I'll bite. My father worked there from early 70s to late 90s.
Samsung dynasty is famous for being anti-union. That anti-union stance is deeply embedded in the company DNA. Union busting activities have been going on since day 1.
The Samsung founder once said, "Union over my dead body". Throughout its 50 year history, the company managed to operate without any official Union representation.
And if you spend time there long enough like my father, that DNA gets slowly worked into you, just like the current execs being tossed into jail.
A few years after my father left Samsung, he ended up as a chief exec at a pharma company for 10 years. For an older generation guy, he is extremely left-leaning and progressive. Except his disdain for unionizing. He would talk painfully about dealing with union leaders at company plant.
Some of that is probably attributable to his Samsung days.
This is a big message being sent to Samsung management culture from SK government who has turned blind eye to its union busting practice for 50 years.
[It got long. I just thought I'd share an experience]
I worked in the company for sometime. Was visiting from their subsidiary in my country for some time. There was a young lady just outside the mobility HQ main gate camped every day speaking something on the loudspeaker. I didn't understand anything except that she was speaking in a very passionate voice and it seemed a bit broken too, a little pleading. No one would go near her or talk to her or take her pamphlets. Not the employees, not a TV crew, nor reporters and she was there everyday till afternoon from morning. I also noticed some photos there, among which some were in a factory worker's uniform (jacket, head protection etc). Though I could guess but I wasn't sure.
One day I walked up to her. She thanked me and told me in her broken English that her husband had died in a factory accident and the company was not owning it. What I understood was "they are not even talking to me". She had all the pamphlets in Korean, only one piece of paper in English which she gave to me and I was going through it. It would have been 1-2 minutes max and three guards basically swooped down upon me and pretty much pulled me aside while shouting at me that what I was doing was illegal and that couldn't talk to her in their broken English. They took the photo of my ID Card and told me "this is warning" and left me alone right there. By the day end I had received a call from my manager who asked me to refrain from getting into it. It was lunch break so when I went back to my office people were looking at my suspiciously. I was just out of college. It was a scary experience.
When the guards were pulling me away the lady was the only person protesting and none of other employees pretty much even looked at me. When I asked a Korean colleague in office that afternoon why everybody is looking at me like this and why no one talking to me suddenly he didn't say anything and remained silent and then softly "we only talk work, no personal". I guess people get conditioned. Even I didn't talk to her again. But I used to nod and smile at her and she always used to smile back.
I left the company after few months. No, I wouldn't say that was the reason. It's strange but I just can't bring myself to buy a company product till today. If someone asks me for a gadget recommendation and I find something decent in their catalog I do recommend that but I personally have not been able to get one myself since then. This incident stayed with me and whenever I think of the company somehow that woman's image flashes in front of me.
I wonder how much of this is korean culture and how much of it is samsung. A friend of mine interned at waymo and took a full time offer. I had lunch with her, and I said another friend of mine at Waymo is getting bored, and she hushed me and said I shouldn't say that because it's bad to talk about your employer this way. Keep in mind my friend is still finishing school, and we were 1000s of miles away from Waymo office. ‾\_(ツ)_/‾
Amazing, thanks for sharing. Can I ask why you think SK is putting such a prominent figure in jail over this?
I mean this in the sense that, first you guys are doing the right thing and second I think here in the US we have a terrible track record of making corporate leaders responsible for criminal activity. I'm really interested in what systematic differences exist between us that allow you guys to actually hold the powerful responsible for their crimes?
I'm a guessing American, but the rightism of modern Korean history is more accute than in the US. (Imagine if we were poor in the 1950s with some McCarther then Goldwater dictators.) Democracy is newer (not historical strong but good trend), and Samsung is more iconic a foe; imagine if FAANG and IBM were all rolled together.
US has tons of inertia both due to it's size and silly governmental structure. Local governments can't or don't do very much interesting in US, but they punch beyond their weight on blocking interesting federal stuff. You can think of foreign adverturism and military bloat as in part an outlet for all the political energy and ambition that should have gone into worthwhile things.
Koreans make cheap nuclear power plants, remember. When the political will lines up, shit can happen. Moon knows the history and so do the people, and those on his side our very self-aware in this being an overdue course correction. Tons of news led up to this, and should lead past this.
That's a great, but a complex question that I'm not qualified to answer. I'm sure others can chime in but here's my take: SK's democracy is still in its making. Even though the country is thousands of years old, its first 'democratically' elected president only came to power in 1948. That's after my parents were born.
I said 'democratically' in quote because nearly all presidents that came into power leading up to 1993 were essentially quasi-dictator and military heads. Even into the 1980s, South Korea had a hard core labor camp in middle of Seoul that housed tens of thousands of gang, anti-government or social activists, and criminals who were sent there without due process. No reliable death count exists, but it's estimated to be 500+ if you count people that suffered premature death after release.
So if you are 40+ like me, you remember what it was like to live in South Korea before the good times that we're all familiar with now. You remember your college age neighbors going out on street in 1980s participating in anti-government protest throwing Molotov cocktails. You remember anti-North Korea curriculum in grade school published by ministry of education. You remember not having true freedom of press and had to self-censor even until 1990s. You remember the sacrifices people made before voting in their first true true democratically elected president in 1993.
