The type of work described in the article has a reputation of low pay per hour and being undesirable.
> TSMC will have to change to an eight-hour work day five days a week.”
Is this US society breaking down and American people being “ungovernable”? Or is it people being able to negotiate reasonable pay to working conditions ratios?
These are people who want that job to exist, but are unwilling to work for the pay and conditions necessary for that job to exist.
Does you definition of free market come from the "you'll work as much as I need you to if you want to eat" camp or the "if you want me to work bad enough, you'll pay me what I ask and negotiate the hours I am willing to work for you" camp?
Two things can be true though and may not be related.
I don't really see it as a hit piece, all sides here sound reasonable. It will be interesting to see what the end solution is. I think that the author would have shown a strong opinion on how to resolve it if it was a hit piece.
Their version of governable seems to mean compliant.
It's not inherently good or bad but it is a particular perspective that I can't see working well in some cultures.
Compliant does not mean accepting piss poor pay and poor work life balance.
Characterizing TSMC not being able to find sufficient people to accept their working conditions/pay as "US workers not being compliant" is a meaningless use of the word compliant in this context.
there is an underlying agreement...just because it isn't directly stated doesn't make them not real. Social contracts arise from cultural norms and very much are a thing.
The OP article, IMHO, smells a bit like misinformation. There are interests (especially in the US) which want to see a never-ending stream outsourcing to "low-cost centers". Stuff like the article provides fodder for that point of view by painting a false picture that americans can't measure up.
Interesting word choice.
Supposedly, the word "ungovernable" was used by anticolonialist/anti-imperialist factions in the '70s to describe a deliberate strategy of breaking down the "peace, order, and good government" that their imperialist counterparts offered as justification for their existence. Closely related is "no justice, no peace". However, this attribution of "ungovernable" to left-actors came to me via a right-source, so I'm not completely sure about it. If true, however, then I think you're implicitly reaching back to that era, to conjure images of South Africa and Uganda. I think the recent coinage of "Brazilianization" has a similar goal. Anyway, I would be very interested if anyone could help trace this sense of "ungovernable" to its source.
Some possible leads:
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-p... and its sources, particularly
[2] King, Anthony, ‘Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, XXIII (1975), 284–96. ;
and
[3] https://ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Soc924-2011/Offe%20--%20Ungover...
and its sources, particularly
[4] Fluno, Robert Y. (1971), “The Floundering Leviathan: Pluralism in an Age of Ungover- nability.” In: Political Research Quarterly, 24/3: 560-566.
These are all "establishment" sources though; there are no real Left sources so far -- though [3] does say,
> Ungovernability is a peculiar concept. It has been used both by academic political sociologists and by journalists and politicians; it has played a role in New Left as well as neo-conservative discourses.
so I think it should be possible to see where it went (and came from) on the Left.
EDIT: I now also find these:
[5] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/become-ungovernable
[6] https://dailypost.ng/2021/01/22/us-were-ungovernable-protest...
Who knows what the latter source is though.
[7] https://itsgoingdown.org/16-things-you-can-do-to-be-ungovern...
EDIT: Yeah, I think it's real.