cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/6745228

TLDR: Apple wants to keep china happy, Stewart was going after china in some way, Apple said don’t, Stewart walked, the show is dead.

Not surprising at all, but sad and shitty and definitely reduces my loyalty to the platform. Hosting Stewart seemed like a real power play from Apple, where conflict like this was inevitable, but they were basically saying, yes we know, but we believe in things and, as a big company with deep pockets that can therefore take risks, to prove it we’re hosting this show.

Changing their minds like this is worse than ever hosting the show in the first place as it shows they probably don’t know what they’re doing or believe in at all, like any big company, and just going for what seems cool, and undermining the very idea of a company like Apple running a streaming platform. I wonder if the Morning Show/Wars people are paying close attention.

  • SCB@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    91
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Chinese people deserve jobs too. Comparative advantage is a good thing that helps everyone involved.

    The Yuan is currently trading at 7.32 to 1 USD

    Companies that appease the CCP are the problem, not companies that leverage exchange rates to better lives globally.

    • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      47
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Chinese people deserve good jobs, not jump off of a building to kill yourself, but wait your the 4th person to do that this month so they installed a net jobs.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I am questioning where I supported Chinese government policies here?

        Because the initial concern was pay, and that’s due to not understanding economic factors. I don’t support Chinese labor regs at all.

        In fact I said

        “Companies that appease the CCP are the problem” which I also thought was a nice little pun, given the show being discussed.

        • isles@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t support Chinese labor regs at all.

          I wonder why labor is cheaper in China.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Two big reasons

            1: currency exchange rates

            2: China is sill fundamentally agrarian and industrializing, and many workers are looking for (comparatively) higher pay

          • SCB@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The show that Stewart walked out on is “The Problem with Jon Stewart”

        • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          21
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yes, fuck the Chinese government.

          And the corporations, both Chinese and American, that help support it.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            10
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Depends on what that means imo. Global trade theoretically supports the Chinese government, because money is fungible, but is a net positive all around.

            The Chinese will never stop clinging to autocracy without wealth of their own.

            • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              10
              ·
              1 year ago

              The “Chinese” will never have wealth, ask Jack ma.

              The ccp would burn China to the ground before releasing an ounce of their power and stolen wealth.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                7
                ·
                1 year ago

                That is not an excuse to stop trying to empower the Chinese to rise against their hellstate.

                Capitalism broke the USSR and it will break the CCP.

                • InvertedParallax@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  10
                  arrow-down
                  2
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  No, just like capitalism didn’t break the states that later formed the confederacy.

                  Even after they lost formal slavery they put horrible policies into effect like Jim crow and share cropping that allowed them to keep slavery in all but name, but were entirely compatible with capitalism.

                  Haiti understands this.

                  We need to stop enabling authoritarians, who do you think taught them how to build the great firewall, they bought literally all of their technology till now from us.

                  • SCB@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    8
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    No, just like capitalism didn’t break the states that later formed the confederacy.

                    It literally did though. That’s why they went to war - the writing was on the wall.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      The Yuan is currently trading at 7.32 to 1 USD

      That means nothing without knowing the total supply

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          23
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          For that you need 2 data pieces:

          • The median pay of chinese workers in Yuan.
          • The Yuan - Us Dollar cross currency exchange rate.

          You then use the second to convert the first into US Dollars so that you compare the Chinese salaries in USD to American salaries is USD.

          Merely the second piece of data wIthout the first means nothing if you’re trying to compare salaries.

          For example, before the Euro the Italian Lira used to have a cross currency exchange rate with the dollar which was thousands of lire per dollar and that didn’t mean Italians in the 80s were incredibly poor: because for every dollar the average US worker received in their salary the average Italian worker got thousands of lire, all put together mean they got about 1/2 to 1/3 of a US salary rather that the 1/1000 that by your the exchange rate alone suffices “logic”.