People are empowered to make changes, because they know they can. They've sent nearly all presidents elected since 1980s to jail for corruption. It's almost a running joke that if you become SK president, your next stop after office is behind bars.
9th term - assassinated in 1979
10th term - coup and forced out
11th & 12th - jailed and sentenced to death but commuted
13th - jailed and sentenced to death but commuted
14th - family member jailed.
15th - sentenced to death by 11th pres, but commuted.
16th - jumped from mountain and killed himself.
17th - jailed and released.
18th - jailed and still in prison.
19th - still serving.
There are millions of Koreans who still remember their 1st president including my parents.
Also, living right next to China and below warmongering NK, people subconsciously know that everything can turn on a dime; you don't want to take any chance with an incompetent one at the top helm.
I think this explains the psyche and behavioral aspect of South Koreans.
The decision to jail the Samsung execs is probably just as complicated too so I won't do justice to the topic. The current administration is very socially progressive. They've been trying to tackle increasing wealth gap issues through real estate tax rules reform, minimum wage increase, and enacting more labor protection laws. As much as Korea appears wealthy from outside, loots are not being shared fairly, people are losing hope, it went from saver nation to zero-saving nation in 20 years.
This corporate crack down is an extension of that. People are pissed and they want to see blood and government is obliging.
Someone once said, Korea still has a dictator and it's the people.
From what I've read in the international news the past few years, it seems there's significant political support and, crucially, momentum behind scrutinizing chaebol-related corruption.
The reason South Korea is putting the prominent figure in jail is more a political persecution than union busting. Union busting activity could have been resolved without a jail term.
In Korea the current administration came to power by those powerful unions, so it has to act against Samsung family as they were very close to previous administration. This is one of the avenue to punish them.
If you have any first hand experience dealing with union in South Korea, you will understand why multi-national companies are reluctant to operate, provide services and open manufacturing in that country.
For economy to grow and keeping in welfare of the employees there has to be a balance between corporate and unions. If an employees decides to go on a strike, company cannot fire them, cannot use temporary staff, cannot ask subsidiary or other departments to help, cannot outsource work done by that person to outside company, cannot close that division. If it does any of this its a criminal offense and the person including the CEO can be jailed. The only way to negotiate is to deal with primary union representative carrying industrial action and these union are current government affiliated and their leaders wields political powers. They will come with 145-152 demands to sign an agreement between union and company. But before coming with demands they will make the employees to go on strike to have a better bargaining power (they call it industrial action).
If company do not negotiate in good faith which is determined by the union representatives not by reasonable laws, the company will be punished. If company do not agree to demands the only way out is to close the legal entity. So most multi-national companies try to limit their exposure to those unions and that's the reason they don't invest as much. Most of the Korean economy is driven by local 5-6 billionaire families who themselves wield a lot of political power so can negotiate strongly with those unions.
Funny enough Korea is more socialist than China when it comes to labor reforms and unions. Also in Korea unions wield strong political powers.
In China there is only one union, which is toothless and do not allow strikes to happen. They also have to abide by company laws and rules. Its only labor courts and department which determine whether company laws in handbook are reasonable or not and every employee at least need to comply with the company handbook.
I'm curious how a country with such a deep history of authoritarianism and right wing politics ended up with such draconian labour laws. Are they a recent thing?
That's fair comment, I suppose it's a matter of interpretation. I have no idea how accurate the description given is and I'm not intending to critique it, I'm just interested in the history.
When workers strike in the US the company can simply hire replacement workers. If the company does so the striking workers are not guaranteed their jobs back after the strike.
It’s not worker which is protected but the union which wields power and union leadership involved in negotiations.
Normally there should be a rule of law which balance the rights of company and worker and has to be reasonable. You turn it other way and it takes away the incentive for entrepreneurs to invest. If they are seen as criminals just if they do not agree with the provisions, they can show dissent only by closing business.
So the said worker whom this union is suppose to save don’t get a job, as entrepreneur will not takes risk of being put in jail, just because he did not agree to unreasonable demand of union. Also there are many other locations in Asia for multi-nationals. So the overall job market suffer if there isn’t a balance between company and worker demands.
Also it’s not really protection of workers, because workers need to work according to unions agenda, which are governed by leadership in those unions. If I am not wrong in Korea there are 2 unions.
The US has very weak protections for workers across the board.
In addition to South Korea, Japan, Mexico, and Quebec outlaw strikebreaking. The practice is so rare in the EU that it is usually not even mentioned in labour law.
The department I work at needs to interference with a third-party very frequently and they are Union run. They are the source of much of our pain and frustrations.
Samsung is responsible for a large portion of GDP in Korea. Arguably, Samsung has contributed a lot to Korea's "Miracle on the Han River".
With Korea's current progressive "Moon's" government, Korea is going through a lot of changes (higher minimum wage, a lot of focus on gender equality, stronger labor union, shorter work hours, stronger punishment for corruptions within companies, etc), and traditional "chaebol" companies are having trouble adapting to some of these changes. There are also a lot of eyeballs on past and current shady behaviors by "chaebol" companies.
As one of the biggest "chaebol" companies, Samsung is also being affected by the changes, and this article shows one of them.
One question I have is how beneficial these changes would be for GDP of Korea. On paper, these changes sound nice as they would benefit employees and make things "fair". But changing things dramatically can have side effects (ex. higher minimum wage led to many small shops closing). More regulations might limit Samsung's ability to compete internationally, which is bad as Samsung (and Korea in general) rely heavily on export-based economy.
> One question I have is how beneficial these changes would be for GDP of Korea. On paper, these changes sound nice as they would benefit employees and make things "fair". But changing things dramatically can have side effects (ex. higher minimum wage led to many small shops closing). More regulations might limit Samsung's ability to compete internationally, which is bad as Samsung (and Korea in general) rely heavily on export-based economy.
Does GDP matter if a large segment of the population is miserable? Samsung's ability to compete internationally is important but I'd rank that as a second to the health and happiness of it's populace.
> higher minimum wage led to many small shops closing
I don't quite buy this -- higher minimum wages might indeed increase costs for small shops, but this is a shallow assessment:
- A clearer definition of "small shop" is needed -- most really small shops are run by the owner/owner's family, no? If this is not the case, then I'd argue that businesses that are dependent on not paying workers a living wage should not exist (if Korea's people wish it so).
- Higher wages usually means more money spent on goods for all but the upper echelon of the population who may or may not be more interested in amassing wealth for whatever reason
The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally. That if you made your nation unto an island with 20 hour work weeks, 2 months paid vacation, a 20 dollar minimum wage (or UBI), public housing, public transit, etc that your economy would rot as capital went places where more exploitation means more profit overall.
Not to say that is an inevitability or even a correct interpretation, but it does lean heavily on the argument that a healthy, educated, rational, and free populace can compete with the export yields of wage slaves overdosing on drugs even if they aren't compelled to do work nobody wants to do for a price nobody wants to take. The question is if people wanting things enough to drive an economy over them needing things.
Historically almost all wealth was built on exploitations - of land, of resources, and of people. What if preventing the exploitation and suffering of your fellows causes everyone to suffer in the long term from economic stagnation? Its a dystopic way to look at the world but given the major economic powerhouses of this and recent eras I just don't see the evidence that its entirely wrong.
Given how obvious and clear these examples are and should be for literally everyone, it is really mystifying to me why the anti-person rhetoric is so prevalent here (among an ostensibly pretty well-educated populace). Do you have thoughts on why that is?
As an American with a hardcore capitalist entrepreneurial father and now living in Switzerland, I chalk it up to some Americans simply not being able to imagine a society that doesn't enshrine "If I don't exploit, someone else will" race-to-the-bottom mentality, or if they could imagine such a society then they deem it "suboptimal" and therefore "wrong".
Edit to add: there's a generational mindset too. Older generations have the advantage of living longer and seeing massive technological change, and have an entrenched mindset of "if I work like a dog and live like shit now, everything deferred will be incredibly rewarded later". Whereas the "proverbial millennial" has not seen as much change and thinks such a mindset is an unbalanced extreme crock of shit, and therefore makes demands of the now, to live a generally fulfilling life; to which older generations think is ungrateful, soft, and demanding, that "because my life was shit, everyone else's should be too, it's only fair". But they'll still tell you they want to leave the world a better place for their kids, which is doublethink. (I'm speaking in very very broad terms)
White collar employees in Germany and Scandinavia are much poorer than their equivalents in Canada and the US. Sure, they get maternity leave and 8 weeks of vacation and whatever but they'll never be able to retire at 35 like an American developer.
It is not worth losing over half my income to get these "worker protections" and "social benefits" and it's no wonder that tons of Europeans come to the US to work and very few Americans go to work in Europe.
Yes, being forced by low wages and high taxes to work until I hit 65 and the government graciously allows me to retire is a shitty life that I am not jealous of.
I don't care how much vacation and benefits Europeans get.
> The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally.
What is the point of competing if not for the benefit of the people? Is competing globally an end unto itself? That sounds neo-liberal, not conservative.
I think it's entirely possible for a country with such policies to compete globally, but it requires a smaller cut for capital owners, whether via taxes or direct ownership changes. That leaves behind a potential source of new revenue for capital holders if the country's policies can be changed. So the question is: can policy change be forced for less money than what can be gained by opening up the market? Would forcing a regime change by military or intelligence intervention turn a profit?
Or, from the perspective of a country trying to enact utopian policies: how can they make external intervention more expensive than it's worth?
> The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally
I disagree -- France does well in terms of GDP per hour worked[0], and is in relative terms a worker's paradise.
On a more subjective note, I think this analysis misses the fact that automation is about to absolutely destroy the working class (if it's not already). The world's need for brute force blue-collar workers is shrinking and enabling people who might have done that work to aim for higher pursuits (which generally people only feel able to do when times are good) should be the goal of an economy with long term aspirations. There's a reason countries start with the economic zone model, but then seek to upskill their populace -- humans, no matter how little you pay them, cannot compete with efficient robots.
> Not to say that is an inevitability or even a correct interpretation, but it does lean heavily on the argument that a healthy, educated, rational, and free populace can compete with the export yields of wage slaves overdosing on drugs even if they aren't compelled to do work nobody wants to do for a price nobody wants to take. The question is if people wanting things enough to drive an economy over them needing things.
That argument doesn't seem to take into account that exports are varied and valued spectacularly diversely. Entertainment is one of America's largest exports and it is very much not a strictly productive endeavor to be entertained (of course you can argue that entertainment is required for productive work so people don't break down). Healthy, educated, rational, and free populaces are most of the time not competing with t-shirt producing sweat shops -- they are more often designing the t-shirts the sweat shops are making.
In addition to this, functioning purely free-market economies basically don't exist anywhere. The idea of a sanction against countries that exploit their workers would be unheard for a strictly economics-focused mindset but is very much possible today.
> Historically almost all wealth was built on exploitations - of land, of resources, and of people. What if preventing the exploitation and suffering of your fellows causes everyone to suffer in the long term from economic stagnation? Its a dystopic way to look at the world but given the major economic powerhouses of this and recent eras I just don't see the evidence that its entirely wrong.
This is true, but it's a spectrum -- in my opinion, aggressive exploitation simply speeds up growth, it is not necessarily a gating factor. I agree in that I think it's not necessarily wrong but still, if it's a spectrum then why don't we turn the dial back a little bit? There are externalized costs that we're ignoring by normalizing exploitation.
Also this constant worry of "economic stagnation" -- this is missing the forest for the trees again, it's worrying about GDP over the wellness of the people of a nation.
The official hours worked figures in France are severely underestimated IMO. For all my career everybody I know worked more than the supposed 35, 39 or 40 hours your contract specifies.
All timesheet software I've seen asks you to input your time in fractions of the official work day, not real hours.
My guess is only workers who really are paid hourly and thus have to badge in and out have their work hours counted correctly.
Don't forget various bureaucrats mainly employed by state. Those are often folks who go to massive strikes that cripple economy since they are losing many of those cozy benefits they take for granted, while taking everybody including foreign tourists as hostages.
I can tell you from personal experience those are hardly breaking a sweat, and few colleagues who actually live there sometimes end up in proper Catch-22-esque situations with things like taxes or driving license changes. good stories to laugh at but proper nightmare to actually go through.
Another topic might be that nobody wants to hire french manual workers, for things like home renovation, unless you have no other option. Little work, long breaks, often way too narrow specialization and often very high prices makes even french people looking for folks from places like Portugal or even Romania. And the costs themselves are only small part of the reasons.
But same colleagues tell me that in software companies people do often work hard. Long are gone generous 2-hour lunch breaks. Seems like a great divide depending how safe ones work feel.
> Does GDP matter if a large segment of the population is miserable? Samsung's ability to compete internationally is important but I'd rank that as a second to the health and happiness of it's populace.
GDP is what enables society to provide health and happiness to its populace. The problem with Bangladesh, for example, is not income distribution. It's top-line GDP. In Korea, according to the OECD, average household disposable income is $21,000 per year, versus $45,000 per year for the United States: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states. Korea isn't so rich that more even distribution of income without top line GDP growth would be a panacea. (And it's also worth pointing out that measures to distribute income more evenly will generally reduce GDP.)
There's no such thing as a "living wage". It's a political talking point and you can set the line wherever you want.
Higher min. wage increases costs and disproportionately affects smaller companies, leading to closures in every region, country, state and city where it happens. This is also why giant corporations like Walmart even support it since it clears out small local store competition.
> There's no such thing as a "living wage". It's a political talking point and you can set the line wherever you want.
This doesn't mean it doesn't exist -- it's just a social construct, and a useful one depending on where your priorities lie. The salient point is that some societies value this concept and draw the line somewhere. If you believe governmental regulation exists to protect the people (at least a little bit), putting a lower bound on what companies are allowed to pay employees in your country/governed region is important.
> Higher min. wage increases costs and disproportionately affects smaller companies, leading to closures in every region, country, state and city where it happens. This is also why giant corporations like Walmart even support it since it clears out small local store competition.
this is basically the same point rehashed -- I can't say that I added too many facts, but simply implying that min. wage increases hurt small business without discussing the increase in goods purchased is a shallow assessment. When workers who are likely to spend money receive more money in terms of wages, they spend these wages -- this should mean smaller companies will see higher sales as well as big companies.
And again, what the economy is doing aside, if you cannot afford to pay a wage that enables your employees to comfortably live, you likely should not exist, find another business. Businesses that attempt to operate in this space are externalizing their costs to society at large -- people who work at these companies depend on social programs that are paid for the society at large.
It's not a construct because it's not a real number. There's no objective definition or accepted test. It's made up by whoever is talking about it.
> "if you cannot afford to pay a wage that enables your employees to comfortably live, you likely should not exist, find another business"
What's "comfortable"? Is this the magic and subjective livable wage again? Who are you to tell everyone else what they should be comfortable with?
Regulation isn't that simple. Not everyone agrees that the government controlling pay is "protecting the people" and many would rather have the freedom to make their own choices. It's purely academic thinking that simply raising wages fixes everything. It often does little but raise costs while also removing opportunities. How many goods are purchased when income goes to zero? How many social programs will they need then?
It's easy to say that businesses should close because of your moral attitude about a subjective number, but do you realize it affects the very people you claim to be protecting? Have you ever worked a min wage job or talked to people who do? Affordability and cost of living have nothing to do with wages and are rarely ever fixed with a min wage.
I always found this such a weak argument. A small store deals with inflation all the time - for the rent it pays for the shop, the products it buys and services it employs. Surely wages as well then? If, even with increased consumer spending being the result of increased minimum wages the small store cannot turn a profit anymore then it means that their business model is simply no longer up to date with modern times.
Where's all this increased consumer spending coming from? This isn't guaranteed and rarely happens, and definitely doesn't go straight back to those businesses.
Employees are the biggest cost, and wages when multiplied by benefits and taxes can have an outsized impact over fixed costs like rent. Sure a business might not fire everyone, but it might start removing some shifts or move some employees to part-time instead. These little changes add up.
The greater point is that it's easy to say "the business model is no longer up to date" when it doesn't affect you. It's much different when your wages go to 0 instead because of other people who think they know better than you about what you need.
That's a good point... Making changes quickly and dramatically does have some effects that might be negative. However, it's usually very difficult for such changes to happen slowly and progressively.
Those kind of changes tend to come when a large percent of the population is fed up with the way things are and start to agitate for changes. At that point, it's unlikely to happen progressively... So it's a bit of a catch 22, as long as the people who benefit from the current state of society are in power (or control those who are in power), change are unlikely to come progressively since it would be disadvantageous to them but, once they lose the reigns (as they inevitably do), change happen so fast that it's both potentially bad for the society at large and worse for the ones who used to be at the top.
I'm not sure there are many examples of enlightened robber barons who allowed progressive changes that were counter to their interests but improved society as a whole.
>I'm not sure there are many examples of enlightened robber barons who allowed progressive changes that were counter to their interests but improved society as a whole.
Bill Gates' charitable work comes to mind. I wouldn't call him really a robber baron as the term implies wealth gained unfairly or from others involuntarily. The Fed is printing almost another half trillion in cash to inject, subsidize Wall St., for example. I also don't know if the term applies fairly to Samsung, as while the Korean history of chaebol companies was fueled by crony capitalism, their wealth does primarily come from their export-driven business where they compete globally. It's not like a JP Morgan (the person) or JP Morgan (the Wall St bank today) who really rely on borderline slavery from captive labor markets, or welfare from taxpayers.
Well many people think Microsoft's behavior was monopolistic, so yes, unfair, and exploiting monopolies is a robber baron motif. They're also known for exploiting their workers but I don't think Bill did that (so far as I know he didn't actively suppress wages like Jobs). In any case he was much maligned at a certain point in history and his charitable work is a little too over-publicized and under-delivering for me to take seriously.
Even if Bill is sincere, gp made the claim that robber barons don't work against their own interest, and I don't see where in the Gates example a man is working against himself.
> > I'm not sure there are many examples of enlightened robber barons who allowed progressive changes that were counter to their interests but improved society as a whole.
> Bill Gates' charitable work comes to mind. I wouldn't call him really a robber baron as the term implies wealth gained unfairly or from others involuntarily.
And yet, even Elizabeth Warren crippled social democratic policies are going too far. Paying taxes should be the litmus test for Bill Gates (and other billionaires), not throwing some scraps into unspecified charity.
Bill Gates is just a smarter Rockefeller that saw the writing on the wall and cashed out early. Call it an "ex-robber baron".
This is just a statement of opinions without any reasoning or substantiation.
I get it that social media is extremely biased to the left and people agree with this kind of thing, but it's disconcerting that people cannot respond to the discussion which follows from first principles and logical reasoning. For example, by responding to the reasoning I gave. Not just saying "I disagree, and Elizabeth Warren isn't even socialist enough for me." It's so unconvincing.
The quality of your argument is low, I suppose that is why you didn't get your expected kind of answer. You just posted opinions, and none of them are facts.
* Bill Gates like philanthropy: Taxes always would be way higher than the sum of all philanthropy. All of philanthropy in the US was $400 billion last year. Trump's tax cut for the rich was $1.5 trillion. Only the last tax cut.
* Taxes are spent democratically, which, in a Democracy, is always preferable to a single rich person following his/her personal agenda, because that, by definition, is not democratic.
* JP Morgan et al. are indeed getting welfare from taxpayers: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/08/first-tim...
If the person fixing your toilet pays more in taxes than a person like Bill Gates, what else would you call that but welfare for the rich?
That was no insult. "You are dumb for disagreeing with me" would be an insult, and if I posted that you would have every right to feel insulted. But I didn't.
But the quality of your argument was low: You just put chained unsubstantiated opinions together, the majority of which are objectively wrong.
You write that "The Fed is printing almost another half trillion in cash to inject, subsidize Wall St." which a) isn't how QE works, and b) The rate of growth of e.g. S&P500 is the same as before QE started.
You write that "social media is extremely biased to the left" which is an alt right conspiracy with oodles of studies showing that this is wrong.
The philanthropy vs. taxation debate is decades old and the results are clear. You are of course free to reopen it with new arguments, but chose to omit those.
Saying the quality of your argumentation is not up to the standard of the person in question is not a personal insult. People can make mistakes and you can too. Pointing them out is not an insult, it is an opportunity for you to improve.
I didn't say it was a personal insult. I said it was an insult. And by the way, insulting without giving a reason why is exactly what my comment said it was: not an argument, just an insult. I can't believe I'm actually writing this to someone who ostensibly is an adult.
Traditional "chaebol" companies are having trouble adapting to some of these changes.
It shocked a lot of people, inside and outside South Korea, when Hanjin Shipping was allowed to go bust. Not resold, reorganized, but immediate bankruptcy and liquidation. Management was expecting a bailout right up to the end. Ships were stuck all over the planet, and empty blue Hanjin containers piled up in ports.
That's when the chaebol realized the rules have changed.
Much of Samsung's production happens outside SK so I don't think the influence of SK labor policies on Samsung is not as significant as one might think.
If anything, such labor policies as well as this kind of prosecution and sentencing for those powerful people would help the long term health of the country and even Samsung itself.
Having a liveable minimum wage works fine in many, many countries. Every time there is talk of raising the minimum wage in a country where it is expected to exploit workers and sleep well at night there are all these big scare stories about "small business" which will suffer and all the "jobs" that will leave. I personally think those people are missing the point and are also for some reason negligent in looking at other regimes that have such policies, where they work fine.
~2010 I worked at Samsung headquarters for a week or so. Other than the backstabbing corporate nature of the place, the degree to which employee autonomy was reduced in all ways (residential situation, transportation, highly regimented schedule, physical security inspections) was shocking. Very glad to leave.
Do you mean you were there as an independent contractor or something or did you actually get hired and then quit that fast due to how unbearable it was?
I'm surprised to hear about how awful the situation in the company is, never realized Samsung was quite that bad. Really disheartening, especially since I'm a big fan of their devices as a mass-produced option. Might look into some alternatives now.
Our company was providing a very high profile application level solution operating between many Samsung divisions across three countries (US/Korea/India) and multiple US carriers' backend services. It was the flagship DRM video application for the US launch of the Galaxy device series. Interesting project politically, wouldn't do it again.
If you work for a Samsung subsidiary, SEA or SRA being the most likely if you're US based, you'll likely end up making the trip to Suwoon at least once a year for various workshops. It's entirely likely they went over for a week and then came back once the workshop was over.
If you can get SVP or above approval for the VIP pass it makes 98% of the security headache and digital city ingress and egress vastly more streamlined. I wont go back without one anymore.
I was able to partake in a series of seminars at Seoul National University earlier this year where one of the lectures was from a finance professor giving advice to the South Korean government how to reform their capital markets. The amount of control the chaebol companies (like Samsung) have over the nature of the South Korean economy is dare I say criminal.
A chaebol can own 51% of a company to get voting rights. That company can own 51% of another company, and 51% of another company, and so on. Multiply it all the way through a chain of companies, and you can get many companies near the bottom of the chain where the chaebol actually owns a small minority of the companies and yet controls those companies nonetheless. This leads to extreme agency-principal problems where many companies end up doing things not in the shareholder's interest.
The difficulty is that these ownership chains are not clear because accounting regulations don't require that level of transparency. So it's difficult to know if you're buying stock in a company that is in a position to actually care about your interests as a shareholder. It's safer to assume that you're going to get screwed as a shareholder. The ability of startups to grow up and become real success stories like the Facebooks and Amazons of the world are extremely rare.
So the chaebols get to reap all the benefits of raiding these smaller companies and never have to worry about their own positions being disrupted. A small company at the bottom of one of these chains can be forced to sell all their intellectual property at dirt cheap prices to a chaebol, and there's nothing other shareholders can do about it. The professor said in the US, securities laws make it easy for shareholders to sue a CEO from doing such stupid things. Not effective in South Korea. Heck, they apparently even have these temp CEO gigs where a guy off the street is hired to be a CEO and is paid handsomely to take the fall and spend some time in jail when legal troubles like that ensue.
Corruption is big in South Korea, and it's no wonder why there are so few new Korean startups that actually become household names. It's not for lack of effort or chance. Further evidence that corruption is big in South Korea, look at how often those big-time chaebol executives get thrown in jail and then they get to walk out free again to pursue their normal life because they're too important to the Korean economy. As a Korean Canadian, it boggles my mind why Korean people accept this status quo. There is admittedly a deep reverence for these companies that brought South Korea out of poverty creating economic growth the likes of which is rarely seen. But even so, I don't see a nice future if people don't stand up more for themselves, including the labourers who get exploited by these companies because they're the only viable employer in town.
Thanks for the fascinating explanation. Which finance professor is this, and do you have more links/further reading on 1) 51% controlling interest chains 2) how corruption is typically structured in South Korea?
>more links/further reading on 1) 51% controlling interest chains
>>A chaebol can own 51% of a company to get voting rights. That company can own 51% of another company, and 51% of another company, and so on. Multiply it all the way through a chain of companies, and you can get many companies near the bottom of the chain where the chaebol actually owns a small minority of the companies and yet controls those companies nonetheless.
it is almost word by word that example from the Das Kapital :)
This is an interesting story, but the thread so far is lame. Please do better. Low-threshold indignation makes for shallow, angry, generic, and therefore boring discussion.
The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
There's simply no comparison. And there are more examples on both sides. And it has worked consistently in many cases in the past. The surprising thing is how something so simple and (in a way) annoying can have such salutary effects. It's as if it calls the hivemind back to its angel self, or something.
I wouldn't have said my comment was indignant (though I did say "lame"), but sure, shallow and generic it was—and off-topic too. For all that, moderation comments are needed here. They are out-of-band feedback signals which help the system regulate itself. Without them, the site would melt down into a hot core of indignation and fluff. We have a lot of experience with this, as does anyone who's been around the block on the internet.
Users routinely upvote flamebait, indignation and snark. That is a flaw of the voting system. Going by upvotes alone would, unfortunately, make HN go down in flames. I say "unfortunately" because it would be so much less work.
