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Nobody cares

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Re: Nobody cares

#511

Post by aprilthird2021 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #265
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are wrong assumptions. Japan has higher suicide rates, lower rate of having kids, and on and on. And like I said, obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average Japanese person doesn't benefit from these things because the average Japanese person lives in a cramped, barely livable closet-sized apartment in a huge city where costs are probably not close to wages

They are wrong assumptions. They aren't so signifigantly high that they fundamentally affect the perceptions of the culture. Japan is 14.29 per 100k suicide rate. the US has 14.21. Japan has something low like 1.2 kids per family, the US has 1.66, also pretty dang low. You gotta do a lot of heavy lifting to say those differences make for a much worse culture. >obviously a rich tourist is treated better. The average J…

Fair play. I'm open more to the idea that a culture where people care about the greater good makes more of a difference. Haven't seen it myself, and I'm still skeptical that if he were an average Japanese person he'd see it the same way. But your argument is convincing.

Re: Nobody cares

#512

Post by bruce511 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #459
bruce511 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some small businesses start because the owner wants to do something well. Sometimes this aligns with some group of customers and it's sustainable. Most small businesses fail of course. Usually because while they do a task well, they're bad at the business part. Once you get large (McDonald's in the parent thread) the focus is necessarily on the business part. At that scale it's not "doing the thing as well as…

One of the things that’s surprising about traveling to Europe and Japan is that this revenue maximizing business strategy isn’t as prevalent. You don’t see the same upsells everywhere and tipping culture is also mostly non-existent. Many US businesses managed to behave in a manner that was vastly less extractive to their customers for most of the last century as well. It really is possible to care about the quality o…

It's exactly harder but when customers prioritize price above everything it's hard to succeed if you offer better, but charge more.

The hard truth is that American consumers care only about price, and so businesses optimize for that (or go under). Which means they lean into other sources of revenue, or ways to reduce costs.

Elsewhere people care about value more than price, and are willing to spend more to get more. Restaurants post the real price (including service) because that's what it costs.

Ryanair exists to fill the need for those who want low price above all else. KLM exists for those who want a better experience and are prepared to pay more.

Re: Nobody cares

#513

Post by _DeadFred_ »

ks2048 wrote: post #115
liontwist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn’t Japan have this problem?

I thought Japan had a reputation for pointless bureaucracy (faxing useless paperwork around to get something approved, etc).

It's a surface level joke but if I remember there were reasons for it, both culturally and regulatory, something about Hankos? I think I read about it on a post here talking about them finally changing some of those requirements.

Re: Nobody cares

#514

Post by rob74 »

teslabox wrote: post #462
_lyxd wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK but blinding blue LEDs are most common substitutes, because it's the lazy default, and because people do not care. That's the point of the article.

Blue-white LEDs have become the replacement for High Pressure Sodium [HPS] traffic lights because that's what the LED light companies have to sell. In the early years of the transition to LED streetlights they had to sell blue-white LED streetlights because warmer LEDs were not competitive with HPS on the basis of lumens-per-watt. Most of the people who understood the advantages of blue-free amber HPS light over whit…

My impression was that HPS lighting became so widespread not because of the supposed advantages of its light spectrum, but because it was simply the most light-efficient technology available at that time. Here in Germany, only main/multilane streets requiring more lighting were using HPS, residential streets mostly had lamps with white fluorescent lights, so switching those to LEDs wasn't as much of a change. But still, I'm wondering: what about curtains, window blinds etc.? It's not as if people are forced to endure the intrusion of street lighting into their bedrooms?

Re: Nobody cares

#515

Post by nextlevelwizard »

ryanisnan wrote: post #229

This is a really uninformed article that comes off as just plain whiny. Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve. I hired a contractor once, who was a fantastic one. We were designing some changes to one of our rooms, and he had a proposal that would have made…

>Taking the traffic curb example, it's entirely plausible that the person who designed that ramp isn't a cyclist, and didn't think about what it would actually be like to be a cyclist making that curve.

