Stolen Samsung technology sold to Chinese company - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2018, 03:30:45 am
content: Well, often enough we see discussions here about China copying or taking liberty with other's intellectual property... For those interested in the topic, this case is of interest.9 Charged With Selling Samsung’s Bendable Screen TechnologyAfter years of working on its foldable display prototypes, Samsung is now stuck facing an ugly fact — thetechnology behind those screens may have already been sold to a Chinese competitor by one of Samsung’s own suppliers. That’s the claim made by South Korean prosecutors today in charges levied against 9 unnamed individuals and two companies.A CEO of one of Samsung’s suppliers and eight of his employees received $13.8M in payments after conspiring with an unnamed Chinese company to transfer information related to OLED production to the latter in direct violation of the company’s agreements with Samsung, according to Bloomberg. .........The above quoted from ExtremeTech.com. Full article below:https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/281496-9-charged-with-selling-samsung-bendable-screen-tech-to-chinese-companies

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2018, 04:03:01 am
content: It sounds like that story with what happened with capacitor plague and the incomplete stolen electrolyte formula in around 1999.

author: Wan Huang Luo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2018, 02:51:59 pm
content: Samsung engaged in price fixing for memory modules and are being pursued by the Chinese government for this. Allegedly. Now a Chinese company improperly received Samsung proprietary IP. Allegedly.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2018, 07:34:58 pm
content: Quote from: Wan Huang Luo on December 03, 2018, 02:51:59 pmAre you implying this didn't happen? Samsung isn't the best corporate neighbor in the world and there RAM price fixing wasn't alleged it was for real. That, OTH, doesn't absolve the Chinese of IP theft and the fact that many millions were provided suggests there were deep pockets underwriting the theft. Two wrongs don't make a right now does it!Brian

author: Domagoj T
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2018, 08:07:46 pm
content: For years I was under the impression that as soon as you do any sort of business with China that you should consider your IP handed over. I'm actually surprised that Samsung believed they were safe from it.

author: Wan Huang Luo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 03, 2018, 09:32:51 pm
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on December 03, 2018, 07:34:58 pmRegarding the use of the word allegedly -It means that I am distancing myself from making a statement of material fact on a contested legal matter.I am implying nothing at all. I am restating allegations levied by country X against company Y, and allegations by company Y's country against against a company in country X.Two wrongs made two wrongs.Personally I think both wrongs were unconscionable and abhorrent.If there is a connection to be made between the two wrongs, that is up to you to decide.I don't think that the second wrong made a right. I think it just made things worse for everyone.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 12:05:08 am
content: Quote from: Domagoj T on December 03, 2018, 08:07:46 pmI worked for a Japanese tech company and found, with some amusement, that they hated doing business in China because of the technology transfer that came with it. Roll the clock back about 30-60 years and that could have been an American complaining about the Japanese pilfering tech. The west outsourced to Japan because it was cheaper but soon learned that the Japanese were quite capable of figuring out how to produce there own competitive products and cut the American companies out entirely. Much of the effort that went into the later trade deals were predicated on the notion that the west could continue to outsource, this time to Mexico and China to name a few, but with more rigorous trade laws dealing with IP the thought was they could gain the benefit of cheap labor and lower costs for workplace safety and environmental controls but with the WTO and other mechanisms avoid the pitfalls discovered with the Japanese model. As it turns out they were wrong and for many reasons the same game is being played again as China is developing there own companies with competitive products that cut the US and multinational companies out of the deal entirely.But, when you understand what is behind this you realize that the protections that the US companies doing business in China thought they had were not all the important to the investor class that cares not one wit where a product is made but only what percentage they keep of the deal. Moving production from the US and western Europe meant they could lower the wage levels and reduce spending for workplace safety and environmental controls leaving more of the transaction as profit for the company and the investor class. In essence we have an indirect transfer of wealth from the working class to the leisure class by means of a direct transfer of income from the former to the later. This is the principal basis for most of the economic policies of the last 40 years.That this is producing the kind of instability in the US and west that has seen the rise of right wing nationalism should not have surprised anyone -- a similar game has been played before and with globally tragic consequence.Brian

