[HN Gopher] Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US
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Manufacturing the Librem 5 USA Phone in the US
Author : dmytton
Score : 259 points
Date : 2021-06-02 15:05 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (puri.sm)
(TXT) w3m dump (puri.sm)
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Making a convergent operating system that is not Android nor iO
|
| "convergent"?
| smoldesu wrote:
| In this case, that means that it converges with desktop
| software. From what I can tell, GTK and QT have both been
| shifting their focus to touch-based, scalable UIs. The result
| is native code that feels just as good with a mouse as it does
| on a touchscreen.
| Ccecil wrote:
| As a small US contract manufacturer working largely in Opensource
| Hardware I applaud their efforts. It is a step forward...even if
| it costs more.
|
| There are many people in the US who would pay more for a phone
| made in the US. It isn't just military/govt. Although, they are
| not the majority.
|
| I got into electronics in the mid/late 90s when there was still a
| lot of development and production in my area. I watched it
| largely move out of country and quite a few mid/high paying jobs
| largely disappear.
|
| It still costs quite a bit more to have boards made in the US
| (unless you get your own equipment) but with the tariffs,
| shipping and possibility of further issues between our
| governments it starts to become fairly close to being worth the
| effort, at least for some things. It would just take one or two
| lot rejections or a batch lost in shipping to make it not
| worthwhile for a mid sized producer. Large companies can absorb
| and plan in advance...small companies the loss may not be
| sizable...but the mid size company very well may have most of
| their eggs in the same basket so to speak.
|
| I have had fairly good results with our Chinese manufacturer over
| the last 8 years or so but doing our own in house QA/Test is
| absolutely required. There has been very few batches where we
| could have got away with not doing so.
|
| In our case we are doing small batch production in house while
| doing larger batches from China but since we have the machines in
| house and we can order parts from anywhere there is very little
| reason to not do our own in house production entirely. This
| allows for much tighter control over the process as well as
| defect mitigation on the fly during production. The next few
| years are going to be very interesting for manufacturing
| worldwide. I expect it won't just be the US who is looking to
| bring at least a portion back to their country...or to countries
| which are cheaper/easier to work with.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Google/Motorola tried this before, but it didn't work out:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27643474
|
| I don't know what went wrong there, or what lessons could have
| been learned.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Actually, that's interesting in that 1. they imply that it
| wasn't a "made in USA" issue and that the problem was just that
| they were only making the Moto X there and it didn't do well in
| the market, and 2. "Motorola says that the Moto X smartphone
| will still continue to be manufactured at plants in China and
| Brazil." -> if they're still making stuff in Brazil, that
| implies that it's really not as simple as "can't make anything
| outside of China".
| ac29 wrote:
| Tariffs on some electronics can be insane in Brazil - for
| example "At a time when the [Playstation 4] was selling for
| $399 in the U.S., an equivalent system was heading to Brazil
| for $1,899".
|
| source: https://tedium.co/2015/07/16/sega-master-system-
| brazil/
| tomcam wrote:
| > Another misconception is that a machine placed part is in some
| way superior to the same connected part placed by hand. It's not.
| It's faster and more efficient, but hand (re)placement is equally
| stable. Electronics off a line are hand repaired more often than
| people understand. This only increases cost (labor and time), it
| doesn't reduce reliability.
|
| I had no idea! Worth the price of admission. Whole article
| fascinated me tbh
| wdb wrote:
| I will wait for the European edition. I can imagine its a unique
| selling point for people in North America
| blihp wrote:
| Is their claim about electronic components 'origin
| declaration'[1] credible or is it just marketing sleight-of-hand?
| Aren't they just buying the same components made in
| Taiwan/China/wherever from a U.S. distributor such as Digikey and
| then saying 'Made in U.S.A.' in the same way other manufacturers
| do? (which would seem to seriously undermine their 'secure'
| supply chain claim) I've been under the impression that we don't
| have fabs in the U.S. making anywhere near the variety of
| components needed for a complete modern smartphone. I don't ask
| to be pedantic, but rather if it would be more accurate to say
| 'assembled' rather than 'manufactured' in USA.
|
| [1] https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
| wott wrote:
| > Aren't they just buying the same components made in
| Taiwan/China/wherever from a U.S. distributor such as Digikey
| and then saying 'Made in U.S.A.' in the same way other
| manufacturers do?
|
| Considering how fuzzy their language has been on the subject +
| the fact that they never cleared it despite many people asking
| for clarification + their track record on "embellishing"
| reality, we can rather safely assume that what they call
| 'Electronics' is in fact a dumb PCB, and that most of the
| components are the same as on the regular version.
|
| In fact, I am even highly suspicious when this post talks about
| "in-house", "our facility". They have basically never
| manufactured anything so far, they are not a hardware maker
| (not even designers, this is outsourced too), there is no sign
| that they have qualified personal for such operation, the
| facility they have been talking so far was in fact a warehouse
| with a bit of final assembly and a bit of warranty service
| (just last month they said they had no personal there qualified
| to even simply check or fix the laptops motherboard they get
| from China), and they have _zero_ cash. This is not consistent
| with suddenly buying PCB making and assembly line tooling and
| operating it for a single small series of product. The only
| possibility is if they got some government contract or
| something like that.
