whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1. Overcoming the Conservation of Energy
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ithout anything to sell, there are no profits. Without profits a company doesn't need employees. Any large manufacturing company wishing to expand their operations must consider the availability...

2. Electricity Redux - Electricity Quotas Will Work About As Well As Race Quotas
(Analysis/Analysis)

...roducts. Some manufacturers didn't have the right political connections, didn't get quotas, had to stop manufacturing and retrench employees. Quotas lead to opportunities for corruption as i...

3. The Speculator: Pricing in the Future
(Analysis/Analysis)

... based to that of a services-based one started in the mid-1990s and seems to be bypassing broad-based industrial manufacturing altogether. When government demands more "beneficiation" of ou...

4. Exports and parliamentary laziness
(Analysis/Analysis)

...executives may safely weep and earn nothing but respect and admiration. One of these is at the opening of a new manufacturing plant. At a cost of R 1.2 billion, and taking two years to build, the ne...

5. Africa, China and Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ket for cheap textiles and other manufactures. Many African nations are watching, with distress, as their local manufacturing capacity collapses against the cheap imports. Earlier this year Zambians...

6. China, Toys And The Tragedy of Xenophobia
(Analysis/Analysis)

...nsformations in human history, shifting an astonishing 350 million people out of poverty. The fact that Chinese manufacturing is still very rudimentary, environmentally hazardous, and with poor safet...

7. Zimbabwe: the Hollow State
(Analysis/Analysis)

...dermines any investment into new capacity in Zimbabwe. The latter point is the most explosive. Zimbabwe's manufacturing was always less efficient that China's and was in trouble before. Res...

8. South Africa's two tiers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...different sets of rules for them? There is no incentive for any formal business to invest in infrastructure and manufacturing plants in townships if they are still taxed at the same rates, have to co...

9. When equality becomes unfair: South Africa's two economies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...unrealistically high labour conditions on the Mexican government in order to prevent cheap imports disrupting US manufacturing; then the US compounds it by preventing Mexican workers entering the US t...

10. Melamine, China, and the peril for emerging markets
(Analysis/Analysis)

...use emerging markets frequently only have competitive advantages in primary industries like agriculture or basic manufacturing. Instead of seeing developing nations as being further back along the dev...

11. Unions, the leverage of the highly skilled, and the future of work
(Analysis/Analysis)

... are lumped together as “white collar” workers.  Yet even that is an over-simplification. Pure manufacturing is no longer the core part of a large company; their brand is.  The ...