The West lives in the dark ages for e-commerce as far as Bangaloreans are concerned. Commerce in India is getting digitised at a furious pace. Even a vegetable vendor uses digitised payment.
The Mumbai 'Dabbawallas' runs the most productive courier business on the planet - a 100% analogue system about 75 years old. Try 'A2B' restaurant for a meal with 25 of your relatives. Your orders will arrive in time exactly as ordered even with several changes.
Using business models taught in B-schools in the West to analyse commerce in India could be highly misleading. e.g. The measure for unemployment in India suffers from severe distortion. I recently tried to hire a an experienced real estate salesperson for our apartment project in Ahmedabad. I was ready to pay 25% above market rate with 2% commission - got 1 response from a 65 year old retiree.
The new 4th generation e-commerce business models are unknown to the West, but they can learn from the start-ups in Bangalore.
Im not entirely sure how anything you said in incompatible with what I said u less you’re claiming that Indian workers on average are more productive , which is demonstrably untrue across the vast majority of sectors. There are certainly excellently run businesses in India but I’m not sure the “India has a bunch of great delivery services” is part of this debate since that’s mostly a function of population density and low labor costs.
"I don’t have reason to believe the workers’ IQ or education level would be relevant if they were given the most basic training, or if they had ever had jobs before where they were given the most basic training."
I doubt this is the case in India, but people tend to overestimate the effectiveness of training on a low enough IQ. Take Scott Alexander's report on his experience in Haiti:
"It has proven hard for me to appreciate exactly how confused the Haitians are about some things. Gail, our program director, explained that she has a lot of trouble with her Haitian office staff because they don't understand the concept of sorting numerically. Not just "they don't want to do it" or "it never occurred to them", but after months and months of attempted explanation they don't understand that sorting alphabetically or numerically is even a thing. Not only has this messed up her office work, but it makes dealing with the Haitian bureaucracy - harrowing at the best of times - positively unbearable.
Gail told the story of the time she asked a city office for some paperwork regarding Doctors Without Borders. The local official took out a drawer full of paperwork and looked through every single paper individually to see if it was the one she wanted. Then he started looking for the next drawer. After five hours, the official finally said that the paper wasn't in his office."
Interesting read as usual, Vaish! Similar problems of low individual agency and rigid seniority hierarchies also happen in Japan, but these problems are often mitigated there by a strong culture of perfectionism. When the skill levels or intelligence of Japanese workers are low, though, the results can be disastrous (e.g. the never-ending crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant).
Like Japan, do you think India has other cultural qualities that, if well-cultivated, could mitigate the problems you write about?
Geert Hofstede wrote a great deal about this kind of thing in his description of high Power-Distance countries. In plain English this is "collectivism," which trains you to stay in your lane, follow along, and don't stick your neck out:
https://tinyurl.com/bekeev2p "researchers secretly moved a chair to partially block aisles in Starbucks and observed how many people moved the chair (exerting the self over the environment) and how many people squeezed through without moving the chairs (fitting the self into the environment; Talhelm et al., 2018). People in China and Japan were much less likely than Americans to move the chair out of the way."
totally. but i would imagine the bigger impact of IQ is through lower quality institutions which in turn affects everything else, rather than individual productivity, given an occupation within their cognitive capacity.
Hmm by institutions I don’t mean educational institutions. I mean rule of law, independent judiciary and central bank etc. and yes, that reflects median iq. That’s the Garett jones hive mind thesis.
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. It's pretty clear that median IQ impacts institutional quality and long term productivity. I'm not sure what you disagree with but happy to engage if you clarify.
I think you’re onto something with regards to how caste destroys agency and acquisition of competency. I wonder if there’s another angle; what’s the point for a worker (or a manager) being more competent, if ultimately promotions only flow to the boss’s nephew? In other words, nepotism.
Perhaps Vaishnav is not exposed to businesses for domestic and commercial chores in India. It's the most advanced and productive on the planet.
If you want a cleaner in Bangalore who is trained and well-equipped, please try-https://www.nobroker.in/cleaning-services-in-bangalore
https://www.urbancompany.com/bangalore-professional-home-cleaning
Want your blood test and other tests, try https://www.orangehealth.in/lab-test-bangalore
The West lives in the dark ages for e-commerce as far as Bangaloreans are concerned. Commerce in India is getting digitised at a furious pace. Even a vegetable vendor uses digitised payment.
