Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy
“The team that built the setting [for the movie Blade Runner imagined 2019 Los Angeles as heavily Japanese. Japanese food dominates the culture. The Japanese language is written on signs. Japanese corporations dominate the skyline. Even the Tyrell Corporation was originally imagined as a Japanese conglomerate in early drafts of the film. Why Japan? Simple: Japan was a rising economic influence and a supposed threat to American economic power in the 1980s. … Since about 2010, the same fears have arisen with China. … It’s the same claims of coming economic dominance by state-run conglomerates and the superiority of industrial policy. America must be afraid, must capitulate to these supposedly superior foreign powers, must adopt their systems, lest we be overrun. And just like with Japan, these fears are obsolete even as they are made.” (03/12/25)