What is holding up Taiwan becoming a real developed country?

what’s holding up Taiwan?

(1) money

(2) education (not just knowing how to get diplomas)

(3) stamina

I’m aware of the concept of opportunity cost, and I think it gets applied far too liberally - I’ve explained why below.

The immediate economic consideration is not the only one that matters, nor is money the only valid metric for measuring “worth”. We live in a world where people want everything quantified, but “spiritual reward” can’t be quantified (either as $ or anything else) so people dismiss it as irrelevant. There’s also the very measurable cost of keeping someone alive after they’ve wrecked their metabolism with junk food. The per-capita cost of treating fat, unhealthy people is much larger than any saving they might have made buying “cheap” food. Like most modern industry, the food industry gets the government (or the general public) to foot the bill for the externalities it creates.[/quote]

Denying the quantifiability of a “spiritual reward” won’t work when your initial attempt was to use it as a variable which supposedly offsets the net losses to cooking over working and purchasing an equivalent product (to tip the equation in favor of making cooking the more rational economic decision). In other words, you can’t simultaneously say, “Spiritual reward S has a value which should be entered into this equation,” and then add, “But S can never be entered into any equation, for it is beyond quantification.”

If you understand opportunity cost, then you understand the importance of using money or some other standard measure to actually make comparisons, weigh costs and benefits, etc.

Though it’s not relevant here, I happen to agree with you in believing that governments should not foot bills for special interests.

No, of course. [color=#000040]But in reality[/color] most food that comes in cans is full of additives. Even when the food itself is wholesome (say, tomatoes or beans) I’d question the wisdom of using a valuable non-renewable resource (steel) to preserve food that wouldn’t need preserving if people did more cooking. And, again, the externalities are pushed under the rug.[/quote]

Since steel is recyclable, I don’t worry about cans, particularly. Also, since most means of preservative storage don’t use steel cans, or even tin ones, I don’t worry about it.

You are right that many foods are full of additives. This doesn’t bother me, either, since plenty of these additives are not harmful, and also because discovery of the harmfulness of an additive directs consumers to seek affordable means to avoid them when they hear about them. There are even food scares over non-harmful additives that force food industry workers to devise alternatives.

You wrote some thing about how farmers should get their act together to get out from under the boot of grocery giants. [color=#000040]But in reality[/color], they haven’t, so grocery stores it is.

I think these statements are untrue. If your thing is logic, mine is psychology, and studying that subject blew my belief in free will out of the water. The majority of our behaviours are a mechanistic reaction to environmental or bodily prompts. I still don’t think we’re automatons - there’s something in there that gives us each a personality and an appearance of free will - but most of our decisions are made for us. The food industry provides what it wants to provide, and then tells consumers that’s what they want. Even a cursory examination of their business practices makes this abundantly clear.[/quote]

Which is why there are dozens and dozens of kinds of pasta sauce for sale, many with competing food industries vying for the same consumer revenues? I guess a food industry conspiracy theory is better than a governmental one.

These are not contradictory beliefs.

If A says, “I hate animal cruelty, but I put up with it when it produces what I want,” we can easily infer, “I only hate animal cruelty so much,” or, “I will not pay the difference to live to my ethical standard,” etc., etc.

Personally, I worry zero about factory farming, since I don’t believe that animals deserve any ethical regard. And it may shock you to know that when it really comes to putting their money down to pay the difference, most people don’t.

Really?[/quote]

Really.

Specialisation is certainly a good thing, but the rule of diminishing returns applies (or the Pareto principle, which is basically the same thing). There comes a point where outsourcing increases your total costs, and I think that point is quite high up the curve. Example: most development economists insist that third-world farmers should not attempt self-sufficiency; instead, they say, they should use “modern methods” (i.e., chemicals) to grow cash crops, and then use the money to buy other things they need. The underlying theory is that the farmer should “stick to what he does best” and let other people handle the other stuff.[/quote]

This sounds like a standard economic response.

[quote=“finley”]They overlook two things:

Firstly, the route to market for farm products is a costly one: getting food from the fields to the consumer’s plate accounts for about 80% of the food price in The West, and about 90% in third-world shitholes where a “road” looks something like a muddy river. So the farmer might sell a tonne of rice for US$350, of which $200 is the cost of inputs and marketing. If he takes his $150 to the food market, he’ll find rice retails for $1/kg, and other vegetables in the $1-$3/kg range. The net result, for all his hard work, is perhaps 100kg of food. Obviously, he’d keep some rice back for himself because it’s much, much more cost-effective. So why not do the same with other things? The conversion efficiency from rice->money->other goods is so poor that even sewing and butchery is best done at home. In practice, what happens is that the farmer realises quite quickly it’s a mug’s game, but decides to just keep all the rice, and never bothers diversifying (or can’t afford to). End result: entrenched poverty, malnutrition, and soil degradation. Well done, Mr Economist.[/quote]

Maybe farmers should find specialists in food transportation who can make it cheaper, so would advise Mr. Economist.

