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A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedgin
by mgraczyk 4y ago
A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor.
Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies.
By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and safety than the agricultural work that they would be doing without economic development. It would be better if the factories were more often owned domestically (instead of owned by Chinese companies), but the actual workers are not suffering in the short term as a result of Apple bringing jobs. The complete opposite is true.
- latchkey 4y agoQuite a few of the factories are actually owned by Koreans... Vietnam is their cheap labor force.
- another_story 4y agoAnd Taiwanese
- tasubotadas 4y agoCapitalism is one of the biggest eradicators of poverty. 1B of people in China was lifted from poverty because of it. And once it's done with one poor country, it starts taking care of the others :)
- CameronNemo 4y ago.
- robin_reala 4y agoI’m no great defender of capitalism, but feudalism did a great job at that a long time before capitalism.
- mr_toad 4y agoOr any system where owners of property could extract profit by employing non-owners of property. Much of the strife in the later Roman Empire was caused by large property owners exploiting slaves and depriving non land owners (including many legionaries) of a chance of making an income. Said legionaries and other plebeians supported politicians with a policy of land reforms. Not to mention the poverty of the slaves themselves.
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- DowsingSpoon 4y agoIt’s well documented that there were no poor people at all prior to the publishing of The Wealth of Nations in 1776. /s
- hbn 4y agoSimilar to how modern medicine made 40 an early age to die
- krrrh 4y agoIt's hard for me to understand how someone can hold this view, and it's hard to know where to start, but no. As capitalism has expanded it has dramatically reduced absolute poverty. It's not even close, and the change only got more dramatic when communism collapsed as an alternative. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Since-1820-750x535.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/World-Poverty-Sin...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- extragood 4y agoThere's an interesting argument in 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' [1] that capitalism is primarily responsible for the Enlightenment period in Europe. By the same token it may also be associated with some of the worst aspects of (relatively) recent history, such as colonialism and the slave trade. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23692271-sapiens
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- adolph 4y agoIs it ironic that the capitalistic poverty lift solidified the CCP?
- LtWorf 4y agoCapitalism with a strong central government that regulates it tightly you mean.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wbsss4412 4y agoThe China duality: It seems that China is a capitalist country when people want to discuss their achievements, and a communist country when they want to discuss their faults.
- relativ575 4y agoThey are capitalism since private sector is allowed and encouraged. They are an authoritarian country as there is no democracy and there can be a single political party. Why is that so difficult to understand? They call their country communist because they can't afford to undermine the legacy of the communist party by admitting that they made huge mistakes in the past.
- wbsss4412 4y agoChina is dominated by state owned enterprises and many of the private investment is in joint ventures with local governmental authorities. People like to gloss over the more complex reality that is Chinas actual economic structure when it benefits their personal ideological agenda.
- alphabetting 4y agoA ton of the achievement has to do with Western investments. For example, Apple spent $275 billion in the late 2010s to build up Chinese tech manufacturing capabilities. That's one company doing a 5X larger investment than the "historic" CHIPs bill signed by Biden this year.
- wbsss4412 4y agoWestern FDI has definitely played a major role in China’s growth, yes. Note that my comment doesn’t call that into question though, only that the conversation around chinas success is almost always grossly oversimplified to suit ideological agendas.
- senttoschool 4y ago>A ton of the achievement has to do with Western investments. To be fair, a fairly big reason why China became poor was because of western imperialism. Look up "Century of humiliation". And if you go back in history far enough, China was the most advanced country and had the highest GDP in the world for long periods of time. But I think you're not open to these ideas.
- mattigames 4y agoDid it eradicated poverty in Burundi? South Sudan? Malawi? Pakistan? I can cherry pick examples too; means nothing, and what about the tankman? Was he lifted out of poverty? Or all the other victims of the goverment? Also China capitalism includes things like stealing tech secrets from the companies that manufacture there[0], is that part of the "ideal capitalism" you advocate for? [0] https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/14/news/economy/trump-china-trade-intellectual-property/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/14/news/economy/trump-china-tr...
- senttoschool 4y ago>Also China capitalism includes things like stealing tech secrets from the companies that manufacture there[0], is that part of the "ideal capitalism" you advocate for? Sure, China has copied/stole tech from the West, just as the West has copied tech from China long ago. It happens when an economy is playing catchup. But in my humble opinion, the idea that China could only steal western tech is rooted in racism and a lot of western media propaganda. Ever had a Chinese co-worker? Did they seem dumber than you? Are they only good at the job because they're copying you or stealing your work?
- mattigames 4y agoGood old "if you critize a government it means you are racist against people in that country". No, that's not how it works, government positions -specially at autocracies- attract a rare kind of people, extremly greedy and ruthless, not representative of the rest. Also if the government orders you to steal secrets from your clients to follow such orders it's just basic survival instinct.
