Labor reform...not going well

If only someone had thought of that! Oh, wait.

Why do you hate these “navel gazing twits” so much, when you actually agree with them? Oh, I forgot. You hate yourself. Lots of love to you then. :heart:

Because otherwise there would be fewer jobs for lawyers? :slight_smile:[/quote]
You know, with the fear and loathing you have of both yourself and lawyers, I’m beginning to suspect you secretly are one. :stuck_out_tongue:

Despite all my ranting here, I’d hate to see Finley in charge of fixing What’s Wrong With The World.

That’s a relief! When you’re chosen to be the UK’s employer delegate at the International Labour Conference, I trust you’ll turn it down. :slight_smile:

It’s good to know Rowlandia has the rule of law now. :slight_smile:

They could be the legislative equivalents of Shakespeare and Moliere and still make a terrible mess. You wouldn’t expect 100+ cooks to make a good broth. But yeah, most countries could probably do with a major code review. :2cents:

Everyone’s a radical outside his area of expertise. After a couple of years on the regulatory code face, his politics will bend to reality. He’s a bending-to-reality kind of guy.

I love empiricists. Everybody’s wrong sometimes, but when an empiricist is wrong, it’s curable.

Also, he sometimes seems to be channeling Ayn Rand:

What Linus says about being selfish means people contributing to areas they are interested in. In reality, after contributing to areas that fulfills one’s needs, the open source framework means coders still must share and let everyone else use it and modify it without getting any money for it, at least not directly.

It’s like contributing to wikipedia out of free will, but with programs. So everyone will only write about things they are interested in, but since they have to share, everyone else benefits as well.

That in itself isn’t selfish at all, but in the spirit of game theory and cooperative competition. I don’t know what what you think Ayn Rand’s theories are, but allowing the rich to buy off politics and fix the system to make themselves more rich without contributing a bigger share to the community is the exact opposite of coopetition.

The key, I think you missed from that news article, is fair. Linus repeated stated GPLv2 introduces fairness that makes the sharing between selfish people possible. Equating fairness with freedom and liberty is the spirit of open source, and pretty much the spirit of socialism, real socialism, ala Bernie Sanders.

This talk of real socialism makes me think of Scotsmen. The true kind.

The great thing about enlightened self interest is that it’s enlightened. The bad thing about selfless sacrifice is it’s profoundly unnatural. Berating selfishness is akin to bemoaning the laws of physics. It’s not going to go away, so just accept it. But enlightenment makes everything better.

[quote=“yyy explaining Salerno, post:81, topic:158317, full:true”]

  1. There is no such thing as price gouging.
  2. Sellers don’t set prices. Buyers do. (The sellers merely offer prices that the buyers can choose to accept.)

Okay, let’s try this logic in other contexts.

  • Pregnancy is caused by eggs, not sperm! (The sperm merely offer DNA to the eggs.) :wall:
  • It does not take two to tango! (The lead merely offers a move to the follow.) :wall:
  • Posts are deleted by users, not moderators! (The mods simply offer a website in which the users can have posts deleted.) :wall:
  • And so on…

Even if we only find this logic acceptable in economics, it still has a very interesting application:

  • The minimum wage is a price. An employer is a “customer” (as von Mises would say). Ergo the government does not set the minimum wage. The government offers it, and the employer sets it (by accepting it).[/quote]
    I’m not anarchist, I abide by the axiom, “Government is a necessary evil,” which insinuates the smaller and least intrusive the better.

It is also not true that only buyers determine price. The dynamism is supply-demand. The sellers determine price inasmuch as market conditions allow them to get the highest price they can working against other competitors also trying to get the highest price that consumers are willing to pay. Buyers also compete to get the lowest price, the more buyers there are, the more competition there is, the less they will find lower prices. Thus prices fluctuate, rise, fall in accordance with factors that exist on both sides of the equation.

There is economic law, just as there is law of gravity. The state does not determine these laws, they can only work with them or against them and get results or suffer consequences.

Is this a joke? You’re talking about China? China has allowed capitalism in limited areas, mostly cities Beijing-Shanghai, because it realized their society has to make money some how to prop up socialism and keep themselves in power, otherwise pure socialism will collapse as Russia learned and make them a joke, or turn highly dysfunctional as North Korea and Cuba.

