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The moral argument. |
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Hemisphere 
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Joined: 21 April 2008 Status: Offline Points: 2272 |
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 Posted: 15 August 2017 at 10:04pm |
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30 minutes in and a bit of a scan through the rest. It seems like a very one sided view, which you would expect from a Wired documentary. It's all a miracle etc.
I guess it's a good counterbalance to my doom and gloom view. After writing out a massive whingey post which basically boiled down to "well it looks almost like a dream come true for smart forwards-thinking Westerners but everyone else over here is going to get fucked in the inevitable shift and that will not be pretty in one way or another"... I decided I'm going to refer myself to the serenity prayer on this one lol: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,: Courage to change the things I can,: And wisdom to know the difference." |
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toastyghost
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Joined: 09 January 2007 Location: Manchester Status: Offline Points: 10919 |
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Posted: 15 August 2017 at 10:54pm |
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I would recommend people read some books about the realities of China. These are good to start:
"Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the China Production Game, Revised and Updated Paperback by Paul Midler" "Chinese Whispers: Why Everything You’ve Heard About China is Wrong Paperback by Ben Chu" I would link to Amazon but that shitty VigLink thing is being stupidly overzealous it seems. Both are easy to find. Edited by toastyghost - 15 August 2017 at 10:57pm |
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Hemisphere
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 2:30am |
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Those Viglink pages do actually allow you to click through to the proper linked page. There's a button like 'continue to Amazon', so no need to remove the link just tell people to find the button.
The books look good! You can get some great summary and highlights just from reading reviews on various shops too.
This is always what I assume happens with the PA drivers. Especially the ones that don't publish TS params.. if there's no parameters published they can cut as much as they like - shorter voice coils, smaller magnets, cheaper cones, the amount of areas for shaving costs without noticeable visual changes are immense, and once they have a deal going with a big importer, the impetus - and the economic viability - to retool their production line downwards goes up, and what's that importer going to do? Even if they notice, they'll probably keep buying unless it causes major uproar with their buyers, but most people buying these parts expect low quality to begin with, so the uproar will never materialise. People just chalk it up to life experience and buy better parts next time.
Edited by Hemisphere - 16 August 2017 at 2:40am |
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Pinyorouk
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 2:31am |
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A very interesting documentary. Watched it from start to finished. Thanks for sharing |
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toastyghost
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 3:52am |
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They call that 'cha bu duo' - https://aeon.co/essays/what-chinese-corner-cutting-reveals-about-modernity |
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thirtha
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 4:48am |
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This is from the Indian context, On May 18, 2017 general motors announced that it would exit the Indian market, which it had entered for the second time in 1996. The first time was in 1928, when it became the first car maker to manufacture cars in India.Fiat is next in line, VW, Skoda, and Ford are struggling to survive in India. They Took India for granted, and are now paying the price. Its a big market, with consistant growth. Out of the top 10 models sold in top 10 models sold in India in the last 12 months, 7 belong to Maruti Suzuki, and the other three belong to Hyundai. Home grown companies Tata and Mahindra are nowhere on the scene. Why is this so? Why is a Japanese company and a Korean company leading the pack? It's very simple. their after sales network, cost of spare parts, and a excellent warranty policy. That's all it boils down to. They never took India for granted from day one, and are now reaping the benefits of it. I booked a Suzuki Baleno in January 2017, and got delivery in July. I was ready to wait for 7 months, just to but that product, because I know, my next 5 years are going to be trouble free. Skoda created such a storm when they entered India, they gave Maruti a jolt. their product was rock solid and one would have thought they are here to stay. Sadly, the attitude of the company with regard to after sales service, and warranty policylet them down. A friend of mine had a Skoda Laura L&k, that had a failed AC compressor while the vehicle was in Warranty. The company rejected the claim stating that the Compressor failed due to the owners negigence. he sold the vehicle the very next day after spending a astronomical 