Live data from Hacker News

Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

asia.nikkei.com

271–280 of 598 posts

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#271

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…

> They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere. it's true! we can't force anybody to use our labor. but we can control access to our markets. you don't have to be a union activist to recognize that exporting american manufacturing jobs has been disastrous for our domestic working class.

> you don't have to be a union activist to recognize that exporting american manufacturing jobs has been disastrous for our domestic working class

You do though. The reality is that "exporting" these jobs means cheaper products for everyone, and no one in what you call the "working class" wants these jobs to be in the US if it means they need to pay more for everything.

The US consistently manufactures more every year despite hiring fewer manufacturing workers because improved automation competes with US labor at lower costs.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are well on their way of climbing onto the next rung of the manufacturing ladder and manufacturing more complex items with higher margins that can absorb higher wages …and transitioning more to a service economy …no?

Not only is it "no", China is in a population loss spiral. It's estimated that their population will halve, from 1.4B to 700M, by 2050. Everything they've built is beginning to fail due to lack of new workers, and an excess of non-productive people. In a country where most people earn around $1000/year.

You’re saying the population of China is expected to halve in less than 30 years? Do you have a source for that?

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#273
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? That’s doesn’t follow. Plus when they won they went full Communist.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>middle income trap China is not a good example for the middle income trap. Middle income trap countries relied on cheap labors but could not move up in the value chain. China has moved up the value chain. They're the top or close to the top for many things including mobile phones, chip manufacturing (7nm), AI, software, 5G, electric car batteries, nuclear power, fusion research, quantum computers, etc. They also pub…

Yet, median income [0] and HDI [1] both at the macro level and at the prefecture level are comparable to Brazil [2][3] and lag behind both Russia [4][5] and Mexico [6][7]. There is no denying the amount of growth the service sector in China has seen, yet a lot of this growth and development is among a sliver of the population living in better developed regions such as the various coastal prefectures. Beijing, Tianjin…

>Yet, median income [0] and HDI [1] both at the macro level and at the prefecture level are comparable to Brazil [2][3] and lag behind both Russia [4][5] and Mexico [6][7].

This is the present. It does not mean China is a middle income trap nation. It continues to grow and advance in innovation.

Also, China's GDP PPP per capita has already surpassed Brazil. GDP PPP is a much better measure of stand of living than GDP/capita.

The biggest factor in whether a country stays in the middle income territory is innovation.

China is innovating. In some areas, it's already leading.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#275

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…

> At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even governments.

Funnily enough, this was how war functioned in Europe between 1500-1750s. Armies were too expensive to maintain, so states hired mercenaries. The problem was that mercenaries wouldn't have any incentive to risk themselves to end things quickly. And when you inevitably run out of money to pay them, in the best case they'd just pack up and leave. In the worst case, they'd loot your city on the way out.

Source: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691027647/ma...

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the Russia-Ukraine war broke out politics is now a primary driver. China has indicated that it is 100% going to retake Taiwan. Their threat is credible. There were indications it would be soon. War is a 'new reality' again and we can see the consequences of it. If you have geopolitical liabilities and you have 10 year strategic planning, then you calculate the odds of 'major conflict' the diversifying away from…

Your little rant seems to have missed that these companies are still owned by Foxxconn and Luxshare. And while Foxxconn may be Taiwanese both the company and the owner are on very very friendly terms with China, which is unlikely to change. The world didn't start with 2022 Ukraine(even the Ukraine conflict didn't magically begin in 2022), most of these conflicts started long before Ukraine. The Indian foreign ministe…

Thankfully your little ranty response doesn't change the thesis at all.

If a war broke out between Taiwan and China - Vietnamese operations would be able to continue irrespective of Foxxcon's ownership. Which is the whole point.

The Indian foreign minister's comments are irrelevant in this context, and he's foolish to not contemplate the gravity of the war in Ukraine which has rattled the entire world economy. Actually, not 'foolish' just greedy: he wants to support Putin buy buying cheap Oil, and needs Russia to not be too close to China.

India, politically, is turning into a vile place, which is sad because there's been so much hope for them. Maybe they'll come back.

Russia->Ukraine is an invasion of the 2cnd largest Army in the world, of a relatively modern (if corrupt), large nation in Europe, directly connected to the EU, that has geopolitical implications the world over, as we've seen. Russian Defence Minister has declared that 'The Soviet Unions is Back' and their intentions to expand the Russian Empire into other countries. They've been trying to disrupt NATO nations (i.e. Latvia) for some time, and of course have their eyes on the Georgia and the 'Stans'. That affects everyone.

There has not been a war affecting major powers in a very, long time. Iraq and Afghanistan (and are not) geopolitically very important. Neither was the Iran/Iraq war.

Those wars could happen while the world watched and tried to figure out 'what to do' i.e. 'intervene' or 'not take sides' etc. but those wars are not going to spill out into the world economy.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is existential, just like a war between China and Taiwan is a 'hugely significant war' that will rattle the global economy like nothing we've seen in decades.

It will involve the US likely directly meaning world's #1 and #2 forces, both nuclear and huge trading partners, and likely include Korea, Japan, Australia, maybe Canada as well. Possibly Europe.

The result could shift the world order in the same way that Russian/Ukrainian invasion is i.e. Asians will be forced to pick sides in the cold war: USA/Japan/Korea/Australia/Europe ... or be Chinese vassal. Or try to fanatically figure out an in-between path, which maybe only India has the power to do.

Those with foresight would have seen this impending reality 10 years ago (see: Kevin Rudd, former Australian PM leading the Asia Society in US) but only now it's become very evident. And FYI it's actually quite rare that we can predict a war so early on - only when you have a kind of foreign policy that's really consistent over time is this going to happen.

And so: big companies realign. Those who don't are likely to pay a price.

China's #1 foreign policy goal is to take Taiwan and they are going to use all of their resources to try to do it.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#277

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…

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…

as a Vietnamese, we just laugh when we read about those things, so out of touch with reality. It's very condescending as well, the logic is that developing countries are stupid so whatever deal they negotiate for themself must be at a disadvantage and bad for them. When I read criticism of China in Africa I could not help but asking myself, if these developed countries care so much why don't they invest in Africa so that Africa has choices other than China? The fact is China (and Vietnam mind you) are the very few countries willing to invest in Africa at their own risk. I would not be surprised if one day it's "communist Vietnam"'s turn to be the scapegoat.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#278

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…

>the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and safety than the agricultural work that they would be doing without economic development

Wait, I think people were much happier and we should go back to an agrarian society and that people are miserable in the dystopia we created, so I need a citation for this.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#279

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…

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 level of efficiency used to belong to the US. I really hope US can revolutionize its manufacturing for this century.

The US consistently increases its manufacturing output through improved automation. US workers are also significantly more productive than other countries', though US labor costs often cancel that advantage.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#280

Earlier 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…

> 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...

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN