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Zero Rupee Note

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Re: Zero Rupee Note

#181

Post by kamaal »

redbluegreen wrote: post #170
barry-cotter wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (more or less accurate) charge of being copycats who do little domestic innovation was true earlier of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, and before them of Japan. It was true for decades of China too. This is just what happens when you’re doing catch up growth. There are huge easy wins by doing in your country what other people in other countries already know how to do, but cheaper because labour is…

That's true, but then for that to happen you need a working government and society, you can't do that if inefficiencies abound. China, Japan and South Korea all had powerful governments who made hard choices, India's on the other hand is weak and ineffective.

You need to put human resources development as the number one priority. As of now these are not even political issues in India. Nobody thinks these are important things to do.

India started off well during its Independence, the first education minister(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abul_Kalam_Azad) and the first prime minister(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru). The idea was to build a highly trained workforce and an industrial base, and then they bootstrap each other. But India has kind of lost its way.

This what is said of first education minister:

Jawaharlal Nehru referred to him as Mir-i- Karawan (the caravan leader), "a very brave and gallant gentleman, a finished product of the culture that, in these days, pertains to few".[16] Mahatma Gandhi remarked about Azad by counting him as "a person of the calibre of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagorus".[27]

India hasn't had good quality leadership in human resources for a while now.

The current priorities of HR development ministers in India go on the line of rewriting history to propel their political propaganda, pushing things like homeopathy, astrology. Hating universities and academia, calling them elites who need to be eliminated for their political ideas to be taken forward.

You don't do much in Human resources building with these kind of systems in place.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#182

Post by naniid »

kamaal wrote: post #120
erklik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ancient Egyptians had a conception of zero, and used a herioglypical symbol for zero. China had a counting rod system, with an empty space being a zero and Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections had a round symbol being used for zero. Other authors were familiar with the concept of negative numbers. These are alll before Indian "invention" (probably be discovery) of zero.

It ain't that hard to understand. Lets say you are a hunter gatherer, you hunted a pig in the forest. You and your fellow cave mates had a good meal. Another cave mate arrives an hour later. Asks how many pigs you hunted, your reply 1, asks how much is left, given you had everything, and nothing is left, what answer would you give? Congratulations you just invented zero in 100000 BC.

What you are defining is zero as quantity. Thats not that difficult. What is brilliant is zero as a place holder which practically made counting to big numbers a breeze.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#183

Post by ddebernardy »

stevenwoo wrote: post #65
Gibbon1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've no way of validating this but I've read that tipping in the US was originally a way for patrons to make sure that the server got paid. During the great depression people were often so desperate for work they would be willing to work for free in the hopes that employers would hire them. (This is still a thing in Journalism). Employers would exploit that. Patrons fought back by tipping workers directly. In the US…

Tipping originated a long time ago, but grew popular in the USA as a way to avoid paying newly freed slaves the same as non African Americans for work. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/18/i-dar... http://time.com/5404475/history-tipping-american-restaurants...

https://qz.com/609293/how-american-tipping-grew-out-of-racis...

^ It's actually the separate, minimum pay wage that emerged from that period - and that subsequently made tipping more customary. Tipping had been around for a while already.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#184

Post by naruvimama »

brianfen wrote: post #123
fellellor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to see the worst in people. The bribe accepting police is also, in many cases, not doing this out of malice. Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. Anyways if you are the police in that situation, it makes much more sense to let the "activist" sort of g…

> I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. At the risk of being downvoted, I feel compelled to offer a foreigner's perspective here. As a foreigner who has lived in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai for 2 to 6 months many times, I have to agree with the other commenter that I did not find a functioning society. Thi…

Agree with you entirely.

When the British left India, there was officially a transfer of power to the congress party. The first prime minister was appointed by the party. The constitution, the police, the bureaucracy and the court system was inherited by the people.

Unlike the developed world or China or Vietnam, India did not go through a bloody revolution. What that meant is that systems that were explicitly meant to harass and exploit the people is what we have inherited.

India runs two parallel systems, the official system and the traditional system. In the past [up until recently] urbanites [directly or indirectly worked for the govt] who were also the elitists suffered the official system but also benefited from it. The rural masses [80+%] were out of the official system.

Today with greater urbanisation, more and more people not used to the official system and forced to deal with it in their own way. First generation urbanites out number the original city dwellers.

