"The reason why Japan's productivity is low" might not be such a troublesome topic to discuss.
With the proliferation of AI, the concerns about productivity might become unnecessary.
That's because there will come a time when productivity actually improves without humans.
The low productivity in Japan is likely due to many companies competing to hire a large number of new graduates all at once.
Moreover, these hires are more like recruiting new members for university circles rather than selecting individuals for job-specific roles necessary for business operations.
Traditional practices like company culture, personal connections, and school-based hiring still prevail.
With this approach, it's natural that they can't compete on a global scale.
Strangely, once these companies bring students on board as employees, the allure seems to vanish completely.
After joining, they're left to fend for themselves through on-the-job training.
When you think about it, many of the tasks at these companies are menial and can be done even by non-graduates.
Hence, leaving employees to their own devices isn't much of an issue. But if that's the case, there's no need for each company to compete to hire numerous college graduates every year.
Yet, there's the foolishness of Human Resources departments blindly collecting students without a clear purpose.
These departments don't even understand the type of students they want to hire.
Consequently, they resort to quick fixes like using educational filters to fill their workforce with graduates from specific universities.
It's nonsensical.
Students are still students, rushing into such companies without much thought.
Even if they're lured in as "management trainees," they end up just being ordinary foot soldiers.
Among their peers who joined at the same time, only a handful will become managers.
They enter companies where only students from specified schools gather, motivated solely by the superiority of being chosen.
They join without any future prospects and are subjected to a long, fruitless competition.
Over the past 30 years or so since the Heisei era, many companies left behind by change have collapsed along with their numerous graduate employees.
Remember that when a company you joined as a new graduate goes bankrupt, you'll face hell.
Even if you manage to switch jobs successfully, if your new workplace is a traditional company, you'll be discriminated against and easily disposed of.
Even if a company doesn't go under, if its performance worsens and it resorts to restructuring, the fate of its employees dismissed through downsizing is the same.
Personally, they might find themselves in a situation where they don't know why they put in effort since childhood.
One could say it's just bad luck or that they chose the wrong company to join. It's incredibly unfair.
Companies that concentrate talent in one place and then lose in the competition, leading to the downfall of both the company and its employees.
While it's a part of capitalism's nature, economically speaking, it's a wasteful use of human resources.
Looking back, during Japan's Showa era of rapid economic growth, when the population was steadily increasing, wasting human resources was acceptable.
"Time is money," and the old days of "Can you fight 24 hours?"
A time when concentrating excellent talent in the unsinkable battleships called large corporations might have been an effective policy and an efficient business strategy that undoubtedly contributed to improving Japan's productivity.
However, nowadays, concentrating talent in specific companies has more negative effects than positive ones.
It's necessary to distribute talent widely and uplift Japan as a whole.
Unless this is done, new business models and innovations won't emerge in Japan.
However, such concerns might become unnecessary.
With the proliferation of AI, worries about talent might disappear.
In fact, a "Copernican revolution" where productivity improves when humans are absent might occur.
In that case, terms like "bulk hiring of new graduates" and "excellent talent" might become obsolete.
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