I’ve been trying to find a good Marxist instance, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear are widely hated. Why is that? Are there any good leftist instances?
I’ve been trying to find a good Marxist instance, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear are widely hated. Why is that? Are there any good leftist instances?
Growth potential. Relatively clear laws on immigration and foreign business. The language doesn’t leave me functionally illiterate (it uses Latin-ish characters). The lack of other immigrants, and general brain drain to Western economies gave me a competitive advantage. Maybe a standard rule of business is “don’t do what everyone else is doing”.
It was clear a lot of growth was about to happen, and anyone who could reach out and grab a bit of it would do well. Also: why sell tech where tech is common and everyone has it already?
Of course that was good on paper, but the first three years were a disaster. Tried working for a foreign company as an employee, got cheated badly, lost most of my assets, didn’t know what to do. The five year plan just came out about then, figured I’d RTFM. It encouraged me to start a tech company, and I am good at tech, so I put every dime in.
Next three years were a disaster too, lost everything. I got wiser though, and things improved after that. The rest is just reliably grinding out work for clients.
I find the quality of life here quite good overall. I used to cough blood in winter. None of that nonsense anymore! Health care is OK. Food and weather are nice, and my neighbors are decent. It’s very safe, by far the safest place I’ve ever lived. Interactions with government have been efficient and cordial. Air pollution and traffic are becoming a bit of a problem, but can’t have everything I guess.
Tools from China and reasonably priced local factories mean I have more access to advanced technology than I had in the West. By a lot! I can now access the means of production, and it’s pretty amazing!
Did they only pay you in “equity” instead of wages?
Also, how was your interaction with the government? Did you have to “lubricate” with your money to make things go faster?
No, they just outright didn’t pay me most months. My visa status depended on my employment, so there was not much I could immediately do. So I kept my head down, got paid as much as I could, and started my own company to decouple my employment from my visa status as soon as reasonably possible. The director openly mocked me for doing so, but I’m the one still in business.
It’s OK, we can talk frankly about bribes. Early on, I decided not to pay bribes. It’s been twelve years or so, no problems have arisen so far. All paperwork I’ve submitted has been processed within a reasonable amount of time, although I am quite good at bureaucracy. The one time it wasn’t due to a glitch (registering to receive Covid vaccination), I called my Party representative and she sorted it out within a day. They were really trying to get the vaccination numbers up, so it was not very difficult.
To provide some context, labor / immigration law compliance of foreign workers in Vietnam has typically been poor. So a lot of people say “oh, you have to pay bribes”, when what they are actually doing is trying to rationalize away the fact that they are breaking the law, e.g. driving without a license or working on a tourist visa, and then searching for someone to bribe to try and escape consequences.
I’m not going to claim that every government official is honest, but I do feel that we get a distorted view of the situation – these are mostly just people finding what they are looking for. Most of the stories I hear online are from the people paying bribes making themselves out to be a victim – “on the ground” what I see is people bragging about being above the law.
It’s gotten better in recent years though. More people are coming to Vietnam to work honestly than before, and they are more qualified. On our side of things, more government systems are becoming digitized and online. I’m hopeful that it will continue getting better.