What can we learn from U.S.-Japan trade war of 1980s?
It is true that the ongoing trade war between China and the U.S. is different from the one between the U.S. and Japan in the 1980s, but the two trade wars do have a lot in common. First, both involve the world's largest and second-largest economies; second, China is the country with the largest trade surplus with the U.S., the spot was held by Japan during the 1980s; third, China is highly dependent on the U.S. market, so was Japan. The U.S. approach and the intensity of the trade wars are also more or less the same.
I don't think the tech war is the full explanation for the decline of Japanese tech; the failure to focus on software is a big one and seems to be due to internal factors such as conservatism and business models tied to sale of hardware.
However when the US combines it industrial interests with its state apparatus it is a formidable force; media described the Japanese society as authoritarian, bitter and racist - eager to get back the Americans after world war 2 - with the everyday Japanese being mindless warrior drones in a strict hierarchy. (For examples of this sentiment see the movies Black Rain or Rising Sun - or lookup the tragic death of Vincent Chin - a Chinese mistaken for being Japanese).
The US justice system ran a series of entrapment campaign targeting Japanese firms. And there was buy-american campaigns and extra tariffs were put on Japanese imports.
Ultimately the Japanese yielded. The plaza accord fixed the Yen at a very high price point hampering Japanese exports. And quotas were set for US exports to Japan and Japanese car factories were setup in the US.
And then in 90es you had the rise of now competitative tech firms from South Korea and Taiwan.
>the failure to focus on software is a big one and seems to be due to internal factors such as conservatism and business models tied to sale of hardware.
It's the same in Germany. Up until 10 years ago or so, they still thought the future of their economy will be selling more diesel engines to everyone. Today Germany is still the world's leading exporter of diesel engines, but how long can that cow be milked until they realize a significant part of their economy is living on borrowed time?
It's what you get when your majority wealth holders, politicians and business leaders are well past their retirement and don't care about the changing world around them, don't care to empower the youth in wealth generation, gate-keeping it all for the existing gentry.
but how long can that cow be milked until they realize a significant part of their economy is living on borrowed time
Oh, they know it. When I lived in Germany 5-10 years ago, this issue was regularly discussed in the media. Some companies do try to adapt. E.g. Bosch traditionally delivered a lot of diesel-related tech, but they are also investing a lot in batteries and fuel cells. E.g. a large number of eBikes in Europe (probably a large majority even) use Bosch motors and batteries.
Only time will tell if it's enough. Of course, companies will try to stretch the transition as much as possible so that they'll have time to catch up.
Another article that shows the similarities in mindset from the time is this one from 1987, it's quite funny how similar it reads to stuff published today.
This is interesting and.. quite different in one very important key way:
"Are the Japanese picking our brains?'' a congressional staffer asks. ''Yes. They're doing it very well. They're doing it legally. The question is whether we have a two-way street"
> In the 80es the us and Japan fought a tech and trade war very similar to the us china tech war that is going on today.
Fundamental difference between these two trade wars is that US had then and still has now military presence in Japan while none in China. Japan has a somewhat limited sovereignty that affected how they could fight the trade war.
America is not ideal by any measure, but China is extremely bad (I mean the current governmental system in China, obviously, not every person living there). And anybody who ignores that is either uninformed, or intellectually unable to comprehend the true state of matters - or, if previous knowledge precludes both possibilities, a China shill. Paid or voluntary - there could be options, a surprising number of people are shilling for a surprising variety of disgusting regimes out of varied logical twists they bound themselves into, but I don't see how one can escape that conclusion, given the available facts.
You would be much more credible if you said how China is “bad” (which is a moral judgement anyway).
Instead you jumped straight to calling anyone who might disagree “uninformed”, a “shill”, and finally you admitted that you don’t understand how someone can hold a different view than you.
It doesn’t inspire confidence in your analytical ability.
There seems to be a certain subset of the HN population that thinks that "morality" is somehow a bad thing.
Morality may be subjective and not "analytical", but it's also completely unavoidable to being a human person, and debates about moral behaviour are absolutely integral to human societies.
There seems to be a certain subset of the HN population that thinks they can get away with attributing an indefensible statement to others who didn't make it, and try to challenge them on it, but those folks shouldn't be treated seriously, just like Don Quixote shouldn't be treated seriously in his fight against windmills.
Yeah, they just systematically genocide their citizens having the wrong heritage (Uyghurs), blackout entire cities that might dissent from their proposed governing systems (Hong Kong) and deny the right of sovereignty to established countries (Tibet, Taiwan) that "don't agree to everything". Not even the tip of the iceberg.
There's no free healthcare... Families are bankrupted by sickness in the family.
If anyone did the "lifting", it's the global markets with their conditional entry into the WTO. Almost all the conditions are still not met and reneged on.
The flamewar comments you posted to this thread have been so hellish, and you have broken the site guidelines so egregiously, that I've banned this account.
I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments–but we have to moderate based on the worst things an account does, and what you did in this thread is completely not ok.
Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Same for ideological flamewar and the other flavors too—and yes, the rules apply regardless of who you're for or against. If anyone would like confirmation of this, there's a counterparty to this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746593.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I am from Asia. If you think America is bad , wait till China becomes the number one power.You will realize the difference between a bully and a hitler
Not really, you just have to read enough history to know that the pre-war preparation phase is filled with vicious lies to dehumanize the other country. Additionally, even a cursory study of Chinese history will leave you with a different impression of what's going on.
I did a cursory study of Chinese history, and that made the crimes of the current Chinese regime look even more horrible, as I learned details about how many people were killed, starved, displaced, lives ruined, culture destroyed and opportunity wasted. But maybe I didn't learn enough. I love learning history. Please do tell us which facts from the Chinese history make it all look good. I'll wait.
Right. Then explain 1989 Tiananmen massacre to us? If this is not the atrocity that the Chinese Communist Party committed, what else? On what ground were you standing that believe a single party, totalitarian regime is the ethically correct way for the people?
The difference is that, in the American system, the political faction that engineered that invasion has lost most of its power through a democratic mechanism. The Bush-era neoconservatives are not the dominant force in the Republican Party anymore. Trumpism is clearly opposed to foreign interventions.
In the Chinese system, a similar reckoning about Tiananmen and other atrocities remains unthinkable. The one true Party must be on the correct path, and faith in that can’t be shaken.
As broken as American democracy is, a two-party system fueled by private money is still much better than a single-party system that also controls the money.
> “Your hatespew of China is designed to deflect from actual reflection of the crimes of your own state, which are vast and not ignorable”
I’m a citizen of Finland. I’m certainly very interested to hear about those vast crimes perpetuated from this nowhere corner of Europe.
If I defend the American system in this context, it’s only because to me it objectively appears fundamentally better than the Chinese one.
I lived in New York for some years and enjoyed it. In contrast, I would never consider moving my family to Shanghai while the CCP rules the country. I wouldn’t feel safe there.