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 02:37:35 am
content: Quote from: Domagoj T on December 03, 2018, 08:07:46 pmI am almost with with you there! But I think there is another angle.Even if nothing get stolen, that you are asking China to manufacture the product means that you are authorizing some one there to learn and know how to make it. That group that learned to make it for Samsung will have the understand and have an example of how Samsung solved the problem of bendability (if there is such a word). It would be unreasonable to expect (a) the technology doesn't get lost and (b) even with an example solution, they can't learn fast enough (relative to shelf-life) to make an alternate solution themselves.I read in a business book eons ago: Something that is of strategic importance, you keep. Something that is merely tactical, outsource the darn thing.I don't think Samsung's executives are so dumb that they don't know all these. I am leaning toward the believe that Samsung probably expected this may happen, but they gamble on it because probably based on whatever negotiation they made with the Chinese government, making it there is the only way they can gain a market share for the China market for products based on these new techs. They were probably hoping it wont happen so soon, and hoping by the time the tech leaks out, it would be kind-of an old or "almost everyone has it" technology, and they would have the lead still because of their experience and their already-debugged manufacturing lines.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 06:06:27 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on December 04, 2018, 02:37:35 amI have a problem with the business books statement that something merely tactical you outsource and here's why. One of the main problems that the business ideology (religion) of outsourcing has is the idea that the critical design engineering you keep to yourself while you have the item made where ever, but what happens is the engineering is really two parts: the design side and the production side. Keeping the design side engineering might seem to protect you but that ignores the fact that lots of smart engineers, working in the productions side, not only develop the production methods but also learn something of the design itself. Sooner or later some smart engineers working in the outsourcing country as production engineers learn some things that could be done better and then go ahead and design an as good or better product -- and they already know how to make it. This is the history with outsourcing -- arrogant companies and engineers think they're smarter than production engineers in, say, China, but that arrogance ALWAYS comes back to anally rape them for there stupidity. The investor class doesn't care as they care only about what percentage of the transaction they get to keep so the business ideology is biased in favor of what suits the investor class and not what's in the best interests of the company or its workers.The dilemma that companies face is whether to outsource or not. A company may wish to retain there IP and there workers in there home country, but if there competitors go to where it's cheaper to produce they're shit out of luck. Many factories in the west have moved overseas not because they wanted to so much as the need to be competitive with those that do.Brian

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 09:04:47 pm
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on December 04, 2018, 06:06:27 amThe benefit of keeping development and engineer working together was clearly demonstrated by Kelly Johnson when he started the Skunk Works team at Lockheed. U2, Blackbird... might have been mission impossible but for Kelly Johnson's innovations and members of those teams credit the co-location of development and manufacturing a lot - at least according to some of the Youtube/History channel stuff on the SR71 and the U2.That said, what is strategic to some may be operational to others. While I do not adopt an attitude of "out sourcing the tactical with disregard", I do think there are valid reasons for it. No different than an EE manufacturer may choose to use an OEM power-brick to power whatever - PSU design is not something so dear that they want to hold close to their vest. Even Lockheed did not extend that co-location of manufacturing and development to their other lines. It was just at Skunk Works that such co-location existed.Not being an employee of Samsung and not being in "Fat City" (ie:executive suite) at Samsung, I don't know what their strategy is. What seem evident is that only with tech-leadership as part of the strategy that could make the big investment make sense. Now with that technology potentially out in the open market, the viability of being undisputed tech-leader for an extended period is in jeopardy. With in mind that there is the possibility that they are just very very unlucky, it is likely that they executed poorly. They Trust but not Verify - or at least not enough verify.

author: Kevman
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 09:38:27 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on December 04, 2018, 02:37:35 amBut the linked article said the supplier was South Korean, so I'm not sure how they gambled that the Chinese would copy it?

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 10:41:02 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on December 04, 2018, 09:04:47 pmThe Skunk Works were top secret projects so keeping as much in house was a requirement from a security standpoint if nothing else. The point I was making is that the Japanese were not considered smart enough to reverse engineer the designs of US products being made in Japan and that arrogance resulted in the demise of the US TV set manufacturing industry, an industry that the US had about 96% of the world market until the late 60's. All the big US electronics companies making TV's moved production to Japan and within a decade Japanese companies like Sony began to not only compete but out compete and by the early 80's there were almost no US companies making TV sets. There's a deeper story to this that is worth looking at, the story of how integration played a role, but that's for another discussion. Put simply, US companies thought they could exploit the cheaper Japanese market to improve profits but in the end they went out of business. But again, the Wall Street types, the big investors, they didn't care one bit if US companies went out of business so long as they dump there holdings before the stock price fell.The situation with China, and other outsourcing destinations, is similar even though the business owners thought they'd protected themselves with provisions in the trade agreements that were there to protect there IP. Those idiots can't learn because there beliefs are religious based and are not reconcilable with history, reality or fact.Brian

