i wonder what japan would look like if it was smaller and cut off from international trade by a significant military power ~150km off its coast

Okay now do China after 77 years of communism

"most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is poor."

–

Quaranteed there are 100s of places in Japan that look like the bottom photo

Photos of like, "depressing eastern bloc commie blocks" are funny for the same reason, those places just look like our house w worse upkeep

love how "big finance buildling" is the marker for success in a nation; says nothing for quality of life, access to medical care, ability to start a family, freedom from the boot of capital stepping on your neck etc

Looks at Cuba: "Wow, these people with our military's boots on their necks for generations still have beautiful architecture and better healthcare than us"

Looks at Japan: and and lots of boring developer-driven corporate-architecture crap and salarymen with no social lives who want to kill themselves

I dream of a great war which reduces the United States to ash

Alongside the obvious, Japan also had nearly a century of Western-assisted industrialisation prior to WW2, while Cuba was either a Spanish colony or US-backed banana republic during that time

I fucking hate these comparisons. Why don't they compare like with like? How's Cuba doing compared to other Caribbean island countries like Jamaica or Haiti or Dominican Republic? Before the recent escalation of the siege + oil crisis, it sure seems like they were doing a lot better for the essential life things. And that's in spite of a blockade by the biggest trading partner in the region.

this is a common flaw in their moral philosophy: only the maximum level of money in a vague all-of-society-in-one-gdp-statistic way makes for a valid society. in reality the cubans aren't and were never suffering from a lack of skyscrapers. if their preferred mode of existence is low rise then so what?

I'll be hope that it's bad joke...

how many south american countries do we have to coup and embargo before you learn that socialism just naturally fails on its own?

Missing the real headline: U.S. Vassal State versus U.S. Enemy State

Japan has like 10x the population shut up

i don't even like skyscrapers? who actually does?

sure, it was impressive and artistic for maybe a decade just to flex on gravity, but we've had these things for a century and no real-life utility has been found. office towers are ridiculous hubris that coasted on structural inertia decades after the 'conveinience' of having these offices so close together was outdated. the vaunted "space-efficiency" is grains to the heap of overall city density, cut the towers and add one floor to the surrounding couple sq km. same deal.

fuck towers