There is a need to have a small government, lower red tape, hopefully the new government which has an overwhelming majority can carry out the overhaul necessary to set things right.

In a way Trump and his trade war can be a good thing and push Indians to realise, that they can not continue being the "source of raw material, cheap labour and a huge captive market" - exactly how the colonist always wanted us to be.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#185

Post by icebraining »

csomar wrote: post #151
oconnor663 wrote: post #32

I wonder how similar bribery culture is to tip culture. In the US where we tip restaurant workers, restaurant wages are often much lower than comparable positions in industries that don't have tipping, so much so that the difference is often explicitly included in minimum wage laws. Do countries with more bribery experience a similar effect, where the wages of police officers and other bribery-prone worker are much l…

Raising the police wages in Tunisia (three folds) increased bribery. By increasing their wages, it means they have more power over the actual government. It means they rule the streets and can be more aggressive asking for bribes. Short answer: No. More wages does not mean less bribery. A strong government that has control over its police force is what reduces bribery.

Raising might not be enough, but it might still be necessary. If you're paying terrible wages and cracking down on bribes, it'll be very hard to recruit.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#186

Post by puranjay »

brianfen wrote: post #123
fellellor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to see the worst in people. The bribe accepting police is also, in many cases, not doing this out of malice. Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. Anyways if you are the police in that situation, it makes much more sense to let the "activist" sort of g…

> I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. At the risk of being downvoted, I feel compelled to offer a foreigner's perspective here. As a foreigner who has lived in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai for 2 to 6 months many times, I have to agree with the other commenter that I did not find a functioning society. Thi…

There is no law on the road in India. I've lived here 30 years and the situation hasn't improved one bit. In fact, it's become worse.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#187

Post by namdnay »

yitchelle wrote: post #165
Semaphor wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience. I wanted to cancel my old credit card but couldn't find a way to do it online. As there were no fees I just ignored it. Well, it turned out that my VPN still had it as the payment method and so I got a bill to please pay my negative balance (they require at least 10% to be paid off after a month). Of course, I paid. But it turns out that I need to contact them to unlock the card after I ha…

Not sure if this would actually occur but would it be a negative mark against your credit score if they had to close your account due to non-payment of a -0€?

Credit scores are an American construct :)

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#188

Post by yitchelle »

namdnay wrote: post #187
yitchelle wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this would actually occur but would it be a negative mark against your credit score if they had to close your account due to non-payment of a -0€?

Credit scores are an American construct :)

The Germans have their own version - Schufa [0]. :-( Most of other countries also have versions too.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#189

Post by barry-cotter »

redbluegreen wrote: post #170
barry-cotter wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (more or less accurate) charge of being copycats who do little domestic innovation was true earlier of Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, and before them of Japan. It was true for decades of China too. This is just what happens when you’re doing catch up growth. There are huge easy wins by doing in your country what other people in other countries already know how to do, but cheaper because labour is…

That's true, but then for that to happen you need a working government and society, you can't do that if inefficiencies abound. China, Japan and South Korea all had powerful governments who made hard choices, India's on the other hand is weak and ineffective.

It’s actually worse than weak and ineffective. If it was weak and ineffective then effective organisations would be able to make an end run around it, whether by corruption or by using politics to institute policy changes. India has a powerful government that’s captured by domestic constituencies that love the current sclerotic system. The Licence Raj lasted 50 years because powerful people wanted it. Moving from the current system to something better will require taking on some of these groups.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#190

Post by agent008t »

oconnor663 wrote: post #50
vbezhenar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Policemen are getting pretty low wages. But there are always a lot of people who want to work there, because they can get bribes. And they actually paying percentage of those bribes to their higher-ups and so on, so it's like a pyramid. And a lot of people want things to stay that way. Policemen are getting good income. Their masters are getting huge income. Ordinary people can pay much less to policeman, than t…

> It's that terrible win-win to everyone situation and that makes it very hard to destroy. It does make it sound like there's a bribery-free equilibrium really close by though. Like imagine all of these things happened as part of a single reform: - Policeman and management salaries go up. - Fines go down. - Taxes go up. - Anti-bribery enforcement goes way up. The idea would be to acknowledge that regardless of the br…

That is basically what they did in Georgia, and it seems to have been very effective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikheil_Saakashvili#Economic_a...
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