|
| With this company, you should never forget that the boss is a
| bullshit artist, and that you should take anything he says with
| a large grain of salt. It doesn't mean that their projects are
| complete vaporware, or that they never deliver, but there is
| great difference between what they claim, what they promise,
| what they drive people to believe on one side, and what they
| actually do and achieve on the other side. He says what people
| want to hear, and it doesn't matter much whether it reflects
| reality or not. For example, in late 2019 he said that they
| would produce 50,000 Librem 5 before the end of Q1 2020. Well,
| as of the end of Q2 _2021_ , they will have produced less than
| 2,000 unit (IIRC). And of course just a few months before, they
| completely faked the release in September 2019.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| From your referenced page
|
| > The Librem 5 USA will have a user-replaceable assembled in
| USA modem. The Gemalto modem chip itself is supplied from
| Germany, and we will be manufacturing our premium Gemalto M.2
| modems in our USA facility.
| sct202 wrote:
| I think he's referencing how some of the chips on the boards
| are unlikely to be US sourced given Librems low volumes, but
| seem to be consolidated as USA because they were soldered on
| a PCB in the US.
|
| For example, from Librem's spec sheet at the bottom of that
| page lists 2 components from STMicroelectronics:
|
| Accelerometer (LSM9DS1) Country of Origin is listed as Malta
| https://www.st.com/en/mems-and-
| sensors/lsm9ds1.html#sample-b...
|
| GPS (TESEO LIV3) Country of Origin is listed as South Korea
| https://www.st.com/en/positioning/teseo-liv3f.html#sample-
| bu...
| perihelions wrote:
| This hack is remarkable.
|
| https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/purism-librem-5-u...
| [.jpeg]
|
| _" Fun side story, one brand of 32GB eMMC has test pins on the
| underside that confuses the optical scanner for SMT parts
| placement, while another brand does not have the test pins. Since
| there is no easy way to mask the optical scanner of those test
| pins, a black permanent marker is a quick fix to blot them out so
| as not to confuse the scanner."_
| lugu wrote:
| Hope having production on the same floor as inovative hw
| designers will bring new features for hackers like:
|
| - ability to extract all memory component to reflash them
|
| - pinctrl connectors for i2c/spi
|
| - reboot of grey bus
|
| - sdr components
|
| Please make something incomparable!
| kaba0 wrote:
| My only gripe with bringing desktop Linux to phones is that
| desktop Linux is a security nightmare. Someone with more
| experience please chime in, but the whole thing is C, no usable
| sandbox (a bug in firejail will make the untrusted code run
| root..) and the old xkcd comic is still true: the only thing a
| malicious actor can't do is install a video driver. That is, your
| user account with all the important data is basically left
| completely open. Compared to the iphone, and android (especially
| graphene os) it is laughable.
|
| And while basically noone uses pinephone/librem 5, there are
| plenty of people running desktop linux (myself included), but I
| don't sleep well knowing how unsecure the whole thing is, and
| seemingly it is not a priority to anyone. Is my paranoia based on
| facts?
| krrrh wrote:
| Interesting to note that they started US manufacturing with the
| Librem Key[1] in 2019 which I imagine has a much lower total
| labor component than a full phone. Paying double the price for an
| under specced product is a lot easier to justify at $59 than
| $2000, especially for something so security essential. I would be
| happy to pay the premium just for the cool factor and to support
| supply chain diversity. I just wish they would release a USB-C
| NFC version of it.
|
| [1] https://puri.sm/posts/made-in-usa-librem-key/
| yifanlu wrote:
| Yeah it's 2021 and Chinese manufactured are more reliable and
| higher quality than anything American made. As an anecdote I
| build PCBs for a hobby and I've purchased PCBs and chips from
| both cheap Chinese fabs and suppliers as well as Americans ones.
| The only issues I've ever had were with American ones (which were
| many times more expensive) and I've stopped using them
| completely.
|
| I would be curious if librem will ever release data regarding
| failure rates of their American made phones versus non-American
| made ones. But considering how they're branding this and the kind
| of person who will spend the premium to buy it, I doubt they will
| ever say anything.
|
| Also after the Snowden revelations, I laugh at the idea that
| American made products are somehow more "secure". Sure we (as in
| US intelligence community) think China puts back doors in things
| but from the Snowden revelations we KNOW that American companies
| like Cisco puts backdoor into things.
| yumraj wrote:
| > Also after the Snowden revelations, I laugh at the idea that
| American made products are somehow more "secure".
|
| Be that may, but as a US person I'd rather have US intelligence
| snooping on me than a foreign hostile entity. There are no ifs
| and buts about it. For folks in other countries, I leave it to
| them if they are more comfortable with a democracy, with
| _relatively_ good relations with most countries in the world,
| snooping on them or a communist regime, which has issues with
| each and every one of its neighbors.
| albatruss wrote:
| Not good advice if you're American as your own government can
| always hurt you most.
| mPReDiToR wrote:
| The foreign entity isn't interested in you. They're
| interested in you to get to your state.
|
| Your state is only interested in you. If they snoop on you
| they're after you personally.
| whereis wrote:
| Foreign entities seek to use info on civilians for
| malicious targeting ops. This is an example of why the OPM
| hack[1] was so devastating.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Man
| ageme...
| nybble41 wrote:
| The error here is the assumption that only foreign entities
| are hostile. A "foreign hostile entity" may have lots of
| information and malicious intent, but they lack legal
| jurisdiction and the ability to take open, direct action
| where I live. The most worrisome threat is that they manage
| to uncover a common interest with some domestic entity and
| share what they learned--and from that perspective domestic
| snooping just cuts out the middleman. I'd rather keep the
| entities doing the snooping and the ones with influence over
| me as widely separated as possible.
| martin8412 wrote:
| China is not communist, nor do I trust the US more than them.
| Both countries are countries I have no respect for.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Which of the two countries has more invasions, coups and
| occupations in its history? Which one is still occupying
| several countries and has military bases in many others?
|
| It's the US the rest of us fear, with good reason.
| cle wrote:
| Even assuming that all hardware is backdoored, it can still
| make sense to use hardware from your own country, since your
| own government probably doesn't want to harm its own economic
| interests.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Has it ever been proven that China backdoored circuits?