Western Europe, instead of mixing capitalism with socialism, learned to mix socialism with capitalism, and that’s where you get some entrepreneurs making paltry profits, but not enough for the labor class to support their families. Taiwan socialism comes into play here, let’s not forget that in Taiwan, employers pay for 1/3 of their employees health tax (and government 1/3, employee 1/3). Such a tax will come back to the employee, determining his/her salary in the end.

France and Germany has had such employment problems continuously for a long time compared to USA, where we enjoy higher wages, as we are not so unionized as they are. At our peak, we were only 1/3 unionized, but mostly below, and the market was allowed more leeway to determine prices than what you find in Europe. Don’t misconstrue me, government still actively intervenes creating bubbles or going against the market in USA, depending on who is in power, but generally speaking it’s less than Europe.

[quote=“finley, post:76, topic:158317, full:true”]

I said a right and a duty. Some sort of quid pro quo. You’re putting words into my mouth here for strawman purposes. I think it was jotham put it a bit better than me: the right is reciprocal (or, if you prefer, the duty is reciprocal). The most qualified people to decide which quids match with which quos are the persons signing the contracts.[/quote]
Well, I don’t think it’s a right actually. When government is flubbing it and going against economics, the people perish…without jobs or any rights thereto. That’s why it’s important for the population to be educated and vigilant about government, because it affects our life and well-being, very huge influence. When government creates unemployment, then what happens to these “universal rights” to work? The government is extinguishing them.

I think you were referring to President Harding’s quote about the quid pro quo, but he didn’t believe in the right to work either.

I wish the higher wage to abide, on one explicit condition—that the wage-earner will give full return for the wage received. It is the best assurance we can have for a reduced cost of living. Mark you, I am ready to acclaim the highest standard of pay, but I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners of America that mounting wages and decreased production can lead only to industrial and economic ruin.

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[quote=“hansioux, post:84, topic:158317, full:true”]
What Linus says about being selfish means people contributing to areas they are interested in.[/quote]

Iow, individualistic.

[quote=“hansioux, post:84, topic:158317, full:true”]
I don’t know what what you think Ayn Rand’s theories are[/quote]

You missed his analysis in the nihilism thread?

Sorry, to be fair to Salerno I should point out that he said the price is ultimately determined by the buyer.

So to be fair, when applying his logic I should say the pregnancy is ultimately determined by the egg, the so-called tango moves are ultimately determined by the follow, and the deletion of posts is ultimately determined by the users. (I’m still banging into a wall, but I suppose it’s ultimately the builder’s decision. That logic is good enough for the Saudi Arabian judiciary, incidentally.)

Less facetiously, using Salerno’s logic, it’s not utimately the government that sets the minimum wage but employers who ultimately determine it by accepting what the government offers. That’s the market for ya.

If employers are not willing to accept it, they can break the law and see how that goes (and they often do), or they can leave. Of course many of them already have left the 1st world, as your President has noted, and he wants to loosen regulation as part of his plan to bring them back.

I’m not anarchist, I abide by the axiom, “Government is a necessary evil,” which insinuates the smaller and least intrusive the better.

I’m glad to hear you’re not completely brainwashed by your guru. (He does not object to the anarcho-capitalist label. It’s “the pure libertarian position”.)

There is economic law, just as there is law of gravity. The state does not determine these laws, they can only work with them or against them and get results or suffer consequences.

I’m sorry. I totally missed the announcement that the science of economics had been “settled” and all textbooks revised to follow the Austrian School.

Is this a joke? You’re talking about China? China has allowed capitalism in limited areas, mostly cities Beijing-Shanghai, because it realized their society has to make money some how to prop up socialism and keep themselves in power, otherwise pure socialism will collapse as Russia learned and make them a joke, or turn highly dysfunctional as North Korea and Cuba. [/quote]

It was not a joke, but apparently your China intelligence is. Sorry to be blunt, Mr. Pirate Hunter, but the 80’s are over, Wham! and Sha Na Na have left the building, FEC’s are collector’s items, and SEZ’s still exist but are no longer “a thing”, to use the modern parlance.

The point is not the ghost of the Chairman (who can still be seen everywhere, yes) but the phenomenon of regulation in developing and “least developed” countries. There are exceptions, but the tendency is for regulation to be more flexible in practice, even if it’s far more rigid on paper. Ask anyone who’s done business in China in the current century.