I’d love to see the clothes that you sew for yourself.

They don’t do everything best, either, so again, following David Ricardo (but quoting Adam Smith): "“If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.”

Externalities, like increased incidences of trichinosis or attraction of other biohazardous critters, be damned?

There’s a reason why many of us dropped home livestock raising and butchering from our family histories. It turns out not to be the best idea to live near places where animals shit, or to let animal carcasses sit in places that will likely not be reserved for butchering, alone.

Do you enjoy eating sauce from jars?

Not particularly, why?

I didn’t say that. I was describing the standard view of economists, who have only one tool for measuring value: money. Spritual reward probably is quantifiable, but on a fuzzy scale; and with no mapping between that scale and the monetary one.

It has certain trivial applications - where, for example, you’re deciding whether to become an engineer or a dentist given a certain skill set - but it is merely one tool in the box. In most of life’s important decisions, money isn’t the primary metric of worth. Here, for example, you might make the decision on the basis that you can’t face spending a lifetime with your fingers in other people’s grotty mouths, whatever the financial reward might be. I suppose you could argue that by doing so you’ve placed a monetary value on the discomfort of being a dentist (economists do in fact use this method to “value” the invaluable) but I’m not convinced that such reductionism is a useful way of looking at things.

Embodied in that steel can is a lot of wasted energy, pointless labour, and non-renewable natural resources (polluted or degraded land and air). Ultimately, you’ve got a whole bunch of people doing something that doesn’t actually need doing.

I know that. But it never ceases to amaze me how some people will argue that this is The Best of All Possible Worlds, and assert their right to be ripped off. I do, basically, believe in markets, so I think people should have the freedom to give their money to whomever they want. If they want to hand over one man-hour of labour for a pretty box of pignuts, and eat it, that’s their own affair. But I don’t think governments should encourage this, or create economic incentives for it, because when it happens on too grand a scale, the entire economy and society suffers.

I don’t see how the presence of redundant, almost-identical products on the shelves proves anything. This is a pretty common outcome of competition in a highly-constrained market dominated by large players.

Doesn’t surprise me, but if you didn’t like my original example of contradictory beliefs, there’s one right there. I assume you think humans “deserve” ethical regard, but it doesn’t seem to bother you that the cruelty and waste of factory-farming directly affects humans: antibiotic resistance, massive economic inefficiency (costs of waste disposal, pollution mitigation, regulatory bureaucracy, culling of male animals … the list is endless), and the soul-destroying work that people are subjected to. Slaughterhouse workers, for example, develop severe mental problems and are often injured physically too. I’ll ignore the fact that humans are also animals and dependent on a wider ecosystem, since you presumably have some convoluted logical argument to prove that 1+1=3.

Not really. Like I said, people believe what the’re told to believe. You do. I do. I’ve just read different things and had different arguments. There is no inherent economic advantage in either producing or eating cruelly-raised meat. It only appears to be so because markets have been artificially skewed.

Nothing like a few hard facts and numbers to back up one’s argument, eh?

I can’t tell if you deliberately misconstrue my arguments to avoid answering them. That’s what I said it was. I then illustrated why it is incorrect.

I agree. It’s an interesting problem I’m working on. It doesn’t alter the fact that the original proposition is full of holes.

This isn’t true for me because (a) I’m shit at manual tasks and (b) My economic circumstances don’t make it worthwhile. My wife sews her own clothes because she’s astoundingly good at it. Competitive advantage, remember?

You really like reductio ad absurdum, don’t you? The curve is U-shaped. I know who Ricardo was, and his logic is only true if transaction efficiency is high. I illustrated why. If you think that’s not so, give me a fact-based counterargument, not just quotes.

:eh: That’s just dopey. People who kill themselves trying to cook are probably overdue for removal from the gene pool.

Like I said, U-shaped curve. Outsourcing to the local butcher is good (and very efficient). Outsourcing to an international conglomerate, which (a) has no vested interest in whether you live or die and (b) places a long and convoluted chain of money-skimming operations between the animal and your plate, is not.

