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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

#161

Post by dv_dt »

It's really odd to me that having an advanced ceramics division at Toto is considered such and odd diversified activity, and on top of that making money from the expertise of that division. Deep knowledge of ceramics would seem to me, to be a fundamental advantage if your main line of business is making ceramic toilets.

Companies like this with deep interlocking expertise used to be common in the US too when the US actually made things. GE was a conglomerate of "diversified" expertise - at least until a grandfather of financialization laid the seed to take apart the company.

AT&T and Xerox used to maintain all sorts of deep expertise in all sorts of science and technical activities - though maybe it could be noted that they were famously bad at spinning out other diversified product lines. But the expertise was a need in their core activities. Maybe the most interesting thing about Japanese businesses is that they have shown how to successfully start and maintain diversified product lines.

The main reason we are surprised by these "diversified" products, I suspect is that the typical American (and HN reader), is just not very familiar with the wide range of expertise needed to actually run manufacturing businesses.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#162

Post by dfabulich »

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…

What article were you reading? This article isn't idealizing Japanese companies, and specifically discusses the drawbacks of the Japanese approach, including zombie companies.

The article's thesis statement isn't "the Japanese approach is better," but that business practices like these bundle together, that they're very difficult to change, and that each bundle has different advantages and disadvantages.

Ironically, you've proved a deeper point about how amusing HN is: we all tend to project our fantasies onto the articles we're discussing, even if we didn't fully read or understand the article.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#163

Post by kibwen »

lacewing wrote: post #141
kibwen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Westerners are taught by the media and education to idealize Japan and hate China almost everywhere. As an American educated by the American public education system and indoctrinated by American media, our government is certainly stupid and vengeful enough to make me want to support this if it were true, but it's just not. The much more banal truth is that Japan is extremely talented at exercising soft power by pro…

Not being a single-party, notionally communist dictatorship may be helping with the image too? I don't know, spitballing here. I think the default approach in the West - and that's not a US-specific thing - is to treat exotic faraway lands with a mix of curiosity and awe. But China is a geopolitical rival with a political system that rightly makes many Westerners queasy, so it doesn't benefit from that anymore.

> Not being a single-party, notionally communist dictatorship may be helping with the image too? I don't know, spitballing here.

No, everyday people are perfectly content to warm to brutal dictatorships who successfully put on a friendly face. Case in point: Dubai.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#164

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

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…

So in a discussion about a Korean’s view of an American’s view of Japan, you bring up China, and you’re the one complaining about propaganda?

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#165

Post by busterarm »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #142
busterarm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this, the 1970s? No, far more basic negligence and corruption. Negotiating deliberately bad contracts and collecting bribes. Diverting hours and cushy roles to union reps and their personal friends. Overwhelmingly siding with management against employees (which is what you think they're going to be there NOT to do). The kind of day to day petty shit that over time makes your job intolerable. Oh and that one t…

Your example is exactly the same problem as "admissible evidence" in a court of law. In the USA, it's very common for evidence to be rejected because the collection of that evidence was itself illegal - this is intended to protect the integrity of the system in general, no matter how heinous the alleged crime in a specific case. So I'm sceptical: was the union really defending that specific employee , or were they tr…

Termination for criminal activity is covered in the CBA's "just cause" clause. The union could have let the termination slide without setting any kind of precedent. Instead the union defended the employee as a flex.

The union knew that they had sympathetic arbitration and it was the early years of retail store surveillance being used against employees rather than common criminals (this was decades ago). I doubt a similar case would go the same way today.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#166

Post by floatrock »

LZ_Khan wrote: post #149

If a corporation does not have an incentive to make money, it will not align its priorities correctly. For every neatly diversified company you have 10 zombie companies with workers floundering around like ants without a queen.

If a corporation has an incentive to make money, it will align its priorities towards making money. Question is: are "making money" and "correct priorities" synonymous?

You use "zombie companies" as a universal pejorative and suggest we should all be instead worshiping at the alter of economic efficiency, JIT-delivery, and maximizing shareholder value without really considering the critiques there.