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 11:05:58 pm
content: The only way out for countries and companies may be total automation.For a long time military secrecy has offered a protected enclave where the increasingly far reaching rules oin global commerce, particularly services don't apply.Even as the US has been pushing global value chains in most kinds of commerce, the US electronics industry has preferred to focus on military hardware, avionics, etc, where exemptions exist from rules that might otherwise require government procurement be open to all other WTO members, if they could deliver the commodity.Similar rules now apply in many areas. Wherever tax money is spent.The US is the prime booster of the global value chains concept with its reliance on so called comparative advantage.This principle willingly concedes entire industries to low wage countries because it claims that it makes no sense for high paid workers to do the work that should be done by low wage ones in countries with an abundance of cheap high skilled labor.The WTO, OECD, World Bank, and other so called global economic governance institutions have fully endorsed this way of doing things, without any objections being thrown up by the so called stakeholders. Now its basically considered to be a done deal.Under GVC the US and other high wage countries (the US which has 'minimum wages' which can range from eight to as high as twelve or more dollars an hour) should concentrate on high value added areas like copyright law, microchips, pharmaceuticals etc. and leave the areas which require large amounts of labor to countries like the self-represented "factory of the world" (China) or "back office of the world" (India) who specialize in outsourcing and offshoring desk jobs which had been done in small companies leading to large amounts of employment.High wage countries can manufacture but consultants penalize them if they "pay too much" generally, firms are being pressured by Wall Street and so called 'global capital' into endorsing automation as much as possible, even if it isnt ready.Similarly web companies replace millions of workers with automated commerce systems that basically run themselves. A shift which is very profitable but bad for employment.Since the establishment of the WTO, increasingly National policies have to conform to support these changes. Especially in services. "everything you cannot drop on your foot". Most people still have not realized the WTO's main change was taking over a plethora of areas regulation which previously had been under national legislatures control.The old way of doing it, compromise where two or more parties tried to bargain for their constituencies is now totally out of the question unless it is the most minimal possible, i.e. complies with the requirement that it be 'progressive liberalization" meaning ever less regulation and always more globalization. This is called a ratchet clause.So basically all the job creating service industries as well as all the jobs which we used to call public services all have to be globalized sooner or later unless they are"services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority";QuoteThis was the so called grand bargain on services that was created when the WTO was. the WTO was given the authority to tell governments how to regulate virtually all laws involving economic activity if it involved aservices - especially ones that had been the subject of so called "Specific Commitments" - which were divided into four"modes of supply".these restrictions on policy are very far reaching when government money is being spent. The limitations on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures are very far reaching.Private businesses have more freedom to do what they want as long as the government doesn't set up or maintain circumstances that keep their foreign competition out.That could include basically any kind of rule or action involving governmental policies including many people have come to assume were permanent gains, but which could be construed as trade barriers because they don't hold sway everywhere. (For example, rules in developed nations must be rolled back, rules in developing nations cannot be increased) Otherwise the developing nations would not have joined the WTO.Generally any favorable set of conditions for workers or consumers, in one country may be forced to conform to a sort of globalleast common denominator. This could lead to the return of many things like child labor, longer working hours, ending of minimum wage and working hour restrictions, systems of statutory Social Security (if they compete with any business in any way) and so on. Anything standing in the way of commerce or which restricts international companies freedom to underbid others.Ironically, laws that prohibit discrimination or require certain accommodations for workers such as minimum wages, are being framed as discrimination in the foreign press in some Global South nations because they are seen as restricting their ability to exploit their natural advantage, low wages.Some press coverage claims that "high" US minimum wage laws as well as quotas on numbers of workers are intended to keep foreign nations and their services firms from getting the benefits of these agreements. In fact that is essentially what is being claimed in an unresolved WTO dispute which asks that a number of US laws restricting international services be sanctioned. It has sat before the Dispute Body for two years and to the best of my knowledge it remains undecided.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 11:35:13 pm
content: Yes, that is the religious dogma that has dominated economic policy for the last 40 years but somewhere along the way the people promoting it decided they didn't need to keep there eyes open and to look what was actually happening. A century ago or a bit longer the US became the dominant economy in the world and did so on the strength of its manufacturing base. In WWII the US made its most important contribution in Europe with Lend Lease and other programs to supply our allies with war materials the US was known as the Arsenal of Democracy and we simply out manufactured the rest of the world and doing so was critical to Russia which carried the lions share of the actual fighting. By the late 70's the paradigm was changing and business owners decided they need no longer share productivity gains with the workforce that produces those gains and the share of the growing economy flat-lined for the working class beginning at the inflection point while income and wealth increased even faster for the wealthy. Manufacturing was no longer seen as useful and getting rid of it, though never publicly stated, was the plan.Fast forward to the early 2000's and China, which was not even in the top 10 in world economies when Nixon went to China, had now become the worlds #2 economy. As of a few years ago China has become the #1 economy when purchasing power is included (GDP PPP) surpassing the USA and they did this with ... wait for it ... manufacturing.It is interesting to note that this is not a USA only phenomena as anyone in western Europe can attest. And, as I mentioned before, the rising nationalism and bigotry we see in the USA is also occurring in western Europe and for much the same reasons.When the economics schools and textbooks all say this is as it should be yet we're marching headlong towards another global cataclysm you'd think that reality would intrude and moderate the beliefs, but a belief held with religious fervor is not amenable to fact or reason.Brian

