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Japan to fund firms to shift production out of China

bloomberg.com

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

#381

Post by nn3 »

arkades wrote: post #366
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…

No, it won't. Speaking as someone who is currently spending his days sourcing medical equipment for his medical center: the cheapest US-based face shield costs nearly 3x what the average face shield in China does (the most expensive US face shield is >10x). Even with shipping hiccoughs and the desire to buy American, I can't justify purchasing 1/3 the personal protective equipment.

In the current situation they probably don't have a lot of incentive to lower prices.

But the question is:

how much premium would you be willing to pay for a local supplier?

If the american company was "only" 50% more expensive, would it work out after the pandemic?

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

#382

Post by int_19h »

xamuel wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as it pains me, I think you might be right. Perhaps we're not ready yet. Then again, who's ready the first time they do something? This pandemic has made obvious a lot of places where our attempt at globalization doesn't work. I hope our societies will learn from it and do better next time.

How would it work if we got globalism "right"? What if instead of a virus, it was an asteroid which instantly destroyed all the factories in Country X, so there's no way for Country X to send supplies overseas even if they wanted to? If we want to be safe from events like that, we better not outsource any critical production to Country X. But if we don't outsource any critical production to any foreign countries, wha…

Doing globalism "right" requires that there are no borders at all, so it would be solved in exactly the same manner as if the factories and the supplies were in two different corners of Country X.

We are also not getting there anytime soon.

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

#383

Post by praeter »

cercatrova wrote: post #376
praeter wrote: post #364

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. 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?

I can't blame them, just like I can't blame a company for becoming a monopoly. We need to regulate them like we do with antitrust, worker's rights, and other things. The free market unabated is terrible for humanity.

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

#384

Post by dang »

tly_alex wrote: post #338
philliphaydon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, you get it when you show loyalty to ccp.

Stereotypes like this is just unbelievable in this days and in HN.

I understand the feeling. Unfortunately it's inevitable that stereotypes etc. end up on HN, simply because HN is millions of people. At any moment, some population sample is getting activated by something that appears here and someone will get triggered into commenting. It's important not to generalize from posts like that to the entire community, because if you do it will feel like you're surrounded by enemies, when the opposite is true.

I sometimes find it helpful to replace "HN" with "large statistical distribution" in a sentence. It's usually true and makes things less dismaying.

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

#385

Post by int_19h »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #130
lotsofpulp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coordination (or cooperation) only works up to a point. If resources are truly scarce, then being selfish may be the only way to survive no matter what century you’re in.

If resources are truly scarce, then competition means most players won't survive - whatever resources they manage to hoard for themselves won't be enough for their needs. Cooperation means more will be saved. (A simple thought experiment: imagine there are 10 equally capable competitors, each needing 2 units of resources to survive, and there are only 10 available globally. Under cooperation, 5 competitors will need…

Under competition, one or two will survive by killing off the rest.

And from the perspective of the victors, it will be a better result, because winning guaranteed survival, whereas cooperation is essentially a lottery. So anybody who has a better chances to win a conflict than a lottery would choose conflict, if they are deciding solely on utilitarian rather than ethical grounds.

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

#386

Post by int_19h »

buboard wrote: post #243
TeMPOraL wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's interesting to me that you find this surprising or view it as bad behavior. It's not surprising in the sense that it fits the definition of a "nation state". It's surprising because one would think that in XXI century, people understood that global problems require global coordination; competition of selfish actors fails spectacularly in such cases.

Why then have nations?

There are places where even posing this question - at least if it clearly applies to the corresponding nation - is extremist speech. Nations, like all other corporations, are like organisms themselves. They might still act beneficial to their population, but never at the cost of their own survival.

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

#387

Post by int_19h »

magduf wrote: post #355
mantas wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who looks like most powerful country then?

Well it's pretty obvious that China is vying for the position, and the likeliest to achieve it.

In the long term, perhaps. But US is still dominant today, and that will not suddenly change next year - the gap is just too great.

Besides, China would need to grow its power a lot to even be able to fit the same tier that US does today. And if they can't or don't want to, then the end result is likely a more decentralized world. Not every era is "Pax ..." - there are long gaps in between the fall of the old empire and the rise of a new one.

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

#388

Post by matt_the_bass »

dang wrote: post #315

All: using HN for nationalistic flamewar is against the site rules. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . We ban accounts that break them, regardless of country, politics, or ideology and regardless of how wrong some other commenter is or you feel they are. HN is for curious conversation. The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't co…

Thank you.

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

#389

Post by aianus »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #260
remarkEon wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow. The rest of the world was acting with the (false) information that China, and the WHO, were putting out there - including that there was "no evidence of human-to-human" transmission. So perhaps when you say it's "not China's fault", this is technically true in the sense that it's the fault of the rest of us for taking what were obvious lies at face value.

At the end of January, it was obvious that it's a severely infectious disease. On 22th of January WHO agreed that there is evidence of human-to-human transmission[0]. By the end of January, the virus was in Italy. By mid-February, it was clear it's going to be a problem for the West. By the end of February, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain and access to a spreadsheet that this is going to be a devastating g…

WHO claimed throughout that border restrictions were useless yet 80% of coronavirus cases in Canada on March 14th were directly connected to international travel. That's a whole incubation period after you say it was obviously going to be a problem.

Every time the Canadian government was asked why they weren't doing anything more, they would reply that they were following all WHO recommendations and WHO says no border closures.

Of course, it's impossible to tell what would have happened if WHO had recommended border closures but since they didn't, it's all on them.

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

#390

Post by int_19h »

zepto wrote: post #103
wendyshu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have morals that aren't a function of geographic location, presumably.

Isn’t it clearly immoral to sacrifice the interests of the people who elected you to support another nation?

The morality argument here considers countries (defined as government + population) as actors, rather than governments. So the question is rather whether it's immoral for the people who elect a government to demand that it represents solely their interests to the point of sacrificing other people.
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