>From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com
>Subject: Re: Bugs in free markets.
>Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 22:15:16 EDT
>
>In a message dated 9/3/2000 5:34:14 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>weidai@eskimo.com writes:
>
> > Is it evil to take
> > advantage of other people, even though they would prefer that you did?
>
>To be honest, sometimes, yes. Although evil is a big word, and highly
>subjective.
>
>I would instead suggest the term "opportunistic." Like an infection that
>wouldn't occur if the host was not weakened. If I go to you out desperation
>and you use that as leverage, you can take advantage of me. This can be my
>fault but it can also be can be manipulated in advance, by you, if you have
>enough force, or power, so desperation is a manufactured tool used by large
>powers against pre-weakened constituencies.
>
>This is the meaning of the old union song "I owe my soul to the company
>store".
>
>Use the example of a drug addict who's dealer begins with free samples,
>then
>keeps raising the fix price but gives him credit (if he will steal or pimp
>for him). Eventually he "owns" the addict.
>
>Or if I can isolate a person so that I pay his wages and I also control the
>price of his living costs, I can always keep him just a little bit behind,
>so
>he can't leave. I can extend credit to him. He would "prefer that I did".
>Me
>too. Otherwise what happenes? His family starves. This of course
>presupposes
>that I am able to hog the market. In olden days small mining towns, for
>example, I can make my goods the only goods available by burning down his
>buildings or whatever.
>Suppose today I'd just need billions of dollars and a politician's ear.
>
>Even simpler, if I just plain say I'll break your legs if you don't let me
>take advantage of you, you might say "OK, I'd prefer you to".
In the case of the Chinese company for which I have worked for almost ten
years - while writing my soon to be released book, "Working for the Enemy" -
the policy in the early '90's, during the recession, was to continuously put
out ads requesting resumes and promising bright futures to employees. They
got hundreds of resumes per week in response, and the company president
spent hours per day going through them.
Then he would hire some guy right out of school with a masters in electrical
engineering, tell him about all the wonderful opportunities, etc. But
first, he had to learn the company and prove himself. So he would be put to
the job of typing in orders from customers and be paid $6.50 per hour. He
would also be expected to do extra work on his own time or on weekends - to
"learn the job" - and he would be pumped for any good ideas that he might
have on how to improve production, and if he had any skills like photography
or art, then he would be encouraged to employ them to create new ads or
graphics for marketing (on his own time, of course).
After three months of busting ass, he would be called in to the president's
office and - expecting his promised initial token $.50/hour raise - be told
by the president that his work was "UNSATISFACTORY." Then he would quit -
not getting any Unemployment Insurance benefits -and they would repeat the
process. With a typical work crew of 12 to 14 in their U.S. office, which
included the president's family, his yes-man manager, and a "permanent"
Chinese worker in the repair dept., they went through about one hundred such
employees in about 7 years.
The position that if the person choses to go along with the situation then
it must be to his advantage ignores the rights to have a contract abided by.
The employees fulfilled their ends of their contracts - some of which were
in fact in writing. The employer, knowing that the costs of recovering
damages thru the legal system by the employee were prohibitive, not to
mention the effects on potential future employment of having a such a suit
on their record, simply screwed one employee after another remorselessly -
and in fact quite gleefully - totally reneging on their end of the contract.
This particular attitude - that contracts are just an idea that may be
renegotiated at any point - is pretty much standard in Chinese business
ethics. American companies do the same thing, to be sure, but not nearly as
often, and when they do, everyone considers it to be reprehensible.
This imposes major costs on the typical Chinese business, however. The jobs
that were constantly turning over required a huge investment in constant
retraining, plus losses due to lack of experience, plus losses due to worker
sabotage when they learned the score, plus all the losses of the expertise
that a permanent happy worker could have contributed. As Fukuyama points
out in "Trust," however, Chinese social structure has been such that for a
couple thousand years it has been impossible to trust anyone outside of the
immediate family. Thus, it is assumed that a non-family - and especially a
non-Chinese - employee cannot be trusted and it is not safe to keep them too
long anyway.
China, in particular, would benefit from a social contract that might
overcome some of these problems.
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