So... In other words... They did not care about their job enough to investigate and think through the situation. They just did the default easy thing and moved on with their day.

Re: Nobody cares

#516

Post by bruce511 »

autoexec wrote: post #470
bruce511 wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats a cop out. There are lots of alternatives to McDonald's. There are lots of alternatives to most things. Some cost more money though. That's kinda the point.

If an "alternative" to McDonald's does exactly the same abusive thing it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's at all. If an "alternative" to McDonald's forces you to drive excessive distances to reach it, or it costs much more, or it sells Thai food instead of burgers, then it isn't a real alternative to McDonald's. A suitable alternative to McDonald's would be one similar enough to McDonald's for your purposes tha…

A suitable alternative to McDonald's is learning to cook.

Or pay a bit more to go to a nicer joint.

Quality does cost more. As long as you keep signaling to MD that you'll tolerate more and more crap for lower prices, they happily oblige.

Re: Nobody cares

#517

Post by podgorniy »

arretevad wrote: post #454
sureglymop wrote: post #253

> We have examples like Elon who, through sheer force of will, defeats armies of people who don't care. For his many faults, you can't say the man doesn't care. I fully expected that bit. Can't say I would agree in any way though. If anything, a perfect example of a person with way too much agency and executive power and way too little restraint and rationality. The perfect anti social candidate to not care but to wa…

Elon only cares about enriching himself.

If that's true what would be explanation of his gaming/streaming?

I believe his motivations are beyond getting rich. At some point in life money become means to goals, and goals are driven by real motivation.

Re: Nobody cares

#518

Post by _DeadFred_ »

tdeck wrote: post #495
throwaway2037 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first three problems also apply to Italy. Why don't we read as much about it? I find it bizarre. (South) Korea, the same. Non-Asians just love to focus on the extreme positive and negative aspects of modern Japanese society; it is weird.

It is weird. I think it's kind of a leftover from the apex of the Japanese economy and all those Japanese business management books. We had a whole generation of managers putting samurai swords on their walls and talking about "open kimono" leadership and people got famous essentially promoting the idea that Japan is like nowhere else and fetishizing the country. So it kind of entered the zeitgeist. There was never a…

Businesses I've dealt with in the manufacturing world (so most American workers before the 'service economy' revolution) deal way more with Japanese companies than Italian. Also I think humans just need an ideal to aspire to. We don't respond well to 'it's all crap, always has been, always will be'. Foreign countries we like look better because we see what's better than where we are. There's a reason for the saying 'the grass is always greener (because from a distance you can't see it's full of dog crap)'.

Re: Nobody cares

#519

Post by vv_ »

caseyy wrote: post #453
Over2Chars wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A well known CEO noted that in a failing organization he was trying to devise a turn around plan for that everyone in the organization invariably blamed... the other teams! Not a one said "our team is responsible for our failure". The engineers blamed product, the product people blamed sales, etc. He said he provided this suggestion, "You are of course right (it's the other groups fault, and it might have been so), b…

There are two groups of people: blamers and doers. For example, people will often blame local government for issues such as not disposing of fly tipping garbage quick enough, but they will not do much to clean up the pavements with sofas or fridges around their house – a man with a van can often drive over these large bits of garbage to a recycling centre for like $30/£30 an hour. Sometimes people will say government…

> Interestingly, sometimes resolving the problem takes less effort than sustained moaning, and certainly less mental strain.

That would involve actually doing some kind of work that people doing the complaining would like to avoid in the first place, because it's "someone else's responsibility to get it right!".

Re: Nobody cares

#520

Post by smusamashah »

What's sticking out to author like a sore thumb is a normal for majority. One can not imagine a better way of things until they have experienced a better one. Even if they are badly bitten by one, majority still can't come up with any better idea.

It's not that nobody cares, they just don't know any better.

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