4 ms·

> I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. > I feel bad for the unaware people still

by simgt 2y ago

> I loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. > I feel bad for the unaware people still ordering. I personally feel bad for the environment and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production. Good if the beneficiaries are gone from your part of the world.

arghwhat 2y ago
> I personally feel bad for the environment 1 item per day is certainly not efficient, but nowadays temu and aliexpress batch things over a small period so that shouldn't really happen... > and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production Remember that taking away bad jobs does not save anyone, quite the contrary. People go from having shit jobs to no jobs, or even worse jobs with lower-profile companies. Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries. E.g., by buying even more stuff from those regions, but from manufacturers paying better wages (and selling goods more expensively), so they end up having to massively expand and hire more.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  > Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    "If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs." This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere between two and six decades late depending on who you feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.
    - XenophileJKO 2y ago
      The thing that really annoys me is tariffs could have been used SO much more intelligently. For example a 24 month increasing schedule. That gives business the kind of incentive to affect manufacturing and something they can plan against. But now we have a dumpster fire and tariffs will have an even worse reputation.
      - arghwhat 2y ago
        It might have been better reputation-wise than the current game of chicken, but tariffs will always sour economic partnerships, which in turn leads to bolstering alternative economic partnerships...
        XenophileJKO 2y ago
        This is objectively untrue, tariffs exist all around the world and countries are still trading.
        arghwhat 2y ago
        That tariffs are in use is not proof that it is untrue. Even with the current dumpster fire we still trade with the US, but that obviously does not mean there has been no harm. For countries, tariffs is not something that is just shrugged off as it impacts their economy, there will always be political countermeasures to strongly discourage that tariffs are applied that harms them. Retaliatory tariffs, impact on other negotiations and relationships, etc. For companies, tariffs harm profits and fair competition on both supply chain and consumer side, depending on where the tariffs are located. The company would strategize for maximum profit margins, circumventing tariffs, remove countries from their supply chain, and focusing on more profitable markets. It wouldn't be a boycott the same way it is now of course. It would be a slower process. But tariffs is a way to force the market and always have wide negative effects. One just hopes that certain long-term side-effects (like high import cost causing focus on driving down local supply cost) is worth the impact (local cost of living increase, drop in investments, drop in friendly reputation).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system But poverty has dropped and income has risen under the CCP? You can argue that the CCP doesn't actually care about "individuals moving out of poverty", and all they care about is staying in power, but this is the sort of accusation that could be levied against governments in the west as well.
    - Sabinus 2y ago
      Apparently the CCP does suppress wages in various ways to keep export goods manufactured cheaply/competitively. It's probably more of an economic strategy than an expression of collectivism but I can't be sure.
  - chairmansteve 2y ago
    Why tariffs on Madagascar?
    - WorldPeas 2y ago
      Maybe he’s not a fan of vanilla ice cream
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I am bugged more by local environmental impacts. Around the time that manufacturing started moving to China en masse in the 1990s I started to hear about trichloroethylene contamination at manufacturing sites in the U.S. Look up "trichloroethylene united states" in Google and you'll probably get results about how our marines were exposed at Camp Jejune and are now eligible for V.A. benefits. A search for "trichloroethylene china" might turn up a picture of a truck full of barrels from a company that wants to send you those barrels.
  - hangonhn 2y ago
    That stuff is all over Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County actually has one of the most if not the most EPA superfund sites. It's the leftover legacy of chip manufacturing. When you rent in the Bay Area, the landlord does not have to disclose TCE contamination to you. TCE can cause birth defects and low birth weight in weeks if breathed in by pregnant women. If you're renting in the Bay Area, Google the address and make sure the property is not over a TCE contamination area.
watwut 2y ago
Those people are not helped by loosing customers and there is no plan to help them. They would be helped by better job opportunities where they live, by more governmental protections for workers where they live etc. But, someone buying stuff made by their employer is not what harms them.
- flappyeagle 2y ago
  *losing
- simgt 2y ago
