Big Business and Big Corruption in Indonesia

   Some of the the biggest American brands are being boycotted in places like Jakarta Indonesia all because of the influence that one rich man holds who goes by the name of Syjamsul Nursalim. This business tycoon embezzled over $607 million U.S. dollars from his own bank, BDNI, during the financial crisis in Asia that happened in 1997 with the subsequent Jakarta riots. After channeling his cash to offshore accounts, BDNI customers made a run on their accounts. Nursalim then convinced the state bank to bail out his flailing business to the tune of over $2.5 billion. He was indicted and imprisoned in April 2001 by Indonesia’s Attorney General’s Office, but oddly Nursalim was granted medical leave to go to Japan for treatment shortly after. But since then he hasn't returned and its unclear why Indonesia's Attorney General's Office hasn't pursued him since. (maybe he tipped off the police.) Now Nursalim is free and filthy rich with a personal wealth of over $950million sitting comfortably in Singapore while 100 million Indonesians scrape by on $2 a day. The brands he owns under his primary company include brands like Starbucks, Burger King, and Zara among many other well known American brands. Jakarta has more malls than any other city in the world, and in order to compete, they need the big brands. While many latte-sipping Indonesians are unaware of Nursalim’s involvement, the green and white giant cannot plead the same ignorance. Insider sources gave info to Vice have also confirmed that Starbucks knew full well about Nursalim's underhand activities before they formed their highly profitable partnership. But not everyone is willing to support the relentless lining of Nursalim’s bulging pockets. Bambang Harymurti, CEO of one of Indonesia’s oldest news organisations, renowned upholder of the free press and qualified astronaut, is leading the charge. Bambang, who likes his coffee strong and tasty, continues to pass the truth about Nursalim (and other such cronies) onto his young generation of journalists in an attempt to make them more socially conscious. He, and many of his staff, now boycott Starbucks and the other brands of Nursalim to make an example of those Indonesians who have benefited while others have suffered.

McDonald's swindles employees!

    Basically tens and thousands of employees have found out they have been swindled by McDonald's, a company that serves billions and billions is being accused of stealing their worker's wages with various illegal practices. One of these practices is "off the clock" work which requires employees to pay  and clean their uniforms when it's the companies duty to take care of the costs of that themselves. Another employee was told to punch out shortly after arriving to work and being forced to wait around without pay until managers allowed his to punch in. Lawyers say McDonald’s franchisees use corporate computer programs to closely monitor the ratio of labor costs to revenues. When it exceeds a corporate-set target, managers allegedly tell workers arriving for their shifts to wait for up to an hour to clock in. Low wage fast-food workers often don't have a schedule to work with and cant get enough hours, so they have a second or third job. McDonald's practices this and other forms of wage theft that cause employees to lose an average of $2,600 per year. Around 25,000 McDonald's employees are named in just one of the California lawsuits, representing the totality of class action lawsuits. This drive to organize fast food workers began with relatively small NYC protest at a KFC in late 2012. In 2013 the December one-day strike saw fast food workers walk off the job in over 100 cities. A KFC employee explained that she can only get 15 hours a week at the KFC where she works and is paid $8 an hour. Previously, LeGrand worked at two separate KFC stores in order to piece together a 35-hour workweek. This clearly shows that the way the fast food industry has gone completely out of hand and is in need for change.

A world with driverless cars...

    In this article it says that driverless cars are going to be on the market surprisingly sometime soon. These autonomous cars are going to be safer and more reliable than traditional cars. This however doesn't come without a great price that the auto insurers and various other groups of people will have to pay.  In the future this will make companies like google and other manufactures very rich while car insurance companies who make their business off of accidents will most likely lose alot of their money. Health insurance companies will also be less in favor because the rate at which people will experience a car accident due to human error will be relatively lower. As said in the article by Chunka Mui "The immediate losers are the people who depend on accidents for their businesses." Governments would lose fines because cars would obey all traffic laws but police forces would need fewer officers on the road and prisons would need less capacity as drunk drivers kept their freedom. People will spend less money on auto repairs, the people who usually man the phones at insurance companies will be laid off, long-haul truck drivers will become obsolete because their services are un-needed. The amount of people this affects is staggering and the list keeps going on and on. Another interesting thing that is said by Mui in this article is that "This is different than outsourcing. We're not just talking about cost savings, it may come down to us choosing live and jobs. Not dollars and jobs, lives and jobs." The services that people provide for transportation will be obsolete because there is a computer at the convenience of the customer. As of now driverless cars are quite expensive and not readily available on the market yet but the price is quickly coming down as the scale goes up. This also brings into question whether technology will prevail in what we can do as humans...


"Driverless Cars are going to Kill Insurance companies", Jason Koebler, Feb 27th 2014. Vice.com