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Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. Success breeds complacency and labor unrest. This isn't just a China-thing (I have no idea

Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. Success breeds complacency and labor unrest. This isn't just a China-thing (I have no idea what your Potemkin regulation is or why you would mix those metaphors). When Westerners see an absurdly profitable company, they think, "why aren't they paying their employees more??!" and start a union to parasitize earnings. When Asians (including the Japanese and Koreans) see an absurdly profitably company, they think, "why are they able to charge such high prices???!" and they kneecap the company's ability to exploit their market. It's an important difference for manufacturing physical things and it's why the West loses out to Asia in manufacturing outside cutting-edge tech. It's defective wetware in our heads and how we think about wealth and creating value, so don't expect manufacturing supply chains to return to Western countries any time soon.

elteto 6y ago
> ... start a union to parasitize earnings. Yes, those pesky employees should just STFU and be thankful for the scraps.
- CountSessine 6y ago
  Again - the fact that you can’t see both sides of the equation is why we don’t make things anymore.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    Terms like "parasitize earnings" don't sound like seeing both sides of the equation. Why's your anger and blame focused there for not seeing both sides? The people who outsourced things weren't simply trying to reduce gains made by unions, they were looking at price differences that could not exist in the US due to cost and standard of living. They certainly weren't looking at both sides of this in terms of long term effect either!
    - CountSessine 6y ago
      Terms like "parasitize earnings" don't sound like seeing both sides of the equation I don't want employees to get those earnings. I don't want investors or shareholders to get them either. I want consumers to get lower prices. they were looking at price differences that could not exist in the US due to cost and standard of living Again, what does that mean, "standard of living"? That we indulge industrial labor monopolies and pay more for manufactured goods than we need or want to like the 60's? How do you feel about paying $5000 for that computer? Or that we reward landlords and enrich landowners for participating in the creation of dysfunctional regulations? I agree - Western industrialists have been able to play both sides of the equation - outsourcing production to places where industrial cost-control is effective and selling in to markets where there's a large upper-middle class of well-compensated credentialed professionals like us and entitled land-owners. But I don't think that the solution is to give more power to industrial labor unions. My own pet solution is German worker councils - if only because they empower workers and make managers and industrialists accountable to employee needs, but at the same time can't coordinate labor demands across an industry. Managers can't ignore employee welfare but also employees can't gang up on consumers. But no one else wants this - industrialists hate the idea of inviting unions in to C-level planning and unions at their core want labor monopolies.
      - majormajor 6y ago
        > Again, what does that mean, "standard of living"? That we indulge industrial labor monopolies and pay more for manufactured goods than we need or want to like the 60's? How do you feel about paying $5000 for that computer? Or that we reward landlords and enrich landowners for participating in the creation of dysfunctional regulations? It means something very plain: nobody in the US would have accepted those wages to prevent profit-based outsourcing. So it wasn't a question of union parasites forcing people overseas, it just was something that would not have worked, structurally. Consumers getting lower prices forever and ever is a single-dimension focus, like you otherwise seem to be decrying, since you're not answering any of the other questions there about how to prevent profiteering or powerful wealthy people from playing both sides. You're looking at just one side but proclaiming it as a secret insight that is the only way to move forward. I don't think worker councils would've done anything to let US production and labor prices compete with offshore labor prices in the past 50 years... if you can make t-shirts cheaper by stripping those labor costs to the bone, but the cost of everything else those workers need is untouched, how will it fix it?
tw04 6y ago
>When Westerners see an absurdly profitable company, they think, "why aren't they paying their employees more??!" and start a union to parasitize earnings. Saying that employees expecting a livable wage is "parasitizing earnings" is a pretty outrageous claim. >It's an important difference for manufacturing physical things and it's why the West loses out to Asia in manufacturing outside cutting-edge tech. The West lost out to Asia because their standard of living was so much lower that it was basically slave labor for a decade. You apparently have missed out on the repeated protests at factories across China with their workers demanding better working conditions and wages. Expecting to be able to be able to do something more than just not starve to death isn't a western ideal, it's a human ideal. When the company you work for is printing money and you're living in poverty, something eventually gives. As has happened at literally every point in human history to date. Sometimes through violence, sometimes through government intervention. But the "unwashed masses" won't stay ignorant forever.
