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alephnan

> far richer

In so far that there would not be supply chain issues causing massive inflation?

How would Amazon, Apple, the world’s richest companies be so without China?

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They could all be running operations in Mexico. That could have become the North American SZ.

> They

This embeds a colonialist / Western bias presuming that Americans companies are leading the charge and orchestrating everything, and the natives are incapable of self organizing. This is opposed to American companies being customers, and Chinese companies offering them a cheap all inclusive solution with implementation details ( factories / labor ) already sorted out. Since you pointed out Shen Zhen specifically.

Mexico would ultimately benefit from more investment. Throw in the trillions the US has wasted on nation building elsewhere and the Americas could have been built into having much stronger public institutions. It's not like Western Europe doesn't leverage its eastern neighbors and North Africa for cheaper labor.

Everyone always goes straight to outsourced manual labor as a solution. It's a bad solution. If we weren't a nation run by corrupt middle managers trying to inflate their own salaries and sense of purpose we'd have stuck with the tried and true method of innovating on the manufacturing process itself making it more automated and less dependent on human labor. Human labor is always slow, prone to mistakes, and expensive. It's the favorite tool of the incompetent. If you think that's wrong then ask yourself which is better, harvesting a field with 100 workers with hand tools or with 1 farmer and a tractor?

China also doesn't share our value of craftsmanship. By letting them own a portion of our supply chain, they own a lot more than just the manual labor. They put us in situations where measuring temperature means buying an antique mercury thermometer, buying a $400 nist certified alcohol one, or getting Chinese made garbage that is not accurate within 2°.

> China also doesn't share our value of craftsmanship

Obviously we share theirs since we’ve shown were interested in cutting costs at the expense of quality.

They could make quality long last products. But in general both as individuals and as society in general from companies to government value cost cutting and short term profit most. So ofc what gets made and sold is the cheapest possible product that is still passable at time of sale.

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