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 01:02:41 am
content: A lot of the tenets of this cult like religion are highly questionable or even downright lies. There is also a whole other side of the story which is quite encouraging of people standing up for their rights. That side of the news is being suppressed or denigrated with frames that aren't even true.one encouraging decision that I had been watching for years was the Achmea dispute and the final decision, it was about whether a country (Slovakia) had the right to return, after only a few years, to a public health insurance system after having signed a trade agreement while part of another country that didn't even exist any more. Of course they were sued in an international arbitral court for 'indirect expropriation' and after many years of decision in what seems like at least a half dozen different venues they finally won on what seems to be an EU-only set of circumstances. Unfortunately, a bunch of other similar cases (known collectively as "IntraEU BITS") where former Eastern European countries that entered the EU and which tried to maintain various social values in the face of various deals and rules that in various ways demanded that they conform to this cult, I think were left hanging or are still in the air. They are scary cases where scary rights are demanded by corporations. Only a few have had the courage to speak out about this, and resist the takeover of the right to regulate, and the debate in Europe is largely unknown elsewhere.The phrase 'nationalism" is not accurate, nor is "populism" Also I think the attempt to frame resistance to corporate takeover of the world as a North South dispute or as racist is not true either. Its basically a scheme to pull the old shell game and have democracy and the concept of an ever improving standard of living everywhere vanish through slight of hand, because that is seen as a threat to the core concept of capitalism that the already rich get to keep all the gains and that wages fall as demand for workers falls and supply increases (by creating a global common market for labor that pits everybody against one another instead of attempting to reduce inequality and concentration of wealth, we are represented as having endorsed it, by virtue of the fall of the ex USSR.If you ask me, that goes against the values of democracy! Democracy = diversity and competition of ideas, not monoculture. But the corporate concept of all money being equal and of countries all of being equally legitimate as long as they are in power is contradicted by the need for restraint in the use of technology globally, or it will turn into an Orwellian nightmare. Instead of freedom of speech, and expression, thanks to the WTO treaties, such as the ones on telecommunications, we are getting equal back doors.What we're seeing is a huge campaign to obscure whats really going on, a sort of global coup by corporations. There are some different factions between the corporations but none of them really seem to map to what we are supposed to think they are.Its really just a huge mess that we all should keep at arms length and regard the media accounts of everything without exception as suspect instead going the extra mile to find out from real people everywhere what is happening and not trusting media to tell us .certainly, whenever governments want uis to do things or change things, its guaranteed to not be what they say it is at this point. how could it be?the bright side of all of this is that people everywhere have common sense and are not as divided as they would have us think! Especially in America, the UK Australia. What we need is a healthy exposure of government and corporate hijinks to the bright light of the sun.It may be ugly and sordid but its real what needs to happen, truth. Also, when it comes to technology and work and professions, there needs to be a meeting of minds that what is good for all of us is not simply the wish list of voter rejected ideas that the biggest actors among global corporations want. That may actually be the very worst things.One thing we should understand is the explosion of labor saving technology should mean that money becomes less important at the day to day level, not more. We need to transition to other ways of organizing society and moving into the future - a world where dramatic things will become commonplace and we will need to learn how to embrace huge and totally unpredictable changes. People will also be living longer so we need to embrace the concept of lifetime learning and social mobility, because those who can afford many years of college now are not the only ones who should be enabled to pursue knowledge. Nor should that group be the only ones entitled to have the government stand up for their rights to have their dreams fulfilled, while others dreams are abandoned in the interest of global dealing. What we have is the governmental equivalent of a privelege escalation attack in computer security where key unenumerated rights that were thought be the people to be theirs and were never given to the politicians have been quietly taken. This has to be challenged and declared unconscionable or our fragile nations, our planets and the human race's future are in serious danger.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 01:45:09 am
content: Yes, part of the game is the distractions that keep people looking at the shiny and not looking behind the curtain to what big money is doing. The distractions play out on both sides as both parties are part of the game. Speaking of the USA for the moment, the right is outraged by immigration while the money they worship has been the principal pull for that immigration. For many decades going back long before Edward R. Murrow's "Harvest of Shame" the large agri-businesses were exploiting what was then known as migrants and today illegal immigrants for cheap labor, often sub-minimum wage labor. This should always have been illegal and companies engaging in it should have been prosecuted, but these large agri-businesses had a lot of money and exerted enormous clout with pols at the local, state and federal level. So while the rank-and-file members of the Republican party are pissed at the influx of illegals they continue to support the pols and business interests that have rigged the system to ensure a continuing supply of them.The left also has its distractions with issues of race and sexual identity being the ones that are most effective at stopping them from looking behind the curtain. And it's not that those are meaningless or unimportant issues, but when those issues dominate as they do they limit our looking behind the curtain.So, both sides have canned distractions that the wealthy know how to stoke (fund) so we focus on the things they want us to.The huge trolling effort made by Russia in the 2016 election and continuing to this day are all about picking the scabs of already open wounds -- wounds that are self inflicted. They did not need to invent anything but rather they reasoned they only needed to throw fuel on the fires that were already burning. The same game with different languages is being played all around the western world and into the former Soviet Republics. Indeed, while Russia is busy trying to separate the former Republics from the EU, and most importantly NATO, they have had willing allies with many "patriots" here in the USA. Putin has exploited the fear of homosexuality in the former Republics and have had politicians and religious figures in the USA go to places like Hungary to stoke that fear -- they are being played like a fiddle by Putin.As much as Putin wishes to do to the west what he perceives was done to the USSR he need not do anything as we are fully capable of doing it to ourselves -- we already are.Brian