- CountSessine 6y ago
  Saying that employees expecting a livable wage is "parasitizing earnings" is a pretty outrageous claim. More defective programming in the wetware. Why is pay the only part of the equation? When Japan realized that their housing market was undermining living standards in the late 90’s, they cracked down on NIMBYism and took housing and land zoning authority away from cities. The housing market almost immediately corrected itself and housing prices in suburban Tokyo have been in free-fall ever since. You can get a 2000sqft family home for the equivalent of about 200k just 30 minutes outside downtown Tokyo today. We don’t do that because... why? The West lost out to Asia because... Again, more defective wetware. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan - these are democratic states with a high standard of living that have been able to control costs in ways that the West hasn’t. More people are homeless in the US per capita than any of those countries and it has everything to do with defective programming and talk of “liveable wages”. Of course everyone needs to be able to afford to live. But your own mistaken assumptions are emblematic of the political and social dysfunction of the West. Until we address that, no - those supply chains won’t be returning.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
freeflight 6y ago
> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. It's much more to do with the steadily increasing complexity of products due to humanity having become very much a global species with heavy interdependence. Look around the room you are sitting in: There will be items in it manufactured all over the world, from components also coming from all over the world. That's not only how we manage to make these things so affordable, that's how we got them at this scale and complexity in the very first place. The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Isolationism like that doesn't lead to progress or innovation, it leads to North Korea style impoverished hermit kingdoms. It's mind-boggling how few people seem to understand this reality in the year 2021, we are so interconnected that we can instantly communicate with somebody on the other side of the planet by just pulling a small device out of our pocket, it's considered the most normal thing in the world. Instead we get shortsighted and small-minded nationalist blowback in the form of Brexit and "America first!" politics. Even with the EU showing that economic cooperation and integration is one of the best and most constructive ways to ensure peace, stability and prosperity, particularly vs the alternative of alienation and vilification of whole nation states and their people as "enemies" that need to be fought in every way possible.
- crmd 6y ago
  >> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. > The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Who is this “single country” straw man you are referring to? The western world is comprised of 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP.
  - freeflight 6y ago
    And these 50+ nations have their very own industries that grew out of a demand for them to the scale of the demand for them with interdependence reaching all the way into Chinese tech manufacturing. If you retool all of that to suddenly do something else, than you will be missing something else. Because it's not like these 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP are just sitting there and wondering what to do with all of that productivity, they are already plenty busy doing those things that got them all that GDP, the things they are good at. That's why it's not really a "straw man", as the original argument implies globalized supply chains that emerged out of a given supply&demand could be artificially transplanted and rebuild in "the West", however that's even defined, to somehow reverse the reality of globalization.
topspin 6y ago
> I have no idea what your Potemkin regulation is Nations such as China erect fig leaf regulatory regimes that are both ineffective and corrupt and are designed to attract Western capital that are avoiding the regulatory burdens (environmental regulation, labor regulation, etc.) in Western nations. These are Potemkin structures in that they offer plausibly deniable cover to the Western establishment for the purposes of trade agreements and other international instruments.
coliveira 6y ago
You're right, except that it is not unionized workers parasitizing profits (unions are decreasing in numbers everywhere), it is shareholders parasitizing companies to extract whatever value they can. This is the big difference. In Asia, shareholders don't have the power to parasitize profits, and they allow ample competition between manufacturers. See, for example, the absurd situation of Apple. Americans think it is nice to have a single company nearly monopolizing device production, as if it were their right. In Asia people would have already started hundreds of companies to fight their monopolistic advantage (as they currently have in China).
IOT_Apprentice 6y ago
I'd presume by Potemkin regulation, he means that regulations in terms of worker health & safety and consideration of the local environment are for show. There is the other aspect of copyright violation and clones of products built when something is observed selling in the market. Still unresolved. That said, when a few Chinese companies shipped consumer facing products that contained chemicals or other material that effectively poisoned people, my remembrance was that the management was executed.

elteto 6y ago

> ... start a union to parasitize earnings. Yes, those pesky employees should just STFU and be thankful for the scraps.