Dong Jianbiao, the father of Dong Yaoqiong, who authorities disappeared for splashing ink on a poster of President Xi Jinping in 2018, died in a prison in Hunan province.
The new Measures on the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services came into effect in March, prohibiting individuals or groups from teaching or otherwise propagating religion online without official approval. A widely used Catholic app, CathAssist, shut down in August because it was unable to obtain a license.
Authorities in Jilin province forcibly disappeared human rights lawyer Tang Jitian.
A court in Shandong province held secret trials of prominent legal scholar Xu Zhiyong and human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi for “subversion.” Their verdicts were unknown at time of writing. The men were detained in 2020 and 2019 respectively after organizing a small gathering to discuss human rights and democracy issues.
The flamewar comments you posted to this thread have been so hellish, and you have broken the site guidelines so egregiously, that I've banned this account.
I don't want to ban you, because you've also posted good comments–but we have to moderate based on the worst things an account does, and what you did in this thread is completely not ok.
Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. Same for ideological flamewar and the other flavors too—and yes, the rules apply regardless of who you're for or against. If anyone would like confirmation of this, there's a counterparty to this comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37746615.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Without going into details about your positions (with which I couldn't disagree more), vague insinuations and "inform yourself" are not welcome here on HN. If you want to make an argument, be prepared to defend it yourself.
I hardly see how in that context I was using it as an excuse (you mean an excuse for China, right?). If anything, I am saying the opposite: the US can't use China as an excuse, because it has a history of also doing pretty bad things.
In other words, I was answering to what I was understanding as: "Oh it's okay we invaded Irak, because China had Tiananmen".
Ehhh, that quote would apply perfectly to China’s requirements that you form a joint venture to enter restricted markets. These JV often require IP to be surrendered.
No need to discuss propaganda. Unlike Japan, Chinese competition is based on national-scale technology theft. No reason to hesitate to sanction China for unfairly competing with stolen technology on a national scale. However, this argument is lapsed because several strong sanctions are already in place.
I am not Western in origin, but live in the West and grew up in a socialist state drinking socialist CCP friendly propaganda. Let me tell you this: China is definitely the bad guy.
India, Taiwan, SK, Japan, Phillippines, Vietnam etc. All these countries can't be wrong and the last time I glanced at a world map, they weren't in the West.
> But Americans have drank so much anti-China propaganda that they consider anyone who isn't saying "China bad" is automatically a paid CCP shill
No, they don't. If you think US propaganda is bad, you haven't faced Chinese propaganda. Within China and its subjugated colonies (Tibet, HK, etc), it is so common you won't even notice it.
I don't think there are universally good and bad guys in this game. There are interests. If you live in the west your interest is for western economy to be the first which means for other economies to be, well, not first. If you live elsewhere the same applies.
As for me, I hate all of my overlords with passion. US EU Russia China, you are all the same to me. Not people, of course. Governments, armies and corporations. Well, almost the same. US and EU dropped bombs on me during my lifetime, Russia and China did not.
> Only on HN is an invader morally comparable to the invaded.
You seem to have a very myopic view on the conflict, there’s a whole history leading up to the events in which the West carries a big part of the blame.
That said, I know whenever I post my views on this conflict I will get downvoted here (which I don’t mind). So in that regard it is certainly not true that the majority of HN supports my views on the conflict. Thus your “only on HN” statement misses the mark, I think.
> ... you invaded and are currently genociding citizens of a sovereign country.
FYI: I am not Russian, don’t have any Russian family ties or ancestry or whatever. Born in The Netherlands and perhaps the earliest ancestors I know of were likely French Huguenots [0] that emigrated to The Netherlands to flee persecution in France.
With that said I’d like to think of myself as having a balanced view on the conflict.
> I think the moment you say this you kind of lose the ability to say that you have a balanced view of the conflict.
This Ukraine / Russia conflict could have been avoided. NATO could have respected Russia’s views towards expanding to the east.
USA has been warned time and time again this would cause a conflict at this point. Even USA state officials [0] warned against it. Yet NATO decided to ignore all warnings and keep expanding eastward until it became too close for comfort to the Russians.
In a way quite similar to the Cuban missile crisis.
What about Georgia and Chechenya, where was the NATO expansion there? Why did Russia invade them?
What about Finland, why didn't Russia invade them when they decided to enter NATO? If this entire war is about stopping NATO expansion?
I disagree. Russia has been where it is all the time, and it’s been able to reach all of continental Europe with it’s missiles for the past half century. NATO has been able to do the same thing in reverse for decades. Sharing a land border is just a formality. Besides, we were kinda at the point where nobody really wanted to invade Russia to stop them from doing anything.
Besides, say Ukraine joined NATO, how is the effect different from Russia taking over Ukraine. We’ll end up with a shared land border.
Obviously it’d be preferred by Russia that they occupy the place, but the war was a non-starter from the beginning. The end result is exactly the opposite from what I expect Russia was hoping to achieve (unless Putin’s aim was to make Russia a second North Korea). Ukraine has never been closer to NATO, and Russia never more reviled.
But this view is shared by some of the most renowned geopolitical analysts in the USA. It's not popular in the mass media, but it is absolutely not a view that should discredit anyone, unless you believe you and the media are qualified to say John Mearsheimer[1] does not have a balanced view of the conflict, while you, with all your background knowledge about Ukraine and Russian relations, do.
> Stephen Kotkin, the preeminent historian of the Soviet Union, and Michael McFaul, the US ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, acknowledged that Mearsheimer was “a giant of a scholar” and “one the clearest, most logical realist theorists out there”, but he was wrong to blame the US for Putin’s invasion.
Some of his statements in this article:
"International politics is a tragedy – it always has been, it is today, and it always will be. Those who believe that you can escape the iron cage, and transcend this Hobbesian world, are delusional. My argument disturbs liberals greatly.”
“The tragedy ... is that you could have two states who are content with the status quo and have no interest in fighting or competing for power. Nevertheless, because they cannot know each other’s intentions, and because they operate in an anarchic system, they have to assume the worst about each other and have to compete for power."
Even if you disagree with some of his arguments, I would think anyone with a rationale view of the subject will agree that there's at least some truth to it, and that the Russian government is not completely mad for thinking in those terms, as the West seems to so strongly believe in general (notice how governments always paint a picture of the "enemy" as being a mad, senseless thug - this is nothing new).
You doing the propaganda work for a regime that tells their people that they were fighting "the Nazi regime in Kiev" to ensure their loyalty.
My ancestors were also (if you don't just plainly lie about that fact, too) Huguenots and they would have not wanted you to cite them in this context after the had to leave their country not unlike millions of Ukrainian people have to right now.
So, wherever you lost that insight, I'd recommend to
pick it up again and recognize the irony in you propagating the Kremlin's world view.
