Live data from Hacker News

Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

asia.nikkei.com

211–220 of 598 posts

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#211
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…

How long before Vietnam pulls a move from China's playbook where they start to manufacture things based on the plans foreign companies brought them and sell the product under Vietnamese company brands?

I actually do not see much wrong about it. The area has been virtually raped by the West at one point. This is at least some compensation

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It would be helpful to characterize them as "democratic" ideals - not "western" ideals. There is nothing intrinsically "western" about human rights. In fact, calling them "western" ideas is exactly how autocracies belittle them to their people.

I agree, the term "Western Ideals" doesn't quite fit but it does go beyond democratic ideals which is why I didn't use that term. There are other aspects like a free market economy that extend way beyond a democratically elected government. I'm certainly open to a new term to describe it.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#213
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…

How long before Vietnam pulls a move from China's playbook where they start to manufacture things based on the plans foreign companies brought them and sell the product under Vietnamese company brands?

they already did. VinFast

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but unwilling to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those same customer HUGE "citation needed" here. Apple did a study years ago (when Obama was President) and the cost to manufacture iPhones in the US was well under 10% of the total cost, by their own calculations. The cost of labor in China has only gotten worse since then (hence the move to Vietnam in the OP).

> years ago No longer the case obviously but more importantly, Apple studied themselves and found they were only saving 10% in costs? This makes no sense lol

10% is many billions every three months. I don't think it's wise or ethical to manufacture in countries that have human rights violations but there's nothing ethical about a corporation.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#215

I'm interested to know to what extent this is just assembly of parts imported from China, or whether the real control over things like the M1 chip assembly, secure element, logic board, etc. are also moved to Vietnam? Seems like that's the secret sauce / real proprietary stuff that tells you whether the high value is moving too. (or maybe that is not even in China either) And do they have the surrounding parts + engi…

https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Supp...

Ctrl+F 157 from PRC, other countries rarely break 30.

Vietnam has 21 suppliers, most of whom also has (likely primary) PRC operation.

>engineering ecosystems

One presumes still need PRC to to build things first and work out kinks - so far only matured manufacturing lines are shifting out of PRC.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't agree with this at all. We have plenty of modern examples that show this to not be the case: West Germany versus East Germany, South Korea versus North Korea, Taiwan versus China. In all these examples less oppressions results in a stronger economy and a higher standard of living for citizens.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#218
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they are poorer than people in Vietnam they can just go to Vietnam to work. That's not that much different than going to southern China to work. It is almost a common market.

Imagine telling poor Americans to just move to Guatemala to do poor people work since it’s not that different and you’ll realize how insane that sounds.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#219
post #60

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…

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.

They won the war. Just took Americans awhile to accept that.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is literally ahistorical. The overwhelming majority of consequential protests/rebellions/revolutions were heavily endorsed by the literati class. Why do you think freedom of speech and expanding education are classically liberal claims?

You can see it right now in Putin's Russia. Opposition to the regime, to the extent that it exists, does not come from the proles.

Post reply on HN