2200 USD to replace the compressor. Today Skoda is down to double digits as far as monthly sales go. Why I am drawing a analogy between cars and audio equipment Is that the issues are similar. After sales service, and warranty. Companies want to sell your products all over the world, you need foreign markets to sustain your sales numbers, but are cynical when it comes to their warranty claims, and you just don't want to concentrate on stocking and distributing spare parts. If at all they have these parts, they sell it at a price that is jaw dropping. At first, you genuinely want to buy a original Robe, or Martin, or a Clay Paky, you go to the distributor, get a shock at the pricing, manage to digest that, thinking you are doing the right thing by going to a original equipment manufacturer, put in the money, and deploy the fixtures. Then the failures start. you have 6 fixtures on the same power line, with a power conditioner, and are using a original Avolites board, and one fixture fails. Now you go to the distributor, who says he will forward the warranty claim, which take 6 months to settle, and by the time the parts come down it's a year by which time, there are two more waiting for service. The least you can expect, is to get spare parts at the right time, and a honouring of the warranty policy. Once you get a bad experience, the morals tend to weaken and then its down hill from there. Now look at the other side. The Chinese side. For the cost of one fixture you get 4. Say the failure rate is 50 pct. You are still on a good wicket. Best part, the seller is offering you a spare parts bin at the time of sale, for a reasonable price. Some sellers are open and say - "no parts, buy two more and strip it for parts". Recently I was talking to the new dealer of DB technologies. He was wondering why he was not able to sell his DVA T8 when "the crappy VRX" was doing so well in the Indian market. he said, "forget the fake passive boxes, look at the sales of the powered version of the VRX. I can't seem to sell a fraction of that". My reply was, having worked with the DVA system, " the problem with DB technologies is, 1. no service. 2. No spare parts available 3. time to settle warranty issues. I won,t be recommending DVA products to any of my friends in the Industry when I am struggling with it myself. DB tech has a good portfolio of products, but you cannot sell in India because of bad policy. DB sold 38,000 DVA T4 before it got discontinued. But you they could only manage to sell exactly 56 pieces in India, and that too, to exactly two customers. They have sold 28, 000 T8's to date, how many have you sold in India? T12, you have sold 17, 000 pieces world wide, but In India, you have sold exactly 30 pieces. Why is that so? because the existing customers have a bad taste in the mouth, and they just can't seem to speak good about your product." When you pay big money on a original product, you expect to be treated fairly at least, till the warranty is in place. A big operator who has a huge inventory of lights and audio equipment summed up his experiece with european manufacturers well. To quote him, .... " I have been in this industry for 17 years. I have dealt with most of the European / American lighting companies. They are all the same. They think that their products are cast in Gold, and they must command a premium price, not ready to accept the fact that their failure rate is slighty better than a copied chinese fixture, if not worse. At the end of the day, the man who is hiring me does not care if I have a original European or American fixture or not. What matter is how much I am going to charge him. My worry is how fast I can recover my investment. Initially I was proud to own "original" equipment. But when I deployed 6 Robe Pointe's at a show, and my competitor deploys 12 fake Robes for the next show, I just lost the contract forever. Now there is no space for morality any more. Pack your bags and head to China. End of story. " And a long as things are going to be like this, China will continue to produce.
Edited by thirtha - 16 August 2017 at 6:10am |
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odc04r
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 9:16am |
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I'd also suggest 'The Hardware Hacker' by Andrew Huang if you want a first hand account of what it is like trying to get a hardware startup manufacturing in China. He discusses the IP contrast between East and West in some detail although he is very biased towards the open hardware movement - which he is very open about (har). |
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odc04r
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 9:24am |
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Somewhat ironically, as the Chinese factory is churning out an order of magnitude more units to sell than a 'proper' manufacturer (whose pricing perhaps limits their marketability and required stock) - they are probably getting to the bottom of their QC issues faster too - just via statistics on the volume of units they are testing. |
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markie
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Joined: 31 October 2005 Location: Sunny Liskeard. Status: Offline Points: 4570 |
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 12:57pm |
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Whilst I agree in general that intelectual property rights should be protected, I can't help having bad thoughts sometimes when I watch the consumer programmes (Watchdog etc.)