If the aforementioned ghost scares you too much, you can choose from a wide variety of other developing countries. The 2nd and 3rd worlds are your oyster. If consumers find your product less appealing when they know it’s made in X – including domestic consumers – that’s also the market for ya.

Taiwan socialism comes into play here, let’s not forget that in Taiwan, employers pay for 1/3 of their employees health tax (and government 1/3, employee 1/3). Such a tax will come back to the employee, determining his/her salary in the end.

Let’s see how Trumpcare compares. :popcorn:

Dunning and Kruger again. I have enough knowledge to accurately assess my limitations. Legislators, with a few rare exceptions, have no education in economics, psychology, anthropology, history, mathematics, business, systems theory, environment, or any of the many topics relevant to the things they regulate. They don’t know what they don’t know. So off they go, beavering away at wordy documents, genuinely convinced that with sufficient obfuscation they can make 1+1=3.

Here in my opinions are why labor reforms are not working. And why Taiwan’s economy seems to be so stagnant.
My father is the founder of what was one of the largest companies and 2-3rd biggest LED manufacturing firms here. I worked from a young age from the factory floors to accounting and finance. And he and I both agree on why his company that was once so successful seems to fallen behind.

Overtime, is a joke. I worked in the office where everyone did overtime. All I saw is people not doing anything really productive and people ordering food in groups. They just get tired for no reason and hurts moral staying until 8pm or later without free time and seeing their families. It’s counter productive but leadership don’t want to acknowledge.

2nd. Power distance between workers and employers is much higher vs other countries with better working culture. This in my mind is some what cultural from the beginning. Asian countries create a much bigger power distance from parents to children to teachers to students. This makes any sort of reform difficult as it’s drilled in Taiwanese DNA that they must obey people above them at all costs and not make any deviations from what is accepted. This is also why wealth distribution from employers even from high management to actual people who own the firm so great. Unless you have ownership, even the average CEO or upper management gets only scraps. This is one thing I don’t think people realize. CEOs CFOs etc make scraps unless they have a share of the actual company in Taiwan. This also makes jumping company to company almost useless and counter productive.

3rd. During the economic boom, Taiwan made up any lack of innovation with heavy production. This idea hasn’t changed as firms don’t put any money in RnD and instead they think they can work themselves out of any economic downturn. I saw this during the 25 years that my father started his company and the people that own the firms still do not see this problem.

4th. Another issue is that the businesses are coming up where 2nd generation of the original founders are coming into the business. Most of the other founders kids I worked with totally lack any leadership skills. Everyone son, daughter, son in law gets a job and many of them are not competent. But it doesnt matter. I was 16 years old and they gave me the biggest office with a window looking out at all the employees when I was interning. I tried my best to do stuff, but still, most people were afraid to give me difficult work or correct me when I make mistakes. So this contribute a lot to why companies are failing as people who are competent are pushed aside for someone’s son and getting paid less.

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I’ve seen most of the stuff you mention. What, if anything, do you think could be done to change working culture for the better?

[quote=“Andrew0409, post:91, topic:158317, full:true”]
Here in my opinions are why labor reforms are not working. And why Taiwan’s economy seems to be so stagnant.
My father is the founder of what was one of the largest companies and 2-3rd biggest LED manufacturing firms here. I worked from a young age from the factory floors to accounting and finance. And he and I both agree on why his company that was once so successful seems to fallen behind.[/quote]
Thanks for your contribution. I think you are right on. I was trying to explain this theoretically, but you provide the experience of it. I also think that Taiwan companies were much more productive and democratically capitalistic in earlier days too, but began lagging, and I wasn’t sure how the balance of it could be pointed to this “aristocratic” mindset or socialism.

I think you’re right about that. That means the overtime part of the equation doesn’t really count for production. For all intents and purposes, employees are working regular hours productive as Taiwanese know how to be, and just hanging out the rest of the time.

If this is totally true, it demonstrates that aristocratic/feudal mindset that prevents real capitalism going on for the purpose of profits. But I can’t imagine even the entrepreneurs, i.e., owners and investors, the capital, are really getting rich if they aren’t superintending a productive, profit-driven outfit. Seems to me, this is their playtoy, their manor, which gives them status, reputation, and praise, gratefulness, and awe from its serfs.

