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…
Or you could just put "since 1953" on the sign and not buy a company and few people would know any better. Equally disingenuous, probably not much less legal either.
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
It's a shrine, not a temple, it's torn down, not burned down, and whether it's the oldest is a matter of whether you believe the legends.
It's interesting about growing older. I don't know if this is a function of aging or a change in how humanity recons time. When I was younger, a century seemed like forever. Now it's just 1920 and we have film, music, audio, books and so on from that time period readily available. In many ways 1920 doesn't really seem all that far away to me while 1860, 1870, 1880 (a century from when I was a child) seemed to be fore…
Change is slowing down, at least in developed countries. A person from the US of 2020 would fit in right in 1970, and be able to adapt to 1920, but be lost in 1870. A person from 1970 would adapt a little quicker to 1920, but be almost as lost as us in 1870.
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.
The parent comment implies these things would follow the old "seems like magic" trope. They would not seem like magic if you explained these concepts to (educated) people of the time.
I did not read that comment in that way. But I think you'd need to explain for a pretty long time to get engineers to believe your story of nuclear fission power plants. In 1912 we didn't even know about neutrons and protons.
Sure, I grant that these may not be forthcoming and obvious developments to everyone, and that you may need to "fill in the blanks" for many when it comes to atomic energy (a jet engine is not a complex machine, however; it is a precision machine). But my comment is more about how much we underestimate the state of the world that came before us and our historical forebears, and the ability of otherwise open-minded, educated people to adapt to new ideas and work with black box abstractions. These ideas would be for example far from a caveman looking at a nuclear submarine (or Bob Lazar looking at a UFO heh).
It's interesting about growing older. I don't know if this is a function of aging or a change in how humanity recons time. When I was younger, a century seemed like forever. Now it's just 1920 and we have film, music, audio, books and so on from that time period readily available. In many ways 1920 doesn't really seem all that far away to me while 1860, 1870, 1880 (a century from when I was a child) seemed to be fore…
I can't remember where i heard this from (it was a podcast) but it was on an economic theory that, if you exclude the internet & computer revolution, humans has not progressed that much in the past 100 years and that we may have entered a period of stagnant growth that may extend a century. Again, internet & computer revolution aside, realistically saying the last "human leap" was the invention of the combustion engi…
I agree that 1880-1915 was certainly a period of radical change, but aviation in 1915 was way less mature than you are suggesting, and would not become so for several decades.
The SPT Airboat Line [1] was the closest to an airline in the US at the time. It operated 20 mile flights across Tampa bay for 6 months in 1914 before ceasing operations.
Flying from NY to LA was not happening on any regular basis, and took much more than a couple of hours. The first transcontinental flight in 1911 [2] took 80+ flight hours over more than a month. Fast forward to 1933, transcontinental passenger flights took 20+ hours [3]. Nonstops finally became available in the late 40s and early 50s.
The parent comment implies these things would follow the old "seems like magic" trope. They would not seem like magic if you explained these concepts to (educated) people of the time.
I did not read that comment in that way. But I think you'd need to explain for a pretty long time to get engineers to believe your story of nuclear fission power plants. In 1912 we didn't even know about neutrons and protons.
We knew about radioactivity then, and Radium-powered superdevices were just entering science fiction.
But in the West, even if you just gave your business away to another person who continued to run it, we would still consider that the same business.
Indeed, the business would continue. The issue is that in the west business owners would not see the merit in just giving a business away for the sake of the age ticking up. In the west the business would get sold and merged. Only in Japan does the adoption make it a family or lineage thing.
The relentless attack on the family in the West may also be related
> Only in Japan does the adoption make it a family or lineage thing. No. Every culture worldwide accepts adoption. A child, grandchild, nephew, etc, continuing a business keeps the business in the family. Whether the child is adopted or not, and regardless of the age of adoption.
You’re not understanding the difference: in most of the world, businesses are carried on because there’s some financial value derived from it, not for the thing itself. Family businesses do exist, and do get passed down, but if the owners of the business don’t have any natural heirs, they’ll wrap it up or sell it. That’s normal. In Japan, the longevity of the thing has a value of its own, so much so that they’ve inve…
Adult adoptions to pass on family businesses large and small are somewhat common in Germany. Mostly it's used to save on taxes (nobody cares about the difference of sale and that kind of inheritance) however officially this can't be your (only) reason for adoption. That e.g. got the Darboven and Jacobs families into trouble who wanted to merge their coffee dynasties by adult adoption.
What you're really describing is the stasis of the last 60 years.
You could argue that the world has gotten into some sort of "stagnant" period, despite the technological advances. E.g. We're no where closer to having a utopian-level of control over our government. Something that the rise of ubiquitous tech should have solved. On some level, we're all very averse to the notion as well, almost as if our attitudes to it have not changed and we have not worked on making tech good enou…
Fun fact: The oldest continuous company in Japan (and the world), Kongo Gumi, was founded by a Korean immigrant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D_Gumi
Another fun fact: the oldest monarchy in the world was also founded by a Korean immigrant https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/world/japan-rediscovers-i...
As far as I can tell you've misread the article. The grandmother of one of the emperors may have been Korean but the first (non-legendary) emperor was Jimmu who was born in Japan. I'm also a little wary of that article since it says "Yamato is the name of the family that founded Japan's imperial line" when Yamato is the word used for the ethnic group to which most Japanese belong. I'm wondering if there's a link here to the idea that Yamato people are mostly descended from the ancient Yayoi who took Japan from the Jomon and were probably from Korea (but not the ancestors of the modern Korean people).