The US actions in the past, and presently, have been abhorrent. As a US citizen I have no issue admitting this. I also have no issue also stating I think the invasion of Ukraine is an ongoing atrocity by Russia.
I don't think you'll find a lot of people being caught in a gotcha when you ask about the US vs Russia as far as impinging on the freedoms of other countries without a right to do so. They will readily tell you that both are wrong.
For all the faults of western democracies, the Chinese Communist Party is far worse. That’s not anti-China propaganda.
You comment on this issue a surprising amount, and clearly feel strongly about the US’ views on China. I’d be curious as to exactly how you feel China is being judged unfairly.
Julian Assange, currently being chemically lobotomized in one of the Wests' most heinously vile palaces of torture - without trial, without justice - would like you to very carefully reconsider your position with regards to political dissidents.
So would Australias Witnesses J, K, L, M, N and O .. who have been disappeared into a military Star Court, for the sake of political dissidence.
Be very careful with your castigation of China. We have far, far more political dissidents in our prisons than you know about. And that is by design.
What I mean to emphasize is that net net, one expects more of the semblance of a rule of law in western jurisdictions. It's why cases like Julian Assange are as controversial as they are, with public organizations in USA willing to make the case to support him and inquire on his well-being.
Our media is controlled but there is semblance of free press. You don't have even that in China. If you're a dissident in China you'd be hard pressed garnering support from any org.
I don't presume to have a complete picture. Maybe if I did it may suggest USA is in reality more like China. But from all that I've seen, authoritarian governments like China continue to have serious shortcomings in the kinds of freedoms we take for granted in the West.
Wikipedia is so funny. I like to read topics about contraversial stuff related to my region of Balkans, both hr. (Croatian) and sr. (Serbian) versions. For the same topic, one side says national heroes, the other war criminals. One side's terrorists are other side's freedom fighters. One side's nazi collaborators are other side's innocent communist victims. And so on.
So, what's the truth? I guess whatever one chooses to believe. I like to create my truths from many different, contraversial or sometimes completely opposing sources on same topic. Your links are all in english language, in en. section of Wikipedia.
> In May, a court in Hainan province sentenced former journalist Luo Changping to seven months in prison for a Weibo post that questioned China’s justification for its involvement in the Korean War.
> By all human rights measures, it is worse. Freedom of association, freedom of speech, freedom of religion … you name it.
I don't think anyone is saying China has "more freedom". But that does not seem to automatically imply that's "worse", which seems to be your ground assumption!
If you believe more freedom is always better, do you agree that social media should have absolutely no moderation? If you don't, then it seems to me you concede that freedom is good, but up to a limit. Then the question become, does China have the right amount of freedom or the USA does? How about the EU, which is quite noticeably less free than the USA? I don't think the answer to these questions are nearly as obvious as you seem to believe by making such blank statements, which leads me to agree with the other person that this is something someone helplessly affected by good old propaganda would do without realizing it (good propaganda is like that, you have no idea you're affected, trying to recognize that is very important).
You have conspicuously avoided addressing the specific, systemic human rights abuses unique to China.
Instead, your post employs a series of rhetorical tactics aimed at stifling constructive dialogue:
First, you assert a false equivalency between China and the USA/EU by trivializing the qualitative difference in freedom levels, thereby attempting to normalize authoritarianism.
Second, you use a slippery slope argument about social media moderation to suggest that all limitations on freedom are essentially the same — equating limited, private content moderation with systemic human rights abuses by government.
Third, you engage in an ad hominem attack by accusing me of being influenced by propaganda without providing substantive counter-arguments.
Were I to adopt your approach, I could easily make similar sweeping ad hominem accusations based on your behavior here.
This response is comic. Are you sure I am the one stifling dialogue?
I did not assert any false equivalence, that's your mistaken interpretation. Given your poor reading skills, I agree there's no reason to continue a dialogue, actually.
Your first false equivalence arises out of trivializing the qualitative differences in freedom between China and the USA/EU, implicitly framing the limitations in China as comparable to those in democratic societies.
This is misleading given the severe restrictions on human rights, freedom of speech, and rule of law in an authoritarian regime like China.
Your second false equivalence is in your equating of limited, private content moderation by a social network with systemic human rights abuses by government.
Sure, but China has lifted nearly a billion out of poverty in the last half century. Would it be superior if that didn’t happen but there was no censorship?
Let's makes this clear: when we say China is bad, we mean the government. The CCP. We're not saying Chinese people are inherently bad.
To credit the "a billion being lifted out of poverty" to "China" (remember in this context we're talking about the government) is just like saying "the US" invented PC, network, lightbulb and the other thousands of good stuff we rely on today.
No, some smart people in the US did that. But it can't be simply credited to "the US".
Chinese people worked hard to lift themselves out of poverty. Did some policies help? Absolutely. But it's not "China lifted them out of poverty".
If it's true, we can even say the US lifted them out of poverty, since the China economy boom came in place when it became the major trade partner of the US. See? The US' foreign policy helped!
I think it’s fair to say that the CCP has hindered that lift more than helped. You could argue that it might not have happened without their involvement, but I think it unlikely that history would be much different. Other than China being a free market economy of course, and maybe everyone learning Chinese instead of English.
If there wasn't censorship and the regime that produced it, many of those people wouldn't need to be "lifted" at all. In a normal country, there's no special effort required from the government to "lift" people from anywhere. Surely, there are still poor people, but not mass poverty that requires heroic efforts to overcome. When did you last hear that Swiss government lifted people out of poverty, for example?
Human rights and human prosperity aren’t mutually exclusive.
On top of which, they did such a terrible job of lifting people out of poverty, they unnecessarily killed tens of millions in the deadliest famine in human history:
Sure. Im saying they did a good thing, you’re saying they did bad. I think lifting a billion out of abject poverty is overall net positive against freedom of speech. There’s no objective way to say one way or another overall.
If you look at removal of poverty China is unquestionably better. There’s simply no unbiased way you could say China is better or worse overall. Any weights you apply to certain things are inherently biased.
Yes, there is an objective way to say that you don't have to institute a fascist totalitarian regime to make people not starve. It is witnessed by the fact that many countries do not have a fascist totalitarian regime, and still do not starve. In fact, mountains of evidence - including in recent Chinese history - point to the fact that a fascist totalitarian government is more likely to cause a mass starvation than to prevent one. Yes, the current fascist dictatorship finally learned how not to make people starve. It doesn't prove it is the only solution to starvation, and the choice is either starvation or fascism - it only makes this particular totalitarian dictatorship a bit less horrible. But still plenty horrible.
I don’t believe you’re engaging in good faith; you are employing tactics meant to stifle discourse:
1. False Equivalence: Suggesting that economic progress and freedom of speech are interchangeable or mutually exclusive is intentionally misleading.