author: Fiveohfour
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 02:27:08 am
content: Quote from: cdev on December 05, 2018, 01:02:41 amI’m sorry but this is ridiculous. It’s word vomit and I can only assume the mention of 100 tangents does not foster conversation. You speak of things as if they’re universal truths. The word nationalist doesn’t have to mean only one thing or the same thing everywhere, but regardless in the places you mention, especially the US & UK, there is a large chunk of people calling themselves nationalists &/or white nationalists and a majority of their talking points and ideas are simply racist. Context is important.As for the whole “globalists” as mentioned in the US in the current political context, it’s again often largely rooted in ignorance and racism.I agree with some basic points you made, I disagree that they support any coherent argument as presented. If the evil globalists want the globe to succeed, let me know what planet you’re on that causes you to be concerned that doesn’t include your corner of it.Lastly, anyone who tells you to avoid the biased media but spends hours daily listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh or any other highly partisan talking head that makes “mainstream” news journalists look like heroes and bastions of morality. If you need the daily events filtered through an angry person on your “team” then you’re just a hypocrite and you have no problem with biased media, you have a problem with media that’s not tilted in the direction/to the extreme you want them to be.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: Fiveohfour
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 02:31:58 am
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on December 05, 2018, 01:45:09 amThe problem is so few are willing to realize they’ve had their own bias stroked and fueled and are unwilling to do as you just did and simply acknowledge that there’s foolishness on every side and if you’re not willing to recognize your own hypocrisy and aim to stop relying on hypocritical and fallacious arguments on a daily basis then you’re just the mirror image those you claim to hate.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 03:00:23 am
content: Anybody who knows me well knows that I am far from any of the things that people are attempting to divide us by calling others.The reason they are doing that is precisely because we have more in common than we are different, and everybody wants the same things.At the same time, I feel I am qualified to talk about the existence of a global class of people who consider themselves to be entitled to exploit others with dishonesty because I grew up dealing with people like that. I know the meaning of the word extrinsic fraud. Nothing is at it seems. It is the hallmark of the most extreme of lies.I know it when I see it. Ive paid a very high price for their lies to me. I know how they think. I know who they are, and I reject it.Everything we're told is backwards. We are the real globalists, because we are real and growing more connected, we are becoming a global family that wants outhers to do well, the old tricks are no longer working.We unlike them, are not thieves trying to take unfair advantage of everybody else who is not a member of our little club.And unfortunately, they ARE. Not only that, they are trying to turn society into a dysfunctional place where they can control others by denying everybody else even things that cost NOTHING. Like open source software. They hate us because we are free of the lust for money they have, and that means we are more CREATIVE. We have the potential to make more money than them. That freedom causes a creative EXPLOSION. And lots of positive economic activity. And we also know how to love and care about one another, something they lack. OUR WORLD IS NOT A ZERO SUM GAME.And they are scared so very scared that we no longer need THEM, and will soon transcend THEM, and their games, and they ARE executing a huge power grab right now in the form of the GATS and TISA and its ilk. Back room agreements to subvert all we care about and steal our country and our planets strengths. No wonder they hide all this.Look at the UK, not a single word in the UK media about the fact that if the UK has to re-enter the WTO by itself they will likely lose their NHS. Proof:https://www.allysonpollock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lancet_2002_Pollock_MarketForces.pdfandhttps://www.allysonpollock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Lancet_1999_Price_WTODomesticPolicies.pdfandhttps://www.ictsd.org/downloads/2008/08/savethechildren.pdfDo you think that is a little sin of omission? Its not.The 1995 deal was the first in a chain of them that are nullifying democracy. Behind the world's back.They are really shameless.We never gave them authority to do this, which is why they are lying so much in their attempt to hide it. Its not legitimate governance to try to steal and future proof- the unpredictable future. Thats just insanity. its guaranteed to back fire. Its the act of desperate people without a clue. Its already causes a huge financial disaster in 2008, nobody knows that because the media never told us about GATS or the fact that it was why they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. Its also behind the privatization of everything. Its especially evil to try to privatize higher education and water and health care behind peoples backs. But thats what they are doing, all of them. Thats the one thing the politicians agree on. That and hiding this. And it stinks.https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/public-citizen-comments-on-international-services-agreement.pdfhttp://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/sites/thecornerhouse.org.uk/files/23gats.pdfhttp://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/GATS_BC2001.htmlWhen you are doing something that huge, something so very outragous and wrong that most people told about it immediately think its a conspiracy theory, you damn well need a way to hide it and you need a lot of coordination.I am sorry, but all of this can be proven conclusively in 15 minutes if one knows where to look.Its a a matter of public record in fact, that cant be denied, one that shows the lie to 3/4 of what we see on TV.And its a huge thing. one that explains every last piece of bullshit we're being fed, conclusively. The information vacuum its causing as corrupt politicians try to hide it is also incredibly dangerous because God knows that covering up its ill effects is going to be responded to by scapegoating lots of innocent people.Look at what it tries to do to immigrants for example, Migration should not be turned into an excluse for near slavery. But thats what they are trying to do to it. So, the people who are accusing their critics of racism and nationalism are in fact doing what they are doing to create a huge global disempowerment of workers - replacing honest hard working people all around the world with people so desperate for their entitlement ' that they will literally work for almost nothing for years. And the ruling class is falling over backwards to do it despite