I though we were going to move all those tech factories back home? I mean, we are literally paying for it, at least our taxes are.
Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
121–130 of 598 posts
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#122At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even governments. If a real war starts we can use the services industry, unless we outsource that too. We’ll send the lawyers and software engineers in, and power our cardboard tanks with wood and steam. I was hoping the pandemic and the war in europe would teach us that electronics, particularly high end, should be relocated to allied countries at the very lea…
We've already been increasing dependence on PMCs, as the Romans did with mercenaries, in our last big war:
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are indeed. It is quite clear, however, that most analyses of their economic successes don’t add that nuance and come to the predetermined conclusion that I outlined above: the success is due completely to adopting western capitalism, and the negatives are due to the elements that don’t fit that mold.
It's fairly clear which policies have contributed to their economic rise.
Shift to markets, stringent capital controls, consolidation of massive state owned enterprises, encouragement of joint ventures between Chinese companies, western companies, and the government, lack of stringent IP laws/rights.
Some of the above is “capitalistic” and some of it is not. Commentators have been predicting China would continue to shift towards becoming more capitalist or fail for decades and they’ve been continuously proven wrong. China has developed a completely different model of development from the western consensus, but people still want to have their cake and eat it too.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#124How is no one mentioning that China is threatening Taiwan. If the US ends up in a war with China, suddenly most Apple products would have serious operations problems if not being shut off completely. Cheap labor isn't a bad reason, but this is also a hedge against the heating politics between the West and both Russia and China.
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They have been threatening the island by flying military aircraft across the Taiwan air defense almost daily for the past year and have now surrounded the island and fired missiles over the island in a show of intimidation. What definition of "threatening" are you using?
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#125A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…
There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. They claim to be championing labor rights, but they are often just angered at companies for stopping all manufacturing in the West. They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere. The obvious truth, and what literally all of these Vietnamese workers w…
I submitted a thoughtful analysis of this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32214320
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#126A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…
China was literally able to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty with all the manufacturing that was moved there. I think most people don't understand anything about economics. Vietnam absolutely wants and will benefit from an increasingly industrialized economy. edit: I'm seeing a number of comments pointing out how these are companies owned by Koreans. Which maybe isn't optimal, but the potential for…
No doubt about any of that, but China played a really tough game to become more than just a cheap workbench. All those forced joint ventures, and the immense discipline required to make those become more than just easy profit-share for some lucky ones who know the right people. They did a lot of things extremely well to get to where they are now. That won't be easy to replicate. Particularly when one of the partners knows that game so well. It could end as colonization 2.0.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a political move. Vietnamese manufacturing is cheaper than Chinese. Chinese labour has gotten expensive over time. EDIT: politics are definitely a welcome side effect, but not the main reason
Why would Apple decide to build in Vietnam after secretly committing $275B to advance Chinese manufacturing? Western political heat seems most logical.
Because the trade war happened and we just had two years of supply chain disruptions.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism is one of the biggest eradicators of poverty. 1B of people in China was lifted from poverty because of it. And once it's done with one poor country, it starts taking care of the others :)
The China duality: It seems that China is a capitalist country when people want to discuss their achievements, and a communist country when they want to discuss their faults.
It's (mostly) capitalist in terms of economy and communist in government/politics.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#129A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…
I think many of us would be more supportive of outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries if their government aligned more with Western ideals. The fact is many countries, like Vietnam, are still "developing" because they have authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their population to some extent keeping their labor cheap while stunting their economic potential.
We see the problems with this situation right now with Russia and China, whether it's buying oil from Russia or manufacturing in China, we've given these countries enormous amounts of power and influence by essentially funding their regimes. As we can see with the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan these regimes are not our friends or allies, even though we have allowed ourselves to become attached at the hip to them economically. As a western consumer I would much rather see my money either stay in country or go to a country that is a political ally and shares more western political and economic ideals.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re ignoring the entire dependence on the worldwide supply chain. That’s like Cook making a show of “manufacturing Mac Pros” in the US for Trump when only final assembly was done here. He did the same dog and pony show in Great Brittain.
Well thats the issue. The whole suite of dependencies needs to be moved back, except where impossible - i.e. minerals etc. Having moved all of this outside the free world we slowed down progress in our own countries. Imagine being forced to come up with cheaper alternatives at home where we’d be with robotics, automation and space mining today. Instead we finance countries that seek to challenge us.
What good does it do to move all of the dependencies except for the most important foundational dependencies?