chinese (slave) labor. in fact, look at anything primarily imported from china - very cheap compared to 1990s. look at things that cannot easily be exported from china like housing or education. expensive.
the world has never been cheap, we're just better at arbitrage now.
LOL, the blog gives a lot of detailed reasons, even summarizes it [1] and but some random stranger gives an outdated opinion from the '90s, which is not even wrong just plain humorous. If slave labor, how come everything else is also not so cheap.
[1] Virtually all the major mechanisms that can drive efficiency improvements — improving technology and overlapping S-curves, economies of scale (including geometric scaling effects), eliminating process steps, reducing variability and improving yield, advancing towards continuous process manufacturing — are on display here
Aren't their salaries and standard of living up a lot - higher than even places like Mexico? Or are all the videos of modern China on YouTube CGI/AI state propaganda? Also, South Korean TVs are cheap, too. Also slave labor?
I don't know about salaries in Mexico, but ~8 years ago the salaries in coastal cities industries for unqualified workers were above 600€/month if I did the conversion correctly at the time, which is 2 to 10 time higher than agricultural jobs.
That was an issue where I was visiting because basically 90% the non-retired adults were working on the coast, 2 days away, and let children with their grandparents all year round except for their vacations. Apparently that created a kind of 'lord of the fly' situation in some villages, but don't quote me on that, I didn't saw it myself. What I saw was the young there feeling abandoned and let down by the central and provincial government, and their parents.
as for salaries - yes indeed they are up. not every chinese laborer is a slave obviously, but many are - not usually for electronics directly though, more often for the inputs of such (energy and what not).
i'm surprised there's contention about this - it's all over the news.
cocoa is the main input for that and is subject to weather and crop failure, which - surprise - is why its' more expensive. however if you're talking about chocolate candies (not raw cocoa) it is indeed less expensive now adjusted for inflation. the problem is the quality of chocolate candies has reduced, so the equivalent chocolate bar is probably more expensive even though the similar one is cheaper.
ironically cocoa is a great example of my point though - it's not imported from china, so there isn't a huge cost reduction.
npalli|1 month ago
websiteapi|1 month ago
it's literally what the graphs in the article say... increased efficiency and what I am saying are not in contention.
whateverboat|1 month ago
formerly_proven|1 month ago
what did the ancient capitalists mean by this?
cpursley|1 month ago
orwin|1 month ago
That was an issue where I was visiting because basically 90% the non-retired adults were working on the coast, 2 days away, and let children with their grandparents all year round except for their vacations. Apparently that created a kind of 'lord of the fly' situation in some villages, but don't quote me on that, I didn't saw it myself. What I saw was the young there feeling abandoned and let down by the central and provincial government, and their parents.
websiteapi|1 month ago
more expensive than chinese
as for salaries - yes indeed they are up. not every chinese laborer is a slave obviously, but many are - not usually for electronics directly though, more often for the inputs of such (energy and what not).
i'm surprised there's contention about this - it's all over the news.
a3w|1 month ago
websiteapi|1 month ago
ironically cocoa is a great example of my point though - it's not imported from china, so there isn't a huge cost reduction.