Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#371

Post by int_19h » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:08 AM UTC

credit_guy wrote: post #326

smacktoward wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist Norman Angell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell ) published a highly influential book, The Great Illusion , making this exact argument. In 1909. It has, let’s say, not aged gracefully.

It did quite well for its author though. It appears he got a Nobel Prize in 1933. Maybe he was pulling the illusion thing.

The book didn't argue that the war wouldn't happen, only that it would be economically disastrous for everybody involved, and thus to choose to go to war is foolishness, since everybody is strictly worse off than they were before - i.e. there are no absolute winners. Countries did go to war anyway, and, exactly as predicted, it was a disaster for all of them, proving the point.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#372

Post by nitwit005 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

pretendscholar wrote: post #113

lgleason wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was truly the case it would be cheaper to have manufacturing locally, vs shipping things across the world from China.

Its difficult because japan is not a resource region country. They don't want to reshore production because its costly to source all of the materials they need.

While this is true, it's become extremely cheap to move raw materials around these days. Shipping ore from Australia to China was at something like $8 a ton (I assume changed due to recent crisis).

I'd expect with Japan internal shipping costs may be a greater problem. They intentionally distributed their industries around the country.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#373

Post by lliamander » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:10 AM UTC

henearkr wrote: post #212

lliamander wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A global government would have led to a more uniform response, but arguably that's exactly what we don't want in a crisis like this. Each nation was able to react differently, and those different responses have provided us the closest thing we have to controlled experiments. Those experiments have allowed us to understand the spread of this disease better.

A global government could very well have planned this diversity. Just like hospitals organize different test groups.

Could have does not imply would have.

Neither the difficulty of planning at that scale, nor the failure modes of a centralized government entity, should be underestimated.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#374

Post by int_19h » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:11 AM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #306

jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

We have seen a lot of talk about a single point of failure but localizing the manufacturing isn't a pancaea by any means as they also shut down during pandemics. The only things immune are automated and unable to be contaminated. Also technically it is better for income inequality in global terms if it converges to a global median. That is why so many hate it because they are the ones with their ox gored by reduced i…

In this pandemic, we aren't shutting down things that are deemed essential - and any manufacturing facilities used in pandemic response would, of course, also be essential.

Whereas the current state of affairs is that China just stops exporting masks, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#375

Post by kyuudou » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:13 AM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #357

reaperducer wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if japan (or any other country) manages to pull production back within its boarders, wouldn't China still be more competitive due to cheaper labor/supply chain costs? Not everyone makes purchasing decisions based on price alone. My wife is into vintage things as a hobby. She says the demand for anything "made in USA" has gone through the roof in the last five years simply because people don't want to support Chi…

> China knows this, which is why it has factories in both the E.U. and the United States filled with Chinese laborers churning things out so they can be labeled "Made in {$anywhere_but_China}." Can you mention one major factory in the US with Chinese laborers?

Probably means Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines? Since less tariff and cheaper labor pool and especially in Vietnam, less individual rights.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#376

Post by cercatrova » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

praeter wrote: post #364

nybble41 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency It is efficiency, really, because it's making better use of an underutilized resource. Over time, of course, the price of labor evens out because the resource is no longer underutilized. > more a question of fairness If it's fairness you want, telling companies to hire locally isn't going to cut it. That's the opposite of fairness, really—you would be…

>> cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency > It is efficiency, really, because it's making better use of an underutilized resource. Over time, of course, the price of labor evens out because the resource is no longer underutilized. It's not efficiency at all, it's stagnation. Since the 80s instead of trying to innovate and automate production lines too many companies have been hopping from co…

Can you blame them? It was cheaper to outsource than automate, so why wouldn't they have outsourced?

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#377

Post by int_19h » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:19 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #267

guug wrote: post #39

Even if japan (or any other country) manages to pull production back within its boarders, wouldn't China still be more competitive due to cheaper labor/supply chain costs? IMO, the reason why companies outsourced their production to china still holds today. Companies pulling out will be at a competitive disadvantage against companies who don't.

Even if japan (or any other country) manages to pull production back within its boarders, wouldn't China still be more competitive due to cheaper labor/supply chain costs? Not everyone makes purchasing decisions based on price alone. My wife is into vintage things as a hobby. She says the demand for anything "made in USA" has gone through the roof in the last five years simply because people don't want to support Chi…

If those Chinese-staffed factories comply with US and EU laws, especially stuff like minimum wage, benefits, and environmental regulations, that's perfectly fine - they're competing on even ground with any other factory in the country.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#378

Post by int_19h » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

finolex1 wrote: post #367

_wldu wrote: post #83

The USA really needs to stop rewarding the quarterly profit driven stock market approach to management. It's the same thing that caused Boeing to build bad airplanes and the same thing that causes companies to build insecure software. We need to get back to engineers and architects (who actually know what they are doing) making decisions and building solid solutions and products. Companies can be reasonably profitabl…

Easy to say now. How many people would be willing (and able) to pay, say, 20% more for an iPhone?

If you rephrase that as, "pay 20% more for an iPhone, but your chances of dying in the next pandemic or war are reduced by an order of magnitude", it might prove more popular. Of course, that depends on how convincing you are... but the present events will provide a basis for those arguments for a long time to come.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#379

Post by hittaruki » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:22 AM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #361

nybble41 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency It is efficiency, really, because it's making better use of an underutilized resource. Over time, of course, the price of labor evens out because the resource is no longer underutilized. > more a question of fairness If it's fairness you want, telling companies to hire locally isn't going to cut it. That's the opposite of fairness, really—you would be…

> Over time, of course, the price of labor evens out because the resource is no longer underutilized. The price would have evened out if labor could cross borders as freely as the goods that it produces - then it would flow to areas where it's in high demand. But with borders and immigration controls and different laws (esp. environment and labor) in different jurisdictions, it's not really a free market. Instead, it…

> The price would have evened out if labor could cross borders as freely as the goods that it produces.

Not really, if that was the case for ex, everyone doing similar jobs would be getting paid the same in US or EU. I am not saying things dont get evened out to an extent, but people are harder to move than the goods they produce.

Re: Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

#380

Post by praeter » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 12:24 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #37

jennyyang wrote: post #4

At the very least, medical supplies and drugs manufacturing will get pulled back into each country. The 3M spat between Canada and the US makes it abundantly clear that in a time of true crisis, you can't even trust your closest friends when something terrifying happens to the world like this pandemic. Whether it means all manufacturing will move away from China or if it means that they will spread it globally, is an…

To be honest, I don't understand what efficiency gains this kind of globalization was supposed to bring anyways... A factory in China is just as efficient as a factory in Spain or USA. Obviously, cheaper workers work for less, but that's not exactly efficiency , (1) more a question of fairness, (2) can be done domestically (low-cost immigrant workers) and (3) there's plenty of cheap workers worldwide, not just in Chi…

> The only real advantage I can see is concentration of skill - e.g. people say that you basically have to develop electronics in Shenzhen, there's simply not enough talent in the US and EU - but I wonder if the efficiency gains are offset by innovation losses. Again, IMO it would be better to have a local high-skilled population of engineers & entrepreneurs.

That's exactly the argument that Tim Cook used a few years ago. He said that an iPhone not manufactured in China would cost 30k USD...before quickly moving manufacturing out of China. These arguments sound nice, but are lies. When offshoring first started the cheap labor pool was the only thing that mattered, and it still is.