Companies Charging Employees For Their Mistakes

[CaptHaddock]

This is a very common practice. The main result is that it stifles any individuality, creativity, business acumen and development in employees, And that is the big trouble with this country. Another aspect of where freer-thinking people will walk all over this lot come the AEC.

I agree with you completely right up to the point of where in SE Asia those freer-thinking people will come from. It's not as though Thailand will be joining the EU.

I meet ordinary people with their heads screwed on the right way every single day. Certainly, the current cultural paradigm doesn't favour them but they're there, and they can think straight and see what's going as well as anybody. Intelligence and ability are no respecters of circumstance.

I am sure there are such people. However, SE Asia is conspicuous because of its failure to produce innovation including the lack of any internationally competitive company or any product with global acceptance. Unlike Northeast Asia. Circumstance is everything.

[Trembly]

This is a very common practice. The main result is that it stifles any individuality, creativity, business acumen and development in employees, And that is the big trouble with this country. Another aspect of where freer-thinking people will walk all over this lot come the AEC.

I agree with you completely right up to the point of where in SE Asia those freer-thinking people will come from. It's not as though Thailand will be joining the EU.

I meet ordinary people with their heads screwed on the right way every single day. Certainly, the current cultural paradigm doesn't favour them but they're there, and they can think straight and see what's going as well as anybody. Intelligence and ability are no respecters of circumstance.

I am sure there are such people. However, SE Asia is conspicuous because of its failure to produce innovation including the lack of any internationally competitive company or any product with global acceptance. Unlike Northeast Asia. Circumstance is everything.

Circumstances change.

A few thousand years ago nature was kind enough that the Egyptians, Khmers, Mayans, Sumatrans and Greeks were afforded the luxury of time and resource to conceive of and build monolithic structures that reflected their profound understanding of the physical world and the cosmos, even by modern scientific standards whilst the northern Europeans were still mostly hunter gatherers who did a bit of land cultivation on the side (I cast no aspersions on their latent intellectual prowess).

As time passed the tables turned as knowledge and technology spread to the inhabitants of less forgiving lands who had been reared by nature to have an inherent sense of impetus and pro-action. That is to say, their culture (culture = successful politics in that particular context) made it difficult for people without those qualities to survive.

And here we are . . .

Circumstances will change again.

[CaptHaddock]

Circumstances change.

A few thousand years ago nature was kind enough that the Egyptians, Khmers, Mayans, Sumatrans and Greeks were afforded the luxury of time and resource to conceive of and build monolithic structures that reflected their profound understanding of the physical world and the cosmos, even by modern scientific standards whilst the northern Europeans were still mostly hunter gatherers who did a bit of land cultivation on the side (I cast no aspersions on their latent intellectual prowess).

As time passed the tables turned as knowledge and technology spread to the inhabitants of less forgiving lands who had been reared by nature to have an inherent sense of impetus and pro-action. That is to say, their culture (culture = successful politics in that particular context) made it difficult for people without those qualities to survive.

And here we are . . .

Circumstances will change again.

Since you clearly have no idea of the situation in SE Asia you fall back on bromides about timeless change healing all. And since you cannot conceive of innovation other than as an expression of individual creativity you assume that it will inevitably blossom on its own here. Fairly idiotic.

The actual situation is that the economies of SE Asia are rife with anti-competitive practices. In fact, the economies are largely divided up into monopoly fiefdoms each of which is controlled by one or a few godfathers who kickback to the political/military leadership as the grantor of monopolies. Here in Thailand those would be, for example, Chiaravanant at CP in food and the powerful banking families like Sophonpanich at BKK Bank.

The characteristic of such godfather economies is that they are closed to competition and provide the godfathers with huge rent-seeking opportunities. Without competition innovation is unnecessary which means that education standards need not be high. No new technology is created. Nor is advanced technology transferred. So the auto manufacturers in Thailand have never transferred the manufacturing techology resulting in the creation of Thai-owned car companies capable of competing in the global market place. Unlike Korea. The partnership between local Thai companies and foreign companies like Toyota is just to supply cheap Thai labor. In China, the first bullet train in Shanghai was built by Siemens, but the Chinese transferred the technology with the result that the low-bidder to build the first bullet train in California was a Chinese company competing with Siemens and others. As far as I can tell, nothing like this has ever happened in SE Asia.

In the modern world techological innovation results from large-scale investments in education, infrastructure, and research and development. This happens in Northeast Asia, but not in SE Asia. Circumstances like these might change at some point, but I don't see any sign that this is happening yet.