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It's also what's crippling progress in many places in Eastern Europe. Depressed wages and fighting on price only to be assembly plant for higher-tech components

by p_l 3y ago

It's also what's crippling progress in many places in Eastern Europe. Depressed wages and fighting on price only to be assembly plant for higher-tech components does not let you build local prosperity, it makes you fungible cheap labour.

ponector 3y ago
Better to be a fungible labour on the assembly plant than be without the work. The alternative for eastern Europeans always was to go to UK or Germany and be a fungible labour there. Current strategy increased quality of life in EE countries. So far that in main cities in Poland housing prices are 4000-5000 USD per square meter.
- p_l 3y ago
  Housing prices are so high because there's not enough housing and sellers can dictate prices. And that prosperity isn't due to low-paid fungible labour, although believe me, the stereotypical polish boss tries hard to drive down the price of labour... And while it's better to be with work than without, living paycheck to paycheck in fear is not that great either, and doesn't exactly provide ways out. So sometimes we're left with just what solidarity we can arrange without legal representation, like the time entirety of one of my former workplaces left the job one day for what american management did to one of them.
  - mathverse 3y ago
    Your southern neighbor here. PL to me is a rising regional power very similar to Korea only hindered by its geographic location and having to compete in the EU market (lack of applicable mercantilism). Poles are entrepreneurial and forward thinking nation that will sooner or later become economically as prosperous as WE. We on the other hand will always be discount version of Austria/Germany.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Being a discount Austria/Germany is still better than being a discount Poland/Hungary.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
What was the better alterative at the time? EE was basically bankrupt in the early 90's. How could they have caught up to join the wealthy innovation driven countries like UK, Netherlands, Germany and Nordics, on mere fractions of their education and research budgets and considering the massive social damage 45 years of communism has done to eradicate free thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Basically, post 1989, nobody had any idea how to run a business, how to do market research, marketing, sales, any of that, let alone build businesses that could challenge wealthy established players from the west, since none of that was taught in schools and universities during communism and now you have to catch up with over 45 years of lost progress over night. It was just not possible at the time, so being cheap outsourcing labor was the only choice to get out of poverty.
- mathverse 3y ago
  People truly underestimate the level of incompetence and corruption after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The EE lands were ripe for the taking and WE companies made sure to take everything as fast as possible. It was not even a battle it was just a pure massacre. That left those countries without any local champions or easy options to elevate themselves. I've said it many many times that it will take dozens of unicorns like UIPath in Romania to offset the loss of industries now dominated by DACH companies. Romania would need to become another Singapore which is almost impossible.
  - ExoticPearTree 3y ago
    Not with the right dictator running it, it isn't :)
- p_l 3y ago
  The fun thing, at least in Poland, is that the most influential reforms were done in 1988 - in fact some of the better managed enterprises started reforming then, one of them being in pretty good shape - but got killed by politician due to what was party-internal strife... and no, we're not talking communist party - we're talking Solidarność. Then a bunch of actions were added on top in attempts to deal with large foreign currency debt, and they weren't exactly done well, and various economic areas were just destroyed with a strike of a pen, in what even the western advisers considered extreme ways. Those areas? They still haven't recovered, because there was nothing available for recovery. There was surprisingly a lot of free thinking, innovation, even entrepreneurship. Not everything was as bad as it was painted, not everything was as good as it was sometimes shown. One of the rare positive elements in all that chaos that some had pointed out and I agree was that the chaos at least ensured consumer goods were better represented and prevented oligarchic centralisation to the level that happened in some other countries.
mathverse 3y ago
It's a chicken and egg problem. EE never had its technocrats like Taiwan or South Korea but a bunch of populist thieves with lack of vision. EE is full of entitled elderly pensioners that control the narrative and are only interested in returning to the "good old times of communism" in one way or another. Prosperity requires stepping out of your comfort zone and implement ideas that bring competitive advantage over your neighbors. These kind of ideas are lumped in the same category like LGBT rights, climate etc etc.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >EE never had its technocrats like Taiwan or South Korea Because also the political and education system in communism couldn't create any visionary technocrats focused on innovation and exports. It simply encouraged cronyism, lying, backstabbing, empire building, fiefdoms and thievery from the same zero-sum pie aka the local national economy. Well educated and innovative workers from Taiwan or South Korea weren't sent to the gulags or political prisons for "free thinking" or for coming from the wrong family backgrounds.
  - erxam 3y ago
    [dead]

by p_l 3y ago

ponector 3y ago

Better to be a fungible labour on the assembly plant than be without the work. The alternative for eastern Europeans always was to go to UK or Germany and be a fungible labour there. Current strategy increased quality of life in EE countries. So far that in main cities in Poland housing prices are 4000-5000 USD per square meter.