2. Relativism: By stating there's "no objective way" to compare, you are deflecting any form of critical evaluation.
3. Unfalsifiability: Your assertion that any evaluation is "inherently biased" is an unfalsifiable claim meant to immunize your argument from critique.
Existence of "point of view" does not make it subjective. You can think the moon is made of Swiss cheese, that doesn't make its composition subjective, it just makes you wrong.
Criteria like "not starving", "not being murdered", "not being raped", "not being put into concentration camp for following your own religion", "not being imprisoned for criticizing the government" is pretty objective, and I have yet to see a culture where being raped and murdered is praised and desired by people. I am sure whatever are the cultural differences in China, they like starvation, rape, murder and imprisonment as little as we do. So the country which does such things to its citizens, massively, is not "doing well", even if its citizens aren't allowed to say so aloud (and that's another sign it's not doing well - "I can't complain" can mean two things, and in China it means you'd be in prison if you do).
I'm not familiar with that community or even ones closely related, but I've worked several years in Japan and Korea, so I'll take a stab at it.
For Japan, I'm pretty confident it's the language barrier. As in most countries, tech people in Japan are mostly males, and mostly are not very strong in the humanities and in social skills. This group tends to be extremely self-conscious about their limited English ability and generally avoids interaction with foreigners.
For Korea, I see a trend, but I'm not confident about the explanation. I see lots of bright kids at university, see them get hired at big tech firms, and see them enthuse about their work over beers. I don't see them interacting a lot with foreigners. My impression is there is so much going on within Korea that they don't feel strongly motivated to look outside.
That's true in general for Japan, but trained Japanese engineers who want a rsync-able cloud storage service are fine to register English web services.
There are reasons I come up with: Little known in Japanese community; there are many people don't watch English community even if they are fine to read English docs and send PR. There are almost zero article introduces rsync.net. Yen is weak for Dollar at this time. Overseas storage service tend to be slow from Japan. It's harder to be adopted by enterprises without Japanese reseller.
In my experience, rsync+ssh with higher latency is slow and price isn't attracting, so I haven't tried it yet.
It's never fine to read English docs and send PR for Japanese engineers. You're probably familiar with Japanese audiences on the Web with a strong, how should I call it, a very unnatural grammatical "accent" almost as heavy as a stereotypical Indian accent but in literal form.
That "accent" is due to our standard English teaching method that builds up an on-the-fly bidirectional translation layer on top of pure Japanese internal monologue. We're trained all the way from middle schools to college/University to do this complex rule-based word transposition and word-for-word substitution technique and that is unnatural as anything and slow as, like real QEMU. This is also why many dumb-faced Japanese people with some English skills are rather quick to issue and respond to fewer-words commands with highly technical expressions("don't lubricate [that] receptacle") but are far slower at returning verbal responses with higher word counts("I'm already 5 minutes into the future from the point I was to be there"), because they're doing it and it's not just a complex multi-parallel but also kind of an exponential time process.
I'm done with that method for better or worse, and I suspect my "tone" in literal English should not even be convincingly Japanese. But it's still way harder to do English, and for the vast majority of us who aren't demonstrably English speaking, it's just their precise translation skills coming with massive overhead.
Your explanation of a bidirectional translation layer analogs a lot to where I am in my study of Japanese. Three years in, there are quite a lot of kanji where I see it and think the English word; the Japanese pronunciation takes a noticeable amount of processing time to surface. My word count is fairly low (maybe 500 - 1000 words) and my grammar is on-par with a three-year-old. However, I'm getting better. Not bad, I suppose, for someone who started study at the age of 46 and only devotes about an hour a day to the task.
My current backup is done by "unlimited" Google Drive (will be dead sometime) + Duplicacy because my RTO/RPO requirement is loose and data is bigger. There are other options like Rclone + S3/B2/etc or just Dropbox/OneDrive like worldwide people use.
BTW, Backblaze is great about PR thanks to HDD stats. News websites frequently advertise their name for free. They also have local reseller.
Isn't it that Japan is REALLY inward-focused society? I've read multiple times that watching their TV as a foreigner is a weird experience, for the most part they talk about stuff going on in Japan more so than anywhere else.
I am a foreigner living in Japan, and I can confirm it. Watching the news is weird, they will focus on random, totally unimportant internal events (like a dude stealing a bike in an unnamed village in nowhere Hokkaido), while ignoring major world events.
So there’s clearly stuff being done to train a younger generation to speak English better than was the case previously.
The problem is that even with that, the mindset still appears to preserve the notion of Japanese supremacy over everything irrespective of data to the contrary. So improvement isn’t happening.
Take the Shinkansen as anotherq example. Impressive if you look at the train specs and reliability/punctuality. What isn’t seen so readily is the manual process of booking seats at stations with limited options for booking online. That manual process is often so inefficient that you might as well travel by a slower train given the loss of time involved.
Similar inefficiencies are observable throughout Japan. The people are typically oblivious because they are indoctrinated into following the process without questioning things. True of the younger English speakers as well from what I’ve seen. Not entirely sure if that’s blind deference, fear of conflict/group judgement or the result of brainwashing into a collaboration over competition mindset. Maybe it’s a mix of all of the above.
So I see very narrow examples of personal excellences where that obsession and perseverance doesn’t involve getting others on board. But innovation or improvement involving groups is more dysfunctional than anything I’ve seen elsewhere by a wide margin.
You can book Tokyo-Osaka Shinkansen tickets online now. The lines owned by JR Central all have online booking now. You can also connect your IC card to your ticket, so no paper ticket is required.
The people are typically oblivious because they are indoctrinated into following the process without questioning things.
If you speak with Japanese people in a private, psychologically safe setting, they will open up about all sorts of things, including continuing to use fax machines!
It's not just we have alternatives for some services, the entire Internet looks like "our" thing from this side. Everything is either perfectly localized, or built and run by local entities, or dominated by local users. In rare cases that none of above are true, social graph of users are still completely closed off from the outside world.
I mean, it's even the case offline. Have anyone seen or used the omnipresent NCR made ATM, with transparent green card slot? There are lots of Ingenico Lane/5000 lately, but that green plastic cover still isn't a thing here. I think there are very few regions that you could live without ever seeing one in life. We're isolate as that.
> Everything is either perfectly localized, or built and run by local entities, or dominated by local users.
People who are tied to the English-speaking net are often totally unaware of how many areas are dominated by local companies even in markets that are linguistically much closer and more used to using English.
And that's not really a criticism - it's hard to keep up when you're not immersed in it.
I'm Norwegian but live in the UK, and I keep being surprised by Norwegian or Scandinavian online services I was unaware of when I go home to visit family, for example, despite following Norwegian news, and visiting twice a year. It's not that they're necessarily more advanced (though sometimes they are) or better, but just that often you find local companies better entrenched than you'd expect.
