8 ms·
Ah, so its workers building the plant, not the workers manufacturing their products.
by JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
Ah, so its workers building the plant, not the workers manufacturing their products.
- ddebernardy 13y agoIt's not good publicity either way...
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoNo, not at all. Like the other article linked by nodata, companies are moving from China to Vietnam because its cheaper. Seems a little greedy.
- Sharlin 13y agoI wonder what happens when they run out of countries to move to.
- jackgavigan 13y agoElon Musk starts to make a LOT of money! :-)
- Offler 13y agoWages go up.
- mpclark 13y agoHahaha! Very funny. Perhaps we'll move away from consuming things that need to be manufactured and towards digital goods instead.
- acheron 13y agoRobots.
- waterlesscloud 13y agoThis is of course the actual answer, as much as people don't want to face it. Once all the prospects for very cheap human labor are exhausted, the work goes to robots. It doesn't go to higher paid humans. That future will not happen.
- chmike 13y agoAfrica is the next eldorado for manufacturing. It has already started.
- bilbo0s 13y agoI think (s)he's asking what happens after Africa.
- sanoli 13y agoProbably true. I wonder why nobody ever counts Africa in these discussions. It's always "but what about when all the poor Asian workers start to earn higher wages and there are no more cheap countries left?".
- pyre 13y agoAs @smoorman1024 stated, too much political instability in much of Africa. It's true that some countries are stable, but (e.g.) being next to an unstable country doesn't affect the risk in a positive direction.
- chmike 13y agoApparently things are changing. Compare Asia from 1975 and today. It doesn't take long for such a profund change. If I was an investor, I would think that now is the right time to start looking at this continent. Chiniese already do. Many africans are highly educated but lack opportunities to put this competence in application. This continent is full of unexploited opportunities.
- smoorman1024 13y agoMany parts of Africa are not politically stable enough to support this manufacturing. You should watch this Planet Money article to understand why Manufacturing (of T-Shirts in this case) move from one country to the next. http://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title http://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title
- virmundi 13y agoWars and a nanny-state. Probably before that hits, automation for most of the product. Eventually we will need very few people to produce any part of the product. We will automate resource extraction. Automate resource delivery. Automate resource refinement. Etc. So this leaves us with a large population that has little point in the current economic system. So we'll get higher unemployment globally. Historically this has lead to wars, either internal or external. Marx/Hegel are right. The haves and the have-nots will duke it out. The have-nots will, like Norther American generals in the civil war, throw bodies at the haves. Eventually coming to a new equilibrium of far fewer have-nots (many are dead) and probably fewer haves. Eventually everything is owned commonly and a new society is birthed based on the idea of self actualization through experimentation.
- useful 13y agohard to fight automated soldiers with intelligence tracking of your movements since birth from low earth orbit
- Tombone5 13y agoexcept they can't track when it's cloudy, and because of pollution that is always. Also the automated soldiers are very expensive, and prone to crash when there's an update to the time zone libraries, or when reading street signs in foreign languages (utf-8 is never properly implemented, not even in the future)
- hershel 13y agoAnother option : the haves will offer a tiny share of the economy(which with optimized technology might suffice for a basic standard of living) and zero influence to the have nots and drown them with escapism ,all controlled from above by a strong totalitarian state. Sound familiar ? if it works so far, why won't it work further on ?
- virmundi 13y agoI don't think escapism actually escapes anything. The US welfare state is escapism from a certain view point. However, the people in it are pretty much locked in place by the system. They are also locked out of "good places". I conjecture this is what causes the crime rate among that same population. They see little opportunity to improve their lot by any means other than violence.
- fennecfoxen 13y agoThey move to another country because the people in the first company become rich enough to demand more money. Sounds like a win. :b The real problem is if they stay in the same place forever because that place is poor forever.
- Pxtl 13y agoBy then the economy will be bad enough in some of the first countries they abandoned. 20 more years of decay in Detroit and it will be another viable 3rd-world manfacturing hellhole.
- at-fates-hands 13y ago>>>Seems a little greedy. Which actually benefits us as the consumer. Would you prefer a less greedy corporation that goes where the most expensive labor is which then increases the cost of production which then increases the cost of the products you buy from said company? Greed is what keeps prices low, and competition high.
- sixthloginorso 13y agoIf they assured me that the extra price goes to ensure a better standard of living and better working conditions for their third-world workers, then yes.
- elohesra 13y agoHow nice that you can afford to pay extra to ease liberal guilt. Do you think that the poorest in your country can afford to pay extra too? For the relatively monied -- and software developers usually count among that number -- it's easy to argue that companies are too greedy, and that companies shouldn't use exploitative labour. For the lower class, paying extra so that someone in the third world can enjoy a better quality of life isn't an option.
- jre 13y agoIt's funny this comes up in an article about Samsung Electronics. They're not exactly in the business of selling essential goods. They basically try to convince you that each year you should get the N+1 TV or smartphone which has more or less the same capabilities as the one before. If you're buying the last Galaxy S4, paying a little more IS an option.