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| On the other hand, your own state has more of an incentive to
| control your behaviour.
|
| As with everything else, think through the threat model.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'm more worried about the other state understanding the
| topology of my state in higher resolution than my own state
| does. The ramifications are endless, and I believe that to
| be the more grave threat (aka undermine society at its
| cultural fabric while stealing/undermining the economy and
| crippling the military).
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| Sure, arrive at your own conclusions :)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It crushed me last year when we ordered extrusion/machine work
| samples (a lot of 10 pieces) from a major American brand and
| some from "Ricky" a Chinese machine shop connect one of the
| guys here heard of through doing other parts sourcing in China.
|
| The Chinese ones were better machined, had no issues, and were
| 1/3 the price. I weep for American manufacturing.
| Romulus968 wrote:
| This is really cool, but it's $2,000. The problem is the specs
| don't quite justify a $2,000 price tag. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is
| $1,099 for 256Gb model. The Librem 5 has 32Gb built in. Granted
| you can expand storage on the Librem 5, but that's added cost on
| top of the $2,000. There are other specs to compare, but storage
| is an easy target.
|
| I think the project is awesome, and I'd be very inclined to
| purchase one, but I can't justify $2,000 for a comparatively
| subpar device.
| Proven wrote:
| > The iPhone 12 Pro Max is $1,099
|
| Is it made in the US?
|
| If not, you should compare it with the other Librem model.
|
| I am interested in Librem 5 phones, precisely because they are
| not iOS or Android. No need to deal with their rules.
|
| I use my phone very little - so I can't say I care about the
| screen quality or performance.
| taylorfinley wrote:
| For perspective a name-brand 256gb microsd card currently
| retails for roughly $30.
|
| The value here isn't in raw specs, it's in privacy and respect
| for the user, which is a total blow out in favor of the librem.
| fouric wrote:
| > Let's say hypothetically that a Texas-based Instrument and
| parts maker has a part, let's say that part is something like a
| TPS65892 (revision AB), and like all parts that Electronics
| Engineers (EEs) select, needs to be kitted exactly to part number
| (TPS65892) and package (NFBGA 96). Normally parts vary by part
| number (I am pretty sure it's why they're called part numbers),
| but in rare instances (I can think of only one) that part is a
| completely different part if it is appended by what you normally
| would read as a revision number: TPS65892BB. In this example
| these are pin-matching parts that do completely different things
| and where all things work fine with the exception of charging the
| battery and providing USB connectivity. After a number of hours
| tracing schematics to board read values, this hunting manifested
| itself into a data sheet comparison where we learned these are
| _unrelated parts_.
|
| Holy moly. I'm glad that _I_ don 't have to deal with that.
|
| What is going _on_ with that instrument maker?
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| I don't know why they won't just come out and say who the
| manufacturer was, to give the hypothetical some real-world
| context. I wouldn't want to assume that they are referring to
| Texas Instruments.
|
| Sarcasm aside, I appreciated the humor they put into that
| paragraph.
| olah_1 wrote:
| This is really inspiring to see consumer electronics made in
| America. So many people say that "we lost the capability" to do
| such.
|
| $2000 isn't a bad price in the grand scheme of things. But I will
| be waiting until the software / UI is snappier.
| deeviant wrote:
| Ah, what _is_ a "bad" price for an massively underwhelming
| piece of hardware, in your book, then?
| bartvk wrote:
| Come on, the Purism people have put up a huge effort. You
| can't just casually the product "massively underwhelming"
| without stating your reasons for doing so.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Well.. The CPU is multiple generations behind anything else
| on the market. Power management is basically non existent.
| They've only recently managed to get cameras working sorta,
| but not really. It was sold as a customer device, not a
| damn development platform. They started crowd funding in
| 2017, and so far have only delivered less than two months
| worth of devices to customers. Purism is violating the law
| on a daily basis.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing it, but it doesn't seem obvious if the parts
| they're using were also manufactured in the US? Which, if
| they're not, makes sourcing them still an issue if global
| supply chains were to break down for example.
| jonchang wrote:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
|
| Scroll a little bit down and you'll see the country of origin
| for the parts. Most are of US origin.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Maybe you don't know, but Purism tends to publish
| misleading information.
|
| Most of the stuff in that product listing is trivial stuff
| to produce. The PCB/PCBA entries can basically all be
| ignored, and all the ICs on those PCBs can basically be
| assumed to be made in China, except for the NXP i.MX8M
| which is made in Korea
| detaro wrote:
| Do you have a source for where the i.MX8s are made? I
| tried to figure that out a while back and didn't find a
| clear answer, although Korea seems likely. (Samsung
| process which is done at fabs in the US and Korea, but
| origin documents I found list China for
| packaging/testing, which is more likely for a Korean fab
| - but not 100% certain, since chips get flown stupid
| distances sometimes for packaging, and not 100% if there
| aren't US-made ones too)
| SahAssar wrote:
| Am I missing something or does that not say where the
| SoC/processor is made? TFA does not seem to say where the
| NXP CPU is made either. Or is that categorized under the
| "Electronics" category?
| martin8412 wrote:
| That answer would be Korea.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Where is that stated?
| mboperator wrote:
| This page has a table of components and their corresponding
| country of origin
|
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa/
| stu2b50 wrote:
| For reference, the Librem 5 USA cost $2000 and comes with 32GB of
| eMMc on device storage, a SoC that can be generously called
| "slow", and 3GB of RAM.
