Comments on: The arcologies arise

By: Mustapha Mond

Mustapha Mond — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:46:03 +0000

Razib wites:
“the flip side of this is that a way of life has now emerged organically in places like Shenzen which is rather reminiscent of late 19th and early 20th century dystopian visions of the industrial future.”

…and Tennessee Ernie Ford sings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfu2A0ezq0

By: Kirk

Kirk — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:10:54 +0000

The urban population will skyrocket from 3.5B to 7B by 2050. That means that everyone who is alive today would be urban. They will not all get their coffee at Starbucks or their clothes from American Apparel. Just the special people like you will do that.

By: Markk

Markk — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:43:53 +0000

“The story emphasizes that labor costs are not the primary issue here”. that is true, the story suggests this, but I think the story is wrong. The whole point was that there was interconnectedness because of other things being built there. There is no magic logistics in China, just locality (from manufacturing experience). Why were other things being built there? Because of reduced labor and regulatory cost.

Why has GE spent 100′s of millions on R&D facilities, with ALL major new ones in India and China over the last 10 years? They say, to build where the new markets are, and that may be somewhat true, but cost is king.

There could have been very similar speed in the US. The cost would have been much higher because of regulations on worker safety.

The thing to remember though is how fast those factories were built. They can be built that fast again elsewhere. We’ll see how things sustain. Not that there won’t be a huge industrial base in China for a long time, but as efficiencies increase, for the U.S., I suspect the origin of goods will swing all over in the next 20 years.

By: Yacko

Yacko — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:53:34 +0000

Robotic assembly lines are taking over, even in China, and yes, at Foxconn. Whether this changes the playing field and things flow back to the US, or to other places is unknown. The concept of massive numbers of overexploited workers will be a footnote.

By: Tim Kowalsky

Tim Kowalsky — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:49:06 +0000

No US plant can match this “flexibility” because no US plant is allowed to treat employees like cattle. The question is, do we want our businesses sending our money to countries who can screw us economically by these methods?

By: Mike Pearson

Mike Pearson — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:51:54 +0000

At the time – and even today – I didn’t think that China merited the MFN status that President Clinton granted it. I think that China has benefited greatly from that change in status, and this was a fairly foreseeable consequence. By ‘this’ I mean the improvement in quality of life for many Chinese, the movement of low/medium skilled jobs to China, and the growth arcologies that you mentioned. I don’t think that the Confucian love of education (supplying them with the workforce needed today) and the desire for an enlightened bureaucracy will lead to Western style civil liberties and democracy – but maybe it will lead to something freer and with a more accountable government than they have now. Maybe a society with a greater middle class wouldn’t allow the degree of corruption and negligence that allowed all of those unsafe schools to be built in Sichuan, with the resulting tragedy.

And maybe here in the US we’ll get over the notion that we are failing in our education if we don’t get each high schooler into a good college. We don’t seem to value educating a person to the technician level – the sort of skills that the article says are lacking here. Too many people end up going to college, flunking out, then goingto DeVry or IIT to end up with an education that is appropriate – one that could have been had in high school for the most part.