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China is the manufacturing superpower

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Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#251

Post by aeonik »

obscurette wrote: post #228

It's not about what China did well, but about Europe/US ignorance. How many times you've heard during last decade that software eats the world? That we should do highly profitable software things only anyway? That everyone and his dog should be a software engineer in future? Well, turned out that it was really about free money and it didn't last. Serious question – how many of you who say that they can't find the job…

Software is eating the world, you just need to multi class into the field that software is eating to be of good value.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#252

Post by obscurette »

sangnoir wrote: post #250
obscurette wrote: post #228

It's not about what China did well, but about Europe/US ignorance. How many times you've heard during last decade that software eats the world? That we should do highly profitable software things only anyway? That everyone and his dog should be a software engineer in future? Well, turned out that it was really about free money and it didn't last. Serious question – how many of you who say that they can't find the job…

> how many of you who say that they can't find the job any more, have considered manufacturing? If one wants a skilled job in manufacturing, they have to earn a qualification first, or go through a period of apprenticeship. The wages for most manufacturing jobs are much lower in the west than for knowledge workers, and openings likely fewer - it's only recently that new manufacturing sites got spun-up after decades o…

There is a non-zero chance that these higher wages of knowledge workers and especially in IT industry were actually the results of rent-seeking.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#253

Post by sangnoir »

rat87 wrote: post #50
wakawaka28 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to protect wages in the face of competition that works for 1/10 to 1/3 the rate is to institute protectionist policies. That has also been unpopular because there's money to be made in offshoring as well. Americans are getting the worst at both ends, and only experiencing short-term benefits of having cheaper goods.

Some people don't like protectionism because in the long term it's worse for both countries. You have a short term benefit of protecting a handful of jobs in exchange for vastly more expensive goods for everyone as well as more expensive inputs to your other products undercutting other local industries. Protectionism is popular because the benifits for the few are visible while the downsides are diffuse but add up. A…

> Some people don't like protectionism because in the long term it's worse for both countries. You have a short term benefit of protecting a handful of jobs in exchange for vastly more expensive goods for everyone as well as more expensive inputs to your other products undercutting other local industries

Expensive goods only result from half-assed protectionism. When governments go the whole nine yards, such as with China's PV and EV industries, or the US with agricultural subsidies, it results in very cheap products and inputs to other products. Corn syrup is an ingredient to a lot of American food items because it's a cheap sweetener due to all the subsidies as the government decided, many decades ago, that American farmers should be shielded from competition. Some decisions make sense in the realm of national strategy and geopolitics, and not pure economics. The US would be very different if it had started to import the bulk of it's corn from Ukraine in the late 1990s

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#254

Post by addicted »

Barrin92 wrote: post #190
doctorpangloss wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People buy iPhones for their software, which is all made here. Otherwise all phones are black rectangles. The hardware isn’t that important.

it's the opposite. People buy iPhones and Apple products for the quality of their hardware and the cost of the devices themselves reflects this. Apple is one of the least software focused tech companies in the world. Everyone except for American teens obsessed with the colors of their chat bubbles uses WhatsApp, Telegram or FB Messenger and other completely platform independent apps. Nobody's ever bought an iphone fo…

This comment completely misunderstands why Apple software is important.

To be clear, as an f’ing Linux user, the things that make Apple software good, which is consistency, lots of hand holding, and making it really hard to break things badly, are irrelevant to me.

But it’s highly relevant to the vast majority of iPhone users in the world.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#255

Post by drekipus »

wiseowise wrote: post #199
Barrin92 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's the opposite. People buy iPhones and Apple products for the quality of their hardware and the cost of the devices themselves reflects this. Apple is one of the least software focused tech companies in the world. Everyone except for American teens obsessed with the colors of their chat bubbles uses WhatsApp, Telegram or FB Messenger and other completely platform independent apps. Nobody's ever bought an iphone fo…

> Nobody's ever bought an iphone for Apple Maps, everyone runs around with Google software on their phone. It is still running on Apple platform. I'm buying an iPhone, because I know that I'll get consistent Apple experience that is same across all of my devices, unlike zoo of Android + Windows/Linux.

> that I'll get consistent Apple experience that is same across all of my devices.

a buggy shitty mess? count me in!

Things aren't even consistent across mac os updates. I think it's much preferable to keep a phone a phone, and the computer a computer.

I only want a macbook because of the hardware. I'd give anything for them to fix the software. but it is what it is.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#257

Post by ianburrell »

mahirsaid wrote: post #237
bobthepanda wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s necessarily so clear that Chinese foreign policy has really paid off yet. Chinese loanmaking to foreign countries has mostly gone bust, with many loans basically in default. While it’s true that Western development agencies were not lending to these projects, they mostly weren’t doing so because they were doubtful of the business cases of said projects and the likelihood that the government could a…

Also don't forget U.S. debt to China. the picture is painted clear of who depends on who.

China has $774B of US debt. The US total debt is $36T. 2% is not control of anything. That is smaller than the daily trading volume. China used to hold more but sold it recently.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#258

Post by whatshisface »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #221
whatshisface wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to prevail in any war in a post-nuclear age. Profiting from a war with China is a total fantasy, it would be the end of both countries, even if we had as little trade with them as with the Soviet Union. The reason we are not manufacturing everything ourselves is that our incumbents refuse to allow anything to replace them, whether that is a more efficient company or a more able manager. They have the sway w…

>It's hard to prevail in any war in a post-nuclear age. Another cold war is possible, and someone could prevail eventually. >The reason we are not manufacturing everything ourselves is that our incumbents refuse to allow anything to replace them, whether that is a more efficient company or a more able manager. That is not true in general. We have laws specifically to promote competition. I'm not aware of anything lik…

If we go into it saying we're only pretending to annihilate civilization they won't match our military spending, and if we don't, we're still being insane.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#259

Post by wakawaka28 »

sangnoir wrote: post #253
rat87 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people don't like protectionism because in the long term it's worse for both countries. You have a short term benefit of protecting a handful of jobs in exchange for vastly more expensive goods for everyone as well as more expensive inputs to your other products undercutting other local industries. Protectionism is popular because the benifits for the few are visible while the downsides are diffuse but add up. A…

> Some people don't like protectionism because in the long term it's worse for both countries. You have a short term benefit of protecting a handful of jobs in exchange for vastly more expensive goods for everyone as well as more expensive inputs to your other products undercutting other local industries Expensive goods only result from half-assed protectionism. When governments go the whole nine yards, such as with…

>When governments go the whole nine yards, such as with China's PV and EV industries, or the US with agricultural subsidies, it results in very cheap products and inputs to other products.

We have subsidies for solar and other stuff but the competition is absurdly stiff. What the US government actually needs to do is limit imports. If you want to subsidize that stuff, the money can come from tariffs.

>The US would be very different if it had started to import the bulk of it's corn from Ukraine in the late 1990s

Yes, it would be worse. Food is very important strategically and economically, and subject to occasional disruptions. You don't want to have people starve because of one or more regions has a low yield. There is zero benefit to letting our land go fallow to save the meager cost of government agriculture programs to help farmers survive bad years. We don't import corn because we grow all we need. It is native to North America after all.

Re: China is the manufacturing superpower

#260

Post by ramblenode »

whimsicalism wrote: post #208
grobbyy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

World War II was won because of US and (less advertised) Soviet manufacturing capacity. Ukraine is more constrained by weapon supplies, especially drones and artillery, than by manpower. I'm not sure both sides are playing the same game. In the game I think might be afoot, if your economy is management consultants, therapists, and hair stylists, that's "bad" GDP. Resources and manufacturing are "good" GDP. Resources…

high finance/management can be quite valuable when you’re trying to plan a conflict. this is how you get the industries developed that are capable of designing a system to turn sand into missile-targeting systems. i’m extremely skeptical of people’s ability to view the economy from on high and pick out the “good, productive gdp” and the “bad, makework gdp”.

> i’m extremely skeptical of people’s ability to view the economy from on high and pick out the “good, productive gdp” and the “bad, makework gdp”.

Maybe in general, but rent-seeking is a pretty large part of the economy by estimates I've seen.

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