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Why Japanese companies do so many different things

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Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#101

Post by ExoticTiger »

qurren wrote: post #81
jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

> how Westerners idealize Japan Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects. This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be s…

I disagree. People still trade, travel, and visit both countries regularly. Even if some media outlets are biased against China, that doesn’t mean Japan need to be idealized, it proves nothing. Your comments come across as more like propaganda.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#102

Post by blowscum »

wk_end wrote: post #99
qurren wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how Westerners idealize Japan Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects. This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be s…

I really don't really think there's much political or propaganda interest in getting Westerners to idealize Japan, at this point. Now back in the 80s? Back in the 80s, despite being aligned with the West, they were perceived a lot like China is today. Everyone was scared that they were going to start eating the West's lunch and various negative stereotypes and exaggerations started to bubble up: it was a futuristic l…

> it was a futuristic land, but a futuristic land of suicides, with little drone-like salarymen crammed into little shoebox apartments the size of a Western bathroom, working 20 hour days.

So basically just what the west is becoming?

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#103

Post by h8hawk »

qurren wrote: post #81
jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

> how Westerners idealize Japan Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. They present cherry-picked aspects of both countries that make China look bad and Japan look good. In reality every country has its good and bad aspects. This is just part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe, in an effort to align their populations to be s…

From what I’ve seen, the opposite is often true. Western leftist mainstream media frequently portrays Japan as a racist and declining society.

Meanwhile, on platforms like YouTube and communities such as Hacker News, the bias is even much stronger. China, along with the broader “Axis of Resistance” and third worldist camp (though China arguably doesn’t fully belong there), is often praised, while the West, including Japan, receives disproportionate criticism.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#104

Post by niyikiza »

jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

Agree with the meta point. I worked in Korea and Japan and loved the culture but when I moved to the west I was surprised to see how people over here fantasize about their (imo inefficient) corporate cultures.

This particular article was decently nuanced though.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#105

Post by czhu12 »

The Japanese economy is also famous for a macro economic stagnation for almost 40 years, a mild deflationary spiral, and companies hoarding cash on balance sheets rather than return it or invest it.

There are definitely world class companies in Japan, but also broad systemic problems with incentives

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#106

Post by ExoticPearTree »

alephnerd wrote: post #54
jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

> It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN Most HNers tend to be in their mid-30s to 50s so a lot of Japan-philia does appear to stem from an older mental image from the 1990s to 2010s. > This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is that this system is heavily driven by Japan's…

I like Japan for its cuisine mostly.

And people take pride in what they do, and try their best.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#107

Post by jmyeet »

jdw64 wrote: post #7

It’s always fascinating to see how Westerners idealize Japan on platforms like HN. It makes me wonder(i'm korean): how would a Westerner react if they saw me romanticizing the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain? They’d probably find it strange and out of touch with reality. This essay on Japan's corporate diversification and physical tacit knowledge is an interesting read. However, as an East Asian, my assessment is tha…

I've thought a lot about (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way) the weebu phenomenon. I remember encountering it first in college when I met people who were in an anime club. It wasn't for me but my philosophy generally is "let people enjoy things".

I will say that it often goes beyond "idealizing". I'd use the word "fetishizing".

I've wondered how much of this stems from being disaffected by the modern (particularly Western) world. I worked with an ethnically Chinese guy who was a massive weebu and that always struck me as odd given the Japan-China history.

Japan has always rubbed me the wrong way: misogyny, racism and denial about Japanese war crimes in WW2 mostly. Also the salaryman work culture. I see videos from Japanese workers and life honestly looks miserable. It's also a country that is dying. The samurais, ninjas, Ronin, shoguns, etc are cool though. Japanese history is fascinating.

My hot take here is that China is actually what people idealize Japan to be. China has the most competent government in the world and it's not even close. It's not problem-free. Nowhere is. But the transformation in the lives of ordinary Chinese people over the last few decades is unbelievable. China pulled ~800 million people out of extreme poverty.

It could be worse than Japan too. I think South Korea is that. As a non-Korean from the outside looking in, South Korea looks like a dystopian run by aristocratic (chaebol) families where the birth rate is the lowest in the world and it's in fact so low that if nothing changes, South Korea simply won't exist in 3 generations.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#108

Post by derektank »

marcosdumay wrote: post #85
Aunche wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why the left cares so much about CEO to work pay ratio these days, especially when Marx himself recognized that ownership was the true source inequality. A CEO is just a really well paid worker. Even CEOs who become billionaires do so from capital appreciation more than compensation.

Because Marx theories do not hold up to reality, and most people can plainly see it. How is it working for the US to have every company mostly owned by the general public's retirement funds?

>How is it working for the US to have every company mostly owned by the general public's retirement funds?

It’s working quite well for retirees.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#109

Post by jandrewrogers »

layer8 wrote: post #75
jandrewrogers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> zero appetite for things that make a little bit of money For obvious reasons, the expected rate of return needs to clear the hurdle of the risk-free interest rate. This puts a pretty high floor on activity that is "worth doing". This is a mechanism by which the phenomenon of ZIRP diversifies economic activity.

The risk-free interest rate is a pretty low floor for returns though? At least in my experience with expectations of what counts as a profitable project.

The risk-free floor is around 4% these days. Because the return on any other use of capital must be risk-adjusted, the breakeven might be 6-7%. That is roughly a 3x higher rate of return than you needed to breakeven when the risk-free rate was ~0%.

Small absolute changes in risk-free interest rates cause many things to become unprofitable when the relative change in interest rates is large. A risk-free rate of 1.0% and 1.5% are both small but the latter is 50% higher than the former.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#110

Post by ExoticPearTree »

toephu2 wrote: post #42

> So why are Japanese companies like this? Why do they do so many different things? And how do they manage to do so all those different things so well? Author says: Japanese companies excel in lots of very different domains because it’s inherent in how they’re structured. My response: No mention of culture? Sure maybe it is because of how they are structured somewhat, but it's also because of their culture. Japanese…

> Japan takes Western concepts, and applies an obsessive cultural devotion to mastery (Shokunin).

Thank you for explaining this. I was alawys amazed how the japanese would take the cuisine from other countries and make it better in all aspects than the country that originated it.

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