  > But, someone buying stuff made by their employer is not what harms them. It is exactly what harms them. With that logic one can defend keeping children in tantalum mines in the supply chain of an iPhone. That's not an acceptable status quo... Removing the market for immoral exploitation of beings and the environment is a necessary step. The size of the market for things made fairly needs to grow.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    There are kids in Congo that are claiming to be older than they are so they can get work in mines to feed themselves and their families. If they don’t work they and their families starve, but if they do work they are encouraging immoral child labor. I don’t understand why many people think the answer is easy and straightforward in that case, this sounds like the trolley problem to me.
    - simgt 2y ago
      The people involved in international aid in particular know fine well that it's not an easy problem to solve... Exploitation and corruption is at every level here. For a children in Congo it may be a better option if the only alternative is to starve, but let's not pretend that everyone from the mine owner to the smartphone buyer is not profiting from that situation. As a consumer one of the few immediate means of action we have is to at least refuse these products when we can... Then yeah, vote, donate, get involved for these kids to live decently.
wickedsight 2y ago
I fully agree on the environmental part. Shipping all this stuff individually is incredibly wasteful. Even the combined packages from AliExpress someone else mentioned this is the case, since there's a ton of unnecessary packaging wasting space and resources. On the 'losing side' part I agree a lot less. In the recent past, most of these items would be sold by mega corps, marked up multiple times with most of the profits flowing into shareholder's pockets. Meanwhile, the average consumer is over paying for the exact same 'low quality junk' with branding like Logitech, Dell or Amazon Basics on it. Now we can get the same (or often better) quality straight from the source, often for a fraction of the price. To me, that's a big win.
- throwawaymaths 2y ago
  I don't think it's the packaging -- I'd you're buying one thing a day a ton of it is just going to pure waste, eventually to the landfill.
properpopper 2y ago
Environment protection in the EU good: - replace plastic straws/cups with paper based ones questionable: - limit nicotine products to 10ml, so now instead of buying one bottle (200ml for example) of nicotine you have to buy 20 bottles 10ml each - ???
- tempaccount420 2y ago
  > good: > - replace plastic straws/cups with paper based ones This belongs at least in "questionable" if not just "bad"
- kortex 2y ago
  The nicotine bottle size constraint is a safety concern. Spilling a 200ml bottle of nicotine easily has the potential to cause lethality or morbidity through skin absorption, particularly in children. A 10ml bottle can still cause injury, but it is way more likely to be survivable. In this case, the safety concerns outweigh the environmental concerns.
- kbelder 2y ago
  I'm so out of the vice loop. What nicotine products do you buy in a bottle?
  - jacobgkau 2y ago
    I don't use them, but I'd assume vape juice.
34679 2y ago
I've been short on work, which means I've been poor. I use my off time to work on side projects that I simply could not afford to complete if I paid what US companies charge for tools, components, and custom PCBs. My ability to innovate is seriously impacted by these tarrifs and there is no alternative that I can afford. I recently created something that people in my industry actually want to buy, but I only ordered enough parts for 5 units. I had priced them so that when I sold them, I'd be able to put larger orders in to begin getting quantity discounts. Only problem is, what was going to be a $2k order will now cost roughly $5k, and guess what? I didn't charge $1k apiece. Now I'm out of stock and stuck in limbo waiting to earn cash from my regular job and see how these tarrifs shake out.
- simgt 2y ago
  To clarify, I'm not defending the tariffs or the way this whole thing is implemented. I'm sure it puts a lot of people in trouble. I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of. Sure at the individual level we can find advantages to it, but I'm arguing that we're collectively worst off.
  - overfeed 2y ago
    > I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of. You're going to (collectively) need to increase the incomes at the low-end if you want people earning minimum-wage to still be clothed and able to furnish their homes. A significant portion of people who by from Shein have no other options within their budgets, and their existence tends to be ignored in conversations such as this one. The unspoken social contract has been "You get low wages, but get access to cheap consumer goods", but now the cheap consumer goods are being taken away. There's a dissonance between wanting American-made/substantive/good quality/expensive consumer goods and maintaining the minimum wage at unlivable levels to avoid knock-on inflation. You can't have the economics of Switzerland coexisting with McJobs.
    - simgt 2y ago
geor9e 2y ago
You remind me of Chamath Palihapitiya. He's this billionaire who likes to call things "cheap low quality junk" too, but for him it's anything is under like $5000, or not made in Milan or the French riviera. He's hamming it up for the audience but the point is the same. Every strata of wealth has the luxury of not buying the "cheap low quality junk" of the strata below it. To you, they are temu possessions, but to another person they are just their possessions. Everyone would love to be wealthy enough to never check a pricetag. And even then, plenty of products last just as long no matter what you spend on them. Many things are literally identical and just marked up 10x by the middleman who imported it to your local store.

