356
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2024
356 points (96.8% liked)
News
21752 readers
3874 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Imagine if China made “goods” instead of shit.
China has a lead on US manufacturing in a number of areas. I mean beyond just labor.
Apple iPhone motherboards and assembly is in China and I think everyone agrees its a very high quality phone. Its no cheap PCB either, but a relatively advanced 10+ layer board with a huge number of chips, components. With volumes that no US company can sustain.
We need to learn from China, but we also need to avoid the absolute crap / bullshit / economic failures of China while doing so.
There's nothing to learn from China. They "learned" their manufacturing base from the US, when the wealthy leveraged trade deals to make production as cheap as possible. China has no equivalent to OSHA, doesn't value human life or safety standards, and has weak environmental regulations in comparison to the US. The US has incredible potential especially as automation gets leveraged but we're forever hamstrung by our bullshit economics and "line go up for shareholders" system thanks to our corrupt politicians. We have nothing to learn from China except that totalitarian states are worse than our oligarchs.
In fairness, the reason garbage comes from China's factories is the US corporations that place orders for consumerist trash. My subtle point was, imagine if China's "customers" valued quality over cheap production. Ever heard of Chinesium?
You ever hear of the iPhone?
You ever hear of Shenzhen? Its a city for electronics in China. Its completely different from anything available in the USA, believe me I've looked.
You might want to look at China again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq_aeq2NTVE
China is incredibly automated. A ton of heavy machinery / automation is made in China. See JLCPCB youtube link above.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1IpTtRV9Sg
You think China doesn't know how to use machines to automatically make pcb boards? Do you think a human actually was placing every single component in an iPhone?
The reason why Shenzen can create items cheaper than USA is because they have a larger volume, larger scale, more automation and superior logistics. Its time for us to learn the basics from China again. Even in China, you ain't gonna get technicians or electrical engineers who can use these manufacturing lines at minimum wage. These are highly skilled workers, in a city full of EEs sharing knowledge and working together.
Apple chose China as a manufacturing site not because it was cheaper, but because it was higher quality and more flexible than the USA supply lines. That was over 15 years ago. People need to wake up to the manufacturing beast that China has become.
That being said, Chinese economic policy remains utter shit. So we still can pull ahead of them. But China's out-automating us and has cheaper labor. Legions of pick-and-place machines, CNC Mills, 3d printers, pcb soldering... (enough to mass produce the iPhone) all exists in China.
Automation? China's got more pick-and-place machines, they got more soldering ovens, they got more stencil masks than us. We need to start catching up to them.
USA has the advantage in energy though. So whatever automation we make here in the USA will be cheaper due to our cheaper energy. China still relies upon importing from Russia and other countries, while USA is largely self-sufficient for energy.
Seriously I don’t know much about Shenzhen but damn it has to be one of the most unique places on earth in terms of having such a nexus of skilled engineers, technicians and production chains for computer chips.
Yeah it is a tragedy people aren’t paid a living wage :( but if tomorrow Shenzhen just abruptly disappeared from the earth we would be in big trouble as there isn’t really “just somewhere else” where what happens at Shenzhen can happen in terms of the global production of sophisticated electronics.
Wellllll.... not chips. Taiwan does that.
China / Shenzhen is more of assembly. PCB boards and the like. Very important to the computer process. China is trying to crack the chip problem as well, but they're not quite there yet. (Taiwan, Korea, and USA are all ahead of China when it comes to chips specifically).
But chips are useless without a PCB, and China is incredibly good at PCBs / assembly. To the point where no one else aside from China can seemingly compete at this.
facepalm lol