Re: Nation of idiots ?



On Mon, 5 Sep 2005, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:


Straydog wrote: 
On Sun, 4 Sep 2005, elephantcelebes@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Kamal R. Prasad wrote:

United States is a major recepient of foreign direct investment 

Why are we the recipients of foreign investment if we have such
incompetent workers and managers? I don't care where the investors
live. People don't invest unless they expect a return.


I'm in the process of reading a number of books to help me get a better
idea what is going on in the international money flow picture. Please
understand that foreign direct investment is a term that can be applied to
any country where investment is made in another country. Please also
understand that FDI also applies to money from, for example, China, to
purchase real estate in the USA. Already a large amount of property in the
USA is owned by Japan, England, Germany and more will be bought as
countries like India and China earn dollars in their bank accounts,
wherever those bank accounts are kept. Since they own these buildings,
office complexes, then THEY get the rent, THEY get the benefits of
inflation in cost (going up 20-30% per year, is better than rent).

all true. Does that book also tell you that money invested by private
parties does not belong to the general public

You confuse, in your sentence above, the right of moneyholders and moneycontrollers to spend/invest that money any way they want with the laws and practices of a land, the USA, to control many aspects of that spending.

and consequently is not
necessarily driven by public interest? 

Not necessarily? Please read below.

I mean, that is the pt I was
trying to hammer in for so long.

You have very rarely, if at all, acknowledged the point I've made above so many times. You have never acknowledged that we have many laws that have been on the books for decades to prevent (i.e. make ILLEGAL) such things as spending/investing money on discriminations based on gender, age, nationals origin, religion, and even disabilities. That covers half a dozen broad areas of commercial behavior, funded by their own investments.

Those are the old laws. Recent laws include Sarbox, which followed the giant corporate frauds just a few years ago. Now, those executives are LEGISLATED to be criminals if they do NOT carry out proper accounting responsibilities. So, you are wrong, again, on your idea that 'we can't legislate what corporations can do.' Sarbox is a very new, sweeping law. And, yes, it does legislate what the owners of money can do. Just like our laws about crime. And, our civil court systems legislates against wrongs committed by rich people againsst poor people.

You still have not acknowledged these facts as RESTRICTIONS and LEGISLATIONS that limit those "owners" of their money from doing ANYthing they want. You still really don't understand any of this.

specializing in the same thing that his US counterparts are doing. the
H1b legislation in whatever form it exists or will exist -doesn't apply
outside the US.


Why are US employers trying so hard to get h1b visas to bring in
workers from your country, and pay them more to work here? They are the
same workers with the same competence, right? Why not just let them
work from an office in your country?


Let me answer this: The h1b is a 'captive employee' visa. The employee
can't quit the job without becoming 'unsponsored' and thus illegal and
thus have to go back home. The other benefit to employers is that because


A transfer of visa is possible -but you need to get hold of another
employer before the current job is terminated.

Or, one of those crook immigration lawyers to make a big cloud of legal smoke.

By and large, i agree 
with the term 'captive employee' visa and one of the reasons why Im not
in the US now -is that I don't want my freedom impaired.


I don't blame you.

of loopholes in the law, they can pay the h1b less to work in the USA. Ten
thousand bucks multiplied by a hundred or a thousand (in a big company)
saves a lot of money to the books.

true -but its also true that there are many americans who are
unemployed and willing to work for the h1b's salary. Why do employers
insist on giving those jobs to foreigners rather than to natives who
will not require a $3000 h1b processing expenditure?

Because the h1b won't quit because he can't quit and if he thinks he can look for another job, then the new boss will call the present boss and say "hey, how is that guy? he has applied for a job with us!" Do you think the present boss will say "Oh, he is great, just take him if you want, we will find another guy". I happen to know this because I hired a foreigner long ago on an informal basis and was called for a reference.

The United States has lost numerous industries to foreign competition
-and I expect something similar to the s/w industry too. It is just a
matter of time before the bulk of what s/w development is being done in
the US shifts to cheaper locations.


Thankfully, I opted out of a career in programming, for a number of
reasons. I mainly use programming when it's easier to write a small
piece of code than explaining what I want to a programmer. Often, my
code will be sent to a programmer, to turn it into production code. My
work is more along the lines of coming up with the new product ideas
that keep programmers employed, regardless of where they live.

What I have observed is that the greater the distance (in terms of
geography, culture, trust, etc.) between you and your workers, the more
time you have to spend specifying in detail exactly what you want them
to do, checking that they got it right, and dealing with quality
problems. These costs are never anticipated when top management comes
down with a directive to outsource everything.


All of the offshoring companies are starting to learn that the "Harvard
MBA Solution" has lots of details they did not anticipate.

some fail, some succeed. Some learn from hindsight -some don't. 

Yeah. No kidding.

But the programmers in my workplace have a lot more to offer. They
understand our products and our customers. They can do things other
than programming. You don't have to specify exactly what you want,
because you can trust them to come up with something creative that
exceeds your expectations.


Having natives doing work on native problems is an advantage that can't be
easily learned in a spread*** like the Harvard MBAs would tell you.

and so toyota couldn't have built the best seller car camry for US
markets?

You know, this is interesting. Ever hear of a guy by the name of Demming? An American who knew quality control. But the crook CEOs of America were more interested in being crooks than in doing anyhthing good for the country. So, Demming went to Japan. Sold his consulting advice to them, and they did just what he taught them to do. And, what do we have? Toyota, Honda, Panasonic, Sanyo, Hitachi, ....ad nauseum.

Yeah, Toyota maybe could not have built the best selling car without some, maybe a lot, of Americans. They also lost the war, you know?

About 8 out of 10 aka 80% of the americans I have come across -cannot
surivive without protectionist measures. And what that means is that a
lot of them are going to shift careers within the next 10 yrs away from
s/w.


Do you mean 80% of programmers, or 80% of workers in general? Either
way, it's nonsense.


Kamal has, from time to time, made noise hinting that any average Indian
programmer or any Indian worker is, on average, better than any average
American programmer or other American worker. Its mostly a rationalization


Not exactly. When you have high unemployment, oppurtunities are reduced
-which means if 2 countries have the same amt/calibre of manpower -the
one with fewer job oppurtunities will have better manpower available
for less.

One with fewer job opportunities will just have manpower for less. Not necessarily better manpower.

Look at it as a supply/demand issue -not as a racial issue. 

Oh, you have dissed Americans lots of times in lots of your posts.


regards
-kamal


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