p_l 3y ago
Housing prices are so high because there's not enough housing and sellers can dictate prices. And that prosperity isn't due to low-paid fungible labour, although believe me, the stereotypical polish boss tries hard to drive down the price of labour... And while it's better to be with work than without, living paycheck to paycheck in fear is not that great either, and doesn't exactly provide ways out. So sometimes we're left with just what solidarity we can arrange without legal representation, like the time entirety of one of my former workplaces left the job one day for what american management did to one of them.
- mathverse 3y ago
  Your southern neighbor here. PL to me is a rising regional power very similar to Korea only hindered by its geographic location and having to compete in the EU market (lack of applicable mercantilism). Poles are entrepreneurial and forward thinking nation that will sooner or later become economically as prosperous as WE. We on the other hand will always be discount version of Austria/Germany.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Being a discount Austria/Germany is still better than being a discount Poland/Hungary.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

What was the better alterative at the time? EE was basically bankrupt in the early 90's. How could they have caught up to join the wealthy innovation driven countries like UK, Netherlands, Germany and Nordics, on mere fractions of their education and research budgets and considering the massive social damage 45 years of communism has done to eradicate free thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Basically, post 1989, nobody had any idea how to run a business, how to do market research, marketing, sales, any of that, let alone build businesses that could challenge wealthy established players from the west, since none of that was taught in schools and universities during communism and now you have to catch up with over 45 years of lost progress over night. It was just not possible at the time, so being cheap outsourcing labor was the only choice to get out of poverty.

mathverse 3y ago
People truly underestimate the level of incompetence and corruption after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The EE lands were ripe for the taking and WE companies made sure to take everything as fast as possible. It was not even a battle it was just a pure massacre. That left those countries without any local champions or easy options to elevate themselves. I've said it many many times that it will take dozens of unicorns like UIPath in Romania to offset the loss of industries now dominated by DACH companies. Romania would need to become another Singapore which is almost impossible.
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  Not with the right dictator running it, it isn't :)
p_l 3y ago
The fun thing, at least in Poland, is that the most influential reforms were done in 1988 - in fact some of the better managed enterprises started reforming then, one of them being in pretty good shape - but got killed by politician due to what was party-internal strife... and no, we're not talking communist party - we're talking Solidarność. Then a bunch of actions were added on top in attempts to deal with large foreign currency debt, and they weren't exactly done well, and various economic areas were just destroyed with a strike of a pen, in what even the western advisers considered extreme ways. Those areas? They still haven't recovered, because there was nothing available for recovery. There was surprisingly a lot of free thinking, innovation, even entrepreneurship. Not everything was as bad as it was painted, not everything was as good as it was sometimes shown. One of the rare positive elements in all that chaos that some had pointed out and I agree was that the chaos at least ensured consumer goods were better represented and prevented oligarchic centralisation to the level that happened in some other countries.

mathverse 3y ago

It's a chicken and egg problem. EE never had its technocrats like Taiwan or South Korea but a bunch of populist thieves with lack of vision. EE is full of entitled elderly pensioners that control the narrative and are only interested in returning to the "good old times of communism" in one way or another. Prosperity requires stepping out of your comfort zone and implement ideas that bring competitive advantage over your neighbors. These kind of ideas are lumped in the same category like LGBT rights, climate etc etc.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>EE never had its technocrats like Taiwan or South Korea Because also the political and education system in communism couldn't create any visionary technocrats focused on innovation and exports. It simply encouraged cronyism, lying, backstabbing, empire building, fiefdoms and thievery from the same zero-sum pie aka the local national economy. Well educated and innovative workers from Taiwan or South Korea weren't sent to the gulags or political prisons for "free thinking" or for coming from the wrong family backgrounds.
- erxam 3y ago
  [dead]