by simgt 2y ago

arghwhat 2y ago

> I personally feel bad for the environment 1 item per day is certainly not efficient, but nowadays temu and aliexpress batch things over a small period so that shouldn't really happen... > and all the people on the losing side of cheap low quality junk production Remember that taking away bad jobs does not save anyone, quite the contrary. People go from having shit jobs to no jobs, or even worse jobs with lower-profile companies. Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries. E.g., by buying even more stuff from those regions, but from manufacturers paying better wages (and selling goods more expensively), so they end up having to massively expand and hire more.

dingnuts 2y ago
> Helping them requires creating vast numbers of better paying jobs with better working condition in their country, which require redirecting vast amounts of money to those countries This was the logic under Deng, and the reason China is now a peer state. Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  "If we enrich the CCP we just end up with an adversary capable of taking us on. That's why tariffs." This argument is absolutely accurate and somewhere between two and six decades late depending on who you feel like blaming for offshoring. Present day all we're doing is poking inflation with a stick, threatening the bond market (and eventually the dollar reserve), and encouraging economic partners to look elsewhere for stability. 3 guesses how all that ends.
  - XenophileJKO 2y ago
    The thing that really annoys me is tariffs could have been used SO much more intelligently. For example a 24 month increasing schedule. That gives business the kind of incentive to affect manufacturing and something they can plan against. But now we have a dumpster fire and tariffs will have an even worse reputation.
    - arghwhat 2y ago
      It might have been better reputation-wise than the current game of chicken, but tariffs will always sour economic partnerships, which in turn leads to bolstering alternative economic partnerships...
      - XenophileJKO 2y ago
        This is objectively untrue, tariffs exist all around the world and countries are still trading.
        arghwhat 2y ago
        That tariffs are in use is not proof that it is untrue. Even with the current dumpster fire we still trade with the US, but that obviously does not mean there has been no harm. For countries, tariffs is not something that is just shrugged off as it impacts their economy, there will always be political countermeasures to strongly discourage that tariffs are applied that harms them. Retaliatory tariffs, impact on other negotiations and relationships, etc. For companies, tariffs harm profits and fair competition on both supply chain and consumer side, depending on where the tariffs are located. The company would strategize for maximum profit margins, circumventing tariffs, remove countries from their supply chain, and focusing on more profitable markets. It wouldn't be a boycott the same way it is now of course. It would be a slower process. But tariffs is a way to force the market and always have wide negative effects. One just hopes that certain long-term side-effects (like high import cost causing focus on driving down local supply cost) is worth the impact (local cost of living increase, drop in investments, drop in friendly reputation).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 2y ago
  >Unfortunately when doing business with communists, enriching them doesn't help the individuals move out of poverty because that would require wages to rise and that happens for political reasons not merit in a single party system But poverty has dropped and income has risen under the CCP? You can argue that the CCP doesn't actually care about "individuals moving out of poverty", and all they care about is staying in power, but this is the sort of accusation that could be levied against governments in the west as well.
  - Sabinus 2y ago
    Apparently the CCP does suppress wages in various ways to keep export goods manufactured cheaply/competitively. It's probably more of an economic strategy than an expression of collectivism but I can't be sure.
- chairmansteve 2y ago
  Why tariffs on Madagascar?
  - WorldPeas 2y ago
    Maybe he’s not a fan of vanilla ice cream
PaulHoule 2y ago
I am bugged more by local environmental impacts. Around the time that manufacturing started moving to China en masse in the 1990s I started to hear about trichloroethylene contamination at manufacturing sites in the U.S. Look up "trichloroethylene united states" in Google and you'll probably get results about how our marines were exposed at Camp Jejune and are now eligible for V.A. benefits. A search for "trichloroethylene china" might turn up a picture of a truck full of barrels from a company that wants to send you those barrels.
- hangonhn 2y ago
  That stuff is all over Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County actually has one of the most if not the most EPA superfund sites. It's the leftover legacy of chip manufacturing. When you rent in the Bay Area, the landlord does not have to disclose TCE contamination to you. TCE can cause birth defects and low birth weight in weeks if breathed in by pregnant women. If you're renting in the Bay Area, Google the address and make sure the property is not over a TCE contamination area.

watwut 2y ago

Those people are not helped by loosing customers and there is no plan to help them. They would be helped by better job opportunities where they live, by more governmental protections for workers where they live etc. But, someone buying stuff made by their employer is not what harms them.

