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Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

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Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#681

Post by red-iron-pine »

ianbutler wrote: post #448
mikestorrent wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to brand efficiency and structure-at-scale as "authoritarian"; how painfully American of you. I know it's a completely foreign concept for anyone that has grown up in America, but it's actually within the realm of human possibility for the government and the individual to be aligned and want the same thing. Typically this is evidenced by tremendous social progress, which we see in evidence with the rap…

You're providing much too much credit to China's government, the dynamic is simpler: China just hasn't calcified yet after workers press for better standards of safety and quality of life and maybe they won't because that's where being authoritarian comes into play. They will crush that in a way we have moved away from. We used to build great things in the US and then we decided the blood price of 30 lives for the Br…

> China just hasn't calcified yet

aye. the old elite of China were overthrown by the communists, whose (that is, Mao's) decisions starved most of the country, followed by the insanity of the cultural revolution.

the new technocratic leadership is just that -- new. really only started happening in the 1980s and 90s.

the US is falling apart due to the entrenched hyperwealthy seeing more and more rents. China's hyperwealthy are all new money and are not entrenched yet, not the way groups like Ford or Boeing or Goldman Sachs are. But soon they will be, and soon the CCP will start prioritizing their needs

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#682

Post by 827a »

tw1984 wrote: post #481
827a wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to be clear about one thing (which I believe is also raised in the book): Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies). The story of startups only being able to manufacture in China is a cute tale that is true for startups. For Appl…

> Much of this is the direct result of Apple investing literally a quarter trillion dollars and exporting critical western IP toward developing Chinese advanced manufacturing capability (among other American technology companies). Really love your 1990s style western centric view. Care to explain how fancy western IP is not leading in more and more techs fields, e.g. drones, EVs, renewable energy, robotics, fighter j…

Its a 2020s western-centric view, because the world is western-centric (though, from your viewpoint in the CCP propaganda farm, I can understand why you'd feel differently). Everything China has was taken from the West, either by theft, the soulless disregard of western business leaders, or by sending their children here for education (if they decide they even want to return; many hate to go back, and we welcome them!)

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#683

Post by red-iron-pine »

SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #302
lkbm wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely anti-authoritarian.

Except in 21st Century America, where libertarian is really just masked authoritarian. Essentially, that means “free to do whatever you want as long as it’s our way.”

"i hate the gub'ment esp. the way evil mega-corporations tell me to"

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#684

Post by red-iron-pine »

titzer wrote: post #640
SaltyBackendGuy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...

Minor correction: America is run by pedophiles with a lot of money, who naturally hire lawyers.

funny how this is getting downvoted when we know now that it is objectively true, with emails and pictures

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#685

Post by _DeadFred_ »

kube-system wrote: post #676
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? The people who would have been doing this are doing shitty HVAC jobs (but still getting to be a bit creative). Are doing shitty welding jobs. Are doing HEAVILY underemployed service industry jobs they hate. Etc, etc. None of the people I know with a mind for making/tinkering/refining processes are working service industry jobs happily. People didn't culturally decide they don't want these sorts of jobs, business…

This goes far beyond skilled labor. But I'll start with that point. The US already has a huge shortage of skilled labor, and it's not like we would ever take people from the HVAC industry and put them in a factory. People in the US are gonna still want air conditioning. Culturally, the US absolutely pushes young people to aim for white collar service industry jobs. Second, it takes a huge amount of engineering talent…

Edit: I grant I could be old and outdated. But having seen cycles. Having seen Japan go up and down. Having seen offshoring first go to Mexico then easily transition to China, I just don't see any black and white here.

1. The HVAC guys would definitely fill the the quick turnaround, small shops that surround the manufacturing industry in China if that was an option.

Culturally doesn't matter. The majority of young men I know are underemployed and hate the service industry, but would be a fit for having their own adjacent business like that ones in China that get so hyped as enabling their dynamics. I think you are very focused on the crowd you know. The young people I know are so itching to create they have 3d printers, or make fishing flies, or make their own clothes.

2. Sounds great, if you live in the bay area or other tech scenes. I no longer do. I left tech to work (albeit tech) in a factory. For the majority of people I know, what you lay out it isn't an option or on the table. They are under-employed in brain dead service jobs they hate, and that do not provide them a future. They would jump on building up the adjacent small businesses that China's manufacturing depends on and that people here hype as 'wow, you can find a shop that does XYZ'. The stuff people say 'we just don't have in the USA'.

3. Small town America was factories since forever. I don't think China's way is the only way. We have a very good transportation system whereas when China established it's manufacturing it didn't. I think your view is myopic here and clouded with 'the China way'.

4. Again, the 80% of America you seem to ignore, pulls out all the stops for shitty ass 50 employee employers to build. You seem to be focused on a very small part of the US.

Nothing you say is a limiter IF the jobs are there. American companies pulling the jobs killed American dynancism, not any of the things you list. If it's TRULY no longer about cost, we could EASILY do it again. The people I met in China weren't better than the average American. They were great, and I think very highly of China. But the advantage I saw were wages, and people from the countryside willing to put up with a lot, but I don't think they will put up with as much long term (and I hope they don't have to, again the people I met are all great people and I hope the best for all of us). And a side of environmental pollution (I know 2 guys that moved their factories to China purely because of savings by not having to be environmentally friendly. So many that falls under your regulation, but that isn't a long term solution/state for China and that was a decade ago, maybe things are changed for the better already).

