IBM Says 'Couldn't Fire 150K US Workers If We Wanted To' 219
theodp writes "In an e-mail worthy of the Dilbert Hall of Fame, IBM execs responded to Robert X. Cringely's Project LEAN layoff rumors, reassuring employees by pointing out that they've already wiped out too many U.S. jobs to be able to lay off another 150,000. Big Blue's employment peaked around 1985, when it had about 405,000 workers who were acclimated to a long tradition of lifetime employment. IBM puts its current global workforce at 355,766, with a 'regular U.S. population' of less than 130,000."
We're Hiring! (Score:5, Funny)
Maths 101 Exam question (Score:5, Funny)
Trick question (Score:3, Insightful)
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm ashamed that he is funded in part by non-profit funds from US taxpayers and makes a bad name for PBS in general.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Duh (Score:4, Informative)
I can easily see how they could dump that many combined regulars, long-term supplementals, and contractors.
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"Humously"?
Typo or attempt at humor? Okay, kill my karma for being a spelling Nazi...
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20
Not to mention reports from other IBMers here:
http://www.allianceibm.org/jobcutstatusandcomment
Also, consider that IBM's employee headcount doesn't include contractors. I don't know how much including them would effect the headcount, but it's certainly by a substantial amount.
Being an idiot doesn't necessarily preclude his occasionally being somewhere in the ballpark of the truth.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
It appears IBM didn't dispute claims of mass layoffs either. They only discounted Cringley's numbers. IBM seems to be using Cringley's number problem as a red herring agaist the existence of coming layoffs.
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It appears IBM didn't dispute claims of mass layoffs either. They only discounted Cringley's numbers. IBM seems to be using Cringley's number problem as a red herring agaist the existence of coming layoffs.
I don't really think that it is IBM's responsibility to tie their hands by promising this or that. If Cringley is wrong on the most notable and falsifiable fact of the matter then why should we believe he is right on anything?
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Right. They limited it by comparing to current US regulars (130,000), but Cringely was talking worldwide and said it is also impacting contractors. And he also acknowledged it's not imminent, but a steadily continuing action.
Anyone should know the numbers are only speculation based on whatever can be gleaned from IBM's actions. It is a not unreasonable number as
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but what's the good of the analogous "stopped-clock" that is wrong most of the time? You certainly can't depend on it, so even if occasionally correct, you have no way of knowing that until after the fact, so it's completely worthless.
As an IBMer... (Score:2, Informative)
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Earlier this year I had my contract with a major bank based out of Charlotte cancelled. My boss was very sorry but as she said, "they do this every year in January or February". Hundreds, if not thousands of contract and full time employees across the world ditched every year...at the beginning of the year. They hire a lot
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Re:Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
TBH, though, much as Cringely _is_ just a hack, I'd rather
Briefly, it's not just about Cringely, but the whole caste is little more than a bunch of entertainers, and not one iota more reliable than astrologers. Linking to any of them, not just Cringely, as if they actually predicted something about to happen, is akin to linking to an astrology site. "The great Mr Psychic says this is your lucky day, go do an interview for a job if you're a Capricorn. [Read more...]" No more, and no less.
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Did Dvorak really write that? Come on, if he did, it HAD to be tongue-in-cheek.
Sadly, he did write that (Score:5, Informative)
Genuine quote from the great pundit: "When I hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, I see that the System Idle Process is hogging all the resources and chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles. Doing what? Doing nothing?"
I've read the article again, just in case there might be some subtle sarcasm I've missed before, but it looks as serious as it gets, if anyone asks me.
The whole list is framed between:
- "This week's column is about exploring the commonly observed problems that crop up with each new release. Maybe Microsoft should patch the patches once in a while. Here are a few of my gripes - most of them a result of excessive patching." which doesn't really sound like the start of a joke, and
- "And please, will the characters who "have never had a crash or blip" in 10 years of "heavy use" not contribute. I'm sick of these people. They're full of it." Which, again, would indicate that not only he's not joking, but he thinks that anyone who hasn't had those newbie problems is, in his own words, "full of it."
Speaking of which, the rest of the complaints sound... shall we say, computer illiterate. And that's putting it mildly. He sounds like the average Uncle Osric or Aunt Emma, who are terminally stumped as to why would their computer suddenly be sluggish or takes a while to connect on the network. It must be all those MS patches, really. Not like the kind of expert who fixes such things for fun, and/or knows exactly what worm was hogging the network.