I think “developed country” is based on the level of infrastructure, access to education, medicine, sanitation, a certain level of economic development, corruption or lack thereof, etc.

I think on that front Taiwan is already developed. Remember there are parts of the US that have third world problems (such as lack of indoor plumbing, etc.) in Indian reservations. Some developed countries (like certain European countries) have terrible traffic, and many first world cities are dirty as heck. Perhaps in Taiwan at the moment they do not see the importance of good looking buildings from the outside because it does not affect their way of life. If you want developing (or even third world) countries, go there and see how things compare… Parts of Taipei and other Taiwan cities may look like shantytowns but poverty is not so pervasive here as they are in other countries such as India.

I didn’t say that. I was describing the standard view of economists, who have only one tool for measuring value: money. Spritual reward probably is quantifiable, but on a fuzzy scale; and with no mapping between that scale and the monetary one.[/quote]

I took this argument (of two) as going as follows:

I say, “People shouldn’t make their own pasta sauce if they can have a net financial gain (or less loss) in buying comparable pasta sauce and working an extra hour.”
You say, “But there are spiritual rewards to consider.”
I ask, “Okay, and how much are ‘spiritual rewards’ worth (in dollars, spirit-points, utils, or whatever)?”
You say, “Well, they’re not subject to that kind of quantification.”
I say, “Then ‘spiritual rewards’ do not enter into this formula, and my above assertion still stands.”

If you allow ghosts into your equations, the math can be made to mean anything.

It has certain trivial applications - where, for example, you’re deciding whether to become an engineer or a dentist given a certain skill set - but it is merely one tool in the box. In most of life’s important decisions, money isn’t the primary metric of worth. Here, for example, you might make the decision on the basis that you can’t face spending a lifetime with your fingers in other people’s grotty mouths, whatever the financial reward might be. I suppose you could argue that by doing so you’ve placed a monetary value on the discomfort of being a dentist (economists do in fact use this method to “value” the invaluable) but I’m not convinced that such reductionism is a useful way of looking at things.[/quote]

I find that people are willing to do anything if the price is right. Ever seen “The Brave?”

Beyond personal observations, though, we in fact function in this way, suing people or companies for damages which are supposed to be sufficient to compensate the bereaved (i.e. buy the cost of the life lost) and discourage future infractions. The whole idea of including “pain and suffering” in damages is derived out of the idea that we can recompense people for victims of “spiritual inflictions.” Discussions in justice do, in practice, seem to reduce to what amount is the right amount.

If lives were infinitely (or unreasonably highly) valuable, no one could ever make products because of the associated risks in production and product use.

And if lives can meet a certain dollar amount (somewhere in the tens of millions, I gather), I suspect that “spiritual rewards” must have a dollar amount, as well.

Embodied in that steel can is a lot of wasted energy, pointless labour, and non-renewable natural resources (polluted or degraded land and air). Ultimately, you’ve got a whole bunch of people doing something that doesn’t actually need doing.[/quote]

Everyone on planet Earth is doing something that doesn’t actually need doing. Even when you’re doing something that you think needs doing, maybe one day (the next day, five years from now, on your deathbed) you’ll realize that it didn’t need doing. People don’t do things because they “need doing.”

Forum reading is a lot of wasted energy. Cooking is a lot of wasted energy. Working is a lot of wasted energy. The question is this: “Which is a measurably better use of that energy?” Economic answers exist, but I’m contending that they don’t weigh in the favor of the DIY at-home farmer, butcher, jack of all trades, master of none.

I agree that governments shouldn’t encourage this and that we don’t live in the best of possible worlds.

I don’t see how the presence of redundant, almost-identical products on the shelves proves anything. This is a pretty common outcome of competition in a highly-constrained market dominated by large players.[/quote]

If companies were holding all of the cards, why so many pasta sauces? Is there really just one company per sauce?

Doesn’t surprise me, but if you didn’t like my original example of contradictory beliefs, there’s one right there. I assume you think humans “deserve” ethical regard, but it doesn’t seem to bother you that the cruelty and waste of factory-farming directly affects humans: antibiotic resistance, massive economic inefficiency (costs of waste disposal, pollution mitigation, regulatory bureaucracy, culling of male animals … the list is endless), and the soul-destroying work that people are subjected to. Slaughterhouse workers, for example, develop severe mental problems and are often injured physically too.[/quote]

I’m willing to live with those costs if they provide people with what they want, just like smokers are willing to smoke even though it increases their risks of emphysema. That’s not a contradiction. That’s a tradeoff.