flappyeagle 2y ago
*losing
simgt 2y ago
> But, someone buying stuff made by their employer is not what harms them. It is exactly what harms them. With that logic one can defend keeping children in tantalum mines in the supply chain of an iPhone. That's not an acceptable status quo... Removing the market for immoral exploitation of beings and the environment is a necessary step. The size of the market for things made fairly needs to grow.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  There are kids in Congo that are claiming to be older than they are so they can get work in mines to feed themselves and their families. If they don’t work they and their families starve, but if they do work they are encouraging immoral child labor. I don’t understand why many people think the answer is easy and straightforward in that case, this sounds like the trolley problem to me.
  - simgt 2y ago
    The people involved in international aid in particular know fine well that it's not an easy problem to solve... Exploitation and corruption is at every level here. For a children in Congo it may be a better option if the only alternative is to starve, but let's not pretend that everyone from the mine owner to the smartphone buyer is not profiting from that situation. As a consumer one of the few immediate means of action we have is to at least refuse these products when we can... Then yeah, vote, donate, get involved for these kids to live decently.

wickedsight 2y ago

I fully agree on the environmental part. Shipping all this stuff individually is incredibly wasteful. Even the combined packages from AliExpress someone else mentioned this is the case, since there's a ton of unnecessary packaging wasting space and resources. On the 'losing side' part I agree a lot less. In the recent past, most of these items would be sold by mega corps, marked up multiple times with most of the profits flowing into shareholder's pockets. Meanwhile, the average consumer is over paying for the exact same 'low quality junk' with branding like Logitech, Dell or Amazon Basics on it. Now we can get the same (or often better) quality straight from the source, often for a fraction of the price. To me, that's a big win.

throwawaymaths 2y ago
I don't think it's the packaging -- I'd you're buying one thing a day a ton of it is just going to pure waste, eventually to the landfill.

properpopper 2y ago

Environment protection in the EU good: - replace plastic straws/cups with paper based ones questionable: - limit nicotine products to 10ml, so now instead of buying one bottle (200ml for example) of nicotine you have to buy 20 bottles 10ml each - ???

tempaccount420 2y ago
> good: > - replace plastic straws/cups with paper based ones This belongs at least in "questionable" if not just "bad"
kortex 2y ago
The nicotine bottle size constraint is a safety concern. Spilling a 200ml bottle of nicotine easily has the potential to cause lethality or morbidity through skin absorption, particularly in children. A 10ml bottle can still cause injury, but it is way more likely to be survivable. In this case, the safety concerns outweigh the environmental concerns.
kbelder 2y ago
I'm so out of the vice loop. What nicotine products do you buy in a bottle?
- jacobgkau 2y ago
  I don't use them, but I'd assume vape juice.

34679 2y ago

I've been short on work, which means I've been poor. I use my off time to work on side projects that I simply could not afford to complete if I paid what US companies charge for tools, components, and custom PCBs. My ability to innovate is seriously impacted by these tarrifs and there is no alternative that I can afford. I recently created something that people in my industry actually want to buy, but I only ordered enough parts for 5 units. I had priced them so that when I sold them, I'd be able to put larger orders in to begin getting quantity discounts. Only problem is, what was going to be a $2k order will now cost roughly $5k, and guess what? I didn't charge $1k apiece. Now I'm out of stock and stuck in limbo waiting to earn cash from my regular job and see how these tarrifs shake out.

simgt 2y ago
To clarify, I'm not defending the tariffs or the way this whole thing is implemented. I'm sure it puts a lot of people in trouble. I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of. Sure at the individual level we can find advantages to it, but I'm arguing that we're collectively worst off.
- overfeed 2y ago
  > I'm only criticizing the race to the bottom that the platforms and kind of consumption mentioned are part of. You're going to (collectively) need to increase the incomes at the low-end if you want people earning minimum-wage to still be clothed and able to furnish their homes. A significant portion of people who by from Shein have no other options within their budgets, and their existence tends to be ignored in conversations such as this one. The unspoken social contract has been "You get low wages, but get access to cheap consumer goods", but now the cheap consumer goods are being taken away. There's a dissonance between wanting American-made/substantive/good quality/expensive consumer goods and maintaining the minimum wage at unlivable levels to avoid knock-on inflation. You can't have the economics of Switzerland coexisting with McJobs.
  - simgt 2y ago

geor9e 2y ago

You remind me of Chamath Palihapitiya. He's this billionaire who likes to call things "cheap low quality junk" too, but for him it's anything is under like $5000, or not made in Milan or the French riviera. He's hamming it up for the audience but the point is the same. Every strata of wealth has the luxury of not buying the "cheap low quality junk" of the strata below it. To you, they are temu possessions, but to another person they are just their possessions. Everyone would love to be wealthy enough to never check a pricetag. And even then, plenty of products last just as long no matter what you spend on them. Many things are literally identical and just marked up 10x by the middleman who imported it to your local store.