Believe me, I've tried finding some trace of tongue-in-cheek irony there. I've hoped it would be an April 1st article. Nope.
But, hey, judge it for yourself. If you can detect some trace of sarcasm there, please tell me.
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He's saying it makes no sense for the machine to be non-responsive when allegedly "idle".
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He's _not_ phrasing it as "the system is 95% idle, therefore it has no excuse to lag". He's phrasing it as the idle process "hogging all the resources" and "chewing up 95 percent of the processor's cycles." That's a pretty dumb way to describe it any way I want to look at it. Even as an attempt at humour, it's as dumb as it gets, a
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Dvorak certainly deserves to be ignored. But the above quote that he made certainly had an effect. I can remember the above statements (using phrases like "heavy use") being made by a huge
Well of course they are entertainers (Score:2)
Boring but technically correct writers will not attract eyeballs and will not get published.
Sorta yes and no (Score:2)
The yes part is: I can aggree with all you wrote there. It's common sense, really.
The no part is: well, that was not really my gripe. Maybe I didn't explain it well enough.
My gripe is with people who should know better, but are taking such entertainers as the new Oracle Of Delphi, and their words as 100% accurate prediction to go by. Cringely said that Intel will buy Apple? It must be as good as an Intel press release. Cringely said that IBM will fire 150,000 out of 130,000 US jobs? I
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I enjoy many of Cringley's articles. I think the people who get most hot and bothered by Cringely, the Inquirer, and the Wikipedia are not managing to notice how much everyday life is an equal crock. Dvorack is a different kettle of fermented anchovies. His average column has me contemplating whether my thumbs fit into my eye sockets.
This particular retort by Cringley has a weasel-factor to make even Dvorack blush. It's like an engineer saying oops, I didn't mean watts, I meant watt-hours, but that does
"they've already wiped out too many" (Score:2, Interesting)
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That said, I hope you find a good new job, and I hope they didn't t
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These are not mutually exclusive. Our huge trade deficit is a political issue created by international corporations who want to do things their way and hire top lobbyists to get it. The huge trade deficit is not good for Americans, but the international corporations don't give a sh8t.
(By the way, maybe IBM hired 2 guys at $14/hr to do the job of one American at $30. Even if the replacement is lousy, they get an extra on
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"Experience" is the new catch-22 (Score:3, Interesting)
My daughter is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma with bachelors and masters degrees in human resources, criminology and psychology. Her overall GPA for both degrees was 3.8. By the way, she did all of this while raising three children as a single mom.
Prior to graduating from the masters program she sent out over 50 resumes and responded to many letters of interest from major corporations and government agencies. Every one ended up requiring more experience t
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Or Silicon Forest, particularly if you want to work on Free and Open Source Software.
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IBM Global Services New Tasks (Score:3, Interesting)
It used to be the case that the Sales Execs didn't care where the revenue comes from. Partner or GS it didn;t matter. Now GS is walking all over Partners in attemts to wrest business away from partners and as a consequence several partners I work with are getting right pissed off.
Once the quote/order info get put onto the Internal Siebel System, it becomes visible to GS who then walk mob handed into the Parner and take the biz away from the partner.
I see this as a last ditch attempt to save their jobs. Therefore IMHO a reduction in GS headcount is long overdue.
There are a lot of really good people in GS but the metrics in which they are having to work are awful. Many are good ones voting with their feet leaving the dross.
This ends up with the customers suffering as the people left in GS to actually deliver the solution can't.
This is nothing new. I saw this 10+ years go in DEC with their services division. It got even worse when Compaq came in a bought the show. Try fitting a services business model into a volume PC business model. They just don't fit.
Just my 2$ worth.
It IS reassuring... (Score:3, Insightful)
The dollar is dropping. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you using some wierd definition of "poor" that I don't understand?
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He probably means "level of disposable income", and we used to have a lot more of it than we do now.
Consumption of goods and services in increasing. Clearly, people have much more disposable income now than they did in the past. Have you ever talked to people about what life was like in the 1950s, or 1960s? Chances are they didn't have 2 cars, a TV in every room, and didn't eat out 3 nights a week, like your typical middle class family now. The kids didn't have a bedroom filled with toys like they do now.
"Unemployment is low" is meaningless if you don't account for type of employment: the fact that more of us are gainfully employed in lower-level, lower-paying jobs is not good.
Are you telling me that a higher proportion of workers where educated professionals back in the 1950
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I want to look at this, let's see, where to begin.
Consumption of goods and services in increasi
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Actually, no. Plus, quality-made goods are becoming far scarcer - so that appliance that once lasted for 10 to 20 years, now usually lasts under 1 year - but costs the same or higher. Ditto services....
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Today you can get a computer that will serve you much better than an olden typewriter, for half the cost.
I saw an old add for an electronic watch: the cheapest was about $50; to
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The crappy manual typewriter that I bought a few months ago cost me $100. (I'm planning to write a novel and annoy my neighbors from my balcony this summer.) So where are these $50 computers you're talking about? Are they as nice as my sexy black MacBook?
Sorry to go off on a rant like that but the "good ol' day" people really piss me off, maybe because I remember my poor parents thinking abou
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I know tons of people who love their 50-60 year old stoves which are still going strong with no signs of stopping. I love mine. Same goes for many other categories of appliance: washers, dryers, etc. I don't need features. I need them to perform a fairly basic operation upon the material world - burn natural gas, wash, dry, etc.
Now, I know there is demand for appliances with lots of buttons that break after a year, but given the number of people I know who are into classic cars and appliances, I find it m
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Where do you get this data? I can find no actual evidence of this. The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Activity [bea.gov] says that disposable income has increased every year since 1990 (see here [bea.gov]).
The rest of your post discusses the savings rate, but that is separate from disposable income. It is true that personal savings has declined in 2005 and 2006. My guess would be that the recent mortgage difficulties are a major factor behind that.
T
Minimum wage is a campaign point, not reality (Score:2)
In fact, have some fun to s
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Look on the bright side (Score:2, Insightful)
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Um, look a little closer at those results for the quarter. They're largely the result of taking advantage of exchange rates due to a weak dollar. As per the stock price increase, that's largely due to raising the dividend to $.40 a share (from $.30), and announcing a massive stock buy back plan, both
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I'm not talking about shifting jobs, I'm talking about how many units of a foreign currency a dollar will buy. Since the dollar is relatively weak now, when profits earned in foreign countries are converted into dollars they can appear to be increased, when all that's occ
IBM/Amazon patent dispute (Score:2)
In defense of Cringely (Score:5, Informative)
I worked at Nortel Networks, a company that had 105k - 110k employees in 2001. In the first 4 months of 2001 the company fired 27k people. In the rest of the 8 months of the year, they fired another 26k people. They fired even more in 2002. Overall, the company fired 57,000 people, over half the company.
IBM has 150k people to fire, and it can do so with ease. The "US" reference is irrelevant, since even 50,000 US workers would be a huge amount of people, but possible.
As for Cringely, he isn't a journalist. He's never claimed to be one, and his 9 years of weekly articles speaks to this. Cringely is a tech insider and writer who writes about interesting topics, and wrote this article not to report it, but in the hopes that IBM employees, and the publicity his articles garner, could help to prevent IBM from making a mistake. And he is right to do so - at Nortel the CEO wiped out half the company and walked away with a 9-figure compensation for inducing mass unemployment and wiping out billions of value and spinoff value when the tech sector of the TSE crashed.
The effects of 150k layoffs in the US would be very bad, and that's what he hopes to stop, because the way they do it is slow and steady, and if people don't figure it out ahead of time, they find out when it's too late. So in that respect, his article is very worthwhile and commendable.
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As for Cringely, he isn't a journalist. He's never claimed to be one, and his 9 years of weekly articles speaks to this. Cringely is a tech insider and writer who writes about interesting topics, and wrote this article not to report it, but in the hopes that IBM employees, and the publicity his articles garner, could help to prevent IBM from making a mistake.
Journalist in other words.Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of bloggers that write interesting stories that aren't accused of being journal
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Maybe, but then I wouldn't be claiming to be a Nortel employee.
Bah! (Score:2)
Also on his numbers... (Score:2, Insightful)
That 130,000 number is total US employees. Cringely's previous estimate supposedly just included Global Services employees, which only represents a fraction of the total workforce. So if we assume half of all US IBM employees work for global services, that still means IBM needs to hire 85,000 new employees before his estimate is even mathematically possible.
This whole thing reminds me of a scene from the South Park episode, "Two Days Before The Day After Tomorrow".
Reporter: Tom, I'm currently ten miles outside of Beaverton, unable to get inside the town proper. We do not have any reports of fatalities yet, but we believe that the death toll may be in the hundreds of millions. Beaverton has only a population of about eight thousand, Tom, so this would be quite devastating.
