josephkk wrote:
On Thu, 24 May 2012 14:47:39 -0700, Jeff
wrote:


But apparently the US government had a conscious
policy of yielding the US consumer electronics business to Japan, in
order to keep them a happy ally.

Yep. I don't know the details, but I was told that the import duties
and tax laws of late 1960's were structured to make it cheaper to
build a product in Japan, than in the USA. Also, Japan's import
duties made it prohibitively expensive to import consumer products
into Japan.

Gosh, this really sounds like US and China today, except with China it is
almost all labor containing products.

?-)


There's a lot in parallel. Remember - just about everything in China has
the aspect of a Potemkin village. They manage to do well because they
throw a *lot* of hands at it, and adapt process to meet requirements
at a deep level. The country's run by engineers, and they know how
to set and fill metrics. By "engineers", I mean some real Dilberts,
too.

http://blurt-online.com/blogs/author/50/

"After the meeting at which Jobs expressed his dissatisfaction, one of
his execs booked a flight to China, where he knew there was a factory
that could mobilize three thousand workers on a moments notice, by
which I mean, waking them up in their dorm beds, putting them on the
production line, and training them to cut the glass for the iPhone
screen."

That's a a synopsis of a lot of articles form reputable sources.
I have to wonder how important the latencies involved really are?
Why in the world would another week before rollout make any difference?

I don't mean "Potemkin village" as a perjorative; they're trying
to figure it out as best they can. But they completely seem to be
failing at developing a consumer culture much. Maybe that is good;
I don't know.

but eventually the prices are gonna equalize in China. Then we'll
see.

It can also be considered to be a lot like America, in the period
before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. There are a lot of ways
to do this sort of thing...

--
Les Cargill