Tag Archives: economics

Anti-Democratic

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Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden claims he’s worried about anti-democratic forces in play in today’s American politics.

We must vote knowing who we have been and what we’re at risk of becoming. We must vote knowing what’s at stake and not just the policy of the moment—but institutions that have held us together, as we’ve sought a more perfect union, are also at stake.

Here’s one of those democratic institutions that’s at risk even after the just-completed elections—from Biden and his National Labor Relations Board:

[The] National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced it would start the process rescind a 2020 rule implemented to protect workers’ right to vote on removing union representation.

The institution of company employees isn’t to be allowed to exercise—by voting in particular—their right to not join a union or their right to vote to decertify an existing union.

Never mind two central facts.

According to NLRB data, among petitions filed to hold elections to install or remove a union, a unionized private-sector worker was more than twice as likely to attempt to decertify union representation than a nonunion worker was to unionize….

And

[A] pro-union group, The Worker Power Coalition, argues the “surge in worker organizing is the largest in more than 50 years,” and the data shows a 53% increase in union representation petitions….

That’s democracy in the workplace in action. That’s democracy that the Hero of Democracy in the White House wants to destroy.

The Ubiquitous Computer

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It’s coming to our homes?

Imagine this scenario in the not-too-distant future. You’re awakened at 6:11 a.m. by the gentle sounds of tinkling bells and birdsong, even though you live in a 12th-floor apartment. Your alarm clock uses radar to track your breathing, and wakes you gently, with sound and light, when it detects you’re in a lighter phase of sleep.
Your transition to wakefulness triggers a cascade of changes in your apartment. Your window shades open automatically. In the kitchen, coffee starts brewing. As you pad into the bathroom to brush your teeth, a display projected onto the mirror above the sink shows your calendar for the day. It highlights what time you’ll have to leave to get to your office for the in-person meeting you scheduled for 8:30.
Returning to your bedroom, you find your stowaway robotic bed has retracted….

Nah.

I’ll never get so lazy I can’t have the wife or daughter or SIL or grandkids do those things.

Some Contextual Questions

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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and of Alphabet’s wholly-owned subsidiary Google, in addressing anti-trust questions regarding Google’s ad-tech business, claimed that

Ad technology is a small part of what Google does, he said, and doesn’t make up a significant share of the company’s revenue, according to people familiar with the meeting [Pichai’s with Senator Mike Lee (R, UT)].

That begs a number of questions though. Questions being begged include these:

  • How much ad-tech revenue is there in the aggregate in the ad-tech market?
  • How many players are there in the ad-tech market?
  • How much ad-tech revenue is taken in by the (let us say) 5 largest players other than Google?
  • How much non-ad-tech revenue do those 5 largest take in with which they can buffer downturns in the ad-tech market compared to Google’s non-ad-tech revenue?

Regarding that last question,

…the parts [of Alphabet’s/Google’s revenue] that mostly relate to brokering the buying and selling of ads on other websites—generated about $31.7 billion last year, or about 12% of its revenue.

That suggests that Alphabet/Google has around 88% of its revenue from non-ad-tech sources with which to buffer its ad-tech in/outflow.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how much or little Google’s ad-tech revenue is in Google’s scheme of things. What matters is how much or little Google’s ad-tech revenue is in the ad-tech market place.

A Couple Questions

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Renault and Nissan are trying to reduce Renault’s participation in Nissan from its current 43% ownership to 15%—or at least Nissan is. The French government owns 15% of Renault. There are a number of impediments to the partial divestiture, including the divvying up of intellectual property that might have been developed jointly. One of the deals that would be made from the divestiture, though, involves Nissan investment in another arm of Renault (which raises the question in my peabrain about what Nissan would be getting, really, from Renault’s reduction in direct ownership of Nissan, but that’s for another time):

In exchange, Nissan would invest in Renault’s new electric-vehicle business, which the French auto maker aims to take public next year, the people said.

One question I have is this: why would any company want to partner with a government-run company, whether it’s a PRC government-run company or a French government-run (which even that 15% stake gives the government functional control) company?

Another question I have goes back to that divvying of intellectual property:

Nissan also doesn’t want technology that it developed with Renault to be shared with Chinese automotive giant Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co, which is planning to take a stake in Renault’s gasoline-car business, the people said.

Why would the French government want to partner with the PRC government to produce what the French government represents to be a French car? That Zhejian Geely stake would give the PRC government access to both French and Nissan intellectual property and technology.

Another Reason to Move the Supply Chain

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This time for the Republic of China’s Foxconn, which among other things, assembles iPhones in a People’s Republic of China factory in Zhengzhou.

In Foxconn’s main Zhengzhou facility, the world’s biggest assembly site for Apple Inc’s iPhones, hundreds of thousands of workers have been placed under a closed-loop system for almost two weeks. They are largely shut off from the outside world, allowed only to move between their dorms or homes and the production lines.

The mainland Chinese workers are causing their own problems for Foxconn, also.

“It’s too dangerous to go to work,” a 21-year-old worker who has been confined to his dorm told The Wall Street Journal, saying that he was skeptical about the company’s claim that there was a low level of infections at the plant.

And

Some workers interviewed by the Journal said many colleagues had refused to go back to the production lines. Others had simply left, they said, sometimes abandoning their belongings.

And

Another Foxconn employee said most of his dozen-strong team of night-shift workers had either been taken to a quarantine facility or had refused to return to work. ….
“I don’t know who around me is a positive case,” said the worker, who has been confined to his dorm for a few days. “I’d be better off staying in the dorm.”

For good reasons or ill, the bottom line is that Foxconn cannot rely on its mainland collection of employees, much less the PRC government’s capricious responses to its Wuhan Virus situation.

Foxconn would be much better off to move its production/assembly facility back to the Republic of China, or to Vietnam, or to expand its nascent production/assembly facility in the US, or some combination of the three. The transition will be expensive, of course, but only in the short-term. Intermediate- and long-term, the company will be much better off, with a more reliable and stable work force, and so will Foxconn’s customers be.