Toshiro Maruyama, mayor of the ski resort town of Hakuba in Nagano Prefecture. The village, often called "a second Niseko," for its potential, is struggling to balance rapid development, led by foreign companies, with local residents' needs and create an optimal model of tourism that benefits local businesses and residents, along with the newcomers.
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We need a market where local people can also earn a living.
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Aly Rustom
We need a market where local people can also earn a living.
We need a market where people who are neither politicians nor their cronies can also earn a living.
Redemption
An afterthought no doubt after the politicians and other insiders have been well paid.
kohakuebisu
The first part is correct, I think you'll find many Swiss owned hotels in Switzerland because locals there learned to serve an international clientele. People in Japanese ski resorts could and should have done the same. Many lodge owners are not proper "locals" anyway, they will be "datsu-sara" people from the city. Most international tourists would actually like to have a English-speaking Japanese host who can tell them about the area, not an Australian English speaking one off the plane five years ago who doesn't know very much about Japan.
The second part about bookstores and Amazon is unfair. Amazon used many synergies, and operating at a loss for something like ten years, to create a dominant market position that extends way beyond books and simple retail itself into all kinds of data services. I think most tech companies, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook are more right-place-at-the-right-time freak occurrences than some textbook application of established business knowledge. MIcrosoft got the call from IBM to develop MS=DOS because the first guy they called wanted to fly his plane. These big companies got lucky (including with regulation) as much as anything else. A lot of their tactics resemble Rockefeller with Standard Oil, they crushed their rivals with stuff that shouldn't have been allowed.
Sven Asai
Capitalism in late stage? That's by far not true and almost impossible as long as there is not any working alternative in sight or existent and has practically shown any substantial advantages. But the biased, almost one-sided money distribution is obviously in last stage. As the name indicates, every participant needs a bit or more of capital in capitalism, and I mean every participant, from active and super rich entrepreneurs down to simple consumers, not only a very few hands holding all the capital. That won't and cannot work well of course. But after a reset of capital distribution, reflected in a healthy Pareto function curve so to say, the system is again very capable of rejuvenating itself.
GBR48
Just look at other tourist resorts. They all follow the same basic pattern. They have a local economy that operates all year round, serving locals all year, with extra income from tourists in the tourist season. Alongside this, they have seasonal work in the tourist sector, just as places have seasonal work in agriculture.
As for having foreign companies develop the area - why didn't locals do this? You get a lot of people complaining that book chains had their markets 'stolen' by Amazon, but those book chains could more easily have become Amazon themselves. They had a head start on Amazon - the supply chain, the contacts, the experience and the staff. Amazon just had an empty garage. The book chains just didn't do it. There is no excuse for not making the most of the opportunities offered by your locale or your sector. If others turn up and do it, when you spent years not bothering to, it is nobody's fault but your own.
Foreign companies means a chunk of the profit leaves, but all resorts have to be serviced. As well as supporting local people, be the supply chain for the resorts. Most will be happy to have reliable, local suppliers and staff. Tourists are a source of income. Make the most of them, to subsidise the services provided to locals all year round.
JeffLee
I wonder what kind of living the people in question are engaged in? Fax machine repair?
dagon
Adam Smith already talked about if hundred of years ago and it will not happen under Late Stage Capitalism.