131–140 of 598 posts
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The main criteria for Apple is how poor and abundant population is.
Not only how poor and abundant the population is. 'Money is the first thing. Morals follow on.' (based on B. Brecht) From Wikipedia: Democracy Index 2021: Vietnam 131 / China 148 (Norway 1 - best / Afghanistan 167 worst) Freedom In The World 2021: Vietnam 167 / China 184 (Finland 1 - best / Syria 194 - worst)
I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of sense.
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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…
But yes, I totally agree that you don't need to be 100% capitalist to benefit from having a market economy. Even the US's economy is ~15% public sector. Usually when multiple ideologies are competing, there's elements of truth all around.
A 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…
If anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be a problem for large countries like China. China needed those cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out of rural poverty. Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left behind. For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book Invisible China.
…and transitioning more to a service economy
…no?
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it was secret for years until The Information reported it. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/report-apple-ceo-tim...
Most businesses deals are secret by default. All my contracts have confidentiality clauses. The only reason to make a deal non-secret is PR.
Not true for investments in the hundreds of billions.
>The only reason to make a deal non-secret is PR.
This deal was kept secret for PR reasons.
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International trade dependency is one of the biggest deterrents to war and often helps countries become allies.
Ukraine’s #1 trading partner was Russia, and Russia’s #3 trading partner was Ukraine. I remember reading the same argument in the 90s, and it seemed to have a lot of merit. But, experience shows us that it’s not correct.
A 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…
How 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.
Also based on recent analysis many countries e.g. China, South Korea have increased exports to Russia including dual use technologies which are prohibited under recent sanctions. This combined with upcoming war games involving China and Russia shows clearly where their allegiances lie. So the risk of China being economically punished is not insignificant and Apple is very likely to be caught in the cross-fire if it d…
As for allegiances, China has none. Not with anybody. China has no moralistic or principal allies. It simply does what is best for China, and happily plays all sides all at once.
At 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…
International trade dependency is one of the biggest deterrents to war and often helps countries become allies.
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2 words: national security. as the world's police and adult, we have to be self sufficient in food, tech, defense, resources, etc
And good luck with that with China holding so much of our debt. Military leaders in the US for decades has been warning politicians that our debt is one of our biggest threats.