The Mumbai 'Dabbawallas' runs the most productive courier business on the planet - a 100% analogue system about 75 years old. Try 'A2B' restaurant for a meal with 25 of your relatives. Your orders will arrive in time exactly as ordered even with several changes.
Using business models taught in B-schools in the West to analyse commerce in India could be highly misleading. e.g. The measure for unemployment in India suffers from severe distortion. I recently tried to hire a an experienced real estate salesperson for our apartment project in Ahmedabad. I was ready to pay 25% above market rate with 2% commission - got 1 response from a 65 year old retiree.
The new 4th generation e-commerce business models are unknown to the West, but they can learn from the start-ups in Bangalore.
Im not entirely sure how anything you said in incompatible with what I said u less you’re claiming that Indian workers on average are more productive , which is demonstrably untrue across the vast majority of sectors. There are certainly excellently run businesses in India but I’m not sure the “India has a bunch of great delivery services” is part of this debate since that’s mostly a function of population density and low labor costs.
"I don’t have reason to believe the workers’ IQ or education level would be relevant if they were given the most basic training, or if they had ever had jobs before where they were given the most basic training."
I doubt this is the case in India, but people tend to overestimate the effectiveness of training on a low enough IQ. Take Scott Alexander's report on his experience in Haiti:
"It has proven hard for me to appreciate exactly how confused the Haitians are about some things. Gail, our program director, explained that she has a lot of trouble with her Haitian office staff because they don't understand the concept of sorting numerically. Not just "they don't want to do it" or "it never occurred to them", but after months and months of attempted explanation they don't understand that sorting alphabetically or numerically is even a thing. Not only has this messed up her office work, but it makes dealing with the Haitian bureaucracy - harrowing at the best of times - positively unbearable.
Gail told the story of the time she asked a city office for some paperwork regarding Doctors Without Borders. The local official took out a drawer full of paperwork and looked through every single paper individually to see if it was the one she wanted. Then he started looking for the next drawer. After five hours, the official finally said that the paper wasn't in his office."
My impression is that India has alot of concern for ritual purity, presumably developed at some point due to actual concern about disease and filth by social reformers - and yet that this ritual purity seems remarkably uncoupled from concern about actual filth. Roughly 100 yrs ago, Gandhi was driven mad by the sight of one of the holy temples in Hinduism being covered in filth. If this 2017 article is any Indication, this hasn't changed at all: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/cleanliness-isnt-next-to-godliness-from-temples-to-upscale-neighbourhoods-indians-show-extraordinary-tolerance-to-filth/?source=app&frmapp=yes
Interesting read as usual, Vaish! Similar problems of low individual agency and rigid seniority hierarchies also happen in Japan, but these problems are often mitigated there by a strong culture of perfectionism. When the skill levels or intelligence of Japanese workers are low, though, the results can be disastrous (e.g. the never-ending crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plant).
Like Japan, do you think India has other cultural qualities that, if well-cultivated, could mitigate the problems you write about?
Geert Hofstede wrote a great deal about this kind of thing in his description of high Power-Distance countries. In plain English this is "collectivism," which trains you to stay in your lane, follow along, and don't stick your neck out:
https://tinyurl.com/bekeev2p "researchers secretly moved a chair to partially block aisles in Starbucks and observed how many people moved the chair (exerting the self over the environment) and how many people squeezed through without moving the chairs (fitting the self into the environment; Talhelm et al., 2018). People in China and Japan were much less likely than Americans to move the chair out of the way."
totally. but i would imagine the bigger impact of IQ is through lower quality institutions which in turn affects everything else, rather than individual productivity, given an occupation within their cognitive capacity.
Hmm by institutions I don’t mean educational institutions. I mean rule of law, independent judiciary and central bank etc. and yes, that reflects median iq. That’s the Garett jones hive mind thesis.
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with. It's pretty clear that median IQ impacts institutional quality and long term productivity. I'm not sure what you disagree with but happy to engage if you clarify.
I think you’re onto something with regards to how caste destroys agency and acquisition of competency. I wonder if there’s another angle; what’s the point for a worker (or a manager) being more competent, if ultimately promotions only flow to the boss’s nephew? In other words, nepotism.