the fact that it literally stabs almost everybody else in the back to do it. Why? Because cheap labor like that (in this case its called "Mode Four") is an incredibly powerful corrupter of mankind. Such was the case with slavery. Who was hurt the most? Everybody who worked - not just the slaves, everybody. It ended in time for the industrial revolution and now they effectively want to bring it back.Quote from: Fiveohfour on December 05, 2018, 02:27:08 amNations are SUPPOSED to be protecting PEOPLE from the excesses of CORPORATIONS but they are not, they are *captured* states now.So of course the representatives of thatcaptured statethe slicker than slick global con artists - the best ones in all human history at that, performing the largest theft ever, the second enclosure of the whole planet, before we realize its OURS,are going to be PREPARED, are going to be world class pros at shouting down all the possible objections except the truthful one that its a huge con game.But one thing you will realize as you read all their scholarly papers, they are doing their utmost to keep the regular people of the world in the dark. You can see this in the little disclaimers where they ask readers to keep disclosures confidential. because whats being done is effectively a class war.By the way its not right wing neoliberalism that should be credited for all the advances in public health and standrds of living over the last two hundred years. Nor is it 'capitalism' (or communism) Its SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY that gave us those gifts. Precisely the things that they are now trying to lock up in a box and make the exclusive property of the wealthy. How? GATS and its progeny virtually outlaw helping people. It outlaws all the good things that governments are expected to do, almost without exception. It outlaws real democracy. Everybody who knows about these changes will tell you this. Want to read about it, look up thetrilemmaof global economic integration or of globalism. Dani Rodrik, Harvard economist (and excellent writer, if you read his work) is identified with it but it actually goes back much farther.the problem is when we go to globalism, we by definition lose democracy or we lose representation for people and people ultimately lose because we are not represented, our money is. And if we dont have a lot of it under this new world order they are rigging the system to create, we and our expectations and dreams just don't exist.Read the link at my post about the law and economics movement. You'll see whats being done. Its unacceptable for a world where jobs are in danger of going away unless we renew our commitment to especially public higher education. Even though the bar to employment is rising, the tools are at our fingertips to improve access to education (Blocked by GATS: Seehttp://www.jceps.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/02-2-02.pdfandhttp://www.eua.be/Libraries/higher-education/GATS_en.pdf) and health care (Blocked also seehttps://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.405.5725) Also it threatens Social Security in the US Seehttps://www.citizen.org/documents/GATS-financial-dereg.pdfandhttps://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/20/a_plan_only_banksters_will_love)What are they so afraid of? Our all growing up and making the future world into a place where we all participate in determining our future.This is an awesome shift, and we can do it. Again, this is what terrifies the elites. Who have always had access to everything that is now possible for us to share.Because their dirty secret is they don't work that hard, most of them had their wealth literally deposited in their laps. The world is not a meritocracy, its increasingly a kleptocracy. Because they are so dishonest.Higher Social Class Predicts Unethical Behavior - PNAShttp://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/11/4086.full.pdfWho I grew up with, or at least spent my summers with for a good chunk of my life. But I am not one of them.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 03:19:48 am
content: Quote from: Fiveohfour on December 05, 2018, 02:31:58 amThe problem with the left here in the USA and I suspect elsewhere in the western world is that the right is so easy to point a finger at -- they make it so easy. So, with the obvious and thinly veiled racism that the Republican party has engaged in since at least the Civil Rights Movement, which served as a most effective recruitment tool for the disaffected Dems in the deep south that lamented that there party were going beyond lip service to blacks, and in frequent periods since then (Willy Horton, etc) have provided the Dems with ready made distractions. The left can be quite arrogant with there lofty attitude of themselves and quite myopic about there own misdeeds and biases.On the economic issues we've been talking about, the last 26 years has seen quite the inversion of position on things like labor and trade. BC (Before Clinton) the Democratic party were at least occasional protectors of the working class and throughout the 80's and into the 90's the Dems thwarted the efforts of the right, and the big money that fueled them, to promote the trade deals that have since decimated the working class, particularly the lower half of the working class. But, when Bill Clinton came along and launched a journey for the Democratic party, a journey away from labor and towards Wall Street, the Banking industry, and Silicon Valley, and now 26 years later the party is entirely made up of whores for SV and other big money types. He threw the working class under the bus and now the DNC works to make sure that only those 'with the program' can get a shot at national office. I had been a lifelong Democrat until 1992 -- Bill Clinton ended my affiliation with the Democratic party.It is odd to think that the Democratic party today is about where Reagan was in the 80's and perhaps even to the right of him -- the Republican's, OTH, have moved so far to the right that Reagan, for all the praise heaped upon him by the right, wouldn't have a chance in the red party today. In fact, we've seen a kind of push-pull relationship between the parties over the last 30 years or so -- the left is pulled right then the left pushes the right still further right. The end game here isn't pretty.Many of the higher paid folks on the left who are all fully behind sexual rights and other left leaning causes are nonetheless fully behind the trade and other economic policies of the last 40 years. When confronted by the impact this is having on many in the working class they either deny it or argue, the weakest of all arguments, that it was inevitable and therefore good. This group of technocrats, bureaucrats and manager types, working at the higher end of the working class spectrum and relatively comfortable, are fully invested in the idea that this is all to be expected and applauded as part of the meritocracy. They did good in school or had other access to success and feel entitled to label those being screwed as deserving of it. In my mind they are no better than the leisure class that similarly looks down upon the unwashed majority.Brian