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#686

Post by kube-system »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #685
kube-system wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes far beyond skilled labor. But I'll start with that point. The US already has a huge shortage of skilled labor, and it's not like we would ever take people from the HVAC industry and put them in a factory. People in the US are gonna still want air conditioning. Culturally, the US absolutely pushes young people to aim for white collar service industry jobs. Second, it takes a huge amount of engineering talent…

Edit: I grant I could be old and outdated. But having seen cycles. Having seen Japan go up and down. Having seen offshoring first go to Mexico then easily transition to China, I just don't see any black and white here. 1. The HVAC guys would definitely fill the the quick turnaround, small shops that surround the manufacturing industry in China if that was an option. Culturally doesn't matter. The majority of young me…

I don't think you realize the difference to which cultural expectations of the workers are different. Yeah, people "hate" their service industry jobs here, but you can get a job in Iowa wrangling spreadsheets making $50,000 a year, grab coffee from the office coffee pot, sit in air-conditioning all day, then you clock out at 5 PM and drive your truck home to your house in the suburbs with a yard and a white picket fence. Nobody wants to make that same money or less working on a hot factory floor with a clipboard on a 996 shift and live next to a factory belching smoke. But in China, you can find people who will do that, and they'll wake up at 3 AM to work on an urgent customer request. And collaborate with all the factories down the road, and have a prototype out by 8 AM. In the US you're not gonna get somebody to respond to your email before 10:30.

> 80% of America you seem to ignore, pulls out all the stops for shitty ass 50 employee employers to build. You seem to be focused on a very small part of the US.

It's easy to get politicians to give out some tax breaks for a reelection campaign. It seems to be damn near impossible to actually get anything done that actually matters. We frequently spend billions of dollars to support manufacturing investment and have nothing to show for it.

Just look at Foxconn in Wisconsin, as an example. Over $1 billion and half a decade and still nothing. China could've had a whole city built. We were just trying to get 13,000 factory jobs, but we couldn't even manage that.

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#687

Post by rockskon »

maxglute wrote: post #626
rockskon wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing. This isn't "working harder". This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure". This isn't "training people in trades". The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.

People idealize US regaining manufacturing glory is like climbing from 1/5 back to 5/5 US industrial peak. Meanwhile is PRC grew he denominator and working at 20/20 scale. Ultimately 20 > 5 > 1, but better 5 than 1.

I mean...we're destroying advanced manufacturing where we make expensive things in exchange for cheap manufacturing of basics like textiles where tariffs of 1000% would be needed to make U.S.-made goods competitive. Exchanging high-paying jobs for poverty wage jobs.

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#688

Post by bastardoperator »

rayiner wrote: post #211
gigatexal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama managed to deport many without the vitriol or the killing of American citizens. Are you a one issue voter? Just showing a blind eye to everything so long as no brown folks cross into this country?

According to the LA Times, that statistic is misleading: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-2014... (“A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data… On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — prim…

If they were cooked then they're cooked now. "Trump succeeded" remains unsupported by the same logic. Good shot on the googling and 12 year old article though.

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#689

Post by realityking »

rswail wrote: post #519
derektank wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in non-Chinese countries. Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a trade bloc capable of replicating China’s manufacturing capacity, it probably could.

There was an APAC trade treaty called the TPP that Rodham-Clinton/Obama pulled out of which would have done exactly that. They were forced to withdraw because of pressure from unions, ie labor not capital. Now it's the CPTPP and doesn't include the US. Canada is looking to the Pacific and EU for trade now (and China as well), so is Mexico. It's likely that the EU/UK trade bloc will connect with the CPTPP via both the…

> There was an APAC trade treaty called the TPP that Rodham-Clinton/Obama pulled out of which would have done exactly that.

I think you got your timelines crossed - it was Trump who pulled out of TPP (though Clinton also opposed it during the campaign).

Re: Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston

#690

Post by rayiner »

bastardoperator wrote: post #688
rayiner wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the LA Times, that statistic is misleading: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-2014... (“A closer examination shows that immigrants living illegally in most of the continental U.S. are less likely to be deported today than before Obama came to office, according to immigration data… On the other side of the ledger, the number of people deported at or near the border has gone up — prim…

If they were cooked then they're cooked now. "Trump succeeded" remains unsupported by the same logic. Good shot on the googling and 12 year old article though.

No, it’s not the same logic because there’s two different numbers: border crossings versus deportations. Nobody is saying the numbers are “cooked.” Just that you have to understand the methodology to compare Obama and Trump.

The LA Times article explains that the deportations number includes deportations of people who were caught shortly after illegal crossing. During Obama, there were a large number of border crossings. So anyone who got caught shortly after crossing was counted as a deportation. But border crossings dropped to nearly zero under Trump. That drives down the deportation numbers. The low hanging fruit is gone.

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