- sixthloginorso 13y agoSo you say that multinational corporations shouldn't compete on ethics? I thought you neoliberals didn't chastise anyone with respect to their choices in commerce. Yes, this is systemic. Are you trying to convince me that the situation isn't fucked? For all the claptrap about how the economy isn't a zero-sum game and that the tide lifts all the boats and so many other platitudes, there's no denying that the quality of life of most people in the world is nothing but a point in a gradient of declining living conditions, everyone benefiting from the labor of people with fewer options who have to work and live worse than them. Anyhow, how much do you think it would raise the cost of the things you use, just to ensure safe working conditions at factories? For jeans, it's a paltry 90 cents. http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/10/bangladesh-factory-safety http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/07/10/bangladesh-factory-saf... Yes, the poorest in my country would probably have to think twice before spending even 90 cents, hell tell that to the homeless. The vast majority of the poor here probably wouldn't mind, given that it's a mere drop in the sea of debt they are drowning in, and that's a problem with many facets, on its own. But there's quite a lot of room for diminishing the unfairness of this scheme, even if the solution feels even cosmetic at times given the broader problem of exploitation and inequality.
- Tloewald 13y agoThere was a wonderful Greenpeace poster from back in the 80s which had these words: "When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money." It wasn't about workers' rights, but something along those lines seems to fit.
- skriticos2 13y agoI always liked that quote, though the Greenpeace association is new to me. It supposedly originated as a native american proverb: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/20/last-tree-cut/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/20/last-tree-cut/
- makomk 13y agoIf you read that link, it's not so much a native american proverb as it is a quote from a specific person who's a native american. I know the fact that actual attribution of this quote, and other things said by Native Americans, gets ignored and their quotes attributed to some kind of vague native wisdom actually seems to piss a lot of people off.
- velis_vel 13y agoThe attribution of things to 'ancient Native American proverbs' is reminiscent of the whole 'noble savage' trope.
- btian 13y agoExcept it's not. China has reached the stage in economic development that people are moving to higher skilled and higher paying jobs. Infrastructure in Vietnam has improved to the extent that is ready for large manufacturing plants. While companies are saving by moving manufacturing plants, many people (millions) in Vietnam are going to experience higher standard of living. I say it's a win win.
- sixthloginorso 13y agoExcept for the people they'll lay off as the plants move? It didn't work out wonderfully for the autoplant workers at Flint and Detroit; for some reason, the people didn't get the upgrade you speak of after the plants closed. Weird, huh?
- gejjaxxita 13y agoIf we kept thinking like that all our clothes would be hand-woven.
- jellicle 13y ago> many people (millions) in Vietnam are going to experience higher standard of living. Aren't therefore many people (millions) in China going to experience lower standard of living?
- blueskin_ 13y agoNot really, because they are moving to higher paying jobs than assembly-line work.
- edwinnathaniel 13y agoNot all of them. Only the luckiest ones. 1-10% probably. The rest got laid off.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y ago
- Symmetry 13y agoIt is greedy, but it tends to have good side effects in this case all the same. When you have a country that starts to industrialize factory owners only have to offer wages twice what someone gets on the farm to get people to migrate from the communities they grew up in to the cities. As the factory owners profit from the cheap labor they spend some of the money on themselves, but also spend some of the money on building new factories and absorbing new labor. Eventually all the excess labor in the countryside is absorbed, and the factory owners have to start competing for new labor by raising wages. This is the same general pattern that happened in Britain then Japan then Korea and China, and seems to be just starting in Vietnam now. There are sometimes variations, such as the fact that rural wages were pretty high in the US due to lots of available land, or the Chinese residency permits system that artificially restricts who can move to the city and so started the rise in wages more quickly than would be "natural" at the expense of the people forced to live in the countryside. But then again the Party knows that its dissent among the people in easy marching distance of it's offices that it really has to worry about. But getting back on track, even if the companies weren't greedy then creating new factories in Vietnam to create jobs for Vietnamese people jobs would be the altruistic thing to do. The difference would be that instead of dividends they would turn their profits into more investment so as to make development happen faster.
- mikeash 13y agoHow often do you purposefully buy a more expensive product solely because it's better for the people making it?
- eropple 13y agoThat's not a fair question. A fair question is "how often do you purposefully buy a more expensive product when the marginal expense product exceeds the marginal benefit you derive?". Nothing exists in a vacuum.
- mikeash 13y agoThat's not correct, because the person I'm replying to is saying that Samsung is greedy for not taking a hit in order to benefit other people.
- jamra 13y agoManufacturing from the US is moving to Mexico. The transportation costs are far less. Also, since they have the raw goods inside Mexico, international fluctuations of the US dollar will not influence costs as much. I don't think Vietnam can compete with China until China stops treating its workers as slaves.
- LekkoscPiwa 13y agoWhat about it's not greedy but people like you wondering why should I pay 300usd for 24" LG screen made in China while I can pay 250usd for 24" Samsung screen made in Vietnam.
- nik61 13y agoSamsung is a Korean company, not Chinese. I've heard that labour mobility in China still has a way to go, but Korea is probably actually running out of people to work in factories.