It's not that there aren't alternatives, but that it's an interesting question why that specific market is under-represented. It could well be just luck of the draw, but there might be other reasons as well.
For the ones who remember BeOS and its history, from Wikipedia : In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured not to market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. Be also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc.'s initial public offering (IPO). The case was eventually settled out of court for $23.25 million with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.
And how can we forget the war that MS waged against Linux for many years, and the copyright lawsuits brought by SCO, partly financed by MS?
So ... stop for a moment and think about where we could be in terms of software and operating systems if some actors (all from the same country) didn't keep trying to kill the competition with unfair tactics in order to continue selling one of the worst operating systems ever created and the main vehicle for all the viruses, malware and ransomware.
There is actually a closed source desktop variant called BTRON spec. uITRON clones are just small(and among very few of actually practical) parts of the grandiose TRON Project universe.
Why would you run a desktop OS on an open frame computer?
And before I get downvoted (and lose the precious karma points) into oblivion, I answer the 'question' myself:
- availability of the software
- ease of use
- familiarity
- performance (throughput, not latency)
- popularity (with the advantages that this brings: availability of help, applications, thoroughly tested, etc.)
Many use RPi as a low power, somewhat feeble desktop computer but that doesn't make a desktop OS an ideal or obvious choice for embedded applications where open frame computers are (arguably more sensibly) used.
Japan's 10-year "Fifth Generation Computing Systems" initiative. I remember, this was very famous in the 80s. It was talked about all over the world. Even in popular magazines in Brazil (like Time), for example.
> The project imagined an "epoch-making" computer with supercomputer-like performance running on top of large databases (as opposed to a traditional filesystem)
Oh that sounds pretty reasonable; It's like the distributed systems that all large services rely on.
> using a logic programming language to define and access the data
Ugh, already going downhill.
> The FGCS Project did not meet with commercial success for reasons similar to the Lisp machine companies and Thinking Machines. The highly parallel computer architecture was eventually surpassed in speed by less specialized hardware (for example, Sun workstations and Intel x86 machines)
> Oh of course they tried to build a high-level CPU too. Still a terrible idea decades later:
I'll bite. A high-level CPU doesn't nessecarily have to add stuff, sometimes a high-level CPU does less because the tight integration with OS and language does more.
If memory safety is enforced by your compiler, e.g by your OS only executing WASM, you can get rid of the MMU. [1]
If you get rid of branch prediction and prefetching logic you get more space for more cores. If you hook up memory in parallel to those cores you get higher effective memory throughput and executed instructions per second.
If you got rid of the mmu you can also use that space for accelerating database indexes. CPUs already contain trie walkers for their page tables, you might as well use that for looking up data in indexes directly.
In the end highly parallel architectures won. It's just that we don't run logic programs in parallel but fuzzy neural stuff via array programming language DSLs.
Replacing hardware memory safety with WASM is a great idea, but FWIW you can get most of the benefits by just using hugepages. Eg, clang spends 7% of its time on TLB misses and you can get a free 5% speedup using hugectl: https://easyperf.net/blog/2022/09/01/Utilizing-Huge-Pages-Fo...
The practical solution would be to replace the MMU with a tiny one that's backwards compatible and extremely cheap in silicon area and latency. Old binaries would limp along due to translation overhead while new software would use only a couple of pages across the whole system since memory protection is done in software when the bytecode is compiled and you never need to swap to disk. New binaries would run >>7% faster. I wouldn't call this a high-level CPU tho. Most high-level CPU ideas are really stupid ones like tagging every word with a type ID that must be checked by hardware while wasting cache on something the compiler could have done.
> If you get rid of branch prediction and prefetching logic you get more space for more cores. If you hook up memory in parallel to those cores you get higher effective memory throughput and executed instructions per second.
Sounds like a GPU. Compiling normal code to run on chips like that is still an open problem and I doubt it will be solved within the next decade. We'd need AGI to rewrite code the same way humans do
> CPUs already contain trie walkers for their page tables, you might as well use that for looking up data in indexes directly.
I had the same idea and I feel like it should be possible with today's CPUs, tho I'm not sure how to implement it. Eg convert IP prefixes to page table entries and use the TLB to decide where to route packets the same way routers use TCAM in ASICs
I thought they were going to continue their 80s dominance with their robot technology, starting with those amazing vending machines. But then nothing happened.
I believe Microsoft had a hand in killing off many great technologies by a variety of means — Nokia, webOS, Firefox OS, WordPerfect, maybe even Amiga. One ironic exception is Apple, which it bailed out (to thwart government intervention).
Thankfully the Gnu’s open source philosophy allowed Linux to survive and thrive. Otherwise we’d be living in a even narrower dystopia of computing choices. (Not even Google would exist.)
> All the hardware and software would have been publicly available at the cost of an annual membership fee to the TRON Association. Ranging from about $23,000 a year down to a modest $4,600.
Cause of death identified. They wanted to do open source with a paywall. A fee structure well outside of what a hobbyist can afford, but hobbyists are the core of open source.
Also the available resources were to be mere specifications and reference implementations. The idea was that each computer manufacturers would build their own versions to compete on the same ABI. Sure, that's how you do manually fabricate operating systems out of blank floppies. That was among the project's fatal mistakes.
Linux is a combination, but it's worth noting that it wouldn't exist without hobbyist work.
That said, it would be interesting to do a breakdown of how much work comes from corporate vs individual contributors for, say, all the packages in a default install of some popular distros. (Also it sounds like a nightmare to try and do that analysis (ex. how do you even determine corp/non-corp contributors?), but it would be interesting if you could do it)
To use an example that's relevant here given the smart home context: Home Assistant has a huge community of hobbyists around it, and I think it's fair to say it couldn't have gotten nearly as far as it has without community contributions.
Hobbyists/government subsidized University students in CS/CE certainly forced a lot of Pareto optimal paths that won't be chosen in committee developments in open-source movement and projects. I'd not think that e.g. "hobbyist simply knows better", necessarily.
It’s less true for the kernel than it is for most open source projects. The kernel has a fair bit of corporate backing now, but out in user land there are way more projects being maintained by volunteers because they find value in it.
Now, yes, but it wouldn't have so much corporate backing now without all the hobbyist contributors before. And even now there are so many OSS projects, so many core libraries that entire industries and businesses are reliant on which are kept alive by a handful of people or even just a single person with no corporate backing at all.
Corporate backing is the exception, not the rule.
It feels like every country (that is not the US) has a legend about how the X company could have been the next Apple/IBM/Microsoft if it weren't for evil/corrupt/incompetent politicians. Usually these stories fall apart on closer inspection.
Not surprisingly, this story doesn't pass my smell test either. It's very light on details. It also talks a lot about the thoughts in Bill Gates' head, but fails to provide any quotes to back them up.
