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Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

bbc.com

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Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#191

Post by johnklos »

(Slightly, but not completely sarcastic)

They've learned plenty from the United States, but they haven't learned that in order to succeed, others must fail. They should be trying harder to make these businesses succeed hard or fail. After all, life isn't about living - it's about how much we can accumulate at the cost of others.

They should also learn the Unites Statesian way of "going out of business" for the purpose of selling the old company's assets to a newly create company for pennies on the dollar while defaulting on debt and loans. Heck - many Hollywood companies do this from one film to the next!

Gah! These Japanese people are amateurs!

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#192

Post by hugey010 »

Morgawr wrote: post #95
erikpukinskis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Born the same year. You clearly haven’t imagined what’s possible. The internet hasn’t happened yet. We are a couple of experiments in. Maybe two of the ten core softwares have been written. The other 8 are just gleams in wild eyes. The UI layer is all still prototypes. The economic layer, very early prototypes. The programming languages are prototypes. You can tell because <1% of the population can even use them. Ima…

>You can tell because I'd argue that nowadays there are more people that use the internet/smartphone devices than there are people that drive cars or watch TVs. Internet usage has far overtook both cars and television by now. Nobody cares about programming languages or "UI", just like most people that drive cars really don't care about the internals of the engine.

Not sure why, but the thought of most people not caring how their cars, or tech, or anything works made me quite sad. I think you're correct, but I'm constantly considering and reconsidering how all the things around us work, are made, can be better... It's all basically real magic but people can actually perform it.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#193

Post by CydeWeys »

adrianN wrote: post #93
fapjacks wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in 1912, jet-engine-powered aircraft and atomic energy would not seem like far-fetched ideas. Certainly not to educated research engineers at GE, anyway. People routinely underestimate how technologically advanced the world was prior to WW1. Aerospace was advancing rapidly, and chemistry was quite well understood in 1912. A jet engine requires precision manufacturing but otherwise is not a complex idea. Radiati…

Fission was discovered more than 25 years later. Nuclear power was pretty far fetched in 1912.

That wasn't when it was discovered, that was just the first practical implementation. The theory side was developed earlier. The Manhattan project was an engineering problem.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#194

Post by davidivadavid »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #127
davidivadavid wrote: post #9

Only a century old? Easy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

You entirely missed the point that there is 33k of them. Your list does not even have 1000.

What makes you think I missed that point? I was making a playful remark about the fact Japan also has companies that are far older than 100 years old, which I find impressive and interesting. If I was trying to come up with a longer list, I would have said so. I wasn't, so I didn't.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#195

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

Interesting. The building is repaired, new roof and windows and floor and ceiling, soon only the frame is 'original'. But the building is not the 'business'.

Every day, the product on the shelf is new. New customers go through the door. Even the product formula or process may change.

Generations pass, and entirely different people are standing in that building selling those (changed) products. The people may have some genetic similarity to those that stood there before. But any human would have substantially the same cell chemistry, which is many millions of times more in common than a particular strand of molecules. So won't any human be enough?

The definition of a 'business' is a human idea. Its not rooted in physics. So if we want to say a business is old or continuous, I guess go ahead.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#196

Post by adrianN »

CydeWeys wrote: post #193
adrianN wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fission was discovered more than 25 years later. Nuclear power was pretty far fetched in 1912.

That wasn't when it was discovered, that was just the first practical implementation. The theory side was developed earlier. The Manhattan project was an engineering problem.

I'm reasonably sure that fission was discovered by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner sometime in the late 1930s, few years after Fermi accidentally split the atom without realizing it.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#197

Post by exhaze »

johnklos wrote: post #191

(Slightly, but not completely sarcastic) They've learned plenty from the United States, but they haven't learned that in order to succeed, others must fail. They should be trying harder to make these businesses succeed hard or fail. After all, life isn't about living - it's about how much we can accumulate at the cost of others. They should also learn the Unites Statesian way of "going out of business" for the purpos…

PS Happy to answers any questions about Tokyo life as an engineer/entrepreneur, just reply to my comment.

I get where you're coming from, but you can make the same one-sided joke post about Americans.

Having done both...

- started YC backed startup while in SF and worked at Uber for 4 years - in Tokyo for the past 2 years

I honestly think that the outcomes here in Tokyo are much better than in SF. Yes, incomes are lower, but your QAPP (quality-adjusted purchasing power) is significantly higher, at all income levels - https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/08/21/commentary/j...

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#198

Post by aurelianito »

Barrin92 wrote: post #20
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you might still say "family run for a thousand years"

more as ad advertisement slogan though. I've never seen someone in the west adopt another adult just to authentically continue a legacy (outside of European monarchies maybe). There is a sense of tradition to these Japanese companies that one doesn't see so often outside of Japan.

Romans used to do adult adoptions. Off the top of my hat, I clearly remember that Cesar adopted Brutus, his killer, as an adult.

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#199

Post by gindely »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #88
Danieru wrote: post #6

Do you remember Ship of Theseus? The thought experiment about if a ship which has been fully rebuilt bit by bit is it still the same thing? Japan appears consistent in saying, yes, rebuilding or swapping out components keeps the identity. You see this attitude in "Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years". In the west we might argue that burning a building and rebuilding, would count as…

> Japan's oldest temple, burned to the ground and rebuilt every 20 years I suspect that there is a degree of translation loss in those quotes. In general if you ask someone about this they'll indeed reply that their temple is 1,000 years old (example). Then if you ask whether this means that this building right here is 1,000 years old they'll may very naturally reply that no, they rebuild it every so often. I'm think…

Which isn't really different then churches, which may be older than the church building. "The church was founded in 1890. The present building was opened in 1950, and the old building is now used as a hall." Sometimes you might even see "The church was built in 1890. A new building was opened in 1950, but they burned down in 1984. The present building was finished in 1986."

Re: Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old

#200

Post by 74ls00 »

rubidium wrote: post #149
nickelpro wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But someone from 1870 could easily adapt to any time going back through the 17th century. I don't see how that's evidence of change slowing down, it's rapidly accelerating.

I would guess the parent comment wouldn’t disagree that it had sped up til about 1950 or 1970. But then it has slowed down since. I tend to agree, and that this whole personal computers, web apps, tracking stuff that’s obsessed over here just isn’t that big of deal compared to refrigeration and easy global transportation (to pick 2 from 1850-1950).

This is the exact curve that is described by an academic in a recent episode of planet money https://pca.st/episode/d1397f9e-49f0-425c-8b10-3c4adb039f3f
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