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 04:02:05 am
content: I've got news for you, at the top, they both are faking it.Its much worse than people think, at this point, we're living in a world thats completely different than the stuff we are being told is the reality.Even the so called good politicians are not able to do their jobs, more than the very minimal to claim they brought issues up - who dont even want to win because if they won, they know the GATS would need to be confronted, in order to do anything, and they lied so badly and would have to explain how they gave our future away, thats a serious problem.So in order to cover that up they are letting us walk into a huge trap. Thats going to cost us trillions of dollars in 'lost expected profits' to get out of in a number of areas. Again, (this happens like clockwork every ten years, and the amount keeps getting bigger)Not only this, its likely almost as bad or just as bad in dozens of other countries too, I suspect.We've really got a major problem here in getting back to truthfulness in government.

author: Fiveohfour
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 04:17:43 am
content: Quote from: cdev on December 05, 2018, 03:00:23 amI don’t pretend to know you or be able to assess your character or what you are/aren’t. Your points about corporations can however be made without suddenly shifting from doom & gloom to suggesting that effectively all racists have received a pardon & are falsely accused to “divide us”Folks who spend much of their time preaching divisive nonsense & decrying the Jewish controlling the world and blacks coming to take our women etc. can be called out & doing so doesn’t somehow discredit any valid points about the power of industry over nations.But if you cant have a focused discussion without invoking a word salad of literally every social/political/corporate conspiracy and how they’re all intertwined...you might well find you’ve done a fair bit of dividing and inadvertently had a limiting effect on the degree of engagement on the actual original topic.Just because largely anything goes here doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning forum etiquette and avoiding replies that are enough of a departure to warrant being their own post/topic can’t be helpful.Take that fwiw, I know I’m trying to escape reading and hearing that crap all day when I log on here, much less see it all in one reply.Take care

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 04:50:30 am
content: I was told by an old friend several years ago, who was one of the infamous people who worked for the tobacco industry (his name was mentioned in the secret tobacco papers) and he told me that a lot - not all, but a lot, of those online extremists are FAKE. And that huge amounts of money were being spent on them, their job is to confuse important issues. He pointed me to a landmark paper, in Science by Jose Halloy et al, on pheromone scented robotic cockroaches influencing real cockroaches. He said it had made a big splash in his industry.At the time I was a little bit skeptical, but now with what I have learned since then, I believe him. Look at how much is at stake. Did you read my links?Of course I am a bit biased, but bluntly, at this point, I think the argument I am making is a lot more compelling than one that takes everything that is happening now at face value.Especially look at how much the current system has invested in deceiving all of us.You want to talk about fascism. Recognize it. This is exactly how it works. I'm not joking with you.Read Hannah Arendt,The Origins of Totalitarianism<<Link to full book

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 05:12:47 am
content: Its really interesting to read the documents currently coming out of (leaked) the negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement.In the documents, the bracketed text is disputed, and you can read which countries want what.Lots of it concerns reciprocity, so a country may concede lots of important stuff in order to prevent their companies from being asked to do the same thing. However this creates a LOT of collateral damage when the income levels and goals of two countries are wildly divergent. You have to read these schedules to understand what I mean.You also need to know what the four modes of supply under GATS are and what the offers or reservations in them mean.let me try to compile some starting points here.http://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/documents/research/political_economy_of_trade_in_services_gats-tisa_2014_en.pdfhttp://bilaterals.org/?-services-34-Anyway, they are somewhere on bilaterals.org Also an older set are on wikileaks.One needs to keep in mind that these leaked documents are really old and it could have changed into literally anything by now. And these things are forever, so they are very bad. IMHO, they should be illegal as incompatible with democracy.FTAs make it so it conceivably governments could be so constrained they quite literally could not actually change anything important!FTAs could trade all your jobs away. Supposedly 'irreversible' financial deregulation which was put into place by GATS in 1998 (the reason the ACA and Dodd-Frank are being gutted) is particularly important because thieves in the form of global financial institutions that increasingly are more powerful than nations (one or two come to mind) could literally steal all peoples money, or their homes, and make it impossible to prosecute them or even audit them to find out what had happened. Any new regulations on them, well, if challenged in the WTO, they may have to be rolled back to their state in Feb 1998, or Jan 1995. Thats the rule, as it seems to be interpreted.Quote from: Rick Law on December 04, 2018, 09:04:47 pm

