281–290 of 379 posts
It's frustrating to see people say that we shouldn't fight Chinese economic imperialism, mercantilism, and protectionism because we should support free trade. Free trade is a two way street. If a trading partner is engaging in unfair practices then it's reasonable to support sanctions and tariffs and other means to get them to stop, even if you're a free trade supporter. In fact this is the whole premise of the WTO,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter, Facebook, and any other entity that deplatformed Alex Jones are private companies and can deplatform whoever they want. In fact that is part of their freedom of speech. This is different from government-enforced silencing of speech, which is what is happening in China right now. I feel no cognitive dissonance, but maybe you can explain more why I should.
If you want to see that sort of cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy on display, just go a few threads over and state: > "Blizzard Entertainment is a private company and can deplatform whoever they want".
I haven't seen anyone saying Blizzard's actions should be illegal. The common response seems to be "boycott", which Alex Jones' supporters were free to do as well
It is rather interesting to see Stratechery talk about values when normally the articles are about markets and capital. I don't how the latter, since they are inherently amoral, can accommodate values either. As a result the argument seemed a little forced. Surely if China is an important market for western companies then the rules of that market apply. It is only to be expected that in a global market there must a c…
> There’s one rather glaring hole in this story of immediate outrage from Chinese fans over Morey’s tweet: > Twitter is banned in China. I didn't even realize until now. They are simply censoring (mainly)American social media posts. On the internet.
How can we get Tim Cook to make a statement regarding democracy in Hong Kong? Either he refuses, which would be supporting the brutal crackdowns, or he forces China to act as they did like in the NBA case.
I have an interesting take on this, from knowing a bit about Chinese culture (lived there) and for having friends and coworkers who are Chinese. Culture in China is about unity. If you look at Chinese history, and if you watch Chinese movies, this is a recurrent theme. Unification through blood and war. This is the goal and China will get stronger and more stable over time. At what cost? Tiananmen, xinjiang, hk, the…
It is impossible to understand Chinese views towards Western values outside of the context of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation
Adobe recently blocked all Venzuelans because of an executive order. Foreign companies are sanctionned by the US for dealing with Iranian entities even if their countries have no issue with Iran. (Huawei's executive was even arrested in Canada on behalf of the US for that). My point is, why should we hold companies accountable for enforcing a certain national policy when A, companies have always done awful things in…
It's frustrating to see people say that we shouldn't fight Chinese economic imperialism, mercantilism, and protectionism because we should support free trade. Free trade is a two way street. If a trading partner is engaging in unfair practices then it's reasonable to support sanctions and tariffs and other means to get them to stop, even if you're a free trade supporter. In fact this is the whole premise of the WTO,…
If your trade partner isn’t practicing as much free trade as you are, but you are still making money on trade hand over fist, then it isn’t very much in your interest to fight what is still a golden goose to you. The only reason this fight has come at all is because of a bunch of displaced factory workers (and areas that did manufacturing) that have been hurt by this trade, and their government had failed to redistri…
As a layperson watching from the sidelines in the software world, but fascinated by welding, electrical/electronics, mechanical engineering, CNC, machining, etc., it is incomprehensible to me why US business leaders would so willingly cede manufacturing to competitors (Chinese in this thread's context, but could be anyone really, even within the same nation). As a dilettante, I'm seeing parallels in manufacturing to what I experience in software, but maybe I'm just not seeing what those leaders see, so perhaps someone can help clear up my misunderstanding.
To think you can divorce yourself cleanly from manufacturing and adopt a "throw it over the fence" mentality, and expect to maintain industry leadership, seems to me as misguided as thinking you can divorce yourself from coding and operational support as a software company, "throw it over the fence", and expect to stay a software leader. That might work for one or three iterations of product lifecycles over a few decades, but there are crucial insights into customer needs and market directions that come about from knowing about what those trenches deal with, that disappear in the fenced-off abstraction layer. You gradually disconnect from your market, your sales and marketing teams lose a critically-grounded, no-bullshit feedback loop from those areas, you lose understanding of the complexities to properly analyze the business problems, you lose metrics those areas gather to inform sales and marketing analytics.
Maybe all those factors simply don't matter, or I'm simply wrong about them being factors at all in manufacturing business? In which case, I put on my value investor's hat and ask, what precisely is the defensible moat about giving up in-house manufacturing knowledge (and often accompanying core support functions) and only specializing in design, sales, and marketing for a manufacturer? I've never been able to figure that one out, either. Seems to me in-house manufacturing secrets are easier to come up with (see Japanese electrolytic caps) and protect than this year's trends and important customer segments, but again, I'm just a layperson, so I'm just left wondering what I'm missing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taiwan (labor is more expensive, but they could maybe rely on automation more) A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that Taiwan actually has low-cost but high-end (university-educated) labor. Ph.D. graduates abound. It is an advanced economy yet wages are surprisingly low due to its export-focused strategy and various other structural causes. Cost of living in Taiwan also appears to be pretty low, which makes…
> A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that Taiwan actually has low-cost but high-end (university-educated) labor. Ph.D. graduates abound. Considering that TSMC is the only 7nm fab lab in large scale operation, I'm not surprised. TSMC, and Taiwan, have always been on the cutting edge, and have even out-competed the US recently (Intel getting stuck at 12nm, GloFo giving up the race entirely). The USA needs to giv…
It was described at the time as "out-sourcing your design and sales". Companies that could not get behemoths like Intel or National Semiconductor or T.I. or the like to manufacture for them, who also couldn't afford to build and run a modern semiconductor fab, could get competitive manufacturing of their designs done. It was a brilliant strategy, and it allowed them to be less dependent on any one design working/selling well, since they had many different companies competing to fill their factories for them.