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The size of BYD's factory

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Re: The size of BYD's factory

#491
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we can motivate ourselves. But they're acting like we did in the 1800s through the mid 1900s. They just build anywhere no matter what. They have no interest in dealing with environmental concerns. The officially released pollution levels in China are mind-boggling and they still do not represent how bad it really is. You think US manufacturers wouldn't be delighted to just buy a few hundred acres land and s…

I’d argue that vested interests in oil and coal have done more to damage the US’s ability to invest like this than any regulatory red tape. Huge parts of America hate EVs. There is endless debate about nuclear vs clean energy vs coal, which prevents any change from happening.

>There is endless debate about nuclear vs clean energy vs coal, which prevents any change from happening.

Meanwhile coal has been on a clearly uneconomical trend for decades, and no amount of bitching by 60k coal miners can prevent that fact, no amount of crying about "woke" policy can prevent other fossil fuels from just being better than coal in every single way.

It's infuriating our country has been strangled by these morons.

They all cry about making America great again, oblivious to the fact that America thrives when it shovels public money into infrastructure like a bad habit. From gifting thousands of square miles of public land to bribe the railroads into building one of the best transportation networks for it's time (also why "america isn't dense enough" is utter horseshit. We connected the coasts before there was anyone living in most of the US), to the interstate which is still unparalleled, to the Postal Service way back in our infancy, to the homesteading project which ensured we have some of the most productive farmland in the world, to the highly educated workforce of the mid 1900s who did the electronics revolution which came about largely because the US navy wanted computers all the way back in WW2, and transistors largely exist so we could have ICBMs, to the millions of electronics experts just set free to build after the war...

America has ALWAYS profited from public investment into infrastructure, both physical and mental, but because a bunch of poorly educated (not a slight, an objective fact) people would rather get black lung like their pappys, we aren't allowed to have nice things.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#492
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use the bike lanes because most of the places I go don't have secure bike parking. I'm worried my bike will be stolen, and the local police don't take bike theft seriously. Some of the local dedicated bike trails have been essentially taken over as homeless camps, which are ironically full of stolen bike parts.

Your concern of theft is a dominent reason cited for not using bikes in wester countries. Interestingly, bike theft per capita is higher in bike paradise like NL and Copenhagen while ranking in the least concerns of those users.

That’s the x thing is higher in higher population areas problem. You have to calculate the probability of your bike being stolen if you have a bike. So not bike thefts per capita but bike thefts per bike owner.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#493
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. It's much easier to either launder or manufacture the goods in a third country, that benefits from most of the same incentives that made Chinese manufacturing go through the roof. Americans will be buying Chinese goods with "made in Vietnam" or "made in Mexico" stamped on it. The American profit will be in setting up those laundering schemes

If the Trump tariffs are based on country of final assembly, then yes, final assembly will just occur somewhere else, but it will take a couple of years to setup, and the inflation shock by that time will have done a lot of damage to the economy (recession likely, depression possible). It makes sense that it took Trump forever to find a treasury secretary willing to go along with this.

The last time he did tariffs against China, he put a tariff on raw materials but not stuff made with that raw material.

It was cheaper to build your excavator outside the country than pay the tariffs on importing the materials to build the excavator here.

It was an objective failure. It also resulted in very smartly targeted payback that caused serious financial distress to a bunch of blue collar American food producers who sell a lot to China because the American market is literally not big enough (my state sells millions of pounds of lobster to China, those lobstermen still vote for Trump).

This is because Trump is objectively a fucking moron, and if you tell him "No, your idea is wrong because you don't know what you are talking about", he gives you the same "You're fired" speech from his damn television show, replaces you with a sycophant, and then does the stupid thing.

Any prediction that starts with "Trump will do the Tariffs in the way that requires second order thinking" is doomed to failure.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#494
post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

75 years ago? If that's the closest precedent you can find, that kinda speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Can you name a single country that China has brought democracy to?

Now we're shifting topics. We're talking about invasions, not bringing democracy.

I also don't think that "bringing democracy" is a universal good, if you look at the US' exploits in the Middle East.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, but this wasn’t secret information Of course it was! All information about the true state of the west was censored and controlled. Today North Korea does the same thing for the same reason. "Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union "Due to the appearance of foreign radio stations broadcasting in Russian territory and thei…

> Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced Do you suppose Yeltsin didn't have access to the uncensored information before his visit? Or that Soviet spies who sent in hyper-accurate maps of US city infrastructure wouldn't be asked to report on the booming economic success of American retail?

Russian intelligence hiding bad news entirely from Russian leadership is a long standing tradition.

It's how we get three-day special operations in Ukraine.

Case in point: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-war-russia-genera...

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it has never invaded outside its traditional borders Your notion of "traditional borders" is where this becomes nonsense. With a little bit of revisionist history you can justify all sorts of invasions, such as the 1959 invasion of Tibet, or the desire to retake Taiwan. In reality, China is an empire, with several of its regions very unhappy to part of it (Tibet, Xinjiang, and probably more if you could only ask it…

Only empire which exists right now is the western empire lead by US, its days are numbered, then when the propaganda curtain falls, it will be a shock. I had people of Xinjiang as my class mates, they laugh at your propaganda.

What kind of propaganda? Because we do no find their propaganda funny.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#497
post #75

US/German manufacturers just do assembly, they don't manufacture parts, so they only need assembly plants. BYD is a vertically integrated manufacturer. They make everything in-house which helps drive down costs. This huge footprint results in having all those different manufacturing lines under one roof. They depend on no one for finished parts, the only supply chain is raw materials.

I believe outsourcing can be a symptom of not innovating anymore. Imagine having to contract out every prototype to a metal working shop — it slows down your ability to iterate because you can’t just go downstairs and try it . But once you have a design set in stone, outsourcing is cheaper than doing it in-house. These companies specialize in producing parts with economies of scale. But if you do it for too long, you…

Except when you've been working with suppliers who have already been iterating on for years in a competitive environment.

The amount of innovation in the automobile industry is staggering when you think of its history more holistically.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#498

I don't know about elsewhere in the world, but the amount of BYD's I see on the streets of Bangkoks today compared to say two years ago must be an 1000% increase. They are absolutely everywhere.

Largest EV manufacturer in the world, of course you would see them everywhere.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#499
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the other issue: the first thing the American company does is ensure it sells coffee-makers for $149 and not a penny less. In fact depending on your tarriff regime, this can incentivize a bunch industries to actually raise prices if the new import cost is higher then they would currently sell at.

The incentive to raise prices is pressured down by customers' desire to not spend more money than they have to. If businesses can get away with raising prices that means the price was too low to begin with, tariffs or no tariffs.

That's dependent on the market actually being efficient.

If a consumer walks into a store and sees coffeemakers by ten different brands, but seven are all actually owned by one giant manufacturer and the other three by some American almost-as-giant manufacturer, then a tariff on the former will drive up the price of seven of them and the American manufacturer will almost certainly raise the prices on the remaining three. Otherwise, it's just bad business.

Re: The size of BYD's factory

#500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In high school the administration specifically stated that just going to college was good enough. They encouraged people to get English, philosophy, history degrees if that’s what they wanted. If you’re 17 and like history class it seems like a logical next step. They didn’t tell you you won’t be able to find work.

still a bad choice. The US is not USSR, one can choose what they want to study or even don't study at all.

Sure, but it’s a choice heavily influenced by authority figures in your life. But yes strictly binary it is a choice. Thankfully the world is more nuanced.
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