- dietmtnview 4y ago> Capitalism is one of the biggest eradicators of poverty. wat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co4FES0ehyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co4FES0ehyI
- eej71 4y agoIf anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be a problem for large countries like China. China needed those cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out of rural poverty. Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left behind. For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book Invisible China.
- alephnerd 4y ago+1 on Invisible China. Scott Rozelle's group at the FSI has been doing some good work on trying to alleviate the opportunity gap that exists in several prefectures in the PRC.
- bigcat12345678 4y agoXi Jinping know this problem all along. And his poverty eradication project is essentially siphoning embezzled fund from corrupted officials into rural areas. I bet Xi Jinping knows research work in the similar lines of Invisible China. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience#:~:text=%E2%80%9CChina%20achieved%20its%20goal%20of,contributions%20to%20global%20poverty%20reduction https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l....
- alephnerd 4y agoRozelle's group at Stanford has consulted at the prefecture level with the CCP [0]. The PRC is de facto federal with a significant amount of leeway at the prefecture (state) level. In fact, a number of PRC policy initiatives are often done in coordination with research groups at Stanford University. The Guiding Cases [1] is another ministerial level initiative that Stanford has consulted on. [0] - https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/reap/content/reap-home https://sccei.fsi.stanford.edu/reap/content/reap-home [1] - https://law.stanford.edu/china-guiding-cases-project/ https://law.stanford.edu/china-guiding-cases-project/
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- koheripbal 4y agoThere is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. They claim to be championing labor rights, but they are often just angered at companies for stopping all manufacturing in the West. They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere. The obvious truth, and what literally all of these Vietnamese workers will tell you, is that foreign tech manufacturing is an amazingly better paying job than what is currently available. The true story with China is that moving Western manufacturing to China raised the standard of living for literally hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty.
- surfpel 4y ago> There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. This is a strawman. You're conflating different groups of people with different interests. Some people complain about labor conditions, some people complain that jobs are leaving the country. Almost nobody is "dishonest" about this.
- wbsss4412 4y agoThere are plenty of people who are extremely selective with regards to their outrage on each issue, though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- atwood22 4y agoSo? Most people's entire existence is predicated on unsustainable consumerism. There is literally too much to care about. If you require that people must care about all issues to care about any issue, then progress won't be made. Maybe that's your intention.
- wbsss4412 4y agoI don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point. My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.
- mattigames 4y agoCan't shake the feeling that a similar rationality was used to partially justify trading slaves "The new master feeds them bread and milk instead of just rice and water! Its a clear win for them!". Yeah I get it, its an improvement for sure but maybe the problem has roots a bit deeper that must be adressed and therefore righfully critized despite being an improvement.
- mgraczyk 4y agoIt wasn't true though. The lives of enslaved people were obviously, measurably worse after enslavement and transportation. They had shorter lifespans, less freedom, literally enslavement, etc. The lives of people groups in African captured for slavery were also worse.
- astrange 4y agoEconomics is called the "dismal science" because slavers called the economists that when the economists pointed out slavery was both bad and inefficient. The slavers' argument was that treating them bad taught them proper Christian character.
- Sakos 4y agoChina was literally able to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty with all the manufacturing that was moved there. I think most people don't understand anything about economics. Vietnam absolutely wants and will benefit from an increasingly industrialized economy. edit: I'm seeing a number of comments pointing out how these are companies owned by Koreans. Which maybe isn't optimal, but the potential for knowledge transfer coupled with investment in infrastructure and logistics chains is a great opportunity that just needs to be used well.
- usrusr 4y agoNo doubt about any of that, but China played a really tough game to become more than just a cheap workbench. All those forced joint ventures, and the immense discipline required to make those become more than just easy profit-share for some lucky ones who know the right people. They did a lot of things extremely well to get to where they are now. That won't be easy to replicate. Particularly when one of the partners knows that game so well. It could end as colonization 2.0.
- koheripbal 4y agoMost of those tough rules emerged well after the boom in Chinese manufacturing. It's not required for achieving what they did.
- dylan604 4y agoHow long before Vietnam pulls a move from China's playbook where they start to manufacture things based on the plans foreign companies brought them and sell the product under Vietnamese company brands?
- echelon 4y agoThat's just the algorithm. Every nation leveraging manufacturing for growth will do this. When it eventually gets too expensive for native workers, manufacturing moves again [1]. Except the locals now have a sizable middle class and knowledge economy, and there are high value industrial processes left behind: automotive, aerospace, scientific, etc. The whole world is growing up, and wealthy nations are paying for it (because they love low cost goods). It's a win-win situation. ([1] doesn't mean every nation shouldn't think defensively about its own supply chain for essential inputs and outputs.)
