overseas manufacturing in developing countries

does anyone know what the world evolves towards when one guy owns a single 3D printer that prints all the world's goods?

on a certain level I wonder if we think/talk too much about apple's factories, obv they are a big symbol of 21st century happy capitalism but the people making random plastic walmart crap in some other factory merit the same attention. I guess foxconn is one of the biggest players I just sometimes get the feeling like the 'people making your iphones are suffering' narrative disproportionally interests people .

sure but that's just the way it is, it's v convenient if you can have a kinda implied binary by only knowing about one half of that equation. didn't nike get busted for sweatshops in the '90s, & adidas sales uptick accordingly, even though they were both sorta equivalent in the kinda labour practices they were involved in? it's just that you're not on the side of the textbook bad dudes.

maybe not quite the same bc apple is as much its own thing as it is a competitor for each specific product, but still

It's that people have an emotional relationship with their iPhones that they don't have with the plastic crap they buy at WalMart, so if you print a story that includes iPhones, readers will read it. Journalists and editors know this. It's the same dynamic that makes advertisers put babies in ads because they know it will draw your attention more than a pic of their product would.

yeah apple's just a way to bring attention to the issue. chrome-plating is a nasty process but nobody really cares about what happens in a faucet or tailpipe manufacturing plant.

right I agree w/ all this stuff, I'm just saying sometimes you could get the impression that china's nothing more than a big apple factory, which I guess will eventually be true, but is far from being true today

It's also a big book factory, that's how I see it anyway.

That'd be interesting to get the full scope of overseas manufacturing and how it relates to our lives as consumers and the lives of workers in the factories. Maybe it'd be a bit too much for people to face, though, to see how much of our convenience and luxury rests on the backs of people living and working in terrible conditions. Seems like the kinda thing people would block out of their minds, though ... nobody (or at least decent people) likes being complicit in abusing people, especially when it makes their lives more convenient.

Funny how human nature doesn't change very much... was there ever a period in human history without some type of slavery? It's not just having people in physical shackles, but also circumstances and conditions that compel sacrificing your life and individual freedom to survive. Even when we do have the luxury of actual freedom of choice, there was a response to that: consumerism. Will the future be any different?

I think the more interesting question is, let's say the developing world agrees to strictly adhire to american labor standards. how much more would an iphone cost? would it be worth the jobs lost in the process?

The experience of working in assembly of small electronics, the experience of working in a factory running injection molding machines making plastic bowls, and the experience of working in a garment factory all very very different. Part of the reason why there's so much focus on that Apple plant is that the pace there is super intense because of the insane demand. There are industries where factory workers get to chill a bit, believe me.

err adhire = adhere

would it be worth the jobs lost in the process?

I don't believe any jobs would be lost - really. i think demand is price inelastic well beyond the price increase required to avoid sweatshops.

the difficulty is coordinated action - china doesn't want to go first because it's already facing pressure from vietnam, etc. apple doesn't want to raise the price of the iphone if samsung doesn't do this. etc.

well are we talking about some global minimum wage too? and I wasn't really talking about *just the iphone* which is fairly unusually price inelastic, I was just using it as a default object in a world w/ universal labor standards.

I'd imagine that if all the East Asian countries banded together and enforced higher qualify of life initiatives, people would find another way to make the most profits they can if there's an available alternative. Africa next? China's already moving some manufacturing to the continent and treating African employees even worse than Chinese employees.

So, probably won't make a squat of difference if China and all the Asian companies raise their standards to American standards, and probably won't do squat to help American workers. That's a totally off-hand conclusion, though.

China's not manufacturing anything in Africa, they are mining for resources

Foxconn, otoh, is opening a factory in brazil

that's why I said we should try to imagine the consequences of doing it globally xp

China is not moving manufacturing outside China, they are merely moving manufacturing the next province inland (previously the ass end of nowhere).

"manufacturing TO the next..."

right, a global minimum wage would do it. hopefully a living wage based on in-country prices.

it create a really weird situation as the ~800 million subsistence farmers in the world suddenly have an even greater incentive to migrate to cities.

*would create

Jon L I thought China was starting to feel pressure from countries like Vietnam?

Yes, sure, but they can shave labor costs down a bit by moving inland to a province which has not been through this whole process yet. Meanwhile the long-standing manufacturing cradle is being transformed into tech business 'destination cities'.

it create a really weird situation as the ~800 million subsistence farmers in the world suddenly have an even greater incentive to migrate to cities.

― lukas, Thursday, January 26, 2012 1:22 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

china claims that the number of urban residents now outnumber rural, though I have my doubts - that's just taking into account migrant workers, who still maintain hukou back in their rural villages

right, a global minimum wage would do it. hopefully a living wage based on in-country prices.

well while I don't think it holds true in all cases, I think that would cost jobs in the big picture. if cheap walmart plastic is more expensive, we're buying less of it, etc.

and yeah, traditionally it's been the eastern and southern coasts of China that have been the most developed through history - just because of proximity to water and shipping. china's infrastructure is catching up, rail lines are being built, to the interior - maybe in 50 years, china will be like america, where even living in the middle of bumfuck nowhere kansas (apologies to all people from kansas) can enjoy fresh ocean caught swordfish and fruits from venezuela.

haha in 50 years people in kansas might not either

As we talked about much earlier in this thread (ppl should read the whole thing it's good!) the lower cost of labor inland may be offset by the higher cost of trucking/railing the goods a further distance to the port...

i'm sure that would be true in some cases, but in other cases mightn't the wage increase just be absorbed by cutting profits? couldn't we think about the minimum wage basically as a redistributive tax?

xxxp

I think the more interesting question is, let's say the developing world agrees to strictly adhire to american labor standards.

As I've posted before in this thread (now lost in the fold I think), one of the pressures in my industry happens when a certain project requires us to adhere to American-level labor standards and we're told repeatedly that the factory employees WANT to work overtime, 6 days a week, longer shifts, etc. Because a lot of them will only be doing this job for a year or two or three, it's not a lifetime of the same labor conditions every day stretching in front of them.

At least this is my impression. Several other posters (dayo?) raised doubts about whether what I was hearing was actually the voice of the workers or the management.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-05/world-bank-china-may-cooperate-to-transfer-manufacturing-jobs-to-africa.html">=http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-05/world-bank-china-may-cooperate-to-transfer-manufacturing-jobs-to-africa.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/04/china-manufacturing-factories-africa">=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/04/china-manufacturing-factories-africa

I was just guessing off-hand, but it's hard to see Chinese manufacturing moving to Africa as not being in the realm of possibility. It's a bargaining chip in a way ... if things get too expensive to produce in China, move it somewhere cheaper if possible. It's not like tycoons have any particularly local allegiances beyond needing labor and resources.

I'm seeing some efforts to move some manuf to Thailand, tbh. Not sure how this figures in.

i'm sure that would be true in some cases, but in other cases mightn't the wage increase just be absorbed by cutting profits? couldn't we think about the minimum wage basically as a redistributive tax?

well that might be the case for a cut of the iphone $ and related products, but in the big picture I don't think very many things we buy are that inelastic and I don't think your average american has *that much* breathing room in their budgets. which is to say on a certain cut would be redistributive but I think that wouldn't make up for the overall losses.

plus in this world american goods and services are now more attractively priced - go to a concert instead of buy plastic crap etc.

i'm not arguing that there are a lot of goods that are price inelastic, i'm arguing that there ... some ... industries that rack up enough profit to absorb cost increases without increasing prices. i don't know how many, i guess.

apple is pretty unique in that regard - for PC manufacturing, profits are RAZOR THIN

aw

I like the idea of a global minimum wage, but how would that ever come into existence? Would it be required for global stability? If not, it's hard for me to see how people demanding that would have enough bargaining power to make it happen.

