The thing I love about the Japanese automotive story is that their success was earned. It wasn't some story of regulatory capture or protectionism or blitzscaling, etc. They built an auto industry over generations and raised the quality line for everyone.
replyThis came with a price, though. Japanese workers were squeezed extremely hard, entire generations of kids barely had any relationship with their fathers. A lot of those practices were then exported to other countries under the guise of toyotism.
replyThat's true. This isn't meant to be a "whataboutism" but I think that's something we see every time a nation industrializes. And then there's a critical point that's hit, and we invent weekends and a healthy middle class. Not sure if Japan ever realized that second part as much (I honestly don't know)? And China seems to be grappling with some 12/6 thing, though I've heard they have an interesting middle class story.
replyReally out of my realm of expertise here, but I think there's something interesting going on here with how some economies evolved out of the "toil and suffer" phase while others don't?
We cannot really go there without opening a big can of politics, but I would be wary to consider this or that change fundamentally inevitable. Marx thought he could see the future, but most of his predictions did not come to pass. Humans are messy.
replyI've often heard Toyota cited as the Japanese manufacturing exemplar, with their "kaizen" (constant improvement) approach.
replyFrom the Freebsd fortune file:
reply Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada
Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan.
The company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5
percent defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in
plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5
percent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them
separately."
-- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail