Singapore feels to me like a festering crisis waiting to explode. You can't throw that much education into a population without them sooner or later saying no.

I had a good yarn today with Greg Wood, who is quite positive about the new official emphasis on creativity, which has hitherto…

In Saigon I had 74 channels on my TV. In Singapore it's illegal to own a satellite dish.

Singapore feels to me like a festering crisis waiting to explode. You can't throw that much education into a population without them sooner or later saying no.

I love that line about the future...I may borrow it if that's ok. This is an incredible country, no?

I have the same feeling from my very brief visit to VN. You read all this stuff about it being the Asian Century and everything, but you don't really grasp what…

Although second hand the detail of the description of washing in kero seemed credible.

If it was from a few years back it was probably true – degreasing your mitts with kero was still common garage practice in NZ 20-odd years ago.

In Australia they use it on their old…

Seems to follow a bit of the better american style employment practises. I have a knee jerk reaction against paternalistic employment policy but of course it may be a win win.

As for our standards I posted this one on the injuries post “my good mate in the…

I was told kerosene was used to wash the carbon black off the Indonesian workers

Probably different now, but back in the oil based paint days, you should've seen what they washed with in a paint factory!

Merc: what did Patti put where the * is?

F[iretr]uck?

There's also the reality of not embarrassing or making things difficult for the people I'm with and, as Graham says in his post, the fact that the Vietnamese people are generally delightful. I had to wriggle out of having a…

I love that line about the future...

Yr welcome – it was the overwhelming impression that arose from a severe case of culture shock after being dumped back into the grey Sydney winter of '75.

But housing in the slums of Jakarta is not comparable to housing in South Auckland in terms of things universally considered good such as running water, electricity, space per person etc

Sounds like the South Bronx. No, the slums of Jabotek are awful but those as often as not tend…

. . . you gotta see the party rallies here..quite something, and there is a massive pride in what has been achieved, as there should be.

The four occasions that I've returned from Indonesia, whether to NZ or to Oz, I've always had something of a sensation of returning from…

it appears that globalisation is very much subject to being shaped by mass political will.

indeed, as it has been here. It's not the first world guilt burden that has forced through the changes, slow that they may be, its the 80% turnout in the last election here and the…

South Auckland factory workers have considerably more purchasing power than their Indonesian equivalents doing similar work – they recieve a greater share of value within the business process...

In Indonesia Marcus, I would dispute that. I'm not sure if a worker South Auckland paying rent or mortgage and feeding kids…

I think that we are in agreement that Western consumers do…

. . . in an imperfect capitalist world there is a degree of Canute-ism in your comments.

This seems to have come full circle, back to Marcus's assertion that treating economic globalisation as some kind of natural force (tide?) amounts to a

. . . deterministic, There-Is-No-Alternative ideology

From your…

In advocating $3 a day wages you are directly advocating the strategic use of poor people around the world for the benefit of the owners of Western firms and local elites, and to a lesser extent middle-class Western consumers.

firstly I think those middle class western consumers are being as…

Australian elite is terrorfied of offending Indonesia, and is very eager to please its northern neighbour.

quite right too with all those billions in processing charges being extracted from the Timor oil and gas fields before the "net split" with Timor...nobody actually thought they were sending troops into Timor Leste…

And as a footnote, commenting on your remarks on Australian-Indonesian relations – I am not an expert – but I do think that the Indonesian elite finds its southern neighbour very useful as a bogey-man for consumption in the imagination of its masses.

I would say exactly the opposite is…

Conversely, most of the time, and not…

Obviously any shift in the international economy of this sort would have to take place gradually, but that doesn't mean that rebalancing the terms of international trade can't or shouldn't take place. And bringing Downer into this is a bit of a red herring.

My point about technology transfer…

The other major difference between Japan and RI of course is that cars get retired in Japan...not so here..and there is a three month waiting list on many cars

Oh yes, verrry nice. You couldn't wish for a nicer bunch of middle class white men sitting in judgement ...

This is OT but i just saw this.

Thats cool — oh and i see this as well. Nice.

...that exam cheating is rife at tertiary level.

and

...a successful project to develop an organic fertiliser at one of the local universities.

together and there may be some very nervous students around.

Maybe we can licence the technology. I have a few students who would benefit from…

If the workers in these factories were paid Western levels the "turmoil" that would lead to would be 1) less vulnerable Western workers losing their jobs, and 2) an increased proportion of profits staying in-country rather than being repatriated to the West.

Of course, that would have factory workers earning…

Thanks again for a most encouraging post.

Whilst its not all good news here (I'd hate to think what the conditions are like in the Djarum factory, in a nation which won't ban or reduce tobacco advertising because their is too much damn money in the end product), the major…

But the reality is that [capitalism]'s just a glorified pyramid marketing scheme that can't sustain itself.

Bingo.

And well before it runs out of low-wage countries to exploit, there is the little problem of finite resources. On top of that, overcomplexity introduces the risk of sudden and massive systemic failure.…

If the workers in these factories were…

FWIW, Vietnam has a literacy rate of 90% and a significant value is placed on education. OTOH, I gathered from…

From my limited experience of occasional visits over the past 30 years, the average Indonesian – including schoolchildren – is vastly better informed about Australia than the average Australian is about their closest neighbour.
Appreciate your point about a community-based welfare structure -…

So the international manufactures seek new low wage economies to produce their goods in

and as much to the point, rake their as much of their profits from grossly overcharging the first world as they may do from exploiting the third.

Why does the same car, manufactured in the same…

Simon: I would like to see you live on $3 a day

If I lived in the Indonesian Community I quite easily could...I'm not sure what you are suggesting....that everybody here working in a factory should be paid the US equivalent, or the NZ equivalent? That to satisfy your western…

In regards to outsourcing being argued…

The labour laws in this part of the world are as tough as most found in western countries, and probably tougher than the US..

That certainly looks very nice – but it seems a hell of a stretch that these laws can be effectively enforced in a huge country with…

And who has tried to claim that the business community has been alturistic in this…

and probably tougher than the US.

Those creepy extra-territorial US zones seem to be the worst places by far. No proper labour laws, no press freedom, no civil society. Being an outpost of the Land of the Free doesn't offer much freedom, it seems.

Sorry to be a little bit cynical here, but is this only going to be the "Good News from the Sweatshop" tour? Or are we in for some more critical reportage of "Oriental Despotisms" meeting Western (and Japanese and Singaporean) Capital?

I thought the implication from the phrase "sausage factory"…

Sorry to be a little bit cynical here, but is this only going to be the "Good News from the Sweatshop" tour?

Whilst there is that and there are some terrible factories (I'm talking Indonesia here, but the sweatshop finger gets pointed this way as often as not), from my…

Which explains the quality of software in a lot of Japanese designed electronics equipment.

Does Motorola use them as well – the UI on the RAZR would suggest they do?