The style of argument in the article is so weird because, at least to me, it has the exact opposite effect of what I presume the author intended. It just sounds like over-the-top nationalistic sour grapes, even if I give it the benefit of the doubt and assume the factual details (which are rather few and far between) are true.
Which is a big shame I think because I'd be very interested to know more about the TRON project and how it compared to other OSes of the day. I went to the Wikipedia page, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project, which unfortunately suffers from the same semi-ridiculous bias: "The project's goal is to create an ideal computer architecture and network, to provide for all of society's needs." Who writes shit like that?
> "The project's goal is to create an ideal computer architecture and network, to provide for all of society's needs." Who writes shit like that?
Quacks do. That's a good way to know a quack - they are often too greedy for their own good. If you see a remedy which cures common cold, cancer, rheumatism and autism, all with no side effects whatsoever - you know it's bullshit. If you have somebody who can do anything, and be excellent at it - you have a con man. If you have a software system that is ideal for any use - it's a scam. Real good things always have requirements and limitations, and the more complex the goal is, the more requirements and limitations there are. If my career in software taught me something is that one of the basic principles is "the right tool for the right job", and there's no tool that is perfect for every job, and can't be.
Just visited Japan for a couple of months. The big tech retailer there is "BIC Camera" which contrary to the name sells everything from Cameras to Macs/PCs to drones and pretty much all consumer electronics. 20 years ago it had a bunch of interest stuff that wasn't available in the west and was typically better constructed than the stuff we got.
Now it's way behind the curve. PCs and accessories that I've not seen in UK/US stores for over a decade. Fax machines are still a thing and sold new.
But outside of such curiosities, it's interesting looking at where Japanese tech has sunk.
The Japanese can't bear to stock Samsung/LG televisions for reasons of national prime one presumes. So there are a bunch of locally branded televisions that seem antiquated - a far cry from the era where Sony held the crown for top end displays.
The PC vendors from Sony Vaio to Toshiba/Dynabook are gone or diminished. The consumer electronics/home electronics that once were interesting look increasingly dated given the Japanese obsession with putting lots of confusing buttons on their products instead of cleaning up the user experience (Japanese toilets are a great example of this... press the wrong button and get violated!)
And of course the camera section of BIC Camera is perhaps the most interesting predictor of where Japan's tech industry is headed. Sure the latest Canon, Nikon and Sony mirrorless cameras are amazing feats of engineering. The problem is that the cameras in phones have become so good that for 99% of the market, the camera in their phone is more than sufficient. So the Japanese camera vendors have become and will continue to will become increasingly niche. Of course the DJI drones next to the camera section offer capabilities the mirrorless variety can't match. So even more of the Japanese core tech industry will get eaten by China.
Pair all of the above with 260% debt to GDP (which is insanely insane even compared to the US/Europe), a population demographic pyramid showing not just an aging population but one that's rapidly declining and an economy that seems build on smoke and mirrors (go into any 7-Eleven and see unbelievably low prices for convenience groceries compared to any US/European store). Such businesses are part of what I'm told is an extensive network of zombie corporations that are run at a loss, subsidised by the banks in order for the banks to get aid/subsidies from the Japanese Government.
Then there's Toyota. Once a clear leader in both fossil fuel and hybrid cars that now has to issue press releases about future battery tech that isn't even close to production. They lag behind both Tesla and the European electric car vendors in actual offerings. Likewise Nissan's electric offerings look increasingly uncompetitive between their shenanigans getting their former non-Japanese CEO thrown in jail.
If these aren't enough - look around Japan outside of the 5 major cities. So much of the mid tier and smaller parts of Japan have been starved of cash. Cities built at the peak in the 80s and 90s with no signs of new development in 20-30 years.
My conclusion: Japan Inc. is a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would have loved to have conceived, veiled in superficial politeness intermingled with lots of courteous smiles and bows.
> If these aren't enough - look around Japan outside of the 5 major cities. So much of the mid tier and smaller parts of Japan have been starved of cash. Cities built at the peak in the 80s and 90s with no signs of new development in 20-30 years.
FWIW I live in a "mid-tier", depopulating city in Japan, and there's been a ton of development. We got a bullet train 12 years ago, and since then we've gotten like 2-3 large new modern hospitals, 3-4 new large fancy shopping malls (replacing old dilapidated shotengai), big new beautiful parks, an expensive decade-long tunneling roadworks to reduce congestion, lots of roadworks and constant, constant construction of new modern condos replacing old buildings and single-family homes. We also now have so much solar they're paying home consumers to use excess generation on sunny days.
Compared to a similar-sized city I'm from in Europe, it feels like we've being lavished with money. And it makes sense - this is where all that debt is coming from!
Is there a good book or something to understand postwar Japan, I’ve read bits and pieces on the ”economic miracle”, lost decade(s), the trade wars, the demographic crisis etc, but is there a good resource that compiles and connects it all?
It makes me want to share a story about an additional piece of perspective on what happened with Japan.
I worked for a CEO in the early 90s who was midwestern ex-WallStreet-analyst deeply concerned about American manufacturing competitiveness (and Japan). A little bit after Japan’s market crash he told me in astonished tones “They have chosen not to let anyone go under! They will be (economically) stagnant for 30 years!”
It was for me a profound moment of awareness of the different cultures of US vs Japan. And my boss’s words showed themselves true in the years since. But it was not at all a surprise at the time that Japan would make such a choice; a society where corporations’ obligations to employees and vice versa were much stronger than in the US and s culture of saving face was much deeper. Not so the US culture of Schumpeter’s creative destruction and bankruptcy. What was astonishing was the scale of the choice and impact on their society, glimpsed in a moment.
Chinese culture is different. I predict their current trials will turn out differently. And they have studied hard the lessons of Japan. But I don’t know enough about Chinese culture to know how they will cope with market-crash-type phenomena. Will they silently absorb the losses, or let things go under, or do something completely different? Or maybe choose deliberately lower growth for a while in an attempt to chart a middle course? We will see.
A few points I'd like to make regarding your assumptions and my view of Japan, which I'm not claiming is fully correct, but has a different perspective to offer:
a) I'm not an expert, but Japan's debt is mostly domestically owned (companies in Japan, Bank of Japan, et cetera) and they hold huge reserves in foreign currencies. Economics is more complicated than a simple debt figure, and I'm not well informed about the details, but the ratio of "debt to GDP" by itself isn't the holy grail as far as I know. Devil's in the details. It's a huge problem, but not as large as the number by itself indicates.
b) Japan is self contained. They have a unique self contained non-extremely-western-poisoned culture, an aging population without relying on immigration, their ethnicity makeup is 98% Japanese (I'm sure them being an island, the language and culture barrier are a factor). Find that bad or good, but I think there's something to that, and I think it's important when discussing their culture or their country.
c) Japan is a paradise for geeks, regarding how many possessions are treated and treasured. You've seen outdated tech and thought it was bad? I'm here ordering old consoles, games, dvds, books from Japan and the condition "slightly worn" from a Japenese seller is the American equivalent to "As good as new, perfect condition". Japan is a paradise for cameras, old game consoles, hard to find hardware, watches, ... arcades you wouldn't be able to find in any other country because they've given way to "the times" in other countries... you see a fax machine, or I guess potentially minidisc player, a discman, old cassette player... sold as "new" and think it's bad? I'd love the fact and buy all of them...
d) Toyota is one of the top 10 companies by revenue in the world, still one of the largest car manufacturers, and famous (among other Japanese companies) for efficient and world pioneering management techniques... Japan has the third highest GDP and ranks 19th in the HDI... is it maybe too soon to sing their demise?
