The project managers and admin staff hired at one of the medium sized companies I worked at were the dating pool for two of the three owners. Stripper hot. Every single one. Underqualified. Every single one. It's gone from secretary pools to middle management pools in the guise of gender equality. One of the owners offered to hook me up with one in exchange for helping him out.
On the flip side, though not often corporately, the US does the same, as do most countries. I love how China gets pointed fingers at constantly for espionage and the like when the rest of the world does the same damn thing. The main difference is govenment-backing of corporations, and the blatant corporate abuse of such things. China for Chinese, and similar nationalistic views aren't exactly shocking given the behavior of our nation, and others toward the Chinese, especially under our current administration. The nationalism and racism is on both sides. And given the scale of China, well, do the math.
Beyond this, the level of information published on the Chinese web is amazing -- I did product research for a Fortune company in the US and the Chinese research published freely put them ahead.
10x the startups. 10x the millionaires made. Every. Year. Everyone else is tiny and stagnant by comparison.
I think we forget that we're dealing with brilliant, exceptional people when we speak of these authors. Like many of their characters, they're far beyond the norm in human intellect and capability. These are by far my favorite quotes of Heinlein and yeah, show that he demanded personal accountability and liberty, and probably didn't like unexceptional people. He loved brilliant and independent people, and characters, and was an asshole to the rest, and to those who opposed his philosophies.
“An armed society is a polite society” is one that's floated often today among those pro-gun.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
I've encountered people that take these as him being a fascist, asshole or prick. Personally, I agree with him on both counts, and consider most people to be lack contributions to the human race for their lack of desire to learn and become competent, or for their inability to learn. If that makes someone an asshole, so be it.
That tends to be one cheap option to keep psychologically tied to the company.
I'm not for or against it, but I imagine being one of those workers it would suck.
Still, I'm all for automating as much as possible, and in the case of workforce reductions, gloating over the fact that things move so much more quickly and accurately.
I do like Elon Musks's attitude toward people wasting time. And this is head and shoulders above what goes on in China, India factory conditions. Not saying no one should whine and bitch and moan about it, but truly, it's not all that bad.