Hi Willcousa, I was surprised they were arrested for IP theft. I have the impression IP theft is quite prevalent there. The executives must have strong influential relationships with the government in order to secure such wonderful protection. May Cisco be so lucky? I think it's about relationships, not the law, not companies.
By the way, nothing stops H from entering the USA. All the key executives at H would need to do is, fund a separate entity in the USA and bingo. But they would be caught. If they were ever to do that here, Cisco could easily follow the money that leads to the trail. And enough people in the industry keep an eye out for Cisco, that it would be called to attention.
My next thought is unrelated to H, but it speaks to the potential for relationship-based IP/business theft: there's a USA-based assembly house here in the Valley where some managers try to reroute business away from their employer (the assembly house) back to their Mainland investor-buddies. It's a slippery slope to slide down. To some, I think their motivation is to naively help their (assembly house's) customer reduce cost, but if they were to step back, maybe they'd realize it nearly borders on mafia-like behavior. I would never trust anyone who reroutes business away from their current employer to their investor buddies, unless the owners approved it. Sometimes I wonder if some assembly managers are trying to double-dip? If I discover people are doing something wrong, I'd definitely take iniative, but as it stands right now, it appears to be just attempts, and it doesn't appear they think their attempts are wrong - a little education can go a long way.
RE: "my belief that an economy doesn't perform very well under strict control (the freedom to invest, innovate, keep what you earn, count on a fair shake in the courts are examples)."
I sincerely wish that were true, but at the early nascent stages it doesn't appear to be the case. If it were true, India's per capita would not be half of China's per capita. Both started out relatively as equals in the 70's.
Yet, China's communism (and the efficiency that communism brings, e.g. high-tech infrastructure, electricity, a hospital built in only 8 days for SARs), yields per capita growth that well-exceeds the democracy of India's countries by a factor of two.
Simply put, democracy is slower than molasses at a country's economic nascent stages, when compared to the swift directive of Communism. Former President Carter recently said foreign countries (that he would try to make democratic) would complain to him about the slowness of democracy.
Democracy is the best in theory and in practice at the higher per capita levels, but at an extremely low per capita level, China demonstrates how communism or dictatorships can deliver an efficiency and quickness to get to the "next level" faster than democracy during the very nascent stages of a country. It's almost as if a country needs to reach a certain level of per capita before democracy can propel it forward.
Due to the slowness of democracy complicating issues of lack of resources and political issues, places like Bangalore (high-tech hub) still doesn't have an international airport and lacks reliable electricity. Why deal with the slowness of democracy in India when China's communism delivers ready-to-go infrastructure? This is why the mfgs go to China, and why software goes to India.
But since software has higher margins, India has this on its side. They also have excellent schools for mathematics (for software development) (but so does China). I do hope India gets the development of infrastructure in gear (elec, water)-- because if they don't - they threaten the greatness and level of growth of their own future and will fall further behind. To bad they just don't privatize the entire infrastructure development to the USA, including the regulatory approval aspects. It takes years and years before the Indian government can complete anything - they've been working on an airport in Banglore for years. Even simple things we take for granted here in the USA, are hard there - for every building you build, for every employee you hire, about 1 out of 8 seem to be some form of a hire-to-bribe payment to someone (e.g. the local mayor to give you water, electricity, etc.) Then of course, one has to be brave enough to deal with the 2nd tier construction industry - where the Bush administration recently arrested a highly dangerous and corrupt construction builder who was transferring drugs into India from Karachi (SP?) and in return apparently was giving Karachi students money for inciting terrorism (i.e. terrorism sponsored drug dealing is intermingled with their construction industry.) I know of someone (an honest investor that was starting out and who had naively invested in a building only to have his life threatened (by the person that Bush admin recently arrested) when he asked for his investment money to be returned. (He decided his life had more value than his money.) And of course, the country didn't really have the power to protect itself from such thugs, that is, until the USA went there and provided the influential power that cut right thru crime and corruption.
We are very lucky to be born or live in the USA.
But since we're on the topic of such strange things and the like. I just heard of a rumor about a local USA worker (not from China nor India) at a large company (not sure which of the large companies, pretty sure it's not Intel, sort of doubt it's Cisco though it could be, but tend to think it's probably some absent-in-mind large company), anyway, the rumor is, he took a $100k bribe from a startup in order to make the decision to buy components from them (it sort of sounded like the startup designed the component rather than just distributed it). Sends the chills down your spine when you hear about this kind of stuff. Everyone who has heard this rumor is extremely shocked. I've never heard of anything like that ever happening in high-tech. Mark my words - this guy (or gal) will get caught and locked up good and solid. It's not something the industry tolerates - extremely distasteful. And the fact that it's floating in the rumorville means this person is one step from being caught and placed behind bars. I wish I knew which large company this involves, so their management could be alerted sooner rather than later.
Regards,
Amy J |