Not picking a fight, but from my perspective your comment comes off as condescending, culturally biased and close-minded... Deriding a whole country/culture/economy because of how you interpreted certain things while visiting...you're citing Japanese toilet buttons as an example for their technological demise given their bad UI (having buttons)? Should it be voice controlled, have a touch panel, connect via Bluetooth to your smartphone and have its own bespoke App, offer fancy usage statistics...
You were there for months and this is your cynical take? How could I, as an outsider applying a similar spirit to yours, rate China (censorship, the CCP, inequality, corruption, certain infrastructure projects, technological tracking), the US (politics, cultural crazes, depression, high school system, prison system, weapons, policing), Europe (immigration and identity crisis, EU, ...), Russia/Ukraine..., Mexico, Brazil,...
This is meant to illustrate: a cynical take is easy to come by...
On (a), depends on whether you subscribe to the view the Modern Monetary Theory(MMT) is sustainable or a dangerous experiment that has unknowable consequences.
(b) Japan lacks natural resources (mineral, oil/gas etc.) and is hugely reliant on exports to keep the domestic economy running.
(c) There's a lot of cool stuff at a cultural level if you're a geek. Geeks are alas a small percentage of the population and that cool stuff is often kind of cool because it is a snapshot of the past. Not sure the curiosities are enough to keep the show on the rails.
(d) This one amused me. I recall IBMers talking about how IBM was one of the top companies by revenue right before it entered free fall and gave the tech industry to the modern tech giants. Kanban, Just-in-time manufacturing etc. were interesting and have their place. But something's gone wrong with the Japanese mindset. The thinking that produced interesting innovation back in the 70s, 80s and maybe even early 90s seems to have given way to a stagnant way of thinking that's evident everywhere you look. There's niches of creativity in things like anime but the innovation in technology and in process improvement that once enabled the amazing growth that Japan saw seems to have given way to a rigid way of thinking and a culture of just following the once innovative processes instead of continually improving them.
As for the voice controlled touch panel, probably not - but could the functions be simplified to less buttons and a more intuitive UI, for sure... unless you've embraced or complacently fallen into a culture of stagnation.
On your points re: China, they're innovating in ways Japan can only dream of without the fanfare or buzzwords. It's why most of the products we buy come out of Chongqing or Shenzhen. There's stuff wrong with China for sure but they're knocking it out of the park economically compared to Japan that's kind of riding the train over the cliff.
Re: The US etc., everywhere has issues but Europe/The US does not have the observable stagnation that can be witnessed in Japan. That's not about condescension but about looking at what I see with an open mind and not being afraid to make critical observations based on what I see before me.
I'd suggest Japan might be something of a warning for us in the West - if we stay complacent, keep worrying about superficial stuff that doesn't matter and let the core economic/innovating metrics trend in the wrong direction for too long we risk getting into a similar muddle.
> (b) Japan lacks natural resources (mineral, oil/gas etc.) and is hugely reliant on exports to keep the domestic economy running.
Natural resources aren't a good predictor of economic success. In fact, most resource rich countries seem to suffer from the "resource curse".
> but the innovation in technology and in process improvement that once enabled the amazing growth that Japan saw seems to have given way to a rigid way of thinking and a culture of just following the once innovative processes instead of continually improving them.
To be frank, I think they were just as rigid back then - if not more so. The only real difference was demographics and an asset bubble. As their population ages, they stop spending. Lower spending means lower income for companies who then slash R&D and new product development. It's visible in other sectors too like entertainment, not just technology. Jpop today is a shadow of its former self.
> China, they're innovating in ways Japan can only dream of without the fanfare or buzzwords.
The same thing that happened to Japan is happening to China now - end of demographic dividend, popping of asset bubble, ... China is likely to stagnate the next few decades. The only difference is Japan got rich before things went south while China is still climbing that ladder.
> Re: The US etc., everywhere has issues but Europe/The US does not have the observable stagnation that can be witnessed in Japan.
Again, it probably comes down to demographics. The West is willing to import people to keep their population rising - possibly at the expense of social stability. The Japanese decided to "go down with the ship" and just deal with the fallout as it comes. China ... doesn't really have much a choice but to go down with the ship. Who the heck is going to immigrate there?
Your really not addressing their comments and kinda missing the point..
But I’ll address toyota - unlike ibm they make a product that is well regarded and not in any danger of being supplemented- while they dropped the ball on ev for hydrogen their existing hybrid tech means “drop in a bigger battery and call it a day” - I think comparing them to imb is a poor comparison at best
And there are many other companies doing quite well in Japan so you shouldn’t be focusing one just one
There’s niche players that are very successful. But the success that once was Japan was about being competitive in more than just niche markets.
Not sure transitioning from hybrid to EV is just a case of drop in a bigger battery. That was kind of the point I made before. From toilets to EVs, the mindset is about preserving the once advanced status quo instead of actually continuing to do “continuous improvement”.
For all the adherents of Kaizen in the West or the apologists for what Japan once was, perhaps it would be wise to question why the place has managed to lose its edge across a range of metrics for multiple decades.
Well, to each their own I guess, I read their response and thought it gave an excellent point-by-point analysis.
At a higher level, I didn't read manxman posts as saying Japan is some sort of tech hellscape, or that their previous high-flying tech companies are all dead, but I think it's pretty easy to argue that innovation in Japan has seriously stagnated over the past 2 decades. I left another comment where I listed tons of Japanese tech I used to have in my (US) house - now I have almost none.
Regarding Toyota, I strongly disagree with "unlike ibm they make a product that is well regarded and not in any danger of being supplanted". I had a Toyota which I loved (it was crazy reliable) for nearly 2 decades that I replaced about 7 years ago - with an EV, and have since bought another EV. I just went to Toyota's website and they only offer a single all-electric EV, the "bZ4X", which I honestly have never heard of. You say it's as easy as "drop in a bigger battery and call it a day" - well, why haven't they then? Toyota is going to get killed in the EV market, which in not too long will be the entire auto market.
I must note while IBM is no longer a shining beacon of innovation, it still exists, still employs almost 300K people, still part of SP100 and still one of the largest technology companies in the world. It may eventually diminish even more than it has now, but I don't think it's time yet to talk about it as if it were dead and buried.