Another thing, when capital is poor (compared to Western nations), they don’t have the same tools or machinery that makes workers efficient. So for example, in a Western factory, shoemakers may make 100 shoes an hour with help of complicated machinery, which more capital makes possible. A Taiwanese factory, with same quality product, a shoemaker may make only 70 or 50 shoes an hour. It isn’t that Western workers work harder than Taiwanese, but the capital outlays make their work much more efficient so that they “earn” more wage than their counterparts. It’s just as you say, they don’t invest in RnD, you think because they think it unnecessary, but I think because capital isn’t so readily available, and if profit isn’t the motive behind everything but only maintaining the feudal manor, then RnD would be waste, it’s too practical to be of use by people who’s thinking isn’t practical.

[quote]4th. Another issue is that the businesses are coming up where 2nd generation of the original founders are coming into the business. Most of the other founders kids I worked with totally lack any leadership skills. Everyone son, daughter, son in law gets a job and many of them are not competent. But it doesnt matter. I was 16 years old and they gave me the biggest office with a window looking out at all the employees when I was interning. I tried my best to do stuff, but still, most people were afraid to give me difficult work or correct me when I make mistakes. So this contribute a lot to why companies are failing as people who are competent are pushed aside for someone’s son and getting paid less.
[/quote]Bingo, another point for the aristocratic/feudal mindset against the capitalism, pragmatic, profit-driven ideal. I’ve worked in a company where I saw this too. The daughter of the owner and CEO had this idea that had to do with creating an Internet presence and because she was the daughter, they made it into a big-time project, hiring staff, investing their capital in it, and at the end of year, it fell flat. So the executives who were the parents asked all the staff (about 300 people in the office) to be salesperson and ask 2 of their friends or relatives to subscribe to the flopped, faulty service or take it out of their own salary. I was aghast, asking the employees to foot the bill for their own lack of insight or knowhow on the market, the employees were dragging their feet, but they were loyal to the lords and they saw it as their duty to get them out of their bind, it was kinda cultic and creepy to me. I thought the kids were kinda spoiled brats and didn’t think entrepreneurial at all and didn’t deserve to be future managers of the company, but alas, profit didn’t figure in these family affairs, these dynasties.

[quote=“yyy, post:89, topic:158317, full:true”]

Sorry, to be fair to Salerno I should point out that he said the price is ultimately determined by the buyer.[/quote]
He said that because in that particular situation, the price rising has more to do with the demand side, the buyers are ever willing to buy at higher prices because of a shortage. The sellers aren’t raising prices in a vacuum.

It’s a bit like saying what is the ultimate cause: lack of supply, or rise in demand? Well lack of supply doesn’t have to do with human agency, it’s just freak. But rise of demand does have to do with human agency. So the buyer is ultimately responsible for the rise in price, instead of the seller, who is just merely reacting to the freak demand.

[quote]>I’m not anarchist, I abide by the axiom, “Government is a necessary evil,” which insinuates the smaller and least intrusive the better.

I’m glad to hear you’re not completely brainwashed by your guru. (He does not object to the anarcho-capitalist label. It’s “the pure libertarian position”.)[/quote]
Yes, you’re right, the Austrian school consider themselves anarchist, and I don’t consider myself libertarian, but conservative. On basic economics, though we agree.

I’m consider myself supply-side economics broadly, which includes the Chicago school, Austrian school, or other derivatives, the father of which, is ultimately Adam Smith.

I don’t know of other websites that explain economics as well as the Austrians; I diverge a little bit from the Chicago school, as Bernanke showed the error of that school to me.

Mises, however, does contend that government regulations and laws are necessary in certain situations, so I’m not sure if he considers himself anarchist.

[quote]
It was not a joke, but apparently your China intelligence is. Sorry to be blunt, Mr. Pirate Hunter, but the 80’s are over, Wham! and Sha Na Na have left the building, FEC’s are collector’s items, and SEZ’s still exist but are no longer “a thing”, to use the modern parlance.

The point is not the ghost of the Chairman (who can still be seen everywhere, yes) but the phenomenon of regulation in developing and “least developed” countries. There are exceptions, but the tendency is for regulation to be more flexible in practice, even if it’s far more rigid on paper. Ask anyone who’s done business in China in the current century.[/quote]
I defer to Finley on this one. I agree that there is “flexible” regulations, not due to profit or capitalism, but rather “guanxi-guanxi,” which is the Chinese euphemistic cozy way of how we say Cronyism in the West, and is present very much in Taiwan as well, working against pure profit capitalism.

