Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook • Hacker News Board

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#171

Post by SkyMarshal » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:44 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #161

killjoywashere wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The true story with China is that moving Western manufacturing to China raised the standard of living for literally hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. And thereby strengthened the hand of the CCP.

It's exactly the opposite. People who can afford a good education are harder to control.

No it isn't. People with nothing to lose and living in poverty while seeing their democratic neighbors prospering are harder to control. People with education, jobs, and families - something to lose - are easier to control. How many Tienanmen Squares has China had since Asian and Western democracies opened their markets and enriched China.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#172

Post by koheripbal » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

usrusr wrote: post #126

Sakos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most of those tough rules emerged well after the boom in Chinese manufacturing. It's not required for achieving what they did.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#173

Post by bigcat12345678 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

fiftyfifty wrote: post #129

mgraczyk wrote: post #19

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…

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 situa…

Opression is necessary to development. Looking back for the cruelest opressions done by some nations towards American Indian, Asian, African in the early and haydays of industrial revolution.

You are going to see opressions happening again and again in the future as well. It's just a natural process of society development.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#174

Post by dcolkitt » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #109

koheripbal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The true story with China is that moving Western manufacturing to China raised the standard of living for literally hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. And thereby strengthened the hand of the CCP.

Even if this is the case, do you honestly not think the tradeoff is worth it? Lifting a billion people out of crushing poverty seems worth it even if it came at the cost of giving a dictatorship stronger geopolitical influence.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#175

Post by wbsss4412 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

theonething wrote: post #128

wbsss4412 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not mostly capitalist.

A system with the property rights that exist in China is a long cry from any reasonable definition of capitalism.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#176

Post by reidjs » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

yrgulation wrote: post #104

dav_Oz wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is some substantial outsourcing of the army and intelligence services via private (military) contractors [0]. In a world of increasing PPP (Public-Private Partnerships) the line gets very blurry indeed. One interesting line of thought (I don't share personally (yet) but find compelling as a dystopian possibility) is that the dirty business of censoring/filtering is outsourced by private companies (i.e. Bi…

I dont want to sound like trump but even a broken clock is right twice a day. We have truly made a joke of ourselves.

That quote predates Trump.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#177

Post by siquick » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

chaosbutters314 wrote: post #48

AYBABTME wrote: post #26

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.

2 words: national security. as the world's police and adult, we have to be self sufficient in food, tech, defense, resources, etc

> As the world’s police and adult

I can’t tell if this is parody or not

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#178

Post by wbsss4412 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

atwood22 wrote: post #156

wbsss4412 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people who are extremely selective with regards to their outrage on each issue, though.

So? Most people's entire existence is predicated on unsustainable consumerism. There is literally too much to care about. If you require that people must care about all issues to care about any issue, then progress won't be made. Maybe that's your intention.

I don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point.

My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#179

Post by yrgulation » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:51 PM UTC

reidjs wrote: post #176

yrgulation wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont want to sound like trump but even a broken clock is right twice a day. We have truly made a joke of ourselves.

That quote predates Trump.

He’s abused it so often that people associate it with him.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#180

Post by atwood22 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:52 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #178

atwood22 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Most people's entire existence is predicated on unsustainable consumerism. There is literally too much to care about. If you require that people must care about all issues to care about any issue, then progress won't be made. Maybe that's your intention.

I don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point. My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.

The same type of argument can be made about any specific issue. For instance, labor rights is incredibly broad. I don't think it's a realistic requirement for someone to care about every possible labor-rights issue. It's fine if people want to be selective.