> If these aren't enough - look around Japan outside of the 5 major cities. So much of the mid tier and smaller parts of Japan have been starved of cash. Cities built at the peak in the 80s and 90s with no signs of new development in 20-30 years.
I live in a small Japanese city of 40k people, and your comment is... way too gentle. Yeah, outside of the major cities the infrastructure was never very good to begin with, and now is seriously decaying, which combined with the extremely chaotic Japanese urban development results in a level of ugliness that is pretty much unthinkable in a normal developed country. But the worst part is that you tell the local people, and nobody seems to care or even realize that something is wrong.
I remember back in the 80’s when we were all witness to Japan’s economic miracle. Some said it was the tightly managed Keiretsu supply system, some said it was MITI, some said that it was Deming, or maybe it was just Japanese culture?
It really looks now like it’s demographics. This is just the sort of amazing thing that countries with a young well-educated workforce and a below-50 managerial class can accomplish. Now we’re all in the age of the gerontocracy, with Japan Inc. leading the way. Even the United States, ostensibly the most societally agile nation in the world, can’t seem to find political leaders who aren’t in comas or don’t suffer micro-seizures in public.
Thanks, this was a great post! It actually made me realize how, relatively recently, I had a bunch of Japanese tech in my house, but now almost none. Sony Vaio was a great laptop. I had a Sony Ericcson phone back in the day, as well as Bravia TV. I remember a family member had one of the "mini" Toshiba laptops in the 90s (I think it was a Portege? not sure) that I remember being so cool back then.
PlayStation is still going strong, and Nintendo, too, but it's really amazing to see how much has changed in such a short time period.
I do take issue with your conclusion, though: "Japan Inc. is a Ponzi scheme that Bernie Madoff would have loved to have conceived, veiled in superficial politeness intermingled with lots of courteous smiles and bows." I don't think it's really much different than modern capitalism basically being a Ponzi scheme that depends on ever increasing population. Japan just hit it a lot earlier than other places because (1) they had such a massive asset bubble in the late 80s, and 34 years later the Nikkei is still well below its peak in the late 80s, and (2) they experienced population decline well before most other advanced economies - their population peaked in 2010.
Edit: Oh, and I used to own a Toyota, too, which I loved and had for nearly 2 decades. Until I replaced it with an electric vehicle.
Sony Ericsson was Swedish by the way, it was basically the old Ericsson phone division with Sony Walkman and Cybershot branding slapped on top.
The Japan models were the old Sony and they always had completely different (and much better) hardware than the models in any other country. IIRC the W900 was the attempt to merge Japanese hardware with Ericsson software and the UI was way smoother and it was the only SE device for years that would record QVGA video instead of QCIF.
I’m deeply cautious of the argument that modern capitalism is reliant on an ever increasing population.
I think this perceived requirement is the result of efforts to undermine or corrupt capitalism to preserve the interests of incumbents at the expense of innovation.
Innovators are always starting at zero and have literally a world of opportunity ahead of them irrespective of whether the world population is growing or declining.
Apple’s growth and value creation was never about chasing user numbers as the first order priority. Instead they built an ecosystem where they delivered value to a small user base and then got that user base to buy into more product categories and services. Those users also evangelise to others more than most. That delivered massive growth that has been buffered against age/population demographics.
Alas Apple seems to be getting into maintaining value over doing real innovation now so maybe their decline is coming, but it’s interesting how the Japanese tech world has not been able to break out of the old ways of doing things and largely doesn’t seem to have learned from the advances in User eXperience that we’ve made in the past couple of decades.
As for PlayStation and Nintendo, true for now but that space is about to move to VR. Enter Meta and Apple but also DJI with interest VR headset control of their drones. I don’t see the Japanese with a credible response to these impending shifts either.
Wow, looking at that table of GDP per capita makes you realize what a crazy outlier the US is. Every country ahead of the US is either a relatively teeny financial haven, or in the case of Norway and Qatar, small petrostates. I'd say the only other countries that are even close in terms of overall economic structure that are near the US in GDP per capita are Denmark and Australia, and they are still significantly behind.
>how the X company could have been the next Apple/IBM/Microsoft if it weren't for evil/corrupt/incompetent politicians //
Surely it's the other way around, companies only get this big and powerful by abusing their power, and probably politicians helping them (if only to boost a private share portfolio) instead of adding for the people?
So if your political system works (applies morality to business, favours the demos over corporate power) you're not going to get these sorts of mega-corporations. Not sure if IBM fit that category, but Apple and Microsoft seem to.
I appreciate the link, but also Wikipedia is kinda a pain for some technical things. The absolute minimum and technically correct descriptions are so often ... not very illuminating.
Granted it's not Wikipedia's point, but it also makes their article's hard to digest at times.
> In 1989 the U.S. software industry group, ADAPSO, concluded in a report on Japanese software that TRON had “strong undertones of nationalism and will have the practical effect of impeding foreign penetration of the Japanese market.”
This is revealing and a highly important point. A "universal" IT standard like TRON can only come from an entity that has essentially governmental authority over digital technology. It can't come from just a smartphone company or software company, because competitors and other companies have no incentive to comply.
It's a bit of a conundrum, because a universal open standard could be really nice for the average hacker, but its practical existence implies an entity that has near total dominion over tech standards. I.e. some entity that could force Apple and Google to implement the standard for all their products.
> It is hard to imagine Microsoft not having stifled TRON as an OS for general users anyway. Still it is a shame that the Japanese government had no strategy and corporate Japan was such a coward. If they had envisioned the future rise of information technology correctly, they would have known about the superiority and importance of their software.
It sounded from this same article like geopolitical pressure had been brought to bear.
Not knowing more about the situation, I'm not ready to call that "such a coward"; it might've been the right call. For example, imagine a parent accepting humiliation, to protect their children from an immediate threat.
I had never heard of the Tron project before this. I do remember Microsoft and msx however which was a Microsoft / Japanese partnership which was quite big in Japan. Anyway thanks hacker news for bring tron to my attention!
I would argue Westinghouse demonstrated some of these ideas first, in the 60s. They could have executed on some of it too I am sure, but I believe it was mostly aspirational demonstrators of what the future could hold.
A war that Japan decidedly lost.
Here is an article from Chinese state media drawing the parallels:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-11/Lessons-from-U-S-Japan...
What can we learn from U.S.-Japan trade war of 1980s?
It is true that the ongoing trade war between China and the U.S. is different from the one between the U.S. and Japan in the 1980s, but the two trade wars do have a lot in common. First, both involve the world's largest and second-largest economies; second, China is the country with the largest trade surplus with the U.S., the spot was held by Japan during the 1980s; third, China is highly dependent on the U.S. market, so was Japan. The U.S. approach and the intensity of the trade wars are also more or less the same.