If you know someone who can do something about harsh regulations, you benefit. Thus government chooses who can be entrepreneurs, who can enter the market. As such, it’s not really a free market, but more like state monopoly. Fascism has much to do with this cronyism kind of capitalism, which isn’t really capitalism, it’s still state control of the market.

It isn’t that capital isn’t available from my personal experience, it’s because they are not willing to put up the capital to compete in the expense of profits. The problem is the ownership is taking a big piece of the pie and have little incentive to make the pie bigger because they take such a big piece of it. Meaning they can continue to pay low wages why should they put forward their profits to RnD for the future right now so therefore no need to make the pie bigger. Especially most of them are getting older, they are not willing to do that now.

This also creates a problem because employees know even if they work hard and make the pie bigger, they still won’t get a bigger piece. So they are just human robots that take orders with little incentive to put more into it. Why would someone young come in the work place with fresh new ideas work harder when he knows that guys son or this guy whos been here longer will get that promotion no matter what he does. And thats what Taiwan needs, for the younger generation to take charge.

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I think the change has to come from the perception of power distance. Almost all of the things I mention has root in how the power distance is from the people in power vs the people who work for them.

No doubt, you’re right. It takes hard work to make profit. And entrepreneurs have to be very intuitive and quite smarter than average to understand how to make profit, how to outsmart, outpredict competing entrepreneurs at serving the customer. There probably isn’t much of this kind of competition going on if all the “entrepreneurs” are doing as you say. I wouldn’t doubt that such “entrepreneurs” don’t have customers in their mind at all. And as you say, they’re pie is enough to keep them happy.

They could make it bigger of course by engaging in capitalism/entrepreneurism, but either they don’t have know-how, or it’s just too much “mafan,” this capitalist democracy, meritocracy. So they use their capital the only way they know how, like the old manor lords did, by wasting it just maintaining their fiefdom manor and serfs in the status quo, where no improvement is possible.

Democratic thinking has to inform the population for real reform to take place, and I think it starts with the younger generations who have no reason to love the mainland. These older people, their authoritarianism and feudalism will die with them.

Exactly. Minds are a stubborn thing to change. You literally have to take these old geezers and shake them hard till those antiquated ideas come loose…or just wait for them to die ultimately and hope their influence dies with them, in the name of progress.

I think if you look at commercials in Taiwan, you can literally see how companies even the big ones do not embrace or adapt to change. They still play some of the same commercials 20 years ago from when I was a kid lol.

A good example is when HTC bought a controlling share in beats. Beats is extremely good at marketing and are able to cut into the main stream. HTCs old heads could not see eye to eye with beats, they literally had one of the hottest companies at the time and they did not trust beats to be be beats and were stuck in their old ways and refused to spend money on things they wanted to do. They eventually just cold not work together and beats bought their shares back. And now guess what, apple bought beats.

Beats seems to specialize on making the bass come out (and treble). I know myself, when I buy headphones, I spend a lot of time looking at the hertz and buy the one with the lowest hertz range, because i love bass. When I listen to music online, I really love some songs because the bass really make it happen. I’m hesitant to share music I like with others as I know they probably don’t have or look for the same headphone/speaker quality and wouldn’t even hear or appreciate what I do.

It’s same principle with pianos, the grand pianos are bigger because they lengthen the bass chords 2 or 3 times that of upright pianos, which renders a more enjoyable experience, you hear more of the complete picture.

It seems HTC wanted only to share in the spotlight, the glory and glamour of other people, what Beats created, merely because they were a well-known brand, (without really appreciating why they were), looking at the surface of things, appearances, kinda like how government and schools get parents to think as long as their kids spend time memorizing and get good grades on entrance exams on the outside, that must mean they are well-educated inside and the system is working. But they weren’t innovative enough to think, how can we conceive to generate more glory and glamor with this valuable resource.

Apple understood the genius, and partly because they were allready in the business with I-Tunes. They predicted the market that customers highly value music in their life (as I do) and I think they were right on the mark with that. Says Tim Cook…