Increased risk of mental problems and physical injury are one of the slaughterhouse worker’s tradeoffs. But you don’t seem to be complaining about boxers or basketball players, who are subject to their increased risks, as well.

I’m all for increasing slaughterhouse automation, by the way.

Not really. Like I said, people believe what the’re told to believe. You do. I do. I’ve just read different things and had different arguments. There is no inherent economic advantage in either producing or eating cruelly-raised meat. It only appears to be so because markets have been artificially skewed.[/quote]

There is one, which is that we don’t have to do it ourselves and can negate certain risks to personal health, for whom you seem to have little empathy, as evinced here:

Yeah! Screw people who don’t want to live up to your romantic vision, or are prone to accidents…unless they work in factory slaughterhouses and lose their legs in meat grinders. Your reading seems to have made you selectively empathetic.

Nothing like a few hard facts and numbers to back up one’s argument, eh?[/quote]

I should provide some. They’ll be forthcoming. I’ve honestly forgotten what this quote is responding to, so I’ll go back and give something substantive.

I agree. It’s an interesting problem I’m working on. It doesn’t alter the fact that the original proposition is full of holes.[/quote]

Then you agree with Mr. Economist. Your only criticism here is that other people applied Mr. Economist’s rule myopically. This then disposes of your second argument.

I remember, but it’s strange that you don’t see how so many other people can accept their ways of life, not cooking at home, using exactly the metric that you describe.

I’m pretty sure that every business that isn’t run by suicidal people wants repeat business. Governments shouldn’t make it easy to hide externalities, but reintroducing those externalities in other ways is definitely not a route to take, either. I still don’t buy corporatist conspiracy theories. Corporations are run by people, who in general are just specialized in keeping a business profitable, and most with a recognition that they don’t run monopolies.

Also, this is how local butchers and international conglomerates can still survive. Lack of knowledge of another is a fault of a local butcher, not of the international conglomerate, which probably doesn’t even know that the local butcher exists.


Reductio ad absurdum isn’t bad. I use it in proofs all of the time. It just gets a bad rap, is all…

This first one did it for me but I felt the following two are also strong causes.

- Lack of civic organisation and local neighbourhood spirit

It is actually rather contradicting considering how Taiwanese so frown on individualism but does not practice it in most circumstances. I’m not sure if I could call it selfishness or they have been taught (conditioned) from young that things like ethics and manners are for the stupid. Lots of things to say here but I’m not going to go all out. There’s a popular phrase imported from the Japanese 小確幸, meaning only the smallest things in life are sufficient for happiness. The problem with today’s generation, they only care about the minor things that effect individuals directly.

Here’s a little analogy where they do organise but all for the wrong cause, and I’m sure this happens all around Taiwan:
Years ago, the 局長 (director-general) of the Kaohsiung Police Office wanted to sweep out the street vendors of the 六合 (Liu-He) night market because, simply, they were there illegally. Also, the police had received complaints from actual businesses there. As soon as the director-general did his job, guess what happened? The vendors organised and complained to legislators. So instead of cleaning up, the director-general got the boot. That goes to anyone who attempt to do something ideally correct. So to the previous posters who mentioned not enough legal enforcement, please understand.

The thing is people on this island have been fed too much convenience, over-democratic some call it. You take away those convenience, even though they maybe wrong, prepare to die. So, now we understand, why it is so bizarre on the streets, the police seem like they aren’t doing their jobs, and …

-Lack of willingness to challenge the status quo
Most Taiwanese friends, I’ve learned, just want to earn steady money and that’s the end of their life. Hence, the saying 鐵飯碗 (metal bowl), a job that doesn’t do much but yield steady pay until retirement.

-Playing the blame game
I don’t have a good job or a well-paying job. Blame the government.
My child isn’t performing well at school. Blame the teachers.
Again, too much convenience, always expecting someone else to solving the problem.

I’ve had more interactions with young Taiwanese recently and I’ve asked to get their views on things.

Usually what comes back…nothing.

I’ll mention did you ever see those factories in Taiwan surrounded by rice fields, what do you think about that ?
Gears clicking, silence. The default attitude taught in schools and families here. Safer to say nothing in case you say ‘the wrong thing’.

I believe the majority believe this is a normal situation and have never noticed anything wrong with this or thought about it until asked to formulate an opinion on it.

Some have noticed but don’t have a real opinion as such.

One told me why it happened due to the lower tax on farmland than industrial land.

Nobody suggested anything on what could be done or ventured an opinion on pollution getting into the water and therefore the food.

I also mentioned air pollution and they mostly seen to think Taipei has bad air pollution, whereas the air pollution in Taichung and down south is much worse according to the statistics (and my own eyes).