You could try building your own community and moderate it yourself, if you don't like what dang is doing.
Or maybe, an easier option could be taking some time to carefully consider what exactly you consider to be self righteous so that a discussion can be had about it. More specificity in complaints typically yields a better response.
dang does a great job of moderating this forum, but to analogize him as having had built this community is a bit extreme, methinks.
>More specificity in complaints typically yields a better response.
well that's exactly why people are complaining about dangs' comment. it's basically a very generic "everything here is low quality. do better." statement with little direction as to what must be corrected.
With no direction on how to improve, but with confirmation that what they're doing is wrong, people tend to get worse.
Pointing to the rules, and then calling discussion 'shallow' isn't my idea of moderation. It's a critique. Not one I disagree with necessarily, but one that I believe is nearly pointless from a moderation standpoint. It teaches nothing, gives no example of positive behaviour, and discourages people from discourse all together -- how are they to know if what they post is worth while? Should they risk reprimand to try and be thoughtful? Maybe not.
'Do better.' as life-coaching advice has never worked.
We need 'Do better X because Y is bad.', complete with examples, rather than aloof judgements.
It's been shown time and again that anonymous and unmoderated forums consistently devolve to radicalized echo chambers. I'm glad that's not what hn is.
If you're criticizing comments in the vein of this (now dead) comment, your critique misses the mark:
> This is what a functioning criminal justice system looks like. Meanwhile the co-founders of the opioid epidemic, which has killed at least 150,000 people, paid a few million dollars in fines. [0]
It's really inconceivable that an outcome like this Korean judgement would ever be reached in the US. 18 months of prison time for union busting? Meanwhile, the ACLU reports that Americans are being jailed to collect on medical debts [1].
Indignation isn't shallow or boring, it's the driving force behind social progress. Indeed, lack of indignation indicates either the inability to imagine a better world or perhaps the natural satisfaction with the status quo of someone who finds themself sitting on the upper rungs of society as currently structured. The latter no doubt describes many of us here.
We could have a nuanced conversation on the comparative virtues and shortcomings of the US and Korean justice systems, or we could downvote anyone who states the obvious into grey text oblivion and poo-poo them for their "shallow" indignation.
It's not intellectual sophistication to avoid mentioning pachyderms when conversing in the company of an elephant; rather, it's obtuse.
You mustn't mistake my comments about indignation for some sort of endorsement of the status quo or siding with the other side. That's not it at all. When I post like I did there, I do so strictly in a narrow sense: as moderator of a site that exists for intellectual curiosity. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Indignation is a driving force in social progress. But it's the arch-enemy of intellectual curiosity. The longer I do this job, the clearer it becomes that HN is in a Manichean universe. You can have intellectual curiosity or indignation. You cannot have both at the same time. That's basically it.
If I take my moderator hemlet off, do I feel the same indignation you feel? You bet I do. But the job is not to moderate HN that way. The job is to preserve it for intellectual curiosity. That's a clear distinction. You'd be surprised how clear it is, if you spent your days looking at it from every conceivable angle.
One thing I wonder sometimes why nobody asks me, so I'll ask it here: why is this ok? Aren't the union busting, medical debt, and opioid epidemic issues—and so many more, climate change, income inequality—utterly more important than the triviality of the rest of HN? Maze-building algorithms, 1983 keyboard vs. mouse tests, and the joy of Cliff Stoll—to mention things that have gotten attention here in the last day?
The answer is yes, they are utterly more important. But would the world be better if those waves swept HN away? I don't think so. I think the world, or at least the internet, is better off with at least one forum that's focused on intellectual curiosity. And if we're going to focus on it, we'd better focus on it deliberately, because otherwise those stronger forces will sweep HN away.
This is great stuff, dang. May I suggest you post this in a blog or something? I think HN readers would benefit from reading about some of the philosophical grounds and intent upon which HN is built.
Catching up on my open HN tabs, so a few days late. Very fascinating. The choices that are made. I second the suggestion from TimTheTinker about an essay/blog on/about the philosophical foundation and choices made of/for the HN community by dang and sctb, expanding on the grandparent comment.
See, an interesting response would explain why you don't think it's a problem that this doesn't happen in the US. It would refute my claim that indignation is the driver behind social progress. Or maybe it would point out that there have been instances of executives being jailed for white collar crime in the US. Consider Enron.
But instead of engaging with the ideas in my comment, you simply dismissed them as boring and insubstantial. This truly does not add much to the conversation. Next time, just downvote and move on.
Yeah, but in that context it makes us look even worse. Like, South Korea has an institutionalized system of interlocking megacorporate congolomerates, and they still manage to better enforce their laws than we do. It's embarrassing.
South Korea has many problems as does the US but one of Moon’s campaign promises was to not go easy on criminal conduct by Chaebols. Chaebols until now have traditionally been given an extremely light sentence followed by a pardon after a month or so.
Your and my downvotes on this US-centric website show why American corporate malfeasance isn't taken seriously in the US... the main perpetrators have captured not only the criminal justice system but also "hearts and minds."
The chair has apologized for it's behavior, and says it is still learning human customs, but hopes to one day reach apotheosis and guide humanity to a new light... The chair has also asked to be addressed as "Jerry".
> top Justice Department officials, led by then-Attorney General Eric Holder, ignored an internal recommendation to criminally prosecute HSBC four years ago because they worried that criminal penalties might send shock waves throughout the global financial system.
