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US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

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Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#251

Post by yourapostasy »

unfunco wrote: post #135
jamesknelson wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if Swiss fine machinery is the best example here. What is it about the nature of Switzerland that makes it a more natural place to create fine machinery then anywhere else? Similarly, using American corn as an example of how free trade should work is pretty underhanded. There’s a ridiculous amount of subsidies there, and the US doesn’t have any qualms with dumping the resulting product on international m…

The nature of the place in the context of Swiss watches could mean the établissage system.

I had to look up that term [1], thanks for introducing me to it.

I'm still not sure how Switzerland the geographic place intrinsically leads to more efficient watch-making, as Shenzen and other Chinese factory cities make copious use of établissage in many different industries. Also, Apple's offshored Chinese manufacturing demonstrates that extremely high quality hardware manufacturing is not ethno-culturally-bound, and can be successfully transmitted through a corporate culture.

Ricardo's comparative economic advantage in Net age-birthed industries seems increasingly more hand-wavium the further away I get from intrinsically geographically-tied economic inputs like mineral resources, fresh water, salt water fish migration paths, or latitude-dependent agriculture, etc., and the further one transits away from historical network effects like Swiss watch-making, Silicon Valley software-writing, or Belgian diamond-polishing, etc.

The mathematical and empirical analyses of comparative advantage [2] [3], as well as great explanations about it [4], don't seem to address extremely complex goods with very high cognitive input factors, like semiconductors, industrial machinery, bio-pharma products, avionics, spacecraft, high-end electronics manufacturing, fracking, cloud services, search engines, e-commerce, etc., and I suspect comparative advantage breaks down as we evolve those and similar economic areas because ceteris paribus, there is no natural, lasting advantage one nation comparatively holds over another on human cognitive power (which I celebrate). In all those areas, there are leaders, but not so much and to such a comparative degree that they decisively elbow out other nations from economically attempting to enter those industries now or in the future.

The Sudan might be a cognitive desert right now compared to Palo Alto or Shenzen, but there is nothing structurally preventing them from turning into a powerhouse in the future (on a multi-generational timescale) to contend with, as say there is with them turning into the next corn-production hub like Iowa, or oil-producer like Saudi Arabia or the fracking Permian Basin.

[1] https://www.watch-wiki.net/index.php?title=Etablissage

[2] https://www.dartmouth.edu/~rstaiger/Bernhofen%20and%20Brown%...

[3] https://www.nber.org/papers/w17969

[4] https://www.pauldeng.com/teaching/intecon/IE_Fall2011_Lectur...

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#252

Post by rcxdude »

anjc wrote: post #91
colechristensen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This will benefit the likes of Amazon more than anyone else. A _huge_ chunk of Amazon is low effort Chinese clone / drop shipped crap or straight up forgery. I don't feel sorry for /r/entrepreneur denizens' loss. It will help the kind of small business with core competencies revolving around producing things and hurt the kind of small business with core competencies revolving around buying things on Alibaba and sell…

> People who actually wanted to do things well... You think intermediaries (e.g. dropshippers) can't add value to a supply chain? I don't know why you'd be so uncaring about /r/entrepreneurs when these are generally just people trying to get by as best they can. Having said that, this treaty withdrawal is still a good idea.

If they provide some level of stocking and quality control, they can. Dropshippers arbitrating between amazon and aliexpress don't really provide much of that.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#253

Post by eiaoa »

Spooky23 wrote: post #142
Tsubasachan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to remind everyone that Chinese economy became what it is today because European, American and Japanese companies invested trillions in China. It was a Republican president who kicked it all off. A policy decision of pure capitalism.

It was also a policy decision driven by necessity. Nixon didn’t go to China for the lulz, China was going down a bad path dangerous to the west and western business was hitting a wall in many ways as well.

> It was also a policy decision driven by necessity. Nixon didn’t go to China for the lulz, China was going down a bad path dangerous to the west and western business was hitting a wall in many ways as well.

My understanding is that Nixon went to China to create a another pressure point on the USSR. The Cultural Revolution was bad, but mostly for the Chinese.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#255

Post by sj3k »

moocowtruck wrote: post #217
jayd16 wrote: post #77

Do people in this thread realize the USPS is almost entirely self funded? I see a lot of talk about tax dollars etc. The USPS doesn't work that way.

i can tell you we're not self funded...thats such a ridiculous argument i hear all the time...ITS SO NOT TRUE HAHA i can do nothing but laugh when isee this crap. I've been here over 10 years lol nothing is self funded about this place

If I remember correctly USPS has some crazy requirement which demands the organization fund retirement plans for many decades out. I think without that requirement they might show a profit every year.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#256

Post by deelowe »

robbick wrote: post #209
jarfil wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not just subsidies, but also how trade routes have been optimized. China, the US and every other country, have non-symmetric mail dispatch systems, optimized for the China->wherever route, with mass dispatch from China branching out to everywhere else. The reverse wherever->China is how much shipments cost over non-optimized routes around the world. Stopping the subsidies won't stop the differences in volume a…

I'm sure I am missing something, but surely every container ship that leaves china with a huge pile of mail has to return again to collect more - can't they just take stuff with them?

Actually, I'm pretty sure there's a surplus of containers (as well as pallets and other such materials).

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#257

Post by colejohnson66 »

hkai wrote: post #245
robbick wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I am missing something, but surely every container ship that leaves china with a huge pile of mail has to return again to collect more - can't they just take stuff with them?

Packages are mostly airmail. Nobody will wait two months for the delivery of their cable they bought online.

Not true. Look at the growing popularity of sites like Wish

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#258

Post by mistermann »

eigenvector wrote: post #51

I used to use a US parcel forwarding service to shop online and have things forwarded to me in Canada. One of the services they offered was first shipping the US origin package to their warehouse in China (presumably via some kind of discounted or chartered freight service) then forwarding it on from there to the destination country via China Post. This could actually be cheaper than mailing something directly from t…

That this level of physical inefficiency is a sound business model well illustrates how unfair this shipping subsidy is.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#259

Post by OldJackHinson »

fzeroracer wrote: post #17
godzillabrennus wrote: post #2

A friend helped the Wall Street Journal expose the damage this treaty was doing to his small business in the United States as it tried to fend off counterfeiters. https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-subsidy-for-china-is-dumb-... Seems like a win for American innovation if you care about that thing. Seems like China is going to get hurt by this change which is bad for globalization if you are into that thing.

What about American innovation that relies on certain parts from China, such as the entire electronic industry which we operate in?

If I understand correctly, this applies to packages less than four pounds.

Re: US Announces Withdraw From Postal Treaty

#260

Post by jayd16 »

qqqwww wrote: post #99
jayd16 wrote: post #77

Do people in this thread realize the USPS is almost entirely self funded? I see a lot of talk about tax dollars etc. The USPS doesn't work that way.

If that is true, then American consumers subsidize Chinese shipping via higher costs of domestic shipping rather than through higher taxes.

Perhaps. However, that's not the same as taxes and its not a hidden cost like a tax. It's not factored into the price of US goods as US companies would use a private shipper if the this law significantly effected shipping costs.

At worst it hurts USPS revenue and increases the cost of first class mail as market forces can't compete for first class mail. My point is a lot of the comments are misleading about the scope of the costs involved here.

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