They frequently feature "counterfeit" Beats by Dr Dre headphones, but they don't tell you that the original product is actually vastly overpriced, and only sold on marketing hype associated with Dr Dre's name. Since the originals are probably no better than my 20 quid Audio Technicas, but 5 times the price I can't help thinking that maybe the counterfeiters are perhaps not as bad as they are portrayed. Likewise the programmes that condemn child labour. Of course it's bad for a kid to be working at 12 years old, but nobody offers any opinion as to what would otherwise happen to the child. The simple fact is that kids are working to feed the families. If they don't work the family don't eat. If the employers were employing adults and paying fair wages their costs would go up and they would lose their price advantage. We as consumers will SAY that we dont agree with these practices, but I bet many wouldn't buy the clothes (or whatever) if they were more expensive. I guess it's inevitable for a developing nation to cut corners in the quest of breaking into the world market. The village churchyard where I live has graves of 12 year old miners. No I didn't mis-spell, they were minors who were miners. Our standards have developed as our economy developed over the last 100 years or so. I'm not saying it's right, just that it is an inevitable consequence of a country lifting itself out of poverty. |
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If it's got wheels or tits it's gonna cost a fortune
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Hemisphere
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 2:44pm |
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Fascinating post Thirtha, but the difficulty, and also the epic frustration for professionals who remember a time (or at least read about a time) when build quality and aftersales service was much higher, is that the race to the bottom means those legit products will become less and less of a clear choice versus the knock-offs, because they have to compete in a market where those knock-offs exist.
I think the point you made about poor support and lack of replacement parts is really important though. It raises questions about what the role is in the world now for the responsible manufacturer, and for the designers, the engineers, the entrepreneurs, inventors and associated R&D bods who frequently devote their lives and go over and above the expected norm, in the perilous task of bringing quality and innovation to the market in the first place. It seems that the optimal solution to the failure of adequate support and spare parts offered, is for a product to be engineered to be durable, repairable, open source: a product that essentially belongs to the community of users in the relevant market. The best product possible is the broom that lasts forever, because every time the handle breaks you replace it, and every time the brush breaks you replace it. But in reality that never happens. The spare parts market is almost never optimally integrated into the business model. It's often not integrated at all! They don't want you to fix your product, they want you to buy another one. The latest one! The best one! Andrew Huang wrote about the concept of an 'heirloom laptop', that you can pass down to your children, because the technology is mature enough, durable enough, and repairable enough, that a completely new one just isn't necessary. Like the broom that lasts forever. But the impetus to innovate and improve things isn't going to disappear. Using the broom analogy, even though the handle keeps being replaced, it doesn't mean that the next model of handle, or the next model of brush, can't be an improvement on the last one. The only thing that remains critical is that the nature of the connection between the parts is retained. And eventually after a sufficient number of each component part has been made obsolete (enough that the only people still using that ancient version of the part are an insignificant anomaly), then you can even change the nature of the connector. Like Apple are trying (and failing) to do with the classic 3.5mm stereo jack. The trouble with the broom that lasts forever though, is what happens to the original inventor of the broom? Or to make a more realistic example, what if James Dyson invents a vacuum cleaner that lasts forever? Immediately the market is going to be flooded with 3rd party spares and before long the original designer isn't selling any parts anymore because serviceable spares are being produced at rock bottom prices. That vacuum that lasts forever could have taken an enormous R&D budget to develop, it could be that it was only possible due to the combined engineering expertise and ability to leverage development capital that Dyson has. No matter how well protected the technology, in 20 years the utility patents will expire, and any remaining design rights can be circumvented by careful development of 'compatible' parts. (like 3rd party controllers for a videogame console). And that's just in the much better regulated Western markets! The Utopian ideal imagines that a vacuum that lasts forever could theoretically be developed by an independent team of open source visionaries, but it would still need to be able to leverage the same degree (or even greater) of design and engineering expertise as Dyson, with their multi-billion pound business, which locks it's employees into a framework and essentially controls them, or at least steers them strongly in the direction of the company vision. Something which is much harder to achieve in an open development environment, where people's efforts and motivations are far more diffuse. In designing of a complex product with such a challenging brief as an infinite-life vacuum, there are so many theoretical routes to the same goal and saying one is categorically better than the others is almost impossible. (Edit: The other major challenges being the supply chain side of components that odc04r mentioned previously, and also it would need to be priced competitively, and provide a sufficiently user-friendly experience compared with products from huge competing corporations, with vast wells of capital and a strong desire to maintain their business model). Achieving that without some form of corporate structure (or equivalent overarching shared commitment) to tie people's energies in the same direction, to encourage more people to act as a cog in a machine rather than the motor, and to do this so successfully as to excel against direct competition from large corporations, is incredibly difficult. Arguably that's what happened in China under Mao. Mao (and his Marxist principles) embodied the shared commitment, equivalent to the corporate structure, that tied people's energies in the same direction. Money, survival, and the banding together into companies (which really just means a collection of people), to ensure the best long term chance of that for their members for years and even generations into the future, is one of the strongest binding organisational principles. Other principles only really seem to succeed when that first principle, of just working to live in the world, starts to falter or breaks down, but history so far has shown that although the alternatives often sound appealing, they generally come with unintended and unexpected consequences which outweigh the initial apparent benefits. Communism often sounds great on paper and millions of people are sold on the idea every year, it seems like it's in a state of constant resurgence, as every generation has people who decide they want to change everything and that we should all be fairer and nicer to each other and share more etc. Which we should. No doubt about that. But there are clear practical limits to the benefits of sharing, and there are major negative impacts as well. Teaching a man to fish is better than giving him fish, and an industrial society based around constant mass distribution of fish and no respect for fishermen is going to have issues, and it will leave the most productive fishermen bitter and resentful, and may even lead them to bow out of the fishing market altogether. In Soviet Russia, the most prolific and productive farmers, with the highest yields and the most successful enterprises, were rounded up and killed as bourgeoisie, and their land reappropriated and farms redistributed to the more ideologically pure communists, but there wasn't anything magical about the land or the infrastructure, it was rather that the people enjoying the most success were succeeding because they worked hard, and they really knew how to manage their workers, and how to use their land and resources optimally. Best practices for highest yields. So loads of people starved. It may be an apocryphal tale, a lot of the stories about Soviet Russia are, but the principle behind it is solid enough. The so-called 'bourgiosie' (the successful farmers, in this case) may not have been the purest communists, but the realities of life: survival, and the translating of resources into sustenance, shelter, comfort and enjoyment, require efficiency and organisation as well as fair and proportionate distribution of wealth. When it comes to manufacturing industries, best practices for highest yields* means products which are timeless in design and functionality, which rarely break, products that can be repaired economically, with spare parts widely available and documentation for repair etc, but that in itself also needs to be backed up through reliability and consistency from the original manufacturer. If the spare parts are produced by a faceless generic third party then you've lost that reliability. Along with all that it still needs to be competitively priced though. People when buying are more concerned with the now than the future, eve if a big part of them knows better, a product for half the price or even 1/3 the price will tilt them away from their better judgement. It's a bit different with loudspeakers because the spare parts are often made by other high quality manufacturers with their own reputations to uphold, and that may be the best possible arrangement. You can still in some cases buy brand new replacement parts for speakers produced in the 1980's (old Turbosound ie), and that's a bloody miracle as far as I'm concerned. Could the same principle be applied to things like vacuums, or Andrew Heung's 'heirloom laptop'? I don't see why not in theory, but the practice would appear to be a logistical nightmare. It's hard enough to manage for a piece of professional kit with about 3 substantial replaceable parts, but for a consumer product with dozens of significant elements? It would need to be of supreme quality overall to justify servicing all of those parts and maintaining supply for decades into the future, and it would rely on a framework that remained common enough and well regarded enough to keep those replacement parts manufacturers in business and continuing to produce replacements. It happens sometimes to an extent, but it's anomalous and limited to very techy sectors. Custom desktop PC rigs is one example, but now most people, even professionals, are buying laptops. Same is happening with pro audio. Things are moving in literally the opposite direction to Heung's vision, even in the fields which you would assume would be the most conducive to such an approach, so what hope is there for far less exciting utilitarian objects like vacuum cleaners? One thing which might help would be the establishment of a whole new band of employment, a sort of consultant technologist class, which has already emerged to an extent with audio and computing technology. There are no shortage of people willing to offer their expertise, freely or on a professional basis, but again it's just too much to consider on top of the consumer experience, which people want to be streamlined, especially at the more mundane end of existence. "Can I interest you in a new washing machine with user serviceable door hatch? Look, you can take apart all the panels and fit a new drum and it'll last forever! Only twice as much but it'll pay for itself five times over a lifetime!" "Er.. I just want a washing machine." "But you can customise the decals! Fit your own knobs!" "..." "Well if you ever consider it here's a link to my washing machine enthusiasts discussion forum". Edit: Google had a concept phone that employed modular part principles discussed by Heung, but the project was canned, probably due to some of the issues I mentioned.  * More best practices for highest yields in manufacturing: - Things which people actually use frequently, and get a lot of use and enjoyment out of. - Things which when in use are generally being used by lots of people at the same time, or at least by a group of friends or family. A speaker, for example! - Things which use less physical resources to produce the same result (but that has to be balanced with the durability aspect so that's a real trick - Parts should be efficiently recyclable/repurposable even when they do fail - If possible the product should be as tailored (or tailorable via accessories) to the tastes of the user as practically possible (aesthetics, expanded functionality, etc), or otherwise as neutral in it's stylings as possible so that people will love it and not have the urge to replace it (also falls under 'timeless') The trouble with the Chinese model for high yields in manufacturing, and I'm not putting all the blame at the foot of the Chinese factories, (as Matt says they just produce what we ask them to), is that it uses an interpretation which is more akin to agriculture, in which best practices for highest yields means: put raw materials in (fertiliser, seeds, water), extract as much acceptable product from raw material input as you possibly can (harvest of crops, dairy products, etc) Agricultural produce is a single use product. Disposable, essentially. It's only one step away from shit. Which is exactly what you don't need from a physical component or device. It really doesn't matter if a piece of fruit or vegetable is 6/10 quality of 10/10 quality, in looks, in shape, in durability, etc. It's all going to market to be eaten, and like Markie says, people need to eat. Getting enough food to eat is still a BIG priority in most parts of the world. Even 3/10 quality is worth the effort to produce if your land/resources to output ratio is great enough. But if you make a product well, like 10/10 well, or 9/10, it might well provide 10, 100, or even 1000 times over the value to the world (or greater material/energy efficiency), than a 3/10 or a 5/10 product will, depending on how well it meets the principles I suggested (and others I'm sure I've missed). And it's no bloody wonder it's like this, because as a country China has converted it's population from farmers into factory workers in one generation, and it continues that conversion process all the tiime. Farming principles are their heritage and they just don't translate instantaneously to principles of manufacturing industries. In Europe I suppose it was somewhat different because you've got centuries of relatively unbroken industrial, academic and legal development, the various, relatively recent colonial empires and all the wealth that brought in, and the industrial revolution itself. Much of which which extended directly to America and to a lesser extent to other colonies. Japan and South Korea were US occupied territories for much of the 20th century, and I think that had a major impact on their industrial development - they're also smaller and more manageable countries. China is massive (in size and population) and extremely difficult to govern and unify (with a fair few examples in history relating to that, I think). China aren't the only country that confuse the best principles of agriculture with the best principles of industry. Every country does it to a greater or lesser degree, because mankind's history of agriculture is simply longer and more ingrained than our history of industry.** It's just especially noticeable the extent that it happens in China because of the rapid industrialisation process that inputs farmers and outputs factory workers. **Also, literally everyone understands food and the basic principles of where food comes from, so generally speaking consumers who don't have an academic, or at least somewhat advanced understanding of how industry works (factory floor workers probably not included), have a higher affinity to agricultural produce than industrial produce, and tend to see everything through that sort of lens. Maybe that's why Apple calls their stuff Apple and puts a picture of an apple on it. Taps into the primal circuitry in some way. Orange mobile? Blackberries? Hmm.
Edited by Hemisphere - 16 August 2017 at 5:24pm |
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Crashpc
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Posted: 16 August 2017 at 6:22pm |
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Hey. Althoug some of my notes had slighlty different meaning, it´s good discussion. But there seems to be a problem in acting on all this. It´s that it´s hard to grab on it and act in a good way.
For example - If you don´t buy that cheap piece some 12yr old child just made, It might as well happen that it will get fired from that rubbish job, ending on the street, soon dying from hunger. What you do then is choosing between two evil things. So we really cannot help that much unless we adress the core of those problems. And that´s generally "evil people" you cannot solve this :-( |
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Nikon and Canon people should not be married to each other. Why did you let this happen?
