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Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

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51–60 of 111 posts

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#51
So because of a fictitious story, a company employing 50,000 should die so a startup employing 100 people can grow into the next big company.

If your concern is about Japan's welfare, how about instead selling your startup to the large company?

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#52
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China owns GM. http://qz.com/594984/the-secret-history-of-gms-chinese-bailo... ;

Even more scary for Detroit, once the American public figures out Tesla is actually more American made than the big 3 they will feel no guilt in buying Teslas instead. This is especially the case if we start losing a bunch of coastal areas and the big 3 look apathetic about their role in global climate change.

Tesla's prices need to fall by at least 75% before Detroit has anything to worry about.

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#53
post #44
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once you're in, the nanny corporation will take care of you for the rest of your life. The flip side of that is if you quit you will never be offered another salaryman job. By anyone. I wouldn't start a business in Japan unless I was already unemployed.

Is this really true? (I have no idea, it just sounds so implausible that I feel like I have to ask.) Is there any good reading on this topic?

According to another HN user the unemployment rate is only 3% so it doesn't appear to be that bad. Those 3% may not include discouraged workers though.

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#54
post #19

Meanwhile, you manage to secure venture-capital funding and even a bank loan. The interest rate is high, but with your rapid growth, you should be able to pay it back. Meanwhile, in the Japan some of us actually live in: 1) Very few 26 year olds will be successfully able to convince their 26 year old co-workers to leave Sharp, because that is a once-in-a-lifetime mistake. I am literally related to a $ANONYMOUS_FOR_SA…

Could this situation create an opportunity for North American VCs to fund Japanese startups? Obviously it would be a lot more logistically difficult than working domestically, and would presumably carry a number of new risks, but if it's really that bad, presumably you could give significantly more lucrative opportunities as well. (And I assume for the startup, the details of getting a bank account and such would be easier if you've already got a pile of capital ready to put in it...)

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#56

The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…

>...then keeping 50,000 workers employed at Sharp seems like a smart bet, compared to keeping 100 people employed at some nimble, fast-moving startup.

Where does the money to subsidize those jobs come from? Are you seriously suggesting that sucking subsidy money out of the productive economy to pay for those jobs is not depressing demand? All our economies could do with some of this magic money, it sounds like it would solve all our problems.

>...More so, Japanese electronics firms still hold great global market share...

Japan functionally has two economies, an export economy and a domestic economy (of course they're not completely decoupled, as Sharp shows). It's managed to maintain a fairly competitive export economy because those companies have to cope with foreign competition, but the domestic situation has festered for a whole generation. It seems like China is following the same pattern.

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#57
post #44
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once you're in, the nanny corporation will take care of you for the rest of your life. The flip side of that is if you quit you will never be offered another salaryman job. By anyone. I wouldn't start a business in Japan unless I was already unemployed.

Is this really true? (I have no idea, it just sounds so implausible that I feel like I have to ask.) Is there any good reading on this topic?

Yeah, it's true. Read the article pkaye linked. There are some odd (to US eyes) implied agreements when you take an office job in Japan. The biggest is this: the company is expected to keep you on until you retire. In return you're expected to not quit, ever. To quit is to betray the company.

It's not like nobody ever gets laid off or quits. But that's the expectation.

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more scary for Detroit, once the American public figures out Tesla is actually more American made than the big 3 they will feel no guilt in buying Teslas instead. This is especially the case if we start losing a bunch of coastal areas and the big 3 look apathetic about their role in global climate change.

Tesla's prices need to fall by at least 75% before Detroit has anything to worry about.

The infrastructure/economies of scale to make that profitable don't exist yet, but Tesla is working at setting them up. Elon Musk: "Model 3, our smaller and lower cost sedan will start production in about 2 years. Fully operational Gigafactory needed."

http://www.techinsider.io/we-now-know-when-teslas-cheaper-mo...

Two things are at play:

1. Tesla doesn't really give a crap about owning the entire market. If their competition causes the big 3 to build low cost zero-emissions vehicles, then Tesla has fulfilled their part of Elon's goals towards saving the world. Basically, putting a stake in the heart of the internal combustion engine and putting automotive economies of scale behind battery and energy storage development.

2. Cheap cars have awful margins, only worth playing in at scale. SUVs on the other hand are hideously profitable. The sport SUV has been the savior of BMW and Mercedes over the past decade, with high margins versus their cars. Porsche got in on this and built an SUV, now Lamborghini is too, margins are just too good to ignore.

Tesla's pursued an Intel-like tick-tock strategy, where they shoot at the high end to make money and get performance knowledge (Roadster, Model X) and with the cash reserves take their next model downmarket (Model S, Model 3).

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#59
post #46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the issue is - is it possible to produce a valid measurement? In scientific method, part of an experiment involves a control. There's no way to produce one in economics - the systems are too complicated. You can't know whether measurements you take are the result of your change directly, or caused by network effects of the change as part of other things going on, or just weather from unrelated things happening in…

I'm not sure if the response to difficulties in measurement is to build a system out of faith and assumptions. We can analyze different policy decisions, either by modeling human behavior (based on experiments which can be controlled and analyzed), or through natural experiments (e.g., What happens when a bunch of states and municipalities alter their minimum wage policies?)

The problem is that the models don't relate well to reality, and it's too difficult to isolate confounding effects from natural experiments.

Re: Japan Must Let Zombie Companies Die

#60

The above article is best understood as a political piece, rather than a business story. Every single sentence in this article can be picked apart, but doing a line-by-line critique would miss the larger problems with the article. The author assumes that more productivity is always good, even though Japan has been suffering a lack of economic demand for most of the last 26 years. Big gains in productivity would only…

If the goal of Japanese policy makers is to boost demand, and that does seem like a wise goal, then keeping 50,000 workers employed at Sharp seems like a smart bet, compared to keeping 100 people employed at some nimble, fast-moving startup. If you want to make sure people have money so that demand is increased then just give them money, don't keep useless jobs around. the USA was able to sell its stake in GM at a pr…

> If you want to make sure people have money so that demand is increased then just give them money, don't keep useless jobs around.

Ideally yes, but that's politically difficult.

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