          By the way, that cross currency exchange rates are meaningless to compare incomes or costs without the actual incomes and prices in the local currency, is really, really, REALLY basic financial knowledge.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            23
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            You then use the second to convert the first into US Dollars so that you compare the Chinese salaries in USD to American salaries is USD

            You don’t need to do this because you only need to look at the fact that those jobs are competed for to see that they are desirable.

            Wage parity isn’t a meaningful discussion when discussing comparative advantage. Too many other factors come into play.

            • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              18
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Okay but you realize that any job would be competitive in situations of poverty right? That’s why you need the second data point.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                arrow-down
                14
                ·
                1 year ago

                That’s specifically why comparative advantage is a good thing - lifting people out of poverty is a good thing.

            • Aceticon@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              To fully measure Comparitive Advantages, you must include the differences in manpower costs, which brings us back to salaries (plus, since this is to compare manpower costs, you also need things like the employer-side tax costs such as social security payments), which then needs to be converted to a single currency using cross-currency exchange rates.

              Further, every single monetary elements of calculating Comparitive Advantage which is in local currencies needs to go through those cross-currency exchange rates in order to be comparable.

              There is no way you can calculate comparative advantage merelly with the single datapoint which is a cross-currency exchange rate because all that tells you is the relation between two units of measurement and says nothing about the actual quantities being measured.

              As I said, this is incredibly basic financial stuff.

              To give you a really basic non-financial example which hopefully will make you understand it:

              • Two farms produce milk, one in Britain and the other in The Netherlands. The farm in Britain measures milk by the pint. The one in The Netherlands measures milk by the liter.

              What you wrote in your original post is equivalent to saying that “The farm in Britain produces more milk because 1 pint = 1.759754 liters”.

              You don’t know anything about how many pints the British farm produces, or about how many liters the Dutch farm produces, yet you claimed the ratio between two measurement units is enough by let you draw conclusions about production numbers even though you used no prodution numbers.

              If I was to bet I would say you’ve read some articles about how the exchange rate of the Yuan vs USD is kept artificially low to increase the competiviness of Chinese exports, didn’t quite understand how it works and still thought you knew enough and applied it were it wasn’t applicable and/or in the wrong way.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                6
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                No I just work in international business and know hy we outsource certain roles.

                You keep pretending you know more about this, and you’re describing irrelevant things. I took econ/IB in college too, bud. Lots of people do.

                • Aceticon@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  4
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Since we’re pulling rank, I worked in Finance, specifically the Investment Banking and the Funds industries, some of which being very well know names (Fidelity, Deutsche Bank, even Lehman Brothers back when they still existed), always in the EMEA divisions which, unlike our US colleagues, deal with cross-currency trades all day every day (because EMEA actually means Europe Middle-East and Asia, so it’s a lot more than just trades on USD priced assets, for USD books, settled in USD).

                  So I’m quite familiar with exactly what cross-currency exchange rates mean, and it’s painfully obvious that you have absolutelly no clue what you’re talking about when you’re quoting a cross-currency exchange rate by itself and claiming that alone is proof of comparitive advantage.

                  • SCB@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    arrow-down
                    4
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Lmao you either didn’t work in finance or can’t parse simple comments, which is why you no longer work in finance, but nothing I have said is incorrect whatsoever

                    Best of luck in your career move

    • Krauerking@lemy.lol
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Boy you sure do sound like you just got your MBA. Chasing the cheapest labor and lowest regulations really doesn’t do much for the populace other than make them slave laborers for better products for the benefits of other nations.
      If the wages are the same across multiple industries then it doesn’t really help right? It’s just taking advantage of a poor countryand enriching higher members of that country who actually do see the most profit gained.

      It might help in getting advanced manufacturing set up in the country but that actually also hurts countries that rely on advanced manufacturing to keep GDP high when they are creating their competitors while doing little investment into themselves.

