In this case, the motivation to finish a product in India is mostly about tariff bypassing; with the final assembly being pretty minimal. Not quite putting the badge on, but close.
A good metric is the difference in value between the precursor and the final product; for most Indian phone production, it's less than 1%.
This is also a big reason why Indian export headlines are a bit silly; they never account for the increased import associated with the high value components.
Unclear if this will change going forward; there are some companies doing a higher proportion of the value chain in India, and some big incentives... But to me it's unlikely.
> the motivation to finish a product in India is mostly about tariff bypassing
I don’t think that’s the whole story. Apple started making phones in india in 2017, back when the tariff situation was merely a twinkle in epstein’s best friend’s eye. I think back then it was about general supply chain diversity, more than tariffs specifically. Useful in cases of natural disasters, or trade embargo, and leverage in business negotiations.
By 2024 they were making 36 million iPhones in India, you don’t get to that capacity if you start in november, after the election. Way I see it india was the backup system, and tariffs are the reason they are using the backup system - not the reason they built the backup system in the first place.
> A good metric is the difference in value between the precursor and the final product;
I agree, that’s a useful metric, especially in this case. But it’s also not perfect. E.g. it’s easy to have a >50% “made in USA” product if all the parts are made in china but the last assembly step takes time. Labour in the US is more expensive, so 5-10min of clicking parts together can easily cost more than the parts themselves. You could increase the capacity of that type of manufacturing indefinitely without ever gaining any real independence.
Brexit is such an odd case, that it seems not worth comparing.
It's so tied into British classicism, and the generally pathetic nature of the middle class English, that trying to extend the results outside of the UK produces absurd ideas.
Essentially the British people took a (not particularly economically motivated) deal to reduce migration, at the cost of economic connection to the EU.
This upset the UK political class greatly, so much of the following policy was about punishing the population, rather than long term economics.
Depends on the billionaire. If it's someone with a large chunk of a large company, each billion dollars represents hundreds of skilled people employed to do something.
If a state is hostile, then why not move that activity? And that's before the direct lobbying at a federal level.
We will all become, or temporarily be, fundamentally limited at times in our life.
It's trivial to build something that accommodates an ideal user, the challenge in software engineering is creating a solution that suits many kinds of people, at different points in their life. Refusing to engage with that challenge is a kind of proud mediocrity.
Have a look at the solar endurance cars; they are pretty interesting on their own, and have had some "functional" designs over the years.
It's possible to make a sedan sized car that can be power positive at highway speeds in summer; even with modern safety and features. It's the rest of the year...
Sadly yes. Normally it isn't a cul-de-sac. It is a neighborhood with several streets, but the streets are more like a maze so that residents can get in (they know the way), but anyone just passing through cannot find a path (without a map). Since everybody has a car it is only a couple minutes to a main road and so good enough - but that is still a long walk and so nobody walks to get places. (People do walk their dogs on the sidewalk, and generally there is a park inside that the kids will walk to)
It isn't big auto that designs these places. Big auto likes them, but the people like it because they don't know anything other than cars, and they know they hate living on a busy street with lots of cars. Those are the only two options they know about so don't bother replying with all the others you know about, they don't exist as options.
Chicken and egg problem. If you start with the assumption that you have a car, they are pretty great. Quiet, no through traffic and can become neighbourly, potentially large blocks. Somewhere to park your car...
Basically trying to retrofit busses to a development built around cars is stupid.
But I don't get the Waymo "solution" in this thread.
Genuinely and not trolling.
Where I live we have non-autonomous car-sharing (that I barely use). Patterns are always the same in the morning all cars go from suburbs/"sleeping" districts to downtown. In the evening all cars go from downtown back to outskirts.
My point is - I don't see any improvement by Waymo here apart from marginal efficiency gains. Every morning in city outskirts/suburbs at the same time a lot of people go downtown that refuse to ride-share (hence autonomous taxi, not a bus/tram/metro), every evening - the opposite happens.
If 80% of white collar workers go to office at 9AM and rent all Waymos - then if I go from suburb at 9.30AM , there are no Waymos in my area, I will need to wait until they come back from downtown until 10-11AM.
Where's the efficiency? Everyone is going to same locality at the same time and demand private chariot. Everybody needs to get a private Waymo - same as private car.
With american car-brain being prelevant - I don't believe those suburbanites will gladly give away their private cars to Waymo subscription instead.
Because people are not nearly as rigid about a 9-5 as you are imagining in aggregate; enough people commute off hours to increase the number of round trips per car significantly.
Even in an office, there are plenty of people doing a 10-6, or an 8-3 then the school run... That's before you consider that many people are not office workers only going between the burbs and the city...
Though still, I wonder, what gains could be from such model (car sharing instead of cars or public transit)?
As far as I understand this model must support (with some room) demand at peak. So how many times less cars would be on the road then? How many streets and parking areas could be returned to people as pedestrian/recreation areas. How would that compare with proper public transport setup in terms of land use, cost, environment impact.
I don't think it would be that much, because I cannot imagine such car sharing model working in places like London, Tokyo or other big developed cities.
This is false. A fixed route is predictable. You know when it will be there and can plan for it. Non fixed routes mean you cannot be sure when your ride will arrive and thus cannot be sure you will arrive on time.
That makes the fixed route better than a flexible route. Sure the flexible route is faster in the best case. However it is unpredictable and people have deadlines of when they can arrive: a flexible route cannot meet those consistently enough.
Bus routes can be fixed in the sense that they can stay in place for decades. Even simple things like paint, signs, and shelters provide psychological permanence.
Things like WalkScore show up on real estate listings as a value add.
You don't even need that. Just seeing the bus go by "all the time" provides permanence. Really it is better, I've seen plenty of paint/signs/shelters, but when I bothered to look the bus only came rarely. When I moved someplace where I saw buses all the time I realized I could use them even though there was no paint/sign/shelter close to where I got on.
As another Australian I'm glad to see it. I remember as a kid watching a neighbour's dog of many years being dragged away to the slaughter by a council worker as the old women pleaded for it to be spared, just because it wasn't the right breed. The rules don't leave any room for empathy. There's a saying, "the problem isn't that Australia was founded by prisoners, it's that it was founded by prison guards".
See, I would call getting a breed of dog that has been identified as dangerous, as incredibly selfish. Genuinely an insane degree of self centred reasoning. My special dog is fine, because it's my dog, and I know better than everyone else (but also can't convince anyone that you are in fact right, in order to change the rules).
It's all the behaviour that we have identified as better overall if everyone follows it, and deciding that it doesn't apply to you, because you don't feel like it.
Run a red light, because you are in a hurry. Drive a truck without a licence, because you think you will be fine. Throw a party every night, because your having a great time and there is not enough resources to limit how shit you can be to your neighbours.
I think Clive James said that, or something similar. I think his version was something like "the tragedy isn't that so many Australians are descended from convicts, but that so many are descended from the guards."
The guards are in charge there as everywhere else.
A good metric is the difference in value between the precursor and the final product; for most Indian phone production, it's less than 1%. This is also a big reason why Indian export headlines are a bit silly; they never account for the increased import associated with the high value components.
Unclear if this will change going forward; there are some companies doing a higher proportion of the value chain in India, and some big incentives... But to me it's unlikely.
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