Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

post.japanpost.jp

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 459 posts

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#361

Post by jq-r »

trenchpilgrim wrote: post #358
jq-r wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the obvious problems is that majority of riders actually have hair and from my experience the chin strap isn’t very very tightly strapped (you want to speak normally I suppose). Hair gives you considerable slip area making the inner rotational liners redundant or maybe even too much.

> from my experience the chin strap isn’t very very tightly strapped Not on a motorcycle helmet! The double D ring system forces you to cinch it tight, and it does not restrict your jaw or make it hard to talk. If you are experiencing this your helmet may be the wrong size. Most riders are picking helmets that are far too large.

I was talking about the bicycle helmets though, I should have been clearer.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#362

Post by trenchpilgrim »

jq-r wrote: post #361
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from my experience the chin strap isn’t very very tightly strapped Not on a motorcycle helmet! The double D ring system forces you to cinch it tight, and it does not restrict your jaw or make it hard to talk. If you are experiencing this your helmet may be the wrong size. Most riders are picking helmets that are far too large.

I was talking about the bicycle helmets though, I should have been clearer.

Oh yeah, most bicycle helmets seem to be stuck 20 years in the past. I mostly use MTB or skate helmets instead.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#363

Post by monero-xmr »

tzs wrote: post #340
monero-xmr wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested in balancing trade with each individual country, with magnitude of deficit taken into account (i.e. a tiny island country would have vastly less impact than China). Tariffs artificially increase costs of goods with another country. That should incentivize purchasing the goods from other countries, with the cheapest being our own. Of course we have very high labor costs, and lack a huge supply ch…

I don't see how balancing with each individual country makes sense. Suppose for example the US needs to buy some natural resource from country X, which the US uses to build something that it sells to country Y at a very large profit. Suppose that the US doesn't export anything that country X needs or wants. Balancing trade with X would mean cutting back on importing that natural resource, which would cut back on how…

This would be an optimization problem and there would need to be far more nuance. But the goal would be balance, without persistent overwhelming differences in trade deficits.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#364

Post by jq-r »

93po wrote: post #203
bsimpson wrote: post #198

There was chatter about this in one of the NYC subreddits over the weekend. Apparently ending the de minimus exemption is closing the grey market for e.g. sunscreen; places that used to sell Japanese sunscreens on American shelves no longer are. There's a frustratingly long list of goods that the US decided to put requirements on in previous generations, and then stopped maintaining. Sunscreen is one; other countries…

i appreciate you mentioning MIPS - i had no idea there was a new, better standard, and i'll definitely get one for my next helmet (motorcycle)

MIPS AB is actually a company, known for predatory patent lawsuits. They've used clever marketing to make MIPS the technology desireable and in my opinion totally unnecessary, or maybe even outright more dangerous for majority of bike riders.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#365

Post by slipperydippery »

ericmay wrote: post #351
phil21 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tradeoff here is “pay the middleman markup tax” for the most part. Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. If we are going to outsource production in order to save on consumer goods costs, the consumer should be the one reaping the surplus - not capital. Properly informed buyers were quite capable of getting quality product out of China for a tenth…

> Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be. I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healt…

> Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be.

This won't work for clothes. We'd need Wal-mart shoppers to be spending like $400/outfit (incl. shoes) to even maybe bring those jobs back to the US. For clothes specifically, short of raising prices so much that the poorest few tens of a percent of the population are reduced to wearing shit-tier disposable clothes covered in also-cheap patches and often worn threadbare, shoes fully wrapped in duct-tape because the soles are practically gone, et c, there's no way you're bringing those jobs back. We'll just pay more for the exact same stuff, with few or no extra jobs as a trade-off.

Meanwhile, goods partially manufactured here (materials made here, finished elsewhere; materials foreign, construction domestic) will see price increases due to tariffs, which may harm sales, which may reduce employment. Between that and any broader economic down-turn resulting from these policies (can't buy as many things if prices are up, can't spend more on expensive US goods if your basics go up in price) I wouldn't be surprised if we see a bunch of the remaining US clothing manufacturers go out of business in the next few years. I have several brands I like that are already showing visible signs of distress (things like products lines being reduced, no new models showing up) and am worried I'll soon have almost no US clothes to choose from, due to these "protectionist" policies.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#366

Post by tsunamifury »

mlyle wrote: post #321
tsunamifury wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we agree if I'm understanding you correctly, yes the Suppliers have more elasticity and must ultimately absorb this. I'd say the remaining problem left in our analysis is massive inequality in America leading to enormous consumer elasticity in a small ultra-wealth portion. This I can't figure out

