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?
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.
You implied that your business outlasts your former employer’s? Serve them right! What a shitty company. Losing trust is detrimental in business so their bankruptcy is only natural.
Regarding “lubrication”, many people including my parents believe that the right middle men (“cò” in Vietnamese) can speed up the process. They don’t have any basis to this thinking though. It’s like a secular form of Asian superstition. Regardless, I now have a habit of reading the nameplates of gov employees should “difficulty” arises.
It’s kinda expected that our immigration laws aren’t the best. Vietnam as a developing economy would expect to export our own labours abroad, rarely do we import labours.
Anyway, it’s nice to hear a story that contradicts what I find on /r/Vietnam subreddit. Let’s hope that the government continue to modernize and improve bureaucratic efficiency. And may the God of Wealth bless your business.
Funny story, when I wanted to learn how something works, I’d just… follow one of the middlemen. Learned how to use the UBNQ, repair televisions (one shop in Q5 is the best, the rest just buy from it), legalize documents, and many other things this way :D
It’s weird how it’s just some weird secular superstition too! There’s literally no difference between what they do and the obvious thing (fill out the form and hand it in). Yet everyone pays them like they are priests performing rituals to win the favor of some Greek god. Who would be I guess… Bureaucratos?
Also /r/Vietnam can be a bit of a… cesspool of inequity. I mean ‘how do I commit crimes’ is a pretty common line of inquiry there. I try not to worry too much because those people won’t have a place in the future the rest of us are building :)