      So yes it works to get the cheapest product possible but it’s really not the super helpful beneficial concept that you think it is and the whole world is not richer for these jobs we give to them to enrich further a group that just chases the quickest profit.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        Chasing the cheapest labor and lowest regulations

        It demonstrably improves their personal wealth, incentives inclusive institutions, and changes countries. History is most assuredly not on your side here.

        Nativism is a plague and populism is the cancer nativism spawns.

      • steltek@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        11
        ·
        1 year ago

        What a strange take when a mountain of evidence is right in front of you. China went from “nothing but cheap labor” to the next world superpower because of exactly this kind of exchange. They have modern cities with rapid transit, EVs, and a top tier domestic tech industry.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Well yeah I mean I kinda covered that. They now have advanced tooling and active investments into their infrastructure and country. It’s not yet actually reaching the majority of China and there is still wide issues with these investments. But now companies will have to find the new cheap labor if there is increasing access to jobs that are to pay enough for the citizens to access these higher standards.

          A country can’t be cheap labor and an important market without either massive divide in the populace or slave labor.

          And if they can’t get cheap labor there anymore these companies will leave and create rust belts like there are in the US. At which point the advanced manufacturing arm and service economy could take over if it’s built enough but they join into a already crowded space with dwindling access to resources. Not to say things haven’t gotten better in sense of moving forward technologically and amenities wise but that is basically always a guarantee of time passing. But this hunt for cheap goods for top level enrichment is not a wholly good venture and is quite destructive in ways that take little effort to see.

            • Krauerking@lemy.lol
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Wow what a terrible response meant to cause an inflammatory response instead of having a discussion about a topic on an intellectual level. You have set up a pin with an impossible answer and claimed that you are the only right response to knock it down.

              But, I have an answer. I care about their well being and not their economic status. I don’t care if they are making more money or not and they aren’t from my country. My countries laws will have no direct impact on them and while I care about the ecology of the planet I can’t be reasonably expected to care about everyone.

              You falsely assume globalist ideals are the only right way to live and I would rather care for those immediately around me who have an impact on my life.

              We can aim for bettering of societies that aren’t our own without it being based entirely around taking advantage of their cheap labor and unawareness of their lacking systems.
              You speak as an economist who only thinks in terms of money without any real compassion and assumes money is compassion.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                6
                ·
                1 year ago

                But, I have an answer. I care about their well being and not their economic status. I don’t care if they are making more money or not

                These two things are incompatible

                You falsely assume globalist ideals are the only right way to live and I would rather care for those immediately around me who have an impact on my life.

                And this is evil

                • Krauerking@lemy.lol
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Oh my God you are a moron. I am just so sorry, I thought you were capable of complex thought there.

                  Which I guess was my mistake, I did see your other comments.

                  …Evil. That’s funny, you have definitely truly never met actual evil. Trust me it’s much worse than loving those close to you and caring for others as much as you can, without over dedication of mental space to those you can’t. And as annoying as you are I actually hope you continue to never have to deal with evil, I hope the world is better and you get to remain a protected smarmy dick. Evil is truly repugnant in a way you apparently can not actually comprehend and it’s better if it stays that way.

    • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Companies that appease the CCP are the problem, not companies that leverage exchange rates to better lives globally.

      Companies in China ARE the CCP. Nothing is actually privately owned. Everything is owned by the government, so giving any money to a company in China is supporting the CCP.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Lots of foreign companies have branches in China, including most global corps

        • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          True, but that is completely irrelevant to the topic of whether it is ethical to use cheap Chinese labor. Those branches are not the ones employing cheap labor from the blue collar workers in China. Those are almost entirely white collar jobs, and many of them are in place specifically to work with the local companies who DO employ the blue collar laborers. The sweatshops aren’t OWNED by Nike or Gucci or Apple. They are contract facilities owned by a CCP-backed corporation.

          • SCB@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            Sure but that level of contracting is not contributing to the CCP so much as to the Chinese people

            It’s ethical to employ any sort of labor

              • SCB@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Slavery isn’t employment

                the condition of having paid work. “a fall in the numbers in full-time employment”