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 07:11:10 pm
content: Quote from: Domagoj T on December 03, 2018, 08:07:46 pmSamsung is Korean, and the supplier making the screens for them is Korean. It was that Korean supplier which sold the tech (...ok.... "allegedly" sold the tech) to the Chinese for a huge chunk of money. This has nothing to do with Samsung doing any sort of business with China as you say.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 07:36:51 pm
content: A search on the net revealed the following.Not related but the Samsung company appears to have recently come under fire for exposing large numbers of workers to cancer causing chemicals.This likely means there now is a need for compensation to be paid to them or their families/survivors as well as enhanced medical monitoring of others who were exposed.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 08:40:46 pm
content: Quote from: macboy on December 05, 2018, 07:11:10 pmAs I am reviewing the replies to this thread, I am back to the idea that one has to expect the technology you developed would in time be available by your competitors - be it self-developed by your competitor, or they got it by other nefarious means. You have to run faster than your competitor can catch up, then you are always safe.If technology leadership is a part of your strategy, it is not a good bet to just develop a "big" technology and try to live off the fruits of the large tech-gap that this new "big technology" created. On the other hand, it is a good bet to develop a good technology team - one that could roll out new amazing stuff one after the other. Each roll out doesn't have to be a "big-bang", but each has to be a remarkable improvement over prior and keep or widen the gap between you and your competition. In other words,it is not the technology but the technology team that is your strategic asset.Put on your office wall a photo of an atomic bomb explosion or some such, and remember that even something held as close to the vest by the USA as the top secret A-Bomb technology got stolen. Yeah, Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were convicted of espionage and executed, but the technology was out - it was no longer secret. That wall photo should help convince anyone from "fat city" (ie:executive suite) that we should not just invest in technology, but invest in the tech team. We need to always run faster than our competition.Knowledge is like heat, however good your insulation, heat still leaks out. May be Samsung planned with that in mind, may be not. As an outsider, I hope they did planned with that in mind.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 08:52:30 pm
content: A common line through this thread is "they", the oligarchs, the bankers, the CEOs .. are making these shortsighted decisions, only interested in the most money today. Equally guilty are those who purchase cheap products, only interested in today's savings.A similar thing happened in the US in the housing meltdown. Lots of anger against those evil bankers and stock manipulators. No acceptance of any part of the blame by those who withdrew every cent of "equity" from their home, or accepted a loan they had no ability to pay. Both sides of the equation were driven by the same thing - greed. The only difference is that one was wholesale, the other retail.

author: Domagoj T
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 09:05:25 pm
content: Quote from: macboy on December 05, 2018, 07:11:10 pmI guess I misunderstood. My apologies.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 09:07:24 pm
content: It depends on how reliable they are. I see no reason to pay an exorbitant price just for a brand name when theexact same productis available from another vendor for less. Historically I've tried to buy quality products and more often than not thats been a good strategy because a good manufacturer will stand behind their products, even when they have no legal obligation to under law, they try to live up to customer expectations of quality. But all that is changing as you pointed out.Given the importance of good governance the very worst 'product' we are asked to buy now is politicians misrepresentations,where we have absolutely no recourse if they lie.Quote from: CatalinaWOW on December 05, 2018, 08:52:30 pm

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 09:19:34 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on December 05, 2018, 08:40:46 pmObviously you need to stay ahead, and follow a policy of continuous innovation. I'm not clear why you think this is relevant in the current context, though. If the reports are accurate, Samsung's technology has reached competitors before Samsung themselves have had a chance to commercialise it, and reap the rewards. You can't move fast enough to stay ahead when that happens.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 09:30:51 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on December 05, 2018, 09:19:34 pmCurrent discussion reaffirmed my earlier thought - hence I wrote "As I am reviewing the replies to this thread, I am back to..."I was hoping that Samsung is/was placing as much a bet on their tech team than a technology.But, it was not a good writing practice to expect others to have read my mind a day or two ago... So, my fault in not doing a clarification better.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 09:32:44 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on December 05, 2018, 08:40:46 pmThe truest words in this thread. I specially like your last sentence, it is a remarkably compact wisdom nugget.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2018, 12:31:31 am
content: Quote from: cdev on December 05, 2018, 09:07:24 pmI see no reason to pay an exorbitant salary just for an engineer when theexact same serviceis available from another country for less.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 06, 2018, 04:13:47 am
content: Should we be putting costly screens around knowledge?Quote from: Rick Law on December 05, 2018, 08:40:46 pmThis is from 2001, 17 years ago.The General Agreement on Trade in Services: An Impact Assessment for Higher Education in the UKhttp://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.202.8320&rep=rep1&type=pdf