Doc67 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 6:43 am When this is over and grandparents, parents, siblings and children have been killed by this, and economies have been decimated, pensions ruined etc, many in the world will bear an enormous hatred of China and it will last for at least a generation.

Products will be proudly marketed as "made nowhere near China"

I detest them already.

#fuckchina

If any post deserves mutliple thumbs up, its this one.

China is finished. Supply chains are moving as we speak, and threats to cut off the USAs supply of antibiotics are going to accelrate that. If Saginaw Gear could switch from making gears to carbines in a few months, some company will be making precursors by the end of the year.

Two months ago, I saw shoes in Bangkok marked Made in the USA instead of Made in China

This is going to accelerate the end of China as we know it. They cant survive exporting $.25 flip flops to Cambodia.

Couldnt happen to a nicer bunch.

newkidontheblock wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 3:45 am

atst wrote:Countries might start manufacturing again instead of outsourcing to the cheapest country

Or at least diversify their supply chain into multiple countries.

Mainland China took years to become a one stop shop for manufacturing. Expect companies to take a few years to move away.

SE Asia, India, and Cambodia (if can keep it’s act together) could be poised to tremendously benefit.

Conversely, If most of the labor can be replaced by robots, expect manufacturing to return. The greatest advantage the western worker had over the Khmer worker is to be the master of the robot. When the robot arrives in Cambodia, the Khmers will end up being mastered by the robot.

China has you rightly said took years to get where they are today, you need to ask yourself how. Firstly they had to learn how, this was achieved by study and development helped by professionals in that field from first world countries. In some ways like India buying British tooling to gain a place in manafacture. Let's face it both of these places don't lack labour. Japan became leaders of this trade with more so cars/bikes and electronics, but first starting only products of very cheap quality were made. China has that trait too, making cheap goods for sale to countries with no regulations neather quality controls.
The textile industry of the UK, slightly different in that the machinery needed a workforce, mostly migrant workers from Pakistan.
Robotics is certainly achievable for a number of countries and could be made to serpress the number of the Khmer workforce, but the end result is cost, or is it more to do with ethics, taking away the work and funds of a developing country. Also many of the first world countries have been supportive to Cambodia and it's people for the last 40 years.

Not sure if i agree with some this ^^^
China's industrial power happened quicker than any nation has ever achieved, ever anywhere.
Stunningly quickly.

And if you think this is the end for them you are a far better optimist than me.
I reckon they will recover far faster than the West.
Disciplined, harder working, national interest above individual advancement, lower costs, dictatorial centralised power,
ant colony organisation, much greater national bank balance, etc etc

And I seriously doubt western consumers, including famously patriotic Americans, will suddenly stop wanting to buy cheap crap from China for the greater good of their country.

The west has been in decline for a while, China's development and power rapidly rising - i actually think a body blow like this virus will accelerate these trends.

Maybe I am too jaded and pessimistic about our Western civilisation's values these days - hedonism, easy short-term solutions, out of control consumerism, gutless foreign policies, the treacherous attitudes of "our" multi nationals, dog eat dog economic Darwinism which is gutting the middle class, no long term planning, etc etc.

But seriously I hope you guys are right.

I'm playing it safe while in OZ. Dont want to catch no virus so bought this anti-virus protection thing

Face masks will become commonplace in Europe and USA

Like many others in France, i'm dismissed from now at work, although salary is maintained.

So we focus on :

Kids
Home education
Creative crafting
Fixing / renovating stuff
Go for a ride / walk in the nature / countryside (as long as far from people - not in sight)
Taking time to cook
Organizing personal stuff, admin, small things always postponed
And in general, resting and thinking about all that sh*t and consequences.

So, on a personal scale, it's not a bad thing yet, and will have some good effects on the long term.

Mortality rates for under sixties with covid are <0.5%, so no fuckers are dying apart from the old coffin dodgers who make no contribution to society, anyhow. So nothing is going to happen. Blip will be over in a few weeks and forgotten in six months. Like everything else.

cptrelentless wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 6:52 pm Mortality rates for under sixties with covid are <0.5%, so no fuckers are dying apart from the old coffin dodgers who make no contribution to society, anyhow. So nothing is going to happen. Blip will be over in a few weeks and forgotten in six months. Like everything else.

I presume you've said that in jest? Otherwise heartless..

Anyway, great to see a positive attitude BUT think about this. If the current containment and lock downs continue for much longer (until the number of new cases peak and drop and/or there is a vaccine which they're saying is 12-18 mths away) eventually businesses will not be able to keep going paying their staff and with the reduction in business income associated with customers staying at home and not wanting to spend except for essentials, they will eventually go broke and people will be laid off. And a recession snow balls..

Governments are printing money with helicopter cash and even banks are proposing loan moratoriums etc but...for how long?

I hope you're right and I'm wrong..

atst wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 2:28 am Countries might start manufacturing again instead of outsourcing to the cheapest country

Let me just give you a story which says that won't happen. To do this, I am going to go all the way back to the Middle Ages. During this period, every town had a blacksmith, and in order to become a blacksmith you had to be a member of a guild. These guilds controlled prices and made sure that nobody could undercut the price of anyone else. You could compete on quality, but not on price. There was a reason for this. Assume that 90% of the business of a blacksmith was very ordinary items, like making nails. If you were to allow someone not of the guild to produce nails at a lower cost, then there would not be enough other business to keep the skilled blacksmith in business. So if a town wanted a skilled blacksmith who could do something other than nails, then they had to make sure that they didn't allow an uneducated and unskilled smith who could produce low cost nails but nothing else. This was the origin of the guild system, the precursor to modern day unions.

Over the last 100 years the whole idea of unions and guilds have been completely destroyed in favor of "efficient" capitalism. Every product that can be made cheaper will be made cheaper, and only by the lowest cost shop. This underpins our basic economic philosophy. It is a dogma. Anything and everything has been pushed to single suppliers who need the entire global economy to justify their business. For the last century, despite all the crisis that have exposed the fragile nature of this business model, and despite centuries of historical precedence which eschewed these business ideas, there has not yet been a serious attempt to return the old ways. In fact, there is not a single company anywhere, nor stockholders in any company, clamoring for lower efficiency production models. Resiliency of the type common in the Middle Ages is simply not something anyone wants today.

The current Coronavirus crisis is not special. Everyone knew all these risks before. Everyone experienced all these risks before. People have screamed at the top of their lungs for decades about how dangerous the current business model is. NOBODY is going to change, because it will cost serious money to change. Do you see the New York stock exchange publishing price/resiliency ratios instead of price/earnings ratios? Because I sure don't.

This value of efficiency is so deeply ingrained in our business psyche that there is no possibility of it changing it just because of this blip of a crisis. None of the other crisis have done it, and it isn't like everyone didn't already know the risks.

This too will pass, and tomorrow we'll be right back to watching multinational corporations doing everything they can to increase efficiency and sacrificing resiliency in the process.