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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

#201

Post by kingkongjaffa »

xandrius wrote: post #195
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why are people saying that the Japanese counterpart of other cuisines are better? Have you guys eaten the originals? OP mentions curry, bread, pizza, etc. Those are things most gaijins complain about when in Japan! Can't find a proper piece of bread that isn't sweetened, or you find a French chain doing something almost similar but still not on par with breads found in France. I helped at a pizza shop near Fuji city…

> general aversion for strong spices

You can get very hot spicy katsu curry in most Japanese cities.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#202

Post by neosat »

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,…

Exactly, I was confused too. The authors clearly mention what the parent comment talks about, albeit towards the end of the article, that the 'J' bundle meant that these firms were not set up for success once they 'caught up' and were required to innovate not just process but from the ground up to envision new categories (e.g. iPhone).

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#203

Post by kingkongjaffa »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #156
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even US and UK are very questionable by now. The last time they had something resembling capitalism was sometime before Roosevelts New Deal.

Why’d you say that? IBM, GE, Ford have all been disrupted

Business can get too big to fail and instead of being allowed to fail get bailouts from the government, thus are not truly capitalism.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#204

Post by wklauss »

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 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.

In his science fiction novels, Kim Stanley Robinson frequently incorporates the Mondragon economic model to explore post-capitalist, worker-owned, and cooperative societies. I'd say KSR is a decently well-known S/F writer, so at least some westerners (and I'd assume many in this site) have already some idea of it. But I'd say it's true that it's easy to romanticize these kinds of singular situations and brush over the problems they might have.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#205

Post by adamwk »

jimbokun wrote: post #157
ux266478 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The recent Abundance movement on the left argues strongly that progress has been held back by over regulation and bureaucratic processes.

Does it? I’ve seen Ezra Klein talk about his book and he talked about how bureaucracy is frequently a scapegoat for getting things done. Europe is very bureaucratic yet is able to build. The issue he called out is red tape yes but more so litigation by the private citizen. That any individual can stop an apartment being built because it blocks morning light into their flower bed

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#206

Post by robocat »

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…

> part of the propaganda machine and what politicians want you to believe

Alternatively it could be due to emergent outcomes from our societies and systems.

Is there a word or concept that explains the idea that "people in power are controlling us"? Maybe the word is related to hierarchy? I also see it in conspiracy thinking (Rothschild, lizard people). The assumption that somebody is in charge manipulating us, and that we can discern their motives based on what their incentives are imagined to be.

A past example might be the red menace - which appeared to me to be part of US culture (politicians pushed it but I think they also took advantage of a natural us-versus-them zeitgeist). People seem to collectively desire a labeled enemy (you also see it about sports teams).

Or see the sibling comment "banal truth is that Japan is extremely talented at exercising soft power by projecting a favorable image of itself" where manipulation is imagined as the base cause. I just don't see the world that way (apart from the scientific difficultly of discerning cause versus effect in human systems).

Maybe it is just all memes.

Individually even very well educated people don't seem to see systems and effects of systems: e.g. every thread about economics e.g. politicians pretending they are in charge when systems have fucked them.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#207

Post by Jblx2 »

sofixa wrote: post #196
Jblx2 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the US even multi hundred thousand people cities have literally nothing other than cars as an option. I'd be interested in hearing an example or two of cities in the U.S. with populations greater than 200,000 that don't have a bus system.

Arlington, Texas is an illustrious example. Almost 400k people and it has nothing.

Interesting. Thanks for the example.

https://arlingtonnetwork.com/arlington-mass-transit-rideshar...

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#208

Post by wklauss »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #183
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…

> romanticizing the Mondragon Are they successful? Japanese culture reflects certain western attitudes which make it stand out. Do I detect resentment?

> Are they successful?

I'd say so. Not on all the branches of the cooperative, but it generates over €11 billion in annual revenue and employs more than 70,000 people with a very stable business. It might be a bit tricky to gauge success when the rewards and incentives aren’t quite the same as in your typical capitalist company, though.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#209

Post by kibwen »

busterarm wrote: post #193
kibwen wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are a poor solution to a worse problem. It's like if your roof was sagging, so you propped it up with a rotten log. You might be tempted to remove the rotten log, but that just means your roof caves in. Unions exist to antagonize company owners to keep them from indulging in their worst excesses when it comes to abusing their employees. Removing the union just means unleashing that unchecked power. A better so…

Or don't move into a house with a sagging roof. Most of the companies that I've worked in my adult life were perfectly fine places without any collective bargaining or ownership. And I made orders of magnitude more money as an employee in those situations than I did otherwise. The average salaried employee's work grievances are petty to annoying and outside of that either wouldn't be solved with collective bargaining…

It is in the nature of gravity and entropy that every roof starts sagging eventually. Congratulations on your good fortune, but the vast majority of people are not and will never be in your position.

Re: Why Japanese companies do so many different things

#210

Post by twoodfin »

pstuart wrote: post #65
griffinkelly wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One other interesting fact about Japanese companies is that their CEOs get paid far far less than Western companies. Checkout this article that talks about it: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/2010/07/5-lessons-of-ja... edit: added article.

As it should be. The pay gap from CEO to bottom tier worker is now obscene (21 times in 1965 and ~285 today). It's the foxes looking after the henhouses.

Last I looked at the most cited version of that ratio, it was comparing Fortune 500 CEO total compensation—including incentive-based stock appreciation—to economy-wide average hourly wages.

That makes about as much sense as comparing top 500 Hollywood actor earnings (including residuals) with the day wages of the folks showing up in TV commercials and as film extras.

The BLS keeps statistics on Chief Executives in general, and pegs their median wages around $200k:

https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes111011.htm

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