That's the opposite of how tax incidence works. Elasticity means you can change your amount produced in response to changes in price. Producers can’t easily change output, so they bear more of the tax burden themselves. But in the long run, producers can reallocate or exit until they’re producing at minimum(average total cost), which makes supply more elastic and shifts most of the burden onto consumers. This is stuf…

Sure ok. You’re being weirdly belligerent.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#367

Post by donkeybeer »

ericmay wrote: post #360
donkeybeer wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should trust people who live in countries that tariff a lot. You won't get quality crap. When tariffs cause the imported good to become equal to $200, the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180. Obviously any incentive that remained for local product to improve is now totally dashed too because of state forced back protection from competition. You end up paying multiple times the prices fo…

I don't think we're comparing apples to apples though, and even so it's again just a trade-off we can make. > the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180 Lowering prices isn't the goal, otherwise we could just export everything to (insert low-cost country here) and have products made as cheaply as possible regardless of working conditions or other considerations. The goal in part with tariffs w…

And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? Its the same inferior product still, except you artificially forced the better stuff to be more expensive. Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America.

Wrong, as I said just ask countries like Brazil what happens when you tariff everything to shit and beyond. Brazil doesn't have chip fabs still and still has to pay a huge amount for phones and computers.

The answer to local industry being shit isn't to coddle it further, it is to scare the living shit out of them. Clearly in-country competition isn't enough, otherwise it'd already have been better than foreign goods. That's how capitalism succeeds, coddling them will only lead to overall crappy product and crappy life everywhere. I find it quite amusing this anti China rhetoric suddenly jumped up after in some areas Chinese getting superior to Americans. Hilarious really how much of a sore loser America is.

Enjoy and suffer shit goods at shittier prices. The tradeoff is you get fucked in both, in any countries that do tariffs. If one of the goals was to make life better for the lower classes, what will happen is that it won't, they'd be fucked even more being forced to pay more for the same stuff.

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#368

Post by M2Ys4U »

wnevets wrote: post #300
righthand wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that the people who believe in “woke mind virus” aren’t intelligent enough to know what a virus even is, then they’re too unintelligent to understand why they should be embarrassed.

> Consider that the people who believe in “woke mind virus” aren’t intelligent enough to know what a virus even is A lot of HNers are gonna disagree with you on this, Paul Graham is one of those people very concerned about the "woke mind virus".

Is he really concerned about it, or is he using concern about it as a political tool?

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#369

Post by ericmay »

donkeybeer wrote: post #367
ericmay wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're comparing apples to apples though, and even so it's again just a trade-off we can make. > the local good doesn't suddenly get cheaper it rises to match $180 Lowering prices isn't the goal, otherwise we could just export everything to (insert low-cost country here) and have products made as cheaply as possible regardless of working conditions or other considerations. The goal in part with tariffs w…

And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive? Its the same inferior product still, except you artificially forced the better stuff to be more expensive. Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America. Wrong, as I said just ask countries like Brazil what happens when you tariff everything to shit and beyond. Brazil doesn't have chip fabs stil…

> And what will you get by making a crappy product artificially competitive?

I disagree with this characterization on at least two points:

The first is that you're assuming the product is crappy. Maybe it's actually quite good but just slightly more expensive for whatever reason, maybe that's unionization or something. Many people may opt to pay $6 less for a cheaper "thing" because they're not thinking about quality or wages or other factors. I know plenty of people who opt for buy-and-replace strategies because of "cheaper" products.

Second you're assuming that the cheap product isn't also artificially competitive. Other countries subsidize manufacturing or have lower wages or have other factors that lead to the product being cheaper than it should be.

> Its absolutely hilarious seeing USA adopt policies of communist countries of the Latin America.

I'm not sure protectionist policies are inherently communist, but to the extent they are I expect leftists to cheer these policies on.

> Enjoy and suffer shit goods at shittier prices.

Sounds good - stop bothering us about our crappy decisions then?

Re: Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

#370

Post by ericmay »

slipperydippery wrote: post #365
ericmay wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of getting cheap Chinese made clothing for $5, you now get to pay Walmart $17 for the same thing. Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be. I mean this is kind of the price of putting what we say first. Want higher minimum wages, higher environmental standards, unionized labor, benefits/healt…

> Right... but now that is (arguably) cost competitive with American labor and manufacturing. Or at least it's more cost competitive than it otherwise would be. This won't work for clothes. We'd need Wal-mart shoppers to be spending like $400/outfit (incl. shoes) to even maybe bring those jobs back to the US. For clothes specifically, short of raising prices so much that the poorest few tens of a percent of the popul…

> This won't work for clothes

Says who? Also you're forgetting if we as a country decide hey this really doesn't work for clothing we can just lower the tariffs on clothing.

Post reply on HN