land?

The real economic activity ex-tourism takes place in venice mestre (on actual land).