Excellent post by
Sackett, but given my particular environment, it's not surprising that I would disagree in principle that government intervention is inherently bad.
Unfettered free-market capitalism, in my opinion, is likely to do more harm than good because competition, in practice, is not fair. People do not enter a market on an even playing field and, if there were no intervention, all factors of production would inevitably end up under the control of a tiny oligarchy, making it ever harder for those on the bottom to climb up via what is supposed to be a meritocratic system.
That being the case, the government does have to step in at times to redress the injustices created by an imperfect system. But that is another topic for debate altogether, not directly related to the pros and cons of outsourcing with regard to Japan's anime industry.
And, in that respect, I actually agree with
Sackett: The outsourcing of anime production to cheaper countries is a natural business trend, and if we claim to believe in free-market competition, then there is little we can do about it.
Either the industry dies out in Japan, or the surviving companies find some other way to balance their costs against their revenue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFluff
In general, though, it's a very odd statement to make given that we spend more money on entertainment now than ever before in the history of humanity. Newspapers may be suffering, and the music industry may not sell as much now as they did in the 1990's because they can't sell people all their old LP records on CD again, but as a general statement it doesn't make much sense. The movie industry, for example, is doing great; box office profits in the US have steadily been going up for the last 15 years (except a brief dip in 2005).
In other words: please clarify and provide sources for such sweeping statements.
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All the above is true. I made an off-the-cuff statement without factual basis. It happens,
mea culpa.
I would clarify that I was thinking primarily about the newspaper and music industry when making the statement. In saying
virtually (meaning, almost) all, I already had in mind that figures for book publishing suggest that this part of the media industry is actually stable, at least in the United States, although it remains to be seen how digital books, now easily consumed via e-book readers, will affect the sector. That, in turn, makes me wonder how manga sales have performed in Japan over the last 10 years, in spite of what is happening in the anime industry.
As for movie revenue trends in the US, I am surprised. I haven't looked into them before and now that I have, they raise a lot of other questions. Thanks for pointing them out.