There are higher upfront costs with a robot, though, so if the volume is low human labor can make more sense.
You can pay one person 5k for 40 years, or you can use a machine that cost 200k upfront that breaks down in 10 years.
Which one are the capitalists going to choose?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Those reasons sound retarded. Having a loss leader product or line just means you are recouping it elsewhere. It’s a draw-in, like $1.25 hotdogs at Costco. It’s different than if your whole business operates at a loss for a certain time in order to squeeze out competition. The only way this would make even marginally sense is if say both IKEA and JYSK had a cafeteria and IKEA decided to sell food at a loss while JYSK would not be able to afford in that segment.
From what I know, it’s not actually China subsidizing shipping, but the individual target countries instead, mostly on taxpayer money. This wouldn’t be bad in practice, except that goods not originating from China do not have subsidized shipping, thus the unfair advantage.
G203 is my budget go to, prob still uses slave labour but they’re Swiss so you’ll never know
Does it matter how much the mouse cost? If my calculation is correct, expensive mouse price - reasonable wage is still < expensive mouse price - 0
Temu is also shady about your data. So lol, you fucked yourself too.
Unless you’ve been a monk for the last 15 years your data’s already out anyway
Even on Lemmy, everything you say is public and can be harvested pretty easily
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!
