Do Americans feel anything about big American brands like 711 or Columbia Picture owned by Japan?
I was just watching Zombieland on cable TV. Columbia Picture has a historical value in USA. It goes way back. The same for 711 convenience chain. These were bought & owned by Japan today. Do you feel anything about it? Like wanting to buy them back for America or something? Or do you just not care? It’s like something of yours that has been meaningful to you being owned by someone else when you are the one who created & owned those. You no longer own them anymore. Any thoughts?
Well, people sell & buy business all the time. It’s just that some important American things were sold to outside America rather than to another American.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was almost a level of hysteria about “Japan” buying up famous American brands and real estate. When Sony acquired Columbia Pictures and CBS Records and when Mitsubishi acquired Rockefeller Center, there was a big to-do about it.
I recall a news story at the time noting that Canadian, British, and Dutch-based interests each individually owned more “American” stuff than the Japanese, but these kinds of things are always racially charged.
Now, as JZ says, the hysteria is about China, because Japan is no longer the country that’s beating us or taking us over or whatever nonsense the xenophobes are peddling.
No, without having read an article about why it’s a bad thing, I feel nothing. What’s done is done and I’m not xenophobic.
7-11 might even improve (I prefer QT-Quick Trip if given a choice. They’re a good company that pays its employees a living wage and has employee-positive policies that inspire motivation and loyalty).
For Columbia, as long as they don’t close it down, keep industry people employed, keep the movies coming and the catalog available, it makes no difference.
Eh, all large companies are mostly owned by rich plutocratic fat cats anyway. What difference does it make what citizenship those rich plutocratic fat cats hold?
EDIT:
But they weren’t my own valuable things. They were valuable things owned by people who happened to citizens of the same nation as I. Now they’re owned by other people who happen to not be citizens of that nation. The only difference between the old owners and the new ones is that the new ones are foreigners. In other words, it’s entirely, 100%, about being afraid of foreigners.
No, having attachment to your own self & its belongings has nothing to do with being afraid of foreigners. Blurring the line between foreigners & self makes no sense. There is a clear distinction between the self & the others.
In an analogy, it’s like someone else dating your wife. Or your work on a lab experiment overtaken by someone else. Or you eating a large pizza but your mother giving away the rest of pizza slices to a neighbor kid.
You can have attachment to your own self & your belongings without being “afraid” of foreigners. It’s a legitimate feeling you shouldn’t be forced to blur out. But I suppose Americans have been forced to be trained to blur out those boundaries & feeling. It sounds a reverse oppression to me. You shouldn’t have to blur out such. You have the right to attachments. But anyway, I suppose that Americans are forcedly made dull on such.
“The others do it too” or “we’ve been done that before” isn’t really relevant how an incident is or felt. If anything, you are supposed to feel the same thing on every occasion.
Maybe the examples are not big enough. If Ford (they invented cars, right?) & General Electrics (is this the Edison one?) were bought over & owned by China, how would you feel? That’s what I was getting at.
I had nothing to do with the creation or ownership of Columbia Pictures or 7-11, nor do I feel that these companies were ever “mine” in any meaningful way.
I have to say I’m puzzled by the idea of having some sort of sentimental attachment to a convenience store. There have been times when I appreciated the…convenience…of a convenience store, but they aren’t particularly charming and one chain is largely indistinguishable from another.
No, Ford did not “invent cars.” Did you know that a German (Karl Benz) is considered the inventor of the car? And if that doesn’t blow your mind, how about this? Chrysler is owned by the Italians. A Belgium-based company owns Budweiser.
At the time Sony bought Columbia/TriStar, the lot in Culver City was a crap hole. Sony plowed a lot of money into the lot, upgrading and renovating. Now, the lot is an important part of the local economy.
Frankly, for the first few years Sony owned Columbia/Tristar, the studios were one giant sinkhole of money which Sony was plowing money into. Part of that is because of the stupid deal Sony made when they negotiated to buy the companies and part of that was because Sony was a bit extravagant with its spending, but there was a lot of money that ended up flowing into the local economy because of that purchase.
Well, how you feel is how you feel. Not my call. Was just curious while watching that movie “made by Sony”.
I meant obviously the attachment in the national sense (similar to patriotism, “something good” happening for America, “something not taken away from America” or whatever), not as a personal sense.
And InBev is about to buy Miller (which already belongs to a South African company that’s headquartered in the UK). And Kraft, Heinz and Burger King are partly owned by Brazilians.
Business today is very international. Many companies, brands and products are sold throughout the world and many companies have employees all over as well.
Not really. America is a big place, with a claim to countless brands. Our national identity is plenty robust that losing a few big name brands is meaningless.
I could see maybe caring if I lived in a country with only a few “claim to fame” worldwide brands, and those started getting bought up. But if you go down the list of the top 100 brands of the world, America would likely feature quite prominently.
Another thing is that often very little changes after these businesses are bought or sold. Columbia Pictures didn’t move its studios and all those jobs to Japan; they still employ thousands here. 7-11 still has its stores in the US. Budweiser is still brewed and sold here. They still make and sell Dodge, Ram and other Chrysler vehicles here. The average employee and the average customer of these companies would hardly notice a difference. (Except, as noted above, the new owners often plow money into the company, so the employee or customer might see improvements.)