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Hemisphere
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Posted: 17 August 2017 at 12:14am |
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I agree it's definitely possible to get too uptight about these things.
Honestly my first concern is people getting burned by con artists, and that goes for Chinese con artists and con artist importers who carelessly buy from them and sell without due care for their customers. If people buy something and they're totally satisfied then no one can honestly say they've been conned, they just might not have spent their money as wisely as they could have. The labour situation in China is way more complicated and it's far less than clear what the best way to approach it is. It's funny, and really apt, that the forum should get a visit from Andrew Bishop of Bishopsound (or BS) in the same week we're talking about your Czech audio retailer, BS Acoustic. I still say Nominative Determinism is at work there :D I spent a lot of time today looking through Bishopsound's website and their Facebook page, Trustpilot reviews, etc. I was initially really sceptical when I saw they have a 98% positive rating on Trustpilot with 168 positive customer reviews in the last year or so (and none below 3 star), My scepti-shield was still up at that point but I went on to the BS Facebook page and the story is more or less the same. Lots of satisfied customers. Overwhelmingly, really. And a fair bit of reasonable criticism and questioning, it's not all cheerleading. Unless of course the bad comments are mysteriously disappearing from the page :D but I don't think you can do that with Trustpilot. Unless all the comments are from fake orders :D It's questionable how much Bishopsound have to do with the design of their speakers -if any!- and their marketing is somewhat disingenuous to say the least (all the British Branding and strong implication of supporting local manufacturing, British jobs etc, when 99% of it is definitely Chinese import). And as to quality, it looks to me like they're on a comparable level to those Master Audio drivers we were looking at, but unlike them they do actually publish TS parameters and plots. Andrew Bishop claims to have his own small factory in China. Well...maybe. His own factory? Or a factory that produces his products along with products for other people. Kind of an important distinction which I would like to hear clarified in some detail. Some of the response plots tell you straight away you are buying cheap speakers. Notice the 10dB trough around 70Hz. And the 10dB peak on the 3x12's. They measured and published the plots even though they're ugly, and they published the TS parameters even though they're nothing to boast about. I find that respectable and it's very, very unusual to see that from a retailer who sells at that price point. Probably people buying these systems don't know what these numbers even mean, but a reasonable effort has been made to be candid about what's on offer. Although their made in China products don't boast "MADE IN CHINA", their made in Britain ones do boast "MADE IN BRITAIN", (while the rest just say 'designed and engineered in Britain') so you can make a reasonable guess about the rest. Regardless of your view of the product there's a strong focus on reputation and customer care, and there seems to be a clear target audience in mind - the sort of target audience a lot of people look down on (little Englanders with little money, simple tastes and narrow outlooks), and there seem to be plenty of people perfectly pleased with the product, value for money, service and support offered etc. To be honest a lot rests on Bishop's claim that he actually owns a small factory in China. It makes a big difference. It puts everything from the quality control, working conditions and pay, and other significant concerns as his responsibility, And in that case a lot rests on how he exercises that responsibility but I'm not about to start speculating about that. It would be interesting if he would share more details about that arrangement. So long as it isn't just a case of firing off an order to the lowest possible price suppliers, crossing fingers on the quality and hoping for the best, then whether people spend 200 quid on a Bishopsound made in China box or 500 quid on an RCF made in China box is basically no concern of mine. I would still advise people with only 200 quid to spend on each bin should just buy used, or buy something smaller and professional, but if people want cheap AND large AND new AND they don't want it to be total piss (Soundlab ie), then the options aren't exactly many and varied, and if people are satisfied then hooray for them. Edit: The BS is definitely stronger than I initially suggested though. If you look at the 218 subs I linked to, the 'designed and engineered in Britain' ones, if you look closely at the main image, the BS logo has been poorly photoshopped onto the stock image. And in the stacked image if you zoom in you can see clearly they have a different logo. Archived versions of the page show a wider range of generic enclosures. Might find a few of the current range on Alibaba. Bishop said he only started up 18 months ago but the website's been open for business since 2014! Funny business.
Edited by Hemisphere - 17 August 2017 at 1:15am |
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