|
| It's easy to see why phones are not entirely sourced from the US
| when it makes the iPhone look like impossibly good value for your
| money.
| fsflover wrote:
| This is not just about the specs:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-
| wiki/-/wikis/Freque....
|
| By the way, there is also China-made version for $800.
| jandrese wrote:
| The point is the device is clearly not competitive on specs.
| You have to put a lot of value in it being an open platform
| to find it attractive.
|
| It is the kind of specs you typically find on $30 phones.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Mobile-Prepaid-Smartphone-
| Lock...
| danhor wrote:
| That's subsidized via the sim-lock. The "real" prize is
| probably more like 80$.
| Answerawake wrote:
| Correct me if I am wrong but the choice of SoC was due to the
| open nature of it and not the origin. All of the other
| limitations stem from the choice of SoC it seems.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Is it actually more open than a typical SoC? Also asking for
| the PinePhone. Also, will it ever get firmware updates? Also,
| I'm not even sure we have source code for the existing
| firmwares.
| auraham wrote:
| It is an interesting idea to have a USA model. However, I do not
| understand why do they have two models of the same phone? It is
| like saying "We have this made-in-China phone which is secure and
| open source but we also have this other made-in-USA phone which
| is more secure and more open". Oversimplistic but that is the
| idea.
| nivenkos wrote:
| The US is the biggest surveillance state of all, why is this a
| step forward?
| Proven wrote:
| Because it's not made by a company connected to the state.
| nickserv wrote:
| The West in general has been on a downward trend when it comes
| to manufacturing. Areas that were relatively wealthy decades
| ago now have high rates of unemployment, crime, drug abuse,
| shortened lifespans etc. If projects like this work out it
| could help reverse that trend.
| jolux wrote:
| I applaud this accomplishment. I think there will be a push to
| manufacture more semiconductor-intensive products in the US over
| the next several years as tensions with China continue to heat up
| and Taiwan is left as a single point of failure. I know progress
| is already being made with TSMC building new fabs in the US.
|
| I will note that Purism do not say what their production capacity
| is, and that it would probably be a different task entirely to
| manufacture a significant percentage of iPhones in the US. I'm
| not surprised that manufacturing thousands of extremely expensive
| phones in the US is possible. I would be a lot more surprised if
| they had managed to manufacture millions of reasonably priced
| phones in the US. The big question is whether the federal
| government will embrace the industrial policy required to rebuild
| our manufacturing capacity in high-tech.
| nikodunk wrote:
| To your point on production capacity:
|
| This reminds me of pushback in the early days of Tesla. Sure
| they can build 1,000, but can they build 10,000. Now we're at
| "sure they can build 500,000, but can they build 5M."
|
| I think the answers "yes", if the demand is there. And I agree
| with you that industrial policy could help jumpstart that
| demand.
| ludocode wrote:
| > I think the answers "yes", if the demand is there.
|
| It's not a question of demand. A negligible number of
| customers care where their product is manufactured. They care
| only about price, which is why manufacturing moved overseas
| in the first place.
|
| What is needed to manufacture phones in the West is
| protectionism and mercantilism. Our governments would have to
| subsidize domestically manufactured products, require the use
| of domestic products for various industries, and tariff those
| manufactured in countries with lower labor standards and
| incompatible civil rights.
|
| Unfortunately such policies lead to higher costs for
| consumers and lower economic growth. It's politically
| unpopular for the same reason action on climate change is
| unpopular: it makes everything more expensive. It's no wonder
| that virtually all western politicians support neoliberal
| globalism. Goods are cheap, even if it means some of us lost
| our jobs in the process.
|
| Worse, these policies also tend to lead to war. One of the
| big reasons we've had relative peace between world powers for
| the last 75 years is that our economies have become closely
| intertwined, so no politician or corporation can stomach the
| economic costs of war. If global trade starts to break down
| we'll head directly into World War 3.
|
| Personally I think we should embrace protectionism anyway
| despite the cost and risk. I'd go so far as ripping up NAFTA.
| American labor standards are so shit that Canadian companies
| can barely compete, and it's holding us back from progressive
| policies like a 4-day work week. Ontario can't even mandate
| paid sick days! I'd rather we have a well-paid labor force
| than cheap groceries and electronics. Unfortunately no
| politician agrees with me.
| bserge wrote:
| > They care only about price, which is why manufacturing
| moved overseas in the first place.
|
| I was under the impression that most of the money saved
| that way went straight into the companies' (offshore)
| accounts and CXO's pockets.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > It's not a question of demand. A negligible number of
| customers care where their product is manufactured. They
| care only about price, which is why manufacturing moved
| overseas in the first place.
|
| Your first paragraph contradicts itself. Not enough
| customers demanding their product be made in USA is the
| very definition of a demand problem.
| ludocode wrote:
| > Not enough customers demanding their product be made in
| USA is the very definition of a demand problem.
|
| The context was Teslas. The parent comment suggested that
| Teslas can be manufactured in volume because there is
| sufficient demand. While true, the demand for Teslas is
| not due to the fact that they are manufactured in the US.
| Tesla buyers mostly don't care where they are
| manufactured; they just want a fast and stylish electric
| car. The demand is not for US-manufactured Teslas. It's
| just for Teslas.
|
| I agree with you that demand specifically for domestic
| products does not exist, but this is obvious. Demand for
| domestic products is not really a thing in the first
| place because the place of manufacture is not a product
| differentiator for most consumers. There are very few
| ways to realistically control direct demand for domestic
| products; laws that force the government to buy domestic
| are about it. You have to create demand for domestic
| products indirectly by making them cheaper than the
| alternative because that's all that consumers really care
| about.
