Back in the Obama days a lot of Americans would have been happy to get such a deal.
I have also worked in other parts of the biotech and medical industry. Currently I work for a foreign firm and it’s really vastly better than the local firms I worked for in terms of no requirement for overtime , no training on weekends , no meetings in the evening, get paid on time and no spurious penalties for this or that , also get stock options every year.
Honestly the biggest problems with local firms is that they are generally too small and specialized so they cannot become multinationals or global giants (yes there are some exceptions like hon hai but who really wants to work for Hon hai). TSMC is one of the few good ones supposedly . You generally need a certain scale to compete at the top level in industries like automobiles , medical devices , precision machinery , aeronautics, informatics . Not only Taiwan struggles with this but Taiwan would have more multinationals IF some of the local companies would acquire each other and work for the bigger picture (and the original founders got out of the way ). Most of the profits are in the parts that multitnationals can serve . So think Nissan and Toyota for cars, Boeing and Airbus for planes, Google and SAP and Sales force for informatics, Roche and Siemens and Hitachi for medical. You need to reach that kind of scale to get the big part of the pie.
Local entrepreneurs will not sell their companies they want to pass them on to their kids . They don’t trust each other to merge and become part of something bigger.
I guess the other major problem is they got used to exploiting workers with poor work conditions and pay so most cannot hire or hold onto global professionals . I have been offered some high level positions in Taiwanese international electronics companies to run their medical sales divisions but their company culture means they have no flexibility and will try to cut cost on everything including a salary that they think is already too generous and not offer proper bonuses , I’m pretty sure on that. Work conditions are really off putting as well .
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In the US, every high tech entrepreneur dreams of selling out to Microsoft. It’s all terribly Hegelian. But at least technological progress happens in the meantime.
And Microsoft maintains the illusion of being innovative.
A big organization cares only about two things: expanding, and holding on to what it has. Only the small can create. Don’t give me huge R&D - they only improve where their bosses allow them to improve. Independence is the freedom to invent the future.
Yes the German model of also having lots of mittelstand seems to work well for them, but here it’s just not great.
Culture, culture, culture. Filial piety must die.
When the patriarchs have all kicked the bucket, every family will go one of two ways. Half of them will create the future. The other half will have no future.
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I think environment is the perfect storm for Taiwan. If for no other reason than everyone is directly made or broken based on health and their surrounding environment. And I don’t mean it as a hippy call to.solar. but more of a fact that in Taiwan out air, soil, water, food and arguably culture is poisoning us. For now, the culture debate, forget it. Too much face, too few funerals (?).
I think of taiwan became.unbiased and.made.itself a role.model it would stand out as mentioned above. We get eyes in Taiwan, people cannot ignore us. So how do we get eyes? I sincerely doubt you get eyes on you by compassion. See PETA, Greenpeace, UNICEF etc. They get bad attention, rightfully so. Worst case you get no attention doing humanitarian aid. So all this shit in donating Money to poor nations or tryin to get WHO recognition seems a bit retarded.
If Taiwan became a real.leading force in environment, which is the direction of the entire world, eyes would be here and.more.likely to say fuck chinas childish games.
Environment means not what dim witted folk think of as hippy Greenpeace protesting garble. By environmental I mean developing sustainable energy, which should be the goal. I realise most people hear/read the words environment and sustainable as a wired extreme millennial or ignorant idiot point of argument. ButTback to reality environment means where we live and sustainable.means we can manage said living space for, hopefully, infinity.
Taiwan I think is the ideal space to make sustainable environment. The climate is insanely diverse and extreme, anyone who studies science will know this. With a small space, huge population and a boatload of money, this task is terrifyingly easy. Sadly reality is different. We don’t have to be hippy extremist types to realise the causes.of death here are pretty related to environment/lifestyle. We could become a world.leader in this regard overnight. Literally. Next year we could be so far ahead if the game its scary. But there is no interest. So create interest. If we think Tsai will do anything meaningful soon, we are just the simple sheep that bit: the dpp/kmt assume we are 
Is this a joke? How could it be terrifyingly easy when the land is extremely limited and the population is huge? What is this sustainable environmental policy you have in mind? Almost every single type of renewable energy is a terrible fit.
“Sustainable” is just a word. Throw up a bunch of windmills and brag about it loud enough, and you’re there.
It’s all about image. What you need is a slick PR campaign, like Uranus Industries had.
“Things come out a little differently at Uranus.”
deny everything and stick to the good ol’ days and you get a yourself a rowland. “you just made my point” - by rowland
This is a fascinating paradox: Rowland is claimed to be the embodient of stagnation, while Rowland claims to want a cultural revolution. 
@discobot quote
The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure. — Francoise de Motteville
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Uh oh, looks like Rollo’s plan to exterminate half the population may be realized. 
Keep an eye on that one, folks.
It is terrifyingly easy precisely because Taiwan is so small and overpopulated. Massive centers of human activity and all areas fairly close to ports make things like transportation, manufacture, energy etc FAR easier than in big less populated countries. Cost of building goes down a lot when its 100km from factory to port rather than 1000km.
Granted we will be sucking oils teet for a long time. But not forever, why not make the move now? It’s obvious nuclear is a bad idea, and it will be closed up. If that takes 10 years that is ample to to replace it with non coal/oilseed electricity. Taiwan is ideal for.many kinds. 10 years ago when our project was doing some numbers on making Taiwan energy cleaner I remember kaohsiung having 6 plus hours of direct sun as a daily year round average. Yes I get the facts about solar isn’t clean either, but its cleanER. Wind, tidal, solar, geothermal if they think its not an earthquake issue, and beginning logical infrastructure.projects are insanely easy for Taiwan to pull off. We are rich, money is not the issue. And with such a small space and huge crowd, the infrastructure will, or should, be a well oiled machine. Meaning profitable.
I can’t think of many countries in the world that would be easier to pull this off…
idk, maybe institute a law that all new construction buildings, both residential and commercial, must buy solar panels from domestic firms that have to heat/power at least 30-50% of the building. Nahh. too simple an idea. Let’s instead build a coal plant on the north coast. Yes, complicated. I like it.
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Yeah, investments is down. There’s no denying that. However, how much foreign investment is in Taiwan doesn’t actually have a lot to do with how well Taiwan’s economy is doing. Sometimes foreign investments here in Taiwan is just a sign of a financial loophole is in place for exploit.
Most of these investments wants to see rapid growth, and there’s just not much room in Taiwan for that at the present. At most we can count on the tech industry can continue to secure key positions in world trade and provide steady growth. Otherwise we need to get on land reform to motivate people to invest instead of buying up real estate.
So “Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade” is your conclusion?
Just walked back home from Family Mart after buying some deals when my son asks, “Why did you vote for Tsai Ing-Wen, she’s hasn’t done anything good?”
I told him I could not vote, because I am not Taiwanese, but he can when he grows up.
I then asked, who told him Tsai Ing-Wen hasn’t done anything good.
He replied, “Ah-mah”.
ha ha. Ah-mah is 本地人 and only speaks Chinese to him.
Everything seems simple if you haven’t thought it through. After you’ve thought it through a bit, it starts to seem a lot more complicated.
But if you figure it out… then it’s just details.
Oh, and… if you don’t have it up and running and working as advertised, you haven’t figured it out. The trouble with people who don’t think things through is they don’t appreciate this fact. That’s why everything seems simple to them.
The thing about coal plants is we know them well. We know the economics, not just as theory but as fact. We know where we stand with them.