TIL, posts that I post publicly and knowingly so, are the same as app that has 2 class-action lawsuits against them related to privacy and just had an event where they bought your likeness from you for 40bucks while advertising it as a "referral program" and the owner of the app had a malware infested App uploaded to the App Stores and with people claiming that their banking account information got leaked through the app.
Thanks! What would I do without the knowledge that you provided to me?
There is a difference between what I like to watch on YouTube and my banking information.
Edit: I forgot to mention that there is a law that forces Chinese companies to grant the Chinese state access to their computer systems. So everything, I said, plus a whole ass government (with more and less corrupt people) has your data!
A relative was talking about ordering stuff from Temu. My response was that the products sold through them (they're just a marketplace) are so cheap that there's got to be slavery involved.
From what I hear, it's also Chinese manufacturers trying to "break in" to the western market by initially operating at a loss. But I doubt how effective of a business strategy that would be, given that there is basically zero brand loyalty on marketplaces like temu. Am I getting my USB dongles from CKXLKY or TOPK? Fuck if I care! Idk tho, maybe the experience is different for people who buy stuff other than cheap electronics.
But yeah, there is 100% slavery involved. It's like the cacao/coffee/chocolate industries, down to the "don't blame us, we're just buying these goods at market prices, like everyone else" excuse. Brother, you are the one setting the market price.
My country made it illegal to sell at a loss (for that exact reason) and IIRC wish and/or temu got in some kind of legal trouble for it. So did IKEA when they tried to use their restaurant as a loss leader - illegal here!
Then there's the matter of shipping subsidies from the PRC, ain't no way cross-continent shipping is 0.02 € on a 5 € item for which the last mile is handled by the national postal service which I know for a fact charges anyone more than one euro for delivering a damn envelope.
Ironically I have had good enough experiences with one or two Chinese brands to probably look at their stuff first whenever I ultimately replace/upgrade what I've got from them, but they certainly aren't the "spam random letters to game Amazon's systems" sort of brands and are really only slightly cheaper than the equivalents from elsewhere.
Chinese goods are heavily subsidized because the chinese state knows humans with free time and no money are an expensive liabiliry. They see busywork in itself as useful in itself, if it brings in any foreing currency on top, that's just gravy.
Chinese goods are heavily subsidized because the chinese state knows humans with free time and no money are an expensive liabiliry. They see busywork in itself as useful in itself, if it brings in any foreing currency on top, that's just gravy.
human labor always makes more financial sense when you're not paying the human labor a living wage, which is why, for the last 30 years, everything the western world consumes is produced in china. it's the human slavery. it's in the machine.
America was founded on slavery and that established a certain quaility and way of life. When slavery was abolished many people wanted to keep the lifestyle that was built on the backs of slaves but without relying on slaves (cheap sugar and foriegn produce for example). Eventually corporations figured out that most people won't care so long as the slavery is out of sight, out of mind, by being done in another country.
i've worked in a few factories and this is not always true, especially with short runs.
to make a machine assemble a thousand things you gotta "tool up". that used to mean designing and building the tool that would do the repetitive motion but nowadays its just as much laying out gcode as it is figuring out how to make the more generalized machinery perform the specific tasks required for putting together some thing.
so take a computer mouse, there's like four parts. a usb wire, a circuit board, the bottom and the top. assembling the mouse is plugging the wire into the circuit board, aligning the board to the standoffs in either the top or bottom and make sure the wire is going out the hole then snap the top or bottom to it's counterpart then test.
probably fifteen seconds from parts to tested and ready for packing?
so in a thousand unit run you're looking at four and a quarter hours of human work. lets go ahead and round up to five, since someone is gonna have to set up our mouse assemblers bench, write out instructions, unpack the parts and dump them into bins, etc. it won't be 45 minutes of work, but more slop is better!
so for a thousand unit run you could pay your mouse assembler $15/hr and still only have 7.5c unit cost of assembly.
packing is another one that often gets done by people, but a mouse is pretty much wrap, tie, bag, box. maybe another fifteen seconds of labor, so add 7.5c onto your assembly and youre looking pretty good.
now your contract factory isn't gonna quote you what they think they can hit, they're gonna drag their laziest, slowest worker over to do the process five times, take the average and quote that. then they can charge you for ten hours when it only took five and pocket the difference. even then 30c per unit is most likely less than the robot equivalent.
just the cost of a quote to tool up for that run is maybe $50? free quotes weren't the norm domestically back in the day, but they were becoming more common overseas. then you've got the cost of the tooling (we'll keep ip like part layouts and gcode here) and the machine time itself!
there's also the actual injection molding of the top and bottom, making the cord, assembling the board, etc, but thats a whole nother conversation!
I have a pair of waterproof shoe covers from temu and they're actually pretty decent
Well, apart from how the button on the elastic strap always pops off on its own...
Or how they aren't really all that waterproof...
On second thought, I agree with you.