|
| This is why it's pointless to talk about "customers
| demanding their product be made in USA". It's not a
| question of demand because the vast majority of consumers
| do not and will never care where a product is
| manufactured.
| jolux wrote:
| > It's politically unpopular for the same reason action on
| climate change is unpopular: it makes everything more
| expensive.
|
| You've got this backwards. Both taking action on climate
| change and buying American are popular [1][2]. Furthermore
| I don't know of much evidence that suggests taking action
| on climate change will raise prices. But you are right
| about protectionism in that way. That's the biggest problem
| here.
|
| In the abstract I see no reason that global trade should
| breakdown if a significant majority of people in the world
| can agree about labor standards, human rights standards,
| etc. In the specific, I believe this was one of the major
| original purposes of the UN, though unfortunately the world
| we live in remains one in which the abuses of great powers
| go unchecked because the cost of nuclear war is too high.
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-
| thirds-of...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-
| madeinusa-pol...
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is one of those revealed preferences things.
| ludocode wrote:
| Of course everyone _wants_ the government to do something
| about climate change. They 're not thinking about what
| they'll have to sacrifice in order to make it happen.
| Almost no one is willing to suffer even minor
| inconvenience in favor of stopping climate change.
|
| Let's see the results of a poll that asks if people would
| be willing to take climate action that doubled the price
| of airline tickets, or that doubled the price of most
| fruits and vegetables in the supermarket. I would expect
| a very different result, yet this is what is necessary to
| offset the emissions in air travel and international
| shipping. (I pulled this "double" number out of a hat,
| but it seems to me to be far less ridiculous than your
| assumption that action on climate change won't affect
| prices.)
|
| It's the same issue with domestic manufacturing. Of
| course all Americans want their products to be
| manufactured in America. But virtually no Americans are
| willing to pay a higher price for them. Stores long ago
| stopped bothering to stock American made products next to
| their cheaper foreign counterparts because _no one bought
| them_. What people say they want is irrelevant; what
| matters is what they actually buy.
|
| > In the abstract I see no reason that global trade
| should breakdown if a significant majority of people in
| the world can agree about labor standards, human rights
| standards, etc.
|
| If a majority of the world agreed on labor standards and
| excluded the rest from trade, there would be no need for
| protectionism. Manufacturing would be a level playing
| field so Americans could compete directly with foreign
| companies on price. Unfortunately this isn't the world
| today. It's not possible to compete in manufacturing with
| countries where laborers are paid under a dollar an hour,
| so as long as we have free trade with such countries our
| manufacturing will never be able to compete.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > Almost no one is willing to suffer even minor
| inconvenience in favor of stopping climate change.
|
| People aren't taking minor, inconvenient, personal, moral
| steps to solve these problems because it's obvious that
| won't do anything to solve the problem. It's irrelevant
| whether or not I shut the water off when I brush my teeth
| when the farm over in the desert is subsidized to run a
| center-pivot irrigation in system in the middle of the
| desert that pulls 800 gallons per minute. Collective
| action is required, which means that instead of
| moralizing we need to fix the incentives. The only
| incentive that is universal is price.
|
| A few people deciding not to fly or buying produce at a
| local farmer's market instead of the grocery store
| because they're concerned about climate change is not a
| signal that's audible to The System.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > If a majority of the world agreed on labor standards
| and excluded the rest from trade, there would be no need
| for protectionism
|
| The average American does not want to buy stuff from
| slaves, at any price.
|
| It's just that if I want to record a factory in China and
| show people how kids and prisoners are making their shit,
| it's not that they won't watch - it's that someone in
| China will shoot me.
|
| It's very hard to show someone what slavery looks like,
| even though it's pervasive in the offshore supply chain.
|
| People become vegans when they see what happens to
| animals at slaughterhouses. There are a _lot_ of vegans.
| The reaction from the meat lobby isn 't, blah blah blah
| prices. It's just to make it illegal to record in a
| slaughterhouse.
|
| > But virtually no Americans are willing to pay a higher
| price for them.
|
| This is some really myopic thinking. Just decide: would
| you pay a higher price to not get stuff from slaves, or
| not? Just you personally. I don't care what Americans
| think. How could you possibly say, "Yes, I'm okay with
| lower prices enabled by slavery." You wouldn't!
|
| I just go and buy American. So I pay four times more for
| a pair of shoes, setting me back to 2001 prices. A time
| when quality of life was still very high. Boohoo. I don't
| want to fucking profit from slavery.
|
| The argument you're engaging in is almost always made in
| bad faith. While you aren't saying it in bad faith,
| you're being co-opted by people who are. No CEO or
| politician sincerely blames Americans' sensitivity to
| prices for slavery in China, they just want to reap the
| profits of that status quo.
| detaro wrote:
| _having the government buy American_ is popular according
| to that link, not actually doing it yourself.
| jolux wrote:
| This is a difficult question to poll because in a great
| sense actions speak louder than words, but what
| information I can find suggests similar preferences among
| consumers themselves: https://review.chicagobooth.edu/mar
| keting/2020/article/made-...
|
| See also: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-
| buyamerican-poll/amer...
| detaro wrote:
| I just found it funny that your provided link starts with
| a sentence containing "has not made Americans more
| willing to pay extra for U.S.-made goods."
| jolux wrote:
| Well, I think the government buying American is probably
| a precursor for anyone else doing so, because they're not
| at the constraints of the market to find the cheapest
| viable product.
| thatcat wrote:
| I thought the government had to accept the lowest bid
| that met specs, though one of those specs could be mfg in
| USA.
