Japan has 33k businesses at least a century old • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by chinesempire » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #179

chinesempire wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be unimaginable in Japan 14 centuries ago. The first western style skyscraper was built in 1890 and demolished in 1923. But Japan had pyramids long before that, there are speculations that the underwater pyramids of Yonaguni could be the remains of a civilization 5 thousands years old

>there are speculations that the underwater pyramids of Yonaguni could be the remains of a civilization 5 thousands years old As far as I'm aware, the all but universal consensus among archaeologists and scholars (and the Japanese government) is that the "underwater pyramids" of Yonaguni are entirely natural.

Just to clarify, I don't believe in pseudo archeology and I've reported the idea of an ancient civilization as speculations.

I was simply pointing out that megalithic structures have been part of ancient Japan either they were natural or not, skyscrapers definitely not.

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

#212

Post by ghaff » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:08 PM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #121

reustle wrote: post #99

If I own a reasonably successful business, and want the prestige / vanity of something like "Since 1953", could I buy a small / failing business in some small town and merge the companies? Would my company now technically be running since 1953? I have companies in both Japan and the US. It's a fun though experiment at the very least. I don't think I'd ever execute on something like this, but a software development ag…

Yes, this is exactly what the people behind Abercrombie & Fitch did. They had an idea for a college brand of clothing and repurposed an old, dying hunting brand in the company lineup to give the new brand authenticity and a nice number to follow “est. “ in their branding.

There was actually an intermediate incarnation. After closing its high-end hunting/fishing store in Manhattan (gunsmiths on premise, fishing lures for a particular type of fish on a particular stretch of Western river) and going bankrupt, a Houston-based outfit made them a more generic "yuppie-ish" sort of store with connections to hunting mostly as an image thing. Then they were sold and developed into their current form.

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

#213

Post by JoeAltmaier » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:11 PM UTC

ilikeathechacha wrote: post #210

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty negative? Water and sewage infrastructure can last 100 years in the USA. The company that makes commercial pumps for cities is still around, and called upon to recreate 80-year-old pumps to replace ones still in use under New York streets. Our electrical grid is unparalleled in the world. Our phone/internet. These things are not so wonderful in other countries (when they even have them at all). What infrastruc…

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition18.cfm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/asce-gi... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis Politicians like cutting ribbons in their district. They do not like investing in maintenance, and operators are left to scrape together budgets to make things work. They often make bad c…

I don't live in CA, so local news there doesn't get very far.

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

#214

Post by christiansakai » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

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…

In Japan there are plenty of old and young people working arubaito (part time) in the service industry. If you go to Disneyland for example, you can see obaachans (grandma) bringing food from the kitchen to the dining area.

Japan as a country is also hi tech. But it seems that they are not worried about the effect of automation and people losing jobs. There are plenty of jobs that machines still can’t do and the Japanese appreciate handcrafts. A lof of Japanese knives are still handmade. Candies, gifts, a lot of them are handmade.

Granted. Japan is the nation where it is mostly relatively closed compared to other far east Asian nation. They won’t give citizenship easily (around 10 to 20 years), they don’t take influx of immigrants, and they care about Japanese more other than non Japanese. All of this is motivated by the preservation of culture and the Japanese way. Japan would rather have their island sink than opening doors to more immigrants to avoid Eternal September that is plaguing the US and Europe.

More conformity meaning easier for the government in terms of economy, policy, etc. Less troublemakers, less lawyers and lawsuits, less crime. But in order to achieve social conformity Japan doesn’t have to be like China where they monitor and watch everything. Conformity is ingrained in every minds and hearts of the Japanese. That is the Japanese way.

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

#215

Post by ilikeathechacha » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #213

ilikeathechacha wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition18.cfm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/asce-gi... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis Politicians like cutting ribbons in their district. They do not like investing in maintenance, and operators are left to scrape together budgets to make things work. They often make bad c…

I don't live in CA, so local news there doesn't get very far.

Well then it’s good I offered three major incidents, two outside of California, that received worldwide attention, but thanks for the detailed engagement on my point.

The California power grid fires were on the television in a pub in northern England last time I was there, not to put too fine a point on it. Speaking of, you should visit Europe and get back to me on infrastructure, especially continental transit. I’m an American and even I’m tired of Amerisuperiority, because it’s that kind of willful ignorance that drives said underinvestment.

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

#216

Post by monadic2 » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

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…

I was never brought up with the national myth of failure but it does explain a lot about how the United States works. Does this imply the need for revolution to fix things? Maybe we could get Japan to liberate us.

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

#217

Post by samatman » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #146

varjag wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We knew about radioactivity then, and Radium-powered superdevices were just entering science fiction.

Knowing radioactivity is just the first step toward discovering the internal structure of the atom. You need a measuring instrument that is much smaller than a whole atom to make any progress. The atom nucleus was discovered by counting how many alpha particles bounced off the nucleus of a piece of gold foil and how many simply passed through it. The bounce rate was incredibly low and therefore the nucleus must have…

Those experiments were conducted between 1908 and 1913.

Personally I think you could tell a GE engineer in 1912 that their company would be building a radiation-powered electrical plant and they'd be keen to find out how, not baffled at the very concept. No way of knowing for sure, of course. Just that, this was an era when radioactivity and (what became) nuclear research was very much something the educated were reading about in their monthly magazines.

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

#218

Post by m-watson » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:19 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #196

CydeWeys wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yea the theory was not really much before this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission#History).

There really couldn't be much theory on this before 1900's anyway because of our understanding of the atom/nucleus.

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

#219

Post by oblio » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

exhaze wrote: post #197

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 lo…

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

He _IS_ joking about Americans :-)))

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

#220

Post by m-watson » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 3:21 PM UTC

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.

Saying it was just an engineering problem is really understating the level of theory and experiment had to happen at the same time. It was a huge scientific and engineering endeavor that happened simultaneously. Some good books that go into the crazy intricacies are American Prometheus and The Making of the Atomic Bomb if you are interested.