- fiftyfifty 4y agoI think many of us would be more supportive of outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries if their government aligned more with Western ideals. The fact is many countries, like Vietnam, are still "developing" because they have authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their population to some extent keeping their labor cheap while stunting their economic potential. We see the problems with this situation right now with Russia and China, whether it's buying oil from Russia or manufacturing in China, we've given these countries enormous amounts of power and influence by essentially funding their regimes. As we can see with the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan these regimes are not our friends or allies, even though we have allowed ourselves to become attached at the hip to them economically. As a western consumer I would much rather see my money either stay in country or go to a country that is a political ally and shares more western political and economic ideals.
- bigcat12345678 4y agoOpression is necessary to development. Looking back for the cruelest opressions done by some nations towards American Indian, Asian, African in the early and haydays of industrial revolution. You are going to see opressions happening again and again in the future as well. It's just a natural process of society development.
- erichocean 4y ago> Opression is necessary to development. That's one of the main theme's of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Always nice to see how classy the HN comment section is. Well done, everyone.
- nsonha 4y agomaybe that's true and we need to question whether development no matter what is in line with our values
- bigcat12345678 4y agoNo, oppression being necessary for development is an observation from history, which is true for the majority of the world's leading national economy. It's different from a political ideology. Because such observation does not justify the oppression, unlike hitler's case. But ironically, your own comment is indeed a prime example of your own ridicule: poorly informed individual making shallow derogatory snab without consecutive feedback.
- marricks 4y ago> By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and safety than the agricultural work that they would be doing without economic development. Do you have numbers on how it improved life of Chinese farmers compared to 100 years ago, 200? When the US went through its industrial revolution we went from people owning farms to basically being owned by the factories boss. Child labor was rampant so we’re ridiculous working hours and blacksmiths and others who were put out of a job basically drank themselves to death. Someone none of that seems to ever happen in other countries and all we hear about is “how great of an opportunity it is for them to get to build iPhones” odd stuff
- hintymad 4y agoIs cheap labor the driving factor, though? I vaguely recall that the labor cost alone in China has not been the largest competitive advantage as the cost has been increasing steadily over years. Instead, it was the complete supply chain in China that out competes other countries. Bloomberg also reported an incident: Jobs wanted to change the cheap plastic screen to glass, and Foxconn was able to recruit more than 8000 workers overnight and completely reconfigured their assembly line to fulfill such request. This level of efficiency used to belong to the US. I really hope US can revolutionize its manufacturing for this century.
- markdown 4y ago> ...This is level of efficiency used to belong to the US. I doubt that.
- hintymad 4y agoRelatively speaking? In WWII, the US produced 300K planes, 130 carriers, 80 tanks every day on average, increased its steel output to 80M tons in 1944 alone, more than other countries combined. And hundreds of destroyers, corvettes, and submarines. Not that we need to do the same now, but it shows that how capable the US manufacturing industry can be.
- zx8080 4y agoWas that ability a result of the recent Great Depression and desperate needs of workers?
- nine_k 4y agoMore like colossal wartime spending. A fighting army (and navy, and airforce) is one hell of a market; they almost always would like more than you can manufacture.
- markdown 4y agoI said nothing about how capable US manufacturing was or is. I was addressing the point that you China could hire 8000 new workers overnight. > In WWII, the US produced 300K planes, 130 carriers, 80 tanks every day on average, increased its steel output to 80M tons in 1944 alone, more than other countries combined At what cost? What did that labour pool stop producing in order to produce machines of war?
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- yieldcrv 4y agoThe interesting thing about the geopolitical context is that Vietnam is also single party Communist country now practicing state capitalism and also has all the trappings of communism such as internment of dissidents, same as China does But our willingness to never think about it comes from Vietnam’s irrelevance, not the system they practice
- akdor1154 4y agoCulturally Vietnam is tending quite pro-west, and yes its govt is single party communist, but nowhere near the levels of authoritarian hell of the CCCP.
- yieldcrv 4y agonot for lack of interest, Vietnam’s party is just limited by competence and wealth and resources
- selimthegrim 4y agoWere you meaning USSR or China here as comparison?
- akdor1154 4y agoOh ta, yeah I meant china, CCP.
- 5822130027 4y ago
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago>the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and safety than the agricultural work that they would be doing without economic development Wait, I think people were much happier and we should go back to an agrarian society and that people are miserable in the dystopia we created, so I need a citation for this.
- devoutsalsa 4y agoAll other things being equal, it doesn’t make sense to chase expensive labor!
- _0w8t 4y agoI read similar things about new factories in Norway like 150 years ago. From our look it was terrible with 11 hours shifts, no vacations, child labor etc. But at that time people who worked there actually preferred that since the alternative was even harder work on farms or in fishery.