As long as globalization exists and cheap sources of labor exist (taking into account cost inputs: fixed costs of infrastructure and developing labor pool, costs of production and shipping per #units, etc., on price considering demand), it completely obliterates any power workers have to make demands on their own behalf in the long term.

What are the solutions here to regain power on that level to make these demands effectively ... armed revolution? Same people take power as we have in power now. Maybe the only solution is if every consumer makes the demand themselves in refusing to buy products manufactured in a certain way, but that depends on the factors of: access to information, and going against the grain of people liking convenience and dealing with their own problems. It's up to us to take account of the social costs ... but that depends on how active and altruistic people are, and I'm a little cynical to believe that would make much of a difference. :{}

Just seems like we're in a very long-term stretch of exploitative labor on the global scale re: manufacturing. I'd love to see how Africa is as a future manufacturing base, because if it is then don't see much hope for this trend changing unless something totally unexpected happens. Shit's different now.

http://behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10284158-the-chinese-want-jobs-too

Workers want those jobs
On Monday, tens of thousands of people lined up outside a job agency to apply for an estimated 100,000 new jobs Foxconn is seeking to fill at its factory in Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan province.
Foxconn wants to double its current workforce of 130,000 at the Zhengzhou plant, which it opened last year. The facility already churns out 200,000 iPhones a day and is part of Foxconn’s grand plan to make Zhengzhou the world’s largest smartphone manufacturing base.
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The basic starting salary advertised--according to a report posted on M.I.C. Gadget, a blogsite about tech and other related matters in China—is 1,650 yuan a month ($261), which includes dorm housing and food.
The pay is lower than comparable salaries Foxconn pays workers at its Shenzhen factory in southern China. But that may be a sacrifice Henan workers are willing to make initially.
With a population in excess of 100 million, Henan is China’s most populous province. A fifth of them are migrant workers who travel widely to find jobs in the country’s more prosperous regions like the south or coast.

$261 a month on top of housing and food is not completely terrible, especially assuming certain things are going to be a lot cheaper there than we're used to. I mean at least that almost guarantees you have extra money to send to your family or save if you want, as opposed to making exactly enough to survive.

I would wager that, taking into account cost of living, that salary is probably equivalent to a 20,000-30,000 a year salary here. but I'm not an economist so I don't know how to directly make those comparisons.

cross-posted from the china thread

http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/1670/DUMPLINGS!!-for-sale

a good picture of what poor people in china do that doesn't involve making iphones, it's pretty sad

Interesting China fact:

The richest 70 members of China’s legislature added more to their wealth last year than the combined net worth of all 535 members of the U.S. Congress, the president and his Cabinet, and the nine Supreme Court justices...
The wealthiest member of the U.S. Congress is Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who had a maximum wealth of $700.9 million in 2010, according to the center. If he were in China’s NPC, he would be ranked 40th. Per capita income in China is about one-sixth the U.S. level when adjusted for differences in purchasing power.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/02/china-fact-of-the-day-6.html

Meanwhile, domestic warehouse work in the undeveloping united states:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor

there's a few details that are a bit fucked up but feeling a lot of "yeah, so?" knee-jerk too.

the great convergence

"amalgamated" is a thin disguise for "amazon"

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/01/19/fewer-more-demanding-workers-for-vietnamese-factories/#axzz1juui4rRO

Unlike China, the vast Communist neighbour to which it is often compared, Vietnam does not have large pools of migrant workers desperate for factory jobs, says Pincus:
“In China, there’s still huge a migration to the coast. There are hundreds of millions of potential workers who have few options. In Vietnam, the migration is smaller, the country is smaller and for many people there are other, better options.”

sad lol

http://www.chinalawblog.com/2012/03/the_end_of_cheap_china_part_v_vietnam_burmamyanmar_and_the_next_big_thing-2.html

http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/03/walmart-china-sustainability-shadow-factories-greenwash?page=1

http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-03-20-now-can-we-start-talking-about-the-real-foxconn/

good post but I'm afraid that 'foxconn apologist' may be a hard label to shake