If you are sitting in a classroom, getting instruction from a master, you might expect to simply receive it all in text book form and learn by rote: <If you haven't thought through your point, why should anybody pay attention to it. Shouldn't ideas that are poorly thought through be ignored? > The reason to pay attention to ideas is because they sometimes represent illumination you have not thought of. You might think, "Hmmm, I never thought of that. That could make sense. Maybe some more investigation would be a good idea." People who dumbly sit and wait to be told what to think in detail and receive rote instruction are never going to achieve much of anything. Tradable Citizenship, for example, is an idea which I have thought about for a decade and haven't come up with or read anything to suggest to me that it won't work and is not a huge improvement on the current geopolitical way of life of everyone.
Similarly, I thought of Fourier transforms in chips in phones in 1989 but obviously not in sufficient detail to actually do it myself. But I could see it could work. Fortunately for me, I happened to meet somebody in San Diego a couple of years later from Qualcomm who told me that was exactly what they were doing. So, because I had thought of an incomplete idea, I was able to recognize my opportunity. I had told my brother [who seems a bit like you] of my idea, but he was as disparaging as your "Oh, you haven't come up with all the detail and patents and planning department and legal framework and a zillion other things so why should anyone pay any attention to your half-baked ideas". Fortunately for him, I told him about Qualcomm and he eventually invested too, before the big run up, and that saved his bacon.
Yes, go ahead and ignore anything you like. If it's not ready for you to copy/paste, it's probably not worth a moment of your time to read let alone think about.
<OK, so you advocated an idea. You wanted boys and girls with 170 IQ. How many were you planning to collect? Did you estimate how long this would take, or where you would find them? > I had not planned the number, nor guessed how long it would take, or exactly where they were. Those are details which follow "Hmmm, that is a reasonable idea. We should investigate it further." If managers don't pick up on ideas, then of course the ideas go nowhere.
Things do not have to be 100% solutions to everything for everyone to be worth doing: <That Chinese people are working for Qualcomm doesn't help much to educate the 100s of millions of unskilled workers. Maybe your point is that China needs 100,000 more Qualcomms to get the job done. Good luck with that. > Actually, it does help the 100s of millions in China that Qualcomm and many other companies are being highly successful in China. That's why we are discussing the "shortage" of workers in China and some are bemoaning their rising pay.
You are obviously unaware of what has been happening in China, India and Japan. <
<<BP would pay a bit more than the rice-paddy price to attract them to the education and apprentice programme.>>
You suppose that this could happen, or better, you know this did happen? If this did happened, what was the return on the investment? If this was only a plan, what was the expected ROI? Are you only supposing that something "good" or profitable could have happened?
<<British and German scientists to do R&D which could have been done by Made in China people are a tenth or 50th of the pay.>>
This is an assertion that I can't easily accept. In fact, I find it highly implausible. You offer no evidence that this has ever worked in the past. This is only your supposition, and so I can't take any lesson from it. >
It's not an assertion. Our son did just that in Japan [worked for Livedoor developing software]. I did it for Texaco Canada and BP Oil International. [Not a tenth, or 50th of the pay but much cheaper that locals]. 20 years ago, pay rates for professors in China were very low. Even 10 years ago they were a fraction of the equivalent pay rates in the "free" world. Young uneducated people in China were of course much much cheaper still.
These things have happened already. You are arguing a case against something that already exists. The discussion was based around the fact that cheap people in China are no longer available. People are moaning that they are too expensive. They are wondering what China can do about it. I explained that it's a good thing that there is a shortage of cheap people in China.
Maybe you just want to disagree with me? Are you an older brother?
Mqurice |
