Eeyore wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Eeyore wrote
Rod Speed wrote
Eeyore wrote
JoeSpareBedroom wrote

In 1988, personal computers used to cost almost as much as a small car.

No they didnt.

Economies of scale changed that.

There was much more involved in the price than that.

It wasn't so much economies of scale,

It wasnt economics of scale at all.

it was making the parts overseas in low-wage economies.

Nope. We saw an even more dramatic reduction in price with say
cpus and memory which have bugger all wage economics involved.

If that were so then why is chip packaging
so often done in Malaysia / Philipines etc ?

Thats a tiny part of the price.

Not if it's done in the West !

Yes it is, because its automated and you just need a machine minding monkey,
and bugger all hours of its wages for each item, so its undoubtedly high wages
dont add much at all to the cost of what is packaged with it minding the machine.

Might as well do the packaging in a low labor
cost country with something that portable.

Can you imagine how much genuine US made drives used to cost ?

I know what they used to cost, I bought plenty of them.

Or power supplies ? Or cases ? Or generic peripherals ?

All of those too.

Why did a US made Microsoft mouse cost £20 when a far eastern one cost $3 ?

The current MS mice still have that sort of margin over the cheapest
and arent made in the US anymore, and havent been for a long time now.

Ireland and Mexico for the two I have here.

My last MS mice came from China.

Ireland most certainly isn't a low wage economy.

There isnt all that much wage involved in one of them,
and significant incentives to set up factorys there.

Maybe the same will happen with biodiesel,
if suppliers see a viable market.

The cheapest biodiesel will come from abroad.

Have fun explaining why the cheapest corn etc doesnt.

They won't use corn. More like palm oil and jatropha.

Not a chance, those dont produce anything like the volume needed.

Oh yes they do.

Oh no they dont.

They are in fact the two best yielding sources of vegetable oil.

Wrong, as always.

These are far better sources of suitable vegetable oil anyway.

I wasnt talking about corn as a source of veg oil, just as an example
of a crop that is produced in the first world using industrial scale
agriculture that doesnt get used in the low labor cost countrys.

Industrial agriculture isn't needed for them !

Corse it is, thats what slashed the costs.

The reason it doesnt is industrial scale agriculture
that doesnt happen in low wage economys.

So why is Malaysia gearing up for palm oil production then ?

Because there is a market for that.

As fuel too.

They will produce bugger all veg oil that way.

They produce FAR more real oil.

Separate matter entirely to whether the same dramatic reduction
in cost will be seen as was seen with ram and cpus and hard drives.

Ram and CPUs are still the 2 priciest components in a PC !

Sure, but we saw dramatic reductions in the price they once
were, and we wont see anything like that with biodiesel.

Palm oil production isnt suited to industrial scale agriculture.

It doesn't need it.

Corse it does, thats a major part of the cost of it.