Lack of awareness about pollution norms and planning norms is startling, even from educated people.

But okay. say the population at large is ignorant about the fact that you can grow rice beside a metal processing plant or what constitutes ‘clean air’? This is what we have the Taiwan and Taichung EPA for right?

WTF are those people doing, they have M.Scs and PhDs, have visited other countries and drive past this shit everyday? They know they shouldn’t have metal factories in residential areas let alone allow them to situate on farmland surrounded by rice fields!

What the hell are they doing?

Okay, so the local government maybe is corrupt. But then what is the central government in Taipei doing?

They probably don’t care about anything outside Taipei, sure. I’ve seen the attitude.
But don’t they know the rice in their Bian dangs comes from central Taiwan? Don’t they know the Lao ban is going to use the cheapest rice?

Are they that dumb? Is it because they never connected the dots?

It actually frustrates me a lot talking to educated Taiwanese. I find those less educated, binglang chewing guys are actually more opinionated and passionate than the educated guys. Do be careful however as some of them gets too opinionated especially about politics.

Facepalm time again:

Consumers cautioned over PBDEs

relevance to this thread?

“Second Division Director Yang Wei-hsiu (楊維修) said the department has listed PBDEs as a toxic substance, but has yet to impose a full-scale ban on their use.”

:unamused:

For reference (from Wikipedia):

“The European Union decided to ban the use of two classes of flame retardants, in particular, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) in electric and electronic devices. This ban was formalised in the RoHS Directive” [RoHS is reduction of hazardous substances, adopted 2003].

A nice pic put together by Courtney Donovan on FB. It illustrates just HOW corrupt local governments are in Taiwan. Unfortunately local governments also hold a lot of power in their given electoral area, in many ways they are more powerful than the central government. They control local planning decisions, compulsory land purchases, local environmental bureaus, who gets appointed as local head of police, power to sue protestors or individuals who ‘cross’ them using local government prosecutors etc etc.

Actually there also been many corruption scandals in the Taipei area (MRT land development/Twin Tower project), but they didn’t fall directly on city/county government officials.

This map is very problematic. For one, the mayor of Chiayi City is KMT and the magistrate of Hualien is independent.

More importantly, it implies that the DPP is clean in all of its districts. Chiayi County magistrate Chang Hua-kuan for one had a corruption scandal, though she was found not guilty.

I think it wasn’t labelled correctly, almost all the DPP areas also have issues AFAIK.

The map is very biased. It implies that DPP is somehow better and less corrupt.

I took it from a Facebook post so it lost some background info, the point is corruption in local government is rampant, and when one gets caught they usually try and get a wife (‘ex-wife’) or relative voted in instead.
Only Taipei and the biggest cities are relatively clean (in city government), the rest of the country is run like personal fiefdoms which pledge allegiance to the central government in Taipei.

People don’t seem to connect the dots. For instance the food oil scandals were mainly from manufacturers in Changhua and Taichung. The contaminated rice fields in Changhua had pipes running along the municipal roads carrying waste 10 KMs to the sea. They were regularly inspected by LOCAL government agencies. Local government officials have the power to decide on the level of fines or if to prosecute for a custodial sentence. Corruption in the countryside will still hurt people in Taipei and elsewhere.

It’s already happened.[/quote]
No, what’s happened is that they started rebuilding Taipei as if they were expecting massive and swift gentrification without bothering to check if anyone actually had enough money for that to happen.

Hi,
The only answer is simple…
the Neanderthal population…right !

People, greed, politicians …

[quote=“headhonchoII”]I took it from a Facebook post so it lost some background info, the point is corruption in local government is rampant, and when one gets caught they usually try and get a wife (‘ex-wife’) or relative voted in instead.
Only Taipei and the biggest cities are relatively clean (in city government), the rest of the country is run like personal fiefdoms which pledge allegiance to the central government in Taipei.

People don’t seem to connect the dots. For instance the food oil scandals were mainly from manufacturers in Zhanghua and Taichung. The contaminated rice fields in Zhanghua had pipes running along the municipal roads carrying waste 10 KMs to the sea. They were regularly inspected by LOCAL government agencies. Local government officials have the power to decide on the level of fines or if to prosecute for a custodial sentence. Corruption in the countryside will still hurt people in Taipei and elsewhere.[/quote]

The same thing happened again with this Chang jun gutter oil scandal. The factory had been reported for suspicious activities for over two years and it was only when the neighboring farmer went to Taichung city government that any inspectors went out to investigate the case.