| munk-a wrote:
| Tariffs and subsidies are tools we can use if we want to
| make sure that domestic products can compete with those
| from abroad - but the current wide allowances for
| lobbying in the US make any sort of move in that
| direction extremely difficult.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > This reminds me of pushback in the early days of Tesla.
| Sure they can build 1,000, but can they build 10,000. Now
| we're at "sure they can build 500,000, but can they build
| 5M."
|
| The fact that they succeeded doesn't mean there wasn't a
| significant chance of failure at each order of magnitude.
| nikodunk wrote:
| Good point
| bsder wrote:
| There's a hell of a big difference between producing 10,000
| cars and 10,000 of anything electronic.
|
| 10,000 cars is real manufacturing volume. 10,000 electronic
| something hasn't even reached volume discount status.
|
| There is a reason we call 100,000 units "The Valley of Death"
| in the electronics industry. Your volume is large enough to
| hit all the problems but not large enough to get the
| discounts.
| CivBase wrote:
| > I'm not surprised that manufacturing thousands of extremely
| expensive phones in the US is possible. I would be a lot more
| surprised if they had managed to manufacture millions of
| reasonably priced phones in the US.
|
| I'm pretty naive on the subject, but in this case why would
| cost of local labor affect which product is manufactured at any
| given plant?
|
| Lets say employees A and B are payed $50 and $20 respectively
| for each product they manufacture. If employee A manufactures
| product X, which is sold for $100, and employee B manufactures
| product Y, which is sold for $50, the company makes a net
| profit of $80 ($150 revenue - $70 manufacturing costs). If
| employee A makes product Y instead and employee B makes product
| X, the net profit is still $80. Is there something I'm failing
| to take into account here?
| detaro wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the question: What are the two
| products you are swapping between the employees?
|
| Problems with scaling production also are more complex than
| just labor cost, especially when starting up.
| CivBase wrote:
| The question was basically "If you have a fixed pool of
| employees at fixed compensation-per-output (ie fixed net
| expenses) and a fixed product throughput with fixed values
| (ie fixed net revenue), why does it matter who makes what
| product since the net profit will be the same?"
|
| Although it sounds like that question may have been borne
| out of my own misinterpretation of the post to which I was
| responding.
| jolux wrote:
| I don't quite follow the question you're asking, but the
| argument I was making is one about economies of scale.
| Manufacturing small quantities of expensive products is
| comparatively easy, at the extreme end you could have a
| single craftsman building every phone and selling them for
| $5000 each. If you need to manufacture a million phones
| though, you're going to need more than one guy, and the
| facility is going to be radically different as well. The
| reason phones aren't manufactured in the US is not because
| nobody in the US knows how to make a single phone or even
| thousands of them, it's because factories like Foxconn which
| employ over a million people to churn out millions of phones
| and other products just do not exist, and there might not
| even be enough excess labor capacity to build them.
| CivBase wrote:
| I must have misunderstood your point. I thought you were
| arguing that manufacturers who produces a variety of
| products with plants in the US and Taiwan can only afford
| to make their expensive products in the US because only
| those products have the margins to offset the relatively
| high US labor costs.
|
| But from your response (and on re-reading your original
| post) it sounds like you're actually pointing out that
| high-volume manufacturers with thin margins have more
| trouble justifying high US labor costs - in contrast to
| low-volume manufacturers with high margins.
| bserge wrote:
| I can only hope we in the EU can buy from the US without some
| ridiculous extra fees.
|
| In the past 10 years, it became cheaper to buy the same
| products from China than the US, which is in part due to US
| shipping companies (DHL, UPS, FedEx) dramatically scaling down
| their overseas shipping business.
|
| I could get a 5KG box of electronics in a week for $50 ten
| years ago. Nowadays, there's only USPS, it takes two weeks and
| still costs more. Kinda sad.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is also debate on if the US should invest in that.
| Political tensions with China are one factor. However remember
| there are limited resources so investing in this means
| something else can't be invested in. Really this should be a
| world wide concern: if China is so bad how can we build up
| someone more friendly - it need not be the US. Could be
| Germany, could be Kenya (I understand China is investing there)
| munk-a wrote:
| I actually strongly disagree with the statement
|
| > Political tensions with China are one factor.
|
| Specifically - I think that, at the end of the day, the
| economic flow is the only thing that matters and all the
| other considerations are sort of moot. What the US offers to
| the world is a gigantic consumer market, and it's quite
| difficult to actually control a consumer market since any
| applications of force or restriction of goods flow ends up
| deteriorating the market faster than it yields control. If
| the US embargoed Chinese imports tomorrow the Chinese
| government would receive a lot of domestic pressure to take
| action but, logically, there isn't an action it can take
| overtly to actually reopen the US market - instead we'd see
| this war play out in propaganda within the US trying to force
| politicians to reverse the decision by causing mass
| discontent. And, honestly, it's likely that companies
| affected by any such embargo would just act independently of
| the Chinese government to those ends - so, essentially, the
| only real forces Chinese businesses would have to oppose an
| economic breakdown are their personally contained forces. I
| think, essentially, that the Chinese government would be
| impotent to deal with such a situation buuuut... that's just
| like my opinion man.