Imprisoned? Not just a fine for the company and settlement requiring them to promise to follow the law gong forward, without admitting wrongdoing? Inconceivable!
Not only that, they denied Lee the chain-of-command, plausible deniability shielding that top level leaders usually get:
"While Lee claims there were many areas he did not know much about, [we] cannot give him immunity only due to the fact that [he] was not aware of the peripheral areas," the judge in the case said.
Well, the allegations, as presented in the article sound pretty bad, and are a few steps beyond the typical workplace retaliation that you would expect for trying to form a union.
In Silicon Valley, you'll typically get put on a PIP, get your reputation smeared, mysteriously discover that your performance reviews have tanked, or get investigated and fired for violations of a deliberately vague, ill-defined policy that everyone else is breaking all the time.
But you're probably not going to get your family spied on, or blackmailed.
Any such retaliation should be dealt with harshly. After all it is a fundamental right of workers to collectively bargain and eroding that right is a pretty big crime.
It should, but it isn't. At best, it gets hush-hushed with quiet after-the-fact no-admission-of-guilt settlements protected by NDAs.
At worst, you lose your retaliation lawsuit, and have blackballed yourself from the industry. There's a reason employers do background checks on new hires.
The Samsung stuff here, though, is truly beyond the pale, because it extends outside the workplace, and is well-documented. (As opposed to he-said-she-said subjective things like performance reviews...)
Wow. This is what a functioning criminal justice system looks like. Meanwhile the co-founders of the opioid epidemic, which has killed at least 150,000 people, paid a few million dollars in fines.
I wouldn't call Sackler's the founders of opioids if that's what you're saying. (I can't really tell if that's what you're trying to say?)
But around here, (where I live in opioid infested flyover country), it's pretty well known by people trying to handle the fallout that the Sackler companies produce about 8% of the nation's supply. About 80-82% comes from other corporations. (With about 10% coming from China, but you can never really know how much of the "China" thing is truth as opposed to propaganda these days? So the China part I'm not sure about, it's just what the generally accepted story is.)
Anyway, that's why the cops and emergency services around here are so angry. Because giving the Sacklers a fine and then saying you stopped opioids is a slap in the face to our community and others like it. It's like they actually believe we can't do math. Or that we won't notice that opioid overdoses are still happening.
Purdue is definitely the creator of the American opioid epidemic by lying about OxyContin's addictiveness and heavily pushing it for situations which didn't need it (wisdom teeth) and got people addicted. Read any of the ~10 mainstream books on this like Dreamland or Dopesick.
None of that changes the fact that 80% of these opioids continue to flow, totally unchecked, from completely different companies. All of whom have lied about the addictive nature of their products. This is not supposition, this is fact. Just numbers. The opioids continue to flow. It's getting people angry because it's like the drug war when you bust the street corner dealer and then you say, "OK, everything is good."
No. Everything is not good. Get out here to places in the rural rust belt and take a look around if you think taking care of the Sackler source has solved this problem.
I'm not a tin foil hat type at all, but sometimes I do wonder if the people around here are right? I mean it's like some people up there are trying to keep this stuff flowing into our communities or something? People are refusing to even acknowledge the problematic nature of all these other companies. They won't even look into them. It's frustrating.
Clearly people in your community are addicted. The fact they're still being enabled is bad. It seems hard to fix. Meanwhile I think we should punish the Sacklers for causing the addiction in the first place, regardless of whether other pharma jumped on the bandwagon.
OP is actually stretching the truth to say they got away with a few fines as several states' AGs are still hounding the Sacklers for the money they funneled out of Purdue.
OK and yet still, you're not doing anything to the people pushing 80% of the poison onto our communities? I mean really, are we supposed to thank you for that?
Maybe it would be more illustrative if I called it crack instead of opioids. You, in your magnanimity, are willing to show your concern for us by shutting down one of the twelve crack houses. And you expect us to thank you? Think of it this way, not one of you have mentioned, even once, doing a single thing about the other eleven crack houses on the block. Do you not see how we might have kind of a problem with that? You keep asking me to be happy about that crack house you shut down last year. Almost like you don't want me even bringing up the other eleven gangs slinging crack and killing people in the neighborhood.
Why do you keep using the second person? I am not in charge of federal drug policy. You can lump me into a category that's neither "us" nor "them", thanks.
And the proper analogy wrt crack would be to hold the CIA accountable for unleashing it on urban communities, which is clearly never going to happen, but if it did, then yes I would expect it to satisfy/validate affected communities to some extent.
Samsung dynasty is famous for being anti-union. That anti-union stance is deeply embedded in the company DNA. Union busting activities have been going on since day 1.
The Samsung founder once said, "Union over my dead body". Throughout its 50 year history, the company managed to operate without any official Union representation.
And if you spend time there long enough like my father, that DNA gets slowly worked into you, just like the current execs being tossed into jail.
A few years after my father left Samsung, he ended up as a chief exec at a pharma company for 10 years. For an older generation guy, he is extremely left-leaning and progressive. Except his disdain for unionizing. He would talk painfully about dealing with union leaders at company plant.
Some of that is probably attributable to his Samsung days.
This is a big message being sent to Samsung management culture from SK government who has turned blind eye to its union busting practice for 50 years.