CountSessine 6y ago
Again - the fact that you can’t see both sides of the equation is why we don’t make things anymore.
- majormajor 6y ago
  Terms like "parasitize earnings" don't sound like seeing both sides of the equation. Why's your anger and blame focused there for not seeing both sides? The people who outsourced things weren't simply trying to reduce gains made by unions, they were looking at price differences that could not exist in the US due to cost and standard of living. They certainly weren't looking at both sides of this in terms of long term effect either!
  - CountSessine 6y ago
    Terms like "parasitize earnings" don't sound like seeing both sides of the equation I don't want employees to get those earnings. I don't want investors or shareholders to get them either. I want consumers to get lower prices. they were looking at price differences that could not exist in the US due to cost and standard of living Again, what does that mean, "standard of living"? That we indulge industrial labor monopolies and pay more for manufactured goods than we need or want to like the 60's? How do you feel about paying $5000 for that computer? Or that we reward landlords and enrich landowners for participating in the creation of dysfunctional regulations? I agree - Western industrialists have been able to play both sides of the equation - outsourcing production to places where industrial cost-control is effective and selling in to markets where there's a large upper-middle class of well-compensated credentialed professionals like us and entitled land-owners. But I don't think that the solution is to give more power to industrial labor unions. My own pet solution is German worker councils - if only because they empower workers and make managers and industrialists accountable to employee needs, but at the same time can't coordinate labor demands across an industry. Managers can't ignore employee welfare but also employees can't gang up on consumers. But no one else wants this - industrialists hate the idea of inviting unions in to C-level planning and unions at their core want labor monopolies.
    - majormajor 6y ago
      > Again, what does that mean, "standard of living"? That we indulge industrial labor monopolies and pay more for manufactured goods than we need or want to like the 60's? How do you feel about paying $5000 for that computer? Or that we reward landlords and enrich landowners for participating in the creation of dysfunctional regulations? It means something very plain: nobody in the US would have accepted those wages to prevent profit-based outsourcing. So it wasn't a question of union parasites forcing people overseas, it just was something that would not have worked, structurally. Consumers getting lower prices forever and ever is a single-dimension focus, like you otherwise seem to be decrying, since you're not answering any of the other questions there about how to prevent profiteering or powerful wealthy people from playing both sides. You're looking at just one side but proclaiming it as a secret insight that is the only way to move forward. I don't think worker councils would've done anything to let US production and labor prices compete with offshore labor prices in the past 50 years... if you can make t-shirts cheaper by stripping those labor costs to the bone, but the cost of everything else those workers need is untouched, how will it fix it?

tw04 6y ago

>When Westerners see an absurdly profitable company, they think, "why aren't they paying their employees more??!" and start a union to parasitize earnings. Saying that employees expecting a livable wage is "parasitizing earnings" is a pretty outrageous claim. >It's an important difference for manufacturing physical things and it's why the West loses out to Asia in manufacturing outside cutting-edge tech. The West lost out to Asia because their standard of living was so much lower that it was basically slave labor for a decade. You apparently have missed out on the repeated protests at factories across China with their workers demanding better working conditions and wages. Expecting to be able to be able to do something more than just not starve to death isn't a western ideal, it's a human ideal. When the company you work for is printing money and you're living in poverty, something eventually gives. As has happened at literally every point in human history to date. Sometimes through violence, sometimes through government intervention. But the "unwashed masses" won't stay ignorant forever.

