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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

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.

manxman 3y ago
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.
kalleboo 3y ago
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.

manxman 3y ago

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.

kalleboo 3y ago

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.