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| > investing in this means something else can't be invested in
|
| Eh, maybe - often that "something else" is capital sitting on
| its hands or investing in things that serve to protect its
| own interests.
| bingbong70 wrote:
| If given a choice, as a person that lives 99% of the time in
| the US, would you rather have a US device that is backdoored
| by the NSA/CIA or a Chinese device that is backdoored by the
| Chinese government?
|
| I personally think the latter is preferable. Not sure why
| anyone buys US made equipment post Snowden/Assange.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I've bought a few non-consumer electronics from Germany all
| manufactured in Germany including the housing/plastic parts.
| Quality is exceptional and everything is to the spec and well
| documented.
|
| The advantage of having semiconductor/electronics
| manufacturing in the US would be cheap land/labor, quantity
| of labor, gov incentives, regulation waivers, particularly in
| the American Southwest: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-
| southwest-is-americas-new-f...
| jolux wrote:
| I agree, but part of the problem with manufacturing in China
| is that American companies have become complicit in the
| abuses of a brutal authoritarian regime. The manufacturing
| efficiencies cannot be ignored, but it would be wise to take
| this into consideration as well moving forward. I'm just not
| sure if there's a reasonable way to do so. This may be an
| inevitable consequence of globalization in the short-term.
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| Why is complicity in abuse of populations suddenly a
| problem? The US imprisons more than China does, forces
| citizens to work through a yet-unresolved pandemic that
| disproportionately impacts already marginalized and abused
| segments of the population, and furnishes private companies
| with prison labor for $1 an hour when the prisoners are not
| being made to fight forest fires or being abused (or
| killed) by law enforcement or each other.
|
| I think the companies have the stomach for more and that
| it's mainly a marketing and public relations issue.
|
| https://fair.org/home/us-media-cant-think-how-to-fight-
| fires...
| jolux wrote:
| > Why is complicity in abuse of populations suddenly a
| problem?
|
| It's always been a problem, but it's best to make
| whatever strides to resolve it that we can.
|
| > The US imprisons more than China does
|
| Sure, but it is not currently engaged in a genocide.
| Standards for due process are also stronger in the US
| than in China, and you don't get thrown in jail for
| criticizing the government either.
|
| The US prison system being bad does not make China's
| abuses any less serious. They are still much worse than
| what the US does.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The US is the one with widely documented concentration
| camps on the border.
|
| And last year showed us just how much due process is
| ignored and political prisoners persecuted, if previous
| history wasn't enough.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > The US is the one with widely documented concentration
| camps on the border.
|
| That's for people crossing in, and on average they're
| only in there for a couple days. The current population
| is around 10k people. It's a problem but it's absolutely
| nothing compared to putting entire groups into
| concentration camps. We did that once, but it sure wasn't
| any time recently.
|
| > And last year showed us just how much due process is
| ignored and political prisoners persecuted, if previous
| history wasn't enough.
|
| It did?
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Entire groups aren't in concentration camps in Xinjiang,
| though. The only source is Adrian Zenz, a far right
| Christian that doesn't even speak Mandarin. If you're
| willing to read on the topic
| https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang. The
| US is the outlier.
|
| US forces murder and imprison innocent people all the
| time, both domestically (poor and black people in
| general, Chelsea Manning) and abroad (Assange,
| Guantanamo). There is no due process of any kind nor any
| justice.
|
| If you talk to some people living in China you'll find
| out a lot about how the justice system works there.
| clarkevans wrote:
| What if pricing was listed in two parts: first, the price at
| current market rates, relative to its alternatives; second, a
| share of early adopter stock. The price paid less market rates
| for a comparable phone treated as an investment, perhaps as much
| as several hundred dollars per device. The stock pool being a
| percentage of the company commensurate with network-effects of
| its adoption. Sometimes crowd-sourced purchases like this are
| more easily justified, and even rewarded later, if accounted for
| as investments.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It seems nice but I don't think it matters at this point to wave
| the nationalist flag when it's only a half-measure forgetting the
| 500 kg gorilla in the room. Where are nearly all the closed-
| source designs, manufacturing, and firmwares for the chips made?
| And, absolutely no chances of backdoors there, right?
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| The 362.874 kg gorilla.
| 627467 wrote:
| Other than US govmt, and other highly regulated US institution, I
| wonder about the size and social characteristics of the group
| that both can/doesn't mind paying 2000USD for a understating (and
| in many ways underpowered) and rejects the non-USA model.
| zf00002 wrote:
| Off topic I guess, but the font that article uses is throwing my
| eyes for a loop. The lower-case 't' in particular, but I am also
| not fond of the number '3' either.
| sokoloff wrote:
| $800 (down from $900) for the Librem 5; $2000 for the Librem 5
| USA edition.
|
| (Edit: I'm leaving this paragraph here as it attracted comments
| that would no longer make sense if I edited/removed, but it was a
| result of a flawed premise [bad math in my head]) That seems a
| significant premium over the actual cost differential, but they
| self-admit "this is for customers who have hard requirements on
| sourcing" rather than "this is what it costs to make something in
| the US".
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| What's the basis for your impression that this "seems" a
| significant premium over the actual cost differential? I have
| zero idea of what it costs a company to manufacture a phone in
| China versus the USA, so I'm genuinely curious.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've priced out PCBA (of a handful of boards substantially
| less complex than the Librem, of course) in the US and
| overseas. In volumes of 1K, the US suppliers were closer to
| 2.5-3.5x overseas rather than 5x.
|
| In writing this, I just realized that I can't do math. I was
| thinking it was a 5x multiplier rather than a 2.5x
| multiplier, which seems pretty reasonable.
| tashoecraft wrote:
| The amount of overhead to spin up a US based manufacturing
| process for an already niche item is going to be expensive. If
| someone has that type of hard requirement, they must not have
| many alternatives and should pay the premium for it. I'm sure
| if there was enough demand the cost would come down.
| bluGill wrote:
| They need a lot of customers to make it worthwhile to bring US
| costs down. Right now US production is mostly used for
| prototypes where high production costs don't matter as much as
| flexibility to make changes. If you need 10 made in the US that
| is good enough. If you need millions made in the US then it
| would be worth investing in all the things needed to
| manufacture something cheaply. With enough investment per-unit
| costs in the US can be lowest in the world - but few things are
| worth putting that much investment in when China already has
| most of what you need and the supply chain is shorter.
