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Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#11

Post by daurnimator »

pmr_ wrote: post #10
fsloth wrote: post #8

The main reason, apparently: "These days, local governments focus on bid prices rather than quality." High quality commodities are considered nowadays luxury and not bare minimum. Quite sad, really.

I think the statement following this is much more important and interesting to HN: > The tendency has become more and more prevalent under electronic auction systems. While incidents like this are often used as examples of the failures of technocracy, I think the problem is elsewhere. A decision process has been out-sourced to a machine that is not smart enough yet to make a good decision. The decision might be good…

If you instruct a machine to optimize for the cheapest price; it will do that. The failure is in the instructions given, not the introduction of machines.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#12

Post by kriro »

This whole saga pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse engineer the machine/recipe. The overlap of people who like to tinker with this stuff and people who love the chalk seems big enough.

It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand. At least it seemed like that. My guess is that they could have sold one of the machines to a US based entrepreneur. I can pretty much envision somone making that chalk in a garage and selling it to universities/individuals.

I also think that it's somewhat short sighted to assume procurement by the employer is needed. Especially in "brainy" jobs it's pretty common for people to be willing to spend their own money for tools they use on the job. If my school only provides chalk X I'm pretty much willing to spend some of my own money for the better chalk if I can't change their mind.

Maybe they were just "too big" and targeting a commodity market instead of going for the smaller premium market.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#13

Post by fsloth »

pmr_ wrote: post #10
fsloth wrote: post #8

The main reason, apparently: "These days, local governments focus on bid prices rather than quality." High quality commodities are considered nowadays luxury and not bare minimum. Quite sad, really.

I think the statement following this is much more important and interesting to HN: > The tendency has become more and more prevalent under electronic auction systems. While incidents like this are often used as examples of the failures of technocracy, I think the problem is elsewhere. A decision process has been out-sourced to a machine that is not smart enough yet to make a good decision. The decision might be good…

I'm totally unaware of conventions used in public purchases.

Isn't an "electornic auction system" just a database anyone can spam - the actual decisions are probably made by humans? My hunch (might be incorrect) that the auction system creates a barrier of disinterest where the official has very little else to go with than the prices quoted. In this case it's not that the machine is stupid - it's way worse, the system stops actively humans doing what humans are particularly good at - separating wheat from chaff based on experience and intuition - if the official will never use the chalks and has no idea what the impact of the product will be.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#14

Post by creshal »

kriro wrote: post #12

This whole saga pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse engineer the machine/recipe. The overlap of people who like to tinker with this stuff and people who love the chalk seems big enough. It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand. At least it seemed like that. My guess is that they could have sold one of the machines to a US based entrepreneur. I can pretty much…

> It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand.

I have no idea why, but with Japanese companies it's a common theme. Most don't even care about overseas expansion, and if they do, it's poorly executed (say, Daihatsu, who dicked around on the European market for decades without ever listening to even trivial customer wishes, and then wrote the whole business off because it "obviously can't work" – well, duh).

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#16

Post by hahamrfunnyguy »

kriro wrote: post #12

This whole saga pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse engineer the machine/recipe. The overlap of people who like to tinker with this stuff and people who love the chalk seems big enough. It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand. At least it seemed like that. My guess is that they could have sold one of the machines to a US based entrepreneur. I can pretty much…

It seems the preference is shifting towards dry-erase boards.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#17

Post by pmr_ »

daurnimator wrote: post #11
pmr_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the statement following this is much more important and interesting to HN: > The tendency has become more and more prevalent under electronic auction systems. While incidents like this are often used as examples of the failures of technocracy, I think the problem is elsewhere. A decision process has been out-sourced to a machine that is not smart enough yet to make a good decision. The decision might be good…

If you instruct a machine to optimize for the cheapest price; it will do that. The failure is in the instructions given, not the introduction of machines.

That much should be clear, my (unfortunately) implicit question is: how can we instruct a machine to optimize for the very intangible things everybody seems to love so much about this chalk? What about the more subtle economic things (like signals of economic climate and value of quality).

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#18

Post by kwhitefoot »

deciplex wrote: post #4
x0x0 wrote: post #2

reading that made me think of the Byrd's song To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven

That's not the original source though, FYI.

It probably is the source of those particular words in Modern English in that particular arrangement. Something very close appears in Wycliffe's Bible and starts like this:

Alle thingis han tyme, and alle thingis vndur sunne passen bi her spaces.

See https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_%28Wycliffe%29/Ecclesia....

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#19

Post by eli »

fsloth wrote: post #13
pmr_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the statement following this is much more important and interesting to HN: > The tendency has become more and more prevalent under electronic auction systems. While incidents like this are often used as examples of the failures of technocracy, I think the problem is elsewhere. A decision process has been out-sourced to a machine that is not smart enough yet to make a good decision. The decision might be good…

I'm totally unaware of conventions used in public purchases. Isn't an "electornic auction system" just a database anyone can spam - the actual decisions are probably made by humans? My hunch (might be incorrect) that the auction system creates a barrier of disinterest where the official has very little else to go with than the prices quoted. In this case it's not that the machine is stupid - it's way worse, the syste…

Sometimes you're required by law to go with the lowest valid bid (presumably to discourage kickbacks and self dealing)

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#20

Post by kolinko »

fsloth wrote: post #13
pmr_ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the statement following this is much more important and interesting to HN: > The tendency has become more and more prevalent under electronic auction systems. While incidents like this are often used as examples of the failures of technocracy, I think the problem is elsewhere. A decision process has been out-sourced to a machine that is not smart enough yet to make a good decision. The decision might be good…

I'm totally unaware of conventions used in public purchases. Isn't an "electornic auction system" just a database anyone can spam - the actual decisions are probably made by humans? My hunch (might be incorrect) that the auction system creates a barrier of disinterest where the official has very little else to go with than the prices quoted. In this case it's not that the machine is stupid - it's way worse, the syste…

The problem is that there is no known alternative really. If you just the government official decide, it breeds corruption.

Or at least it used to. Perhaps with the modern IT systems we could create a solution that delivers the transparency to the process - the official would explain his/her choices publicly, and the public would have an opportunity to argue...

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