Comments on: Centennial of the House of Representatives

By: kaptan

kaptan — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:58:41 +0000

100 years of desperate championing of elite interests. 100 years of pseudo-nationalism at the expense of the Filipino people.
100 years of outright marginalization of the Left.
100 years of landlord land reform.
100 years of fake political parties.
100 years of bludgeoned democracy.

By: cvj

cvj — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:41:33 +0000

Brianb, yeah we know the Internet is bullshit free.

By: ramrod

ramrod — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:56:19 +0000

Actually, technology has radically changed the sales profession, case in point is BrianB’s internet purchases. When I started out as a salesrep for Zuellig a long time ago, we divided the Philippines into several regional units, each unit was managed by a national sales manager, each unit or PD (pharmaceutical division) had several AM units (or area manager) who had several PD salesmen under him, all in all the salesforce was more than a thousand or so.
Several years after, the AM units were reduced to 1 KAM (keys accounts manager), a laptop, pos hand held, and ZEOS (fondly called Zuellig Eliminates Old Salesmen by the union), the system connects major hospitals and major customers directly to the warehouse (computer base of course). Now we are just talking about local operations here.
In our company now, the whole Philippine operations (in billions of Php) is run by 1 person alone (with a help from a call center). Of course, there is still a need for the company to have a face (person) and who will make the market analysis, political scenario, plant visits, etc.? Honestly, you have to be a salesman and a marketing man rolled into one, add IT literate to the list. And if you want career advancement in the regional level, you need to speak Mandarin or Cantonese, if you’re eying global career advancement you have to speak a European language (I’m still deciding between French or Finnish), my boss advises French.

By: Equalizer

Equalizer — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:43:33 +0000

GLORIA

Tandaan mo,

Ã¢â‚¬Å“ang batang swapang at sinungaling ay d tatangkad,uusli ang ngipin, at mananatiling unano!Ã¢â‚¬Â-Diosdado Macapagal

By: BrianB

BrianB — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:59:39 +0000

CVJ,

I use the Internet to purchase stuff. Saves me time and a lot of bullshit.

By: cvj

cvj — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:50:35 +0000

Brianb, the sales profession falls under the category of what Hardt and Negri calls affective labor, which is:

…labor that produces or manipulates affects such as a feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion…- Multitude, Hardt and Negri

Far from being a sign of backwardness, the rise of the sales profession is part of a general trend towards immaterial or biopolitical labor, i.e.,

…labor that creates not only material goods but also relationships and ultimately social life itself – Multitude, Hardt and Negri

…which is the new hegemonic form of labor. As Hardt and Negri explains…

When we claim that immaterial labor is tending toward the hegemonic position we are not saying that most of the workers in the world today are producing primarily immaterial goods. On the contrary, agricultural labor remains, as it has for centuries, dominant in quantitative terms, and industrial labor has not declined in terms of numbers globally. Immaterial labor constitutes a minority of global labor, and it is concentrated in some of the dominant regions of the globe. Our claim, rather, is that immaterial labor has become hegemonic in qualitative terms and has imposed a tendency on other forms of labor and society itself. Immaterial labor, in other words, is today in the same position that industrial labor was 150 years ago, when it accounted for only a small fraction of global production and was concentrated in a small part of the world but nonetheless exerted hegemony over all other forms of productio. Just as in that phase all forms of labor and society itself had to industrialize, today labor and society have to informationalize, become intelligent, become communicative, become affective – Multitude, Hardt and Negri

Salesmen (and -women), along with our nurses, call center agents, IT professionals and even lawyers are the future of labor.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:00:26 +0000

“the highest paid should be the salesmen”

CVJ, salesmen are a dying breed, naturally. That we have lots of salemen here, that there are more need for salesmen than any other worker is an indication of our backwardness.

By: vic

vic — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:19:27 +0000

rego,

you mentioned our charitable works among my townmates in North America and now it involves all townmates worldwide, thanks to internet.

ours involves mostly giving back to our town (see alimodian.net) mostly in infrastructure, like helping finance a barangay centre or chapel, and lately my townmates in Northeast and Western states started the project of supplying thousands of books and a Reading center in town and also distributing the books among barangays. Its been going since l986 and we also take pleads for donations among the townÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s civic citizen and raise funds for them, mostly by contributions from our town mates here that keeps growing with later arrivals.

But we are open to suggestion among town mates and even consider some from our LGU officials. And I believe we are making some impacts…

By: cvj

cvj — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:41:48 +0000

Brianb, i'm not so sure about bureaucrats being the highest paid. Well paid yes, but i believe that the highest paid should be the salesmen (on commission basis of course). In my experience within the Corporate world, i realized that a big corporation is actually a socialist cocoon, at least that part that is not exposed to the market. Believe me, if it were not for market pressures and corporate culture, corporate bureaucrats would behave exactly the same way as government bureacrats. Thanks for the clarification about slave mentality. It's just that i don't think it's indios vs whoever since indios are already among the bad guys.

By: BrianB

BrianB — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:07:07 +0000

“Also, your Ã¢â‚¬Å“free the indiosÃ¢â‚¬Â seems to be too broad and too narrow at the same time.”

CVJ, this is in line with my belief that Filipinos still think like slaves. A harsher word for “colonial mentality,” the inadequate cliche.