[caseyross]

I think this gets to the core of it. It's just not economic anymore.

My sense is that most of these family shops were started during the mid-20th century when the economy in developed countries was more accommodating to small business. Through decades of ever-increasing pricing pressure from giant multinationals, the most successful family operations could still keep their doors open because of the trusted reputation they had earned in their communities. But even that lifeline is increasingly imperiled as their best, longest customers age out and die, and are not replaced by younger customers because of constantly falling wages in real terms.

[makeitdouble]

Also to note: older generations were more used to crappy work conditions.

They didn’t enjoy it, oh no, and we saw the endless battles to get rid of dangerous and body crushing jobs, all the fight for unions, workers getting shot during strikes etc. And many traditional jobs were just a step below in terms of pressure and work hours.

In a way, their wish for a better future for their children mostly got realized, and a lot of traditional occupations didn’t or couldn’t adapt to that mindset.

The family business in the article is a farmer in the north, and by today’s standard it’s usually a brutal job, “work life balance” is basically an imaginary concept, there’s little leeway for error (forget to turn some knob just once in the dozens of time you do it in a day, and you have a month worth of production gone away), and you’re facing enough natural and economic odds that investment is basically akin to gambling.

[lazyasciiart]

The family business in the article is described as a transportation company with a farm attached? I wonder if he could sell the transport business separately.

[makeitdouble]

I reread the article and it’s still not clear to me what he does exactly. It’s explained as a transportation company, but as the article progresses, we’re told that farmers “depend on Mr. Yokoyama for tasks like harvesting hay and clearing snow” and “17 employees tend to 3,000 head of cattle, and Mr. Yokoyama’s company fills in the gaps.” so it seems they’re doing a lot, yes.

On the transportation business, it has a reputation of being cutthroat, and bigger national players like Yamato / Sagawa have had a lot of trouble recruiting despite the booming business coming from e-commerce.

It’s kinda tough any angle we look at it…

[ehnto]

Notably, Japan had previously enjoyed a very strong middle class. With age demographics and economics changing I suspect the spending capacity of the middle class as a whole might be dropping.

Small business struggles when people can't afford more than the cheapest as the cheapest usually comes from the big corporates.