Yes, the "zombie company" strawman is paying people to move dirt from one hole to the other and back again which is dumb, but the "efficient company" has its own strawman, one drowning in manufactured debt, peeing in pee bottles in-between amazon warehouse isles, and unable to manufacture its own medical equipment when a black-swan pandemic event hits.

Which one is "better" largely depends on if you value societal stability or shareholder profits.

Or, in the framing of the article (which is summarizing Aoki, Milgrom, and Roberts), J-style companies exceed in periods of moderate volatility where 1) things don't change so much that you need the money-above-all-else incentive that favors strong hierarchical Jobs-like leadership that finds the visionary new solution, but 2) they change enough that the money-above-all-else incentive that favors value-engineering enshittification loses out to competition. The "societal stability" is just a part of the incentive bundle that forces the adaptation called the J-style approach.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#167

Post by Trasmatta »

dfabulich wrote: post #162
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…

What article were you reading? This article isn't idealizing Japanese companies, and specifically discusses the drawbacks of the Japanese approach, including zombie companies. The article's thesis statement isn't "the Japanese approach is better," but that business practices like these bundle together, that they're very difficult to change, and that each bundle has different advantages and disadvantages. Ironically,…

Thank you, I was confused reading the comment above, because the article pretty clearly laid out the benefits and drawbacks of the system. I didn't see any idealizing.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#168

Post by com2kid »

ux266478 wrote: post #139
user____name wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it propaganda though? Japan is more aligned with ‘the west’ not only in geopolitics but in the system of governance that was imposed upon it by via USA occuptation. Whereas China has a very different political system that is generally poorly understood and distrusted. Regardless, I don’t know where you’re from, but I see plenty of idolizing of China and how it manages to solve big problems at speeds unseen outside…

> but I see plenty of idolizing of China and how it manages to solve big problems at speeds unseen This is actually a great example for extant romanticization of China. People lauding Chinese expediency in the context of industry and construction often don't realize it's almost entirely enabled by extreme underregulation and underenforcement of industrial safety standards. Chinese people themselves will often point t…

> People lauding Chinese expediency in the context of industry and construction often don't realize it's almost entirely enabled by extreme underregulation and underenforcement of industrial safety standards

Kind of like Tesla's latest factories, or DR Horton building homes with massive problems from day 1?

Or Silicon Valley being a collection of superfund cleanup sites?

Or just the environmental pollution, in general, in Texas?

No one has figured out how to balance growth with safety. Ideally it shouldn't be hard, the total amount of money saved is pennies compared to the overall investment, but making everyone follow the rules via regulations ends to being a huge cost and time multiplier.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#169

Post by oceanhaiyang »

gigatree wrote: post #86
amunozo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing, being Spanish the Basque Cooperatives movement is fascinating. Do you have any recommended read about it?

The most recent video I could find about this was from like 7 years ago, very weird

Maybe try a book instead of YouTube. Not weird as it probably isn’t something that would get clicks

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#170

Post by raincole »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #88
ryukoposting wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll preface this by saying there are lots of other factors at play, but here's an interesting one I can speak to personally: Car culture. We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. Even most Baby Boomers are too young to remember a world without Honda or Toyota. Across all age groups, a lot more Americans grew up with a fondne…

> We're a very car-centric society, and the Japanese auto makers have been a part everyday life to 3 full generations of Americans now. I assume "we" are Americans. I keep writing this over and over again on HN: There are NO highly developed non-micro states that are not car centric outside of major cities. Yes, literally, Japan, outside of a few large cities, is incredibly car centric. Sure, the cars are small and c…

> outside of a few large cities

Yeah and this is the exact reason why people call the US car-centric. Only in the US the large cities are car-centric too. You just proved the parent comment's point.

> They came for a single reason: To avoid import tariffs. Please stop romanticising this for any other reason.

You're hallucinating. There is zero romanticization in the parent comment about why they came to the US.

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