|
| Everything I said about the US applies in some form to every
| other country to some extent.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| This multiplier (800x2.5) seems much lower than I'd expect.
|
| For prototype quantities (<100), I have consistently seen a
| multiplier of 8 or so, for the exact same spec (and verified
| within-spec after receiving the parts).
| 542458 wrote:
| That actually seems about right to me, at least for the type
| of mfg I'm used to. Compare low-run CNC quotes from Hubs
| (China) and Xometry (USA) - Xometry is usually ~2-3x the
| price. I've seen similar for IM prices although I have less
| experience there. One caveat is that in China it's relatively
| cheap to move stuff between factories (Say the part is made
| in factory 1, then painted in factory 2, then laser-etched in
| factory 3), whereas in the US as soon as you try to do that
| setup and freight gets really expensive really fast.
|
| I don't know anything about PCBs or components, so I can't
| really comment there - maybe the multiplier is worse in that
| case.
|
| One additional thing to consider is there are often grants or
| tax breaks for US or in-state manufacturing that can be VERY
| appealing depending on where you are and what you need done.
| tape_measure wrote:
| Can you recommend some other Xometry/Hubs competitors for
| hobby use?
| rjsw wrote:
| Your multiplier looks about right if you compare the Librem
| USA Phone with a PinePhone.
|
| The $800 price point is already inflated so that it _can_ be
| made in the US.
| wk_end wrote:
| It's so cheap it angers me.
|
| Given the ultra-integrated supply chain over in China for
| high-tech parts & the comparatively low economies of scale
| here, this is almost a worst-case scenario - and the
| multiplier is 2.5? Surely that isn't worth all of the
| deleterious consequences outsourcing has wrought.
| avs733 wrote:
| Another way to look at it is
|
| "this is what it costs to ALSO make something in the US"
|
| you aren't just paying to the difference in labor, you are
| paying for the difference in requirement, documentation,
| redundancy, small market segment, etc.
|
| It's like bolts for aircraft. I can buy the bolt for a couple
| cents at my local Ace. But to buy the certified one costs 10x+
| because of the work involved in getting it certified.
| foobarian wrote:
| I find binning fascinating when this topic comes up. You
| start with a pile of 1 cent parts with a 10% tolerance, go
| through it and measure each and every one, and you magically
| end up with bins of 1% tolerance parts that now cost a
| dollar. The parts didn't change at all! And yet merely the
| fact that they are sorted gives them so much more value.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Another interesting story is that in the 50s and 60s, light
| aircraft shared a lot of accessory parts with cars of the
| era.
|
| Cessna used the same voltage regulator as Ford. Ford
| accepted statistical process inspection for their parts.
| Cessna required 100% parts inspection for the exact same
| part.
|
| Solution: run the assembly line for the voltage regulators
| normally, do the greater of the number of inspections
| required by Ford or the volume required by Cessna. Ink all
| the inspected parts with an inspection stamp. Now, Ford can
| use any of the voltage regulators. Cessna can use any of
| the stamped regulators. Both companies get parts more
| cheaply than if the lines were separated.
| bserge wrote:
| It's still a great way to do it. Instead of 3D printing a
| custom pulley for your hobby build robot, you could just
| use a standard VW part that costs much less and will last
| a lifetime.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Indeed, and when you buy the 10% tolerance part you _will_
| get one thats close to 10% out because the ones that were
| better have all been picked out.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I am not surprised at all by the price considering the need to
| manufacture something that's a totally bespoke design in very
| low quantities. The economy of scale factor that a giant
| manufacturer in east asia has access to is not available for
| this sort of project.
| mboperator wrote:
| Seems like this is priced for military & contractors.
|
| Genuinely hope they can find success in that niche. Even if
| their products never compete with the iPhone in ubiquity,
| having a domestic company with full stack hardware
| manufacturing experience is a tremendous asset both to the
| country and to other companies who aspire to bring their own
| manufacturing stateside.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _Seems like this is priced for military & contractors._
|
| You would normally expect to see the magic words "Berry
| Compliant" if the target market includes that. Not super-
| clear how mobile phones would fall into that particular
| regulatory tranche.
|
| EDIT: no, my bad, that only applies to (broadly defined)
| fabric products.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Seems like this is priced for military & contractors.
|
| there are already a series of south korean manufactured,
| Samsung DoD approved android devices for that market. And
| similar from General Dynamics, as I recall.
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/solutions/industries/gov.
| ..
| prox wrote:
| Could it be possible they would run a specific batch for the
| military or intelligence industry?
| emacsen wrote:
| I purchased the LibreM phone when it was being crowdfunded. I
| waited years for the thing to be released, and what they came out
| with at the end was beyond disappointing. It's nearly three times
| heavier and 2.5x thicker than a normal phone- by today's
| standards, the thing is a brick.
|
| If I had been told that I was going to get a developer device,
| that would have been one thing, but I (and many others) were sold
| the LibreM as a consumer device, and it's just not.
|
| Along with that, there are reports of how working within the
| company was, such as this one:
|
| https://jaylittle.com/post/view/2019/10/the-sad-saga-of-puri...
|
| ... which paints an extremely negative picture of the internal
| working of the company.
|
| Between feeling ripped off for my purchase and hearing how
| terrible working with them was, I'd have a hard time buying any
| new products from Purism.
| fsflover wrote:
| Not sure why you are disappointed exactly. Because of the size?
| It's the only phone with usