Comments by "capmidnite" (@capmidnite) on "Asianometry" channel.

  1. I'm confused. The Plaza Accord which resulted in the JPY appreciating was mid-1980s while the bike boom was early to mid 1970s.
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  2. 5:39 "Reverse engineer" : A euphemism for copied without license, hence saving money on original design and engineering.
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  3.  @UbermanNullist  "Also, the Japanese government prohibited the establishment of universities in Korea." I guess you never heard of Keijo Imperial University in Seoul? Which happened to the predecessor to SNU. Granted the majority of the students were Japanese but there were Korean students.
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  4.  @UbermanNullist  What are you talking about? The Japanese established universal basic education in Korea for the first time in its history. If Koreans weren't educated, how did Lee Byung Chul (the founder of Samsung) attend Waseda University, one of the best universities in Japan?
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  5.  @eduwino151  I can just imagine the helicopters hovering overhead with their cables and grappling hooks and the engineers holding on as everything goes BOOM.
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  6.  @ROIDDDDD  What are you talking about? You think the US Navy is going to hand shipbuilding contracts to Korean shipyards? The South Koreans don’t even have one aircraft carrier.
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  7.  @ROIDDDDD  Why don't you brush up on your English before you post? I don't understand what you are trying to say.
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  8. I think mechanical calculators will make a comeback when the next big EMP strike (from the sun or a nuke) instantly zaps all electronics.
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  9. The video touched upon but didn't elaborate on two things: (1) The Korean industrial workforce as a whole is getting older and expensive. Korean shipyards now routinely employ welders and other workers from SE Asian countries such as Vietnam, on working visas because young Koreans don't want to do such work and (2) every country (UK, USA, etc) that used to have a domestic shipbuilding industry has followed the same cycle of increasing government subsidies to prop up domestic industries in the face of fierce foreign competition, only to eventually throw in the towel after realizing it was a useless endeavor. The US does have the Jones Act to preserve a minimal amount of domestic commercial shipbuilding capacity, though. Also, the USA will always retain its military ship building capacity.
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  10.  @Dave_Sisson  Most surviving Swiss watch companies are owned by the Swatch Group and many models across different brands share the same movements. Rolex and Patek being one of the few independent ones.
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  11. I had the chance to take a cycling trip around the Inland Sea in Japan, where Imabari Shipyards is located. Some of the factory buildings are right up against the road and you can look in and see the workers and half-finished pieces and hear the pounding of machinery. The Hyundai shipyards in Ulsan are fenced off though and can only be seen from a distance.
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  12.  @푸른마  Thank you, I didn't realize they have to pay a royalty to GTT for the LNG ships. LNG ships are one category the Korean shipbuilders are moving into, to get away from Chinese competition.
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  13.  @Schinshikss  Zimbabwe tried out "land reform" and ended up destroying the economy.
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  14. How is your Rolex seized and needing a rebuild every 10 years? Is it an antique model? Cause modern Rolexes run like . . . a Swiss watch!
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  15.  @joaocosta3374  My minute repeater is so lame. I can barely hear it across the room.
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  16.  @Dave_Sisson  The United States still makes its own aircraft carriers, submarines and other military ships. And the outdated Jones Act which requires domestic shipping to use USA-made ships keeps a little bit of commercial shipbuilding capacity alive.
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  17.  @lengould9262  I always imagine the fuel injection era as beginning in the mid to late 80s, when the technology finally matured and became mainstream, with electronic computer control. I am aware the tech was around before that, albeit in a cruder form.
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  18. According to the screenshot at 15:14 Ibiden, JSr (chip packaging, materials). I know for example that Japanese firms pretty much have a monopoly on ultra-pure hydrogen flouride to clean semiconductors.
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  19. It's a gun so hopefully it's reliable! Can't say the same about their cars, though.
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  20.  @richardbloemenkamp8532  Fair enough, their earlier model lineup looked very generic and even their current designs can pass for something from China, for example. The current lineup of Pyeonghwa Motors from North Korea looks like it could have been made by anyone too.
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  21. In South Korea there's a similar local beef called hanwoo and in fact the Korean cows are closely related to Japanese cows. It has fat than wagyu and thus less "melt in your mouth" than wagyu, but has a distinct flavor. Australian and American beef is available too in the Korean market but hanwoo commands a higher premium. Unlike wagyu, hanwoo is exported in very minuscule amounts and thus virtually impossible to find outside Korea.
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  22. 15:33 That's a picture of the Showa Steel Works in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, during the 1930s.
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  23. Second!
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  24.  @amerigo88  The motorcycle fork brand? Showa was the name of the Japanese emperor's reign when the steel works were built.
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  25.  @excitedbox5705  Well I meant the optics in the stepper.
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  26. So if fabs consumer so much water, why are they building one in Arizona?
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  27.  @wolfgangselle4307  Sure, that explains the finances of it. But I'm still trying to figure out the "common sense" of it. With enough tax incentives, one can install solar panels above the Arctic Circle. Or grow water-intensive crops in the desert.
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  28.  @francisdayon  “If they don’t hit their metrics they don’t get promoted.” Why this emphasis on “metrics?” The inevitable result of emphasizing metrics (tangible numbers) is that first, the metrics will get fudged by those whose job is to compile and report them because they are working for the government and second, the politicians will start governing first and foremost to “hit the metrics.” Whatever the cost. Maybe in a business setting “hitting the metrics” is a good idea (sales figures, cost cutting, balance sheets, etc) but you think governing a state or city or country with its many variables and competing constituencies and demands can distilled down to “hitting metrics”?
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  29.  @francisdayon  China has a huge problem with provincial governors and local leaders reporting massaged “metrics” to Beijing in order to look good.
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  30.  @msp5138  “The West got rich because it colonised . . .” And in that same period of time non-western powers such as the Mughals and Manchus were busy conquering and exploiting other people. The West got rich because it created the Industrial Revolution and the Scientific Revolution. You think the steam engine and science was “stolen” from African people?
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  31.  @qjtvaddict  How is the US a “complete failure”? What political system is perfect? The USA is mid-pack according to corruption indexes compiled by NGOs.
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  32.  @RM-el3gw  Any watch going for $12 will break (usually the band) within a year or two.
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  33. But how does land reform that divvies up land to numerous small owners foster industrialization and the growth of a modern economy? The Enclosure Acts of the 1700s and 1800s in the UK led to the previously commonly-held land to be monopolized by landlords. The result was many landless tenants flocking to urban areas and providing a workforce for the factories. Meanwhile, the landlords who held the land were incentivized to use it more productively and make improvements.
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  34. I think what should also be mentioned is how Giant and the Taiwanese bike industry in general has achieved massive economies of scale with modern automated factories that can't be duplicated elsewhere. Giant still manufactures for companies such as Trek. It is a virtuous cycle, where economies of scale leads to lower production costs, which leads to more brand-name bike companies realizing it's cheaper to sub-contract Giant to manufacture their mid-level bikes and slap their label on it.
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  35. Big chaebols such as Hyundai like to play up their scrappy rags to riches founding stories. The founder of Hyundai for example was a farmer’s son who fled to Seoul to make it rich. Left unsaid is the massive amounts of government favoritism and cronyism and corruption in the background.
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  36. For English speakers, it would be pronounced with a hard "J." Do you expect an English speaker to pronounce the capitol of Bavaria as "Muenchen"?
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  37.  @indahooddererste  Well, it depends on if there's a commonly accepted word for an American place name in your language. And I'm sure if a native from your country that couldn't speak English at all pronounced "New York", it might come across as something different.
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  38. Except J is never "Y" in English. Why don't English speakers pronounce Munich as "Muenchen"?
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  39.  @arsic094  "Uneducated people see a familiar letter in a foreign word and pronounce it as if it was their own language." But what if the English-pronunciation of the foreign place name has been long accepted and used by everyone from journalists to diplomats? Examples: Paris, Munich, Moscow. Pronouncing "Jena" with a hard "J" sound is a far less butchering of the original than the examples I gave. 99% of the time an English-speaker will pronounce it with the hard "J."
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  40.  @MNkno  The collapse of Japanese Manchuria was pretty swift after the Soviets invaded it during the last days of WW2. I believe many Japanese women and children were left stranded. Some children were even adopted by local Chinese families.
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  41. Third!
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  42. Not mentioned in the video is how after WW2 major German corporations had to give up their patents and IP as part of war reparations. Zeiss lost patent protections for their lens designs and cameras such as the Contax. The Japanese manufacturers Nikon and Canon swooped in. The Contax formed the basis for the Nikon S cameras which in turn formed the basis of the F cameras. After the F cameras came out, the Germans played second fiddle to the Japanese in the professional and mass consumer SLR camera market. Zeiss's current dominance in the lithography machine market at the expense of the Japanese seems like a bit of sweet revenge.
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  43. I guess they hated Samsung because Samsung turned government witness. "Snitches get stitches" holds true both in the criminal world and in the corporate.
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  44.  @thor8086  And don't ask a Taiwanese their opinion about Korean baseball.
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  45. This question has been covered in the discussion thread. That's the German pronunciation. You wouldn't expect an English speaker to pronounce Paris as "Paree"?
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  46.  @MichaelT_123  Is pronouncing Muenchen as Munich a mis-pronunciation of the German?
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  47.  @kurt9395  Um, that's exactly what I've been trying to say. And even for so-called obscure place names, an English speaker looking at the word "Jena" in print would pronounce it with a hard "J".
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  48. The hard "J" is how it is pronounced in English. Like how Nurnberg is pronounced Nuremburg, Muenchen is Munich, Braunschweig is Brunswick. Jena is Jena in written English because I guess it's a simple name.
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  49. Stopped watching after 5 minutes. Video interrupted by YouTube ads every 2 minutes. Lame.
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  50.  @dickiesdocos  Ads every 2 minutes is lame. And these are ads that you can’t block because they interrupt the video. Not sure if content creators can control ad frequency. But anyway I can exercise my right to tune out.
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