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.
Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
201–210 of 598 posts
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#202A 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…
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#203A 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…
But our willingness to never think about it comes from Vietnam’s irrelevance, not the system they practice
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's almost certainly final assembly, and plugged into the supply chain next door.
The other parts aren't all made in China. The displays are made in Japan and Korea.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is cheap labor the driving factor, though? I vaguely recall that the labor cost alone in China has not been the largest competitive advantage as the cost has been increasing steadily over years. Instead, it was the complete supply chain in China that out competes other countries. Bloomberg also reported an incident: Jobs wanted to change the cheap plastic screen to glass, and Foxconn was able to recruit more than 800…
> ...This is level of efficiency used to belong to the US. I doubt that.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to decrease inequality, it would make sense for people to be compensated for reducing inequality. This is what exactly what outsourcing is.
Outsourcing has dramatically increased inequality in the United States. Try again.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#207How 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.
Quoted post unavailable.
China is the one provoking people here.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#208I wonder how long it will be until Apple is running their own fabs, or at least diversifies away from heavily relying on TSMC. Has anyone seen news to this effect?
I think it's the last thing they would do themselves. Setting up and operating their own TSMC-level fabs would cost Apple: * tens of billions of dollars * at least 5 years of time * most of all: immense effort and focus that could be used elsewhere
They can easily afford 1/10th of that to build a fab that's ready in five years right here in the US if they wanted to. (Las Vegas is ideal, no natural disasters of any kind.)
Hell, they could write a check and buy Intel outright.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/12/report-apple-ceo-tim...
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#209Earlier 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…
95% of Vietnamese support capitalism: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/13/vietnam-... thus making it the most capitalist country in the world... Second in line is Bangladesh P.S. USA had a capitalism approval around 70% in the same survey.
Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
#210A 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…
Is cheap labor the driving factor, though? I vaguely recall that the labor cost alone in China has not been the largest competitive advantage as the cost has been increasing steadily over years. Instead, it was the complete supply chain in China that out competes other countries. Bloomberg also reported an incident: Jobs wanted to change the cheap plastic screen to glass, and Foxconn was able to recruit more than 800…
> Foxconn was able to recruit more than 8000 workers overnight...This level of efficiency used to belong to the US.
is that efficiency or just control/desperation of workers?
i'm not sure i'd like to see that come to the u.s...