NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/environm/14188

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-01 | 2.0 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!DIALix!tillage!gil
From: [e-mail] (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Idiotic Japan Bashing
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Fri, 01 Jan 93 06:44:29 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents
Lines: 34


In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

 > Who said its a secret.  Only you seemed to have missed the point that they
 > have adopted strategies that run for decades.  In the US, long-term means
 > till the end of the fiscal quarter.  In Japan it means till the objectives
 > are achieved.

Indeed, Toyota have invested over $US1 billion entirely rebuilding
their Australian operation with *no* prospect of any return at all
for more than ten years. Their plan is to be top dog as competitors
pursuing inherently sort-term goals finally run down through the
combined effects of technological redundancy and depreciation at a
time when the technology the Japanese are installing now will be at
its most productive.

Australia has already suffered from that mistake, thinking we were
clever getting hold of so much European manufacturing plant as part
of the spoils of war, only to discover very quickly that we then had
to compete on the world market using old technology against the new
up-to-date of the so-called vanquished. Now we invite the Japanese in
to ensure a local base for the supply of automobiles we need on other
economic grounds, but we still keep one another at arms length.

Our acute embarrassment might have been lessened had we deployed the
war time plant as the basis for research and development of new plant
as the Japanese had done initially, but we did not even do that and it
all just began falling apart in the end.

All the astute investors of the day knew just where to put their money
then too. They do again today, but with a little more hindsight.

Gil