CountSessine 6y ago
Saying that employees expecting a livable wage is "parasitizing earnings" is a pretty outrageous claim. More defective programming in the wetware. Why is pay the only part of the equation? When Japan realized that their housing market was undermining living standards in the late 90’s, they cracked down on NIMBYism and took housing and land zoning authority away from cities. The housing market almost immediately corrected itself and housing prices in suburban Tokyo have been in free-fall ever since. You can get a 2000sqft family home for the equivalent of about 200k just 30 minutes outside downtown Tokyo today. We don’t do that because... why? The West lost out to Asia because... Again, more defective wetware. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan - these are democratic states with a high standard of living that have been able to control costs in ways that the West hasn’t. More people are homeless in the US per capita than any of those countries and it has everything to do with defective programming and talk of “liveable wages”. Of course everyone needs to be able to afford to live. But your own mistaken assumptions are emblematic of the political and social dysfunction of the West. Until we address that, no - those supply chains won’t be returning.
- sudosysgen 6y ago

freeflight 6y ago

> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. It's much more to do with the steadily increasing complexity of products due to humanity having become very much a global species with heavy interdependence. Look around the room you are sitting in: There will be items in it manufactured all over the world, from components also coming from all over the world. That's not only how we manage to make these things so affordable, that's how we got them at this scale and complexity in the very first place. The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Isolationism like that doesn't lead to progress or innovation, it leads to North Korea style impoverished hermit kingdoms. It's mind-boggling how few people seem to understand this reality in the year 2021, we are so interconnected that we can instantly communicate with somebody on the other side of the planet by just pulling a small device out of our pocket, it's considered the most normal thing in the world. Instead we get shortsighted and small-minded nationalist blowback in the form of Brexit and "America first!" politics. Even with the EU showing that economic cooperation and integration is one of the best and most constructive ways to ensure peace, stability and prosperity, particularly vs the alternative of alienation and vilification of whole nation states and their people as "enemies" that need to be fought in every way possible.

crmd 6y ago
>> Yes - because manufacturing in the West is ultimately self-defeating. > The idea that a single country could emulate that, in complete isolation, is bluntly said childish. Who is this “single country” straw man you are referring to? The western world is comprised of 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP.
- freeflight 6y ago
  And these 50+ nations have their very own industries that grew out of a demand for them to the scale of the demand for them with interdependence reaching all the way into Chinese tech manufacturing. If you retool all of that to suddenly do something else, than you will be missing something else. Because it's not like these 50+ nations with over $40 trillion in GDP are just sitting there and wondering what to do with all of that productivity, they are already plenty busy doing those things that got them all that GDP, the things they are good at. That's why it's not really a "straw man", as the original argument implies globalized supply chains that emerged out of a given supply&demand could be artificially transplanted and rebuild in "the West", however that's even defined, to somehow reverse the reality of globalization.

topspin 6y ago

> I have no idea what your Potemkin regulation is Nations such as China erect fig leaf regulatory regimes that are both ineffective and corrupt and are designed to attract Western capital that are avoiding the regulatory burdens (environmental regulation, labor regulation, etc.) in Western nations. These are Potemkin structures in that they offer plausibly deniable cover to the Western establishment for the purposes of trade agreements and other international instruments.

coliveira 6y ago

You're right, except that it is not unionized workers parasitizing profits (unions are decreasing in numbers everywhere), it is shareholders parasitizing companies to extract whatever value they can. This is the big difference. In Asia, shareholders don't have the power to parasitize profits, and they allow ample competition between manufacturers. See, for example, the absurd situation of Apple. Americans think it is nice to have a single company nearly monopolizing device production, as if it were their right. In Asia people would have already started hundreds of companies to fight their monopolistic advantage (as they currently have in China).

IOT_Apprentice 6y ago

I'd presume by Potemkin regulation, he means that regulations in terms of worker health & safety and consideration of the local environment are for show. There is the other aspect of copyright violation and clones of products built when something is observed selling in the market. Still unresolved. That said, when a few Chinese companies shipped consumer facing products that contained chemicals or other material that effectively poisoned people, my remembrance was that the management was executed.