Anchor: Any word on how the survivors in the town are doing, Mitch?
Reporter: We're not sure what exactly is going on inside the town of Beaverton, uh Tom, but we're reporting that there's looting, raping, and yes, even acts of cannibalism.
Anchor: My God, you've, you've actually seen people looting, raping and eating each other?
Reporter: No, no, we haven't actually seen it Tom, we're just reporting it.
Isn't journalism so much more fun w
Some new terms for your lexicon (Score:2)
I dunno, if I ever get "resource reduced" or "workforce balanced" I'll probably still feel like I
He apparently hates LEAN (Score:3, Insightful)
He wrote: It has to be since the very essence of LEAN is foreign hiring.
LEAN http://www.lean.org/ [lean.org] has nothing to do with foreign hiring. It's a philosophy for process improvement that focuses on eliminating wastes in that process. Such wastes include: excess inventory, re-work, moving things around more than needed. It's about redesigning the process so that there is as little wasted effort and material as possible.
LEAN is well-executed when the culture of a company is changed to empower workers to have more control over the way they do their work - and those employees are encouraged to find better ways to do what they do. For example, Toyota is often held up as a prime example of LEAN. There, an employee who finds a better way to improve a process is rewarded with cash bonuses.
Now it may be that a company has hired a consultant to tell them do do layoffs and they call it LEAN, but that's not what it is.
But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
IBM = Indian Business Machines (Score:2)
Let's See. Toyota did LEAN. Toyota doesn't treat their employees like crap. Therefore, IBM doesn't treat their employees like crap.
No, I don't think that logic works.
> But, everyone here seems to be of the opinion that Cringley's full of shit. I'll have to agree.
Everyone? You don't speak for me, Buddy. Cringely has been around for a long time, does great PBS series and usually is insightful on his column. He's made some goofs over the y
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No, I don't think that logic works.
I don't think you get what I'm saying. I'm not making that connection at all. And I'm not defending IBM.
LEAN (when fully capitalized) is a very proper noun that represents a discipline, philosophy, methodology, and a way of working towards process improvement. While many believe it was "perfected" by the Japanese (and specifically at Toyota)
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I think we're agreeing. Whatever IBM calls what they are doing, it is not, indeed, LEAN.
But, Cringley doesn't seem to get this and is blaming LEAN for what they are doing - when he should be blaming IBM for misusing the name LEAN to cover for their layoffs. LEAN is a great methodology for improving processes and in most cases would no
LEAN Methodology (Score:2, Informative)
He's deliberately scaremongering by using the term out of context to suggest that it is the title of a project that's synonym
Orwellian language (Score:2)
Mysterious Lean Project? (Score:3, Interesting)
It ain't about laying off people. Not if you do it right.
However, for many companies, it's a radical re-think of the corporate culture and hard to implement because far too many managers can't wrap their heads around some of the concepts and think it's just simpler to get rid of people. That's not Lean. That's just stupidity.
--
BMO - "I'm not anti-business. I'm anti stupidity" - Dilbert
Lifetime employment (Score:2, Interesting)
From an Ex-IBM employee (Score:4, Informative)
The F500 clients are "not pleased", because they have been struggling with communication and logistical issues for quite some time with the new overseas staff, because you simply cannot expect that a non-native English speaker with (most of the time) heavy accent can elaborate highly technical and complex issues. We have been rolling our eyes for months while listening to daily conference calls with our South American or Indian peers. It simply does not work. The clients are paying a high premium for "excellence" and get served an understaffed, underpaid and "not very motivated" workforce. A server goes down in NJ and there is no staff to physically reboot the machine. I have seen instances where the client has to wait 3 months, before someone was found for "on-site" support.
My US co-workers are naturally all pissed off. Contractors are let go without notice after almost a decade of service. Managers are trained to be naturally unemotional alpha-males with mostly poor people skills. Teams primarily consists of an equal number of computer-illiterate managers/techleads and technically skilled people who *do the job*. Sure, it's their right to lay off people, but the way it has been implemented has been traditionally poorly managed. After all a serial number is easier to let go than a human being. The published reports don't surprise me at all. I know plenty of ex-co-workers who have been let go (and rehired) a dozen times during my time at IBM. I am not disgruntled ex-employee, because I thought that the IBM way was the "way to go", because I never experienced any other work environment.
I worked for IBM for almost a decade and I didn't even realize how miserable I was until I started my new position. When I got home from my first day at my new (non-IBM) job, I was so (positively) overwhelmed that I uncontrollably sobbed. This is what 10 years of working with IBM have done to me.
You Miss the Point: Hire Plus Fire (Score:2, Informative)
So, Cringely's scenario is entirely plausible. IBM could fire 150,000 Western employees and hire 130,000 Chinese and Indian employees. Certainly, most outsourcing work is in India. So, putting the core of Global Services in India makes economic sense.
I am a former IBM e
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How many plants can they close? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to work at a company, where the standing joke at headquarters was if a plant (factory) did anything wrong, they would close it. The big boss would say: "Either they make target, or I'm going to close the plant!" Of course, the targets were completely unrealistic, so the next meeting would be: "Well close the plant dammit!!! Close the plant!"
The people at HQ would keep a running tally of how many divisions (plants) were closed that week. 15 plant closures was a bad week, as the company only had 13 plants. At one point, things got so bad they had to purchase a few more plants to make up for the plants they really did close. I'm glad I'm not working for that company anymore.
Yes, it is possible for management to discuss closing more plants than they have, and to fire more employees than they have hired ...
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Of course no one owes anyone anything... But if you don't bother to take care of the people, they tend to "take care" of you. We could have quite easily became another Nazi or Communist country had FDR not instituted his New Deal reforms during the great depression. Free market capitalism works... up until a point.
Rupert the Borg (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Government hadn't stepped in, every American would now be an employee of The Rockefeller Corporation.
The trouble with Free Markets, is they're usually not. Heard a Pundit on BBC World Service saying we shouldn't worry about Rupert Murdoch taking over the Wall Street Journal because it's a "Free Market" anyone can set up a blog and compete. (Level playing field, my ass.)
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We could have quite easily became another Nazi or Communist country had FDR not instituted his New Deal reforms during the great depression.
The New Deal didn't do jack shit but saddle us with a lot of goldilocks-type government programs that barged in and won't go away. FDR and his pals were just throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at the economy, trying to make something good happen. The thing that actually kept the US from collapsing into some fascist/socialist hell was the massive industrial mobilization of WW2.
Good. (Score:2, Insightful)
As they say in reality television: "You're fired". Two years from now when the market turns up, you'll wait in line to hear the potential employers in your field say "If you had been good; you wouldn't have been let go. Someone would have hired you." and ask, "
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This is the problem with globalization. Congress should act now to stop companies from off-shoring jobs and get rid of the H1B visa workers. Keep American jobs for Americans even if it means our products are more expensive than those from other countries. Ban importation of products made by companies in countries that employ sub-standard labor at ridiculously low wages like China, Korea, and Vietnam. That's not enough though.
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One would think that the events of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries have shown that the company needs its employees as much as the employees need the company, if not moreso.
A cynical approach to hiring only nets you cynical employees.
Re:IBM Town (Score:5, Funny)
It's called "Bangalore".
Re:IBM Town (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems pretty silly that in this 21st century the billionaires can move their funds and trade across the globe in milliseconds... But the ordinary people still need some silly visa permit from the king to move their skills likewise. Trade at the post-industrial level, immigration at the Napoleonic law level?
Kind of a sweet deal for the industry: move your production to whichever country has cheaper citizen slaves knowing the people cannot follow in kind.
Great Napoleonic Law (Score:5, Insightful)
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Volumes of Law (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually the Napoleonic code was adopted because it was a revolution in more ways than it's structure and organisation. It provided a very effective and just system. I could go on but I'd rather get back to my Law studies.
But I will say this much; my own legal system uses one (1) single core volume of some 3000+ pages. And the German work of codification, BGB [wikipedia.org], inspired the world as far away as China and Japan [wikipedia.org].
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Since then, personal rights have remained where they were while the property protections have gotten a lot better (see patents/IP/MAFIAA, WTO/World Bank, banking laws, trade treaties, etc.)
Two hundred years later your status and rights are still at the whim of the sovereign and depend entirely by where you your mother pushed you out. It's high time us humans got something better, wouldn't you
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However, you seem to be suggesting that the relocation of production from a high- to a low-wage country (the "America to India"
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Libertarians Wouldn't See Your Point (Score:2)
The point would be lost on a stereotypical Libertarian. The doctrine posits that everyone is equally empowered to enter into a contractual relationship. So, if the stockholders want to retain a board that approves this sort of compensation, that's their business.
That not everyone is really even vaguely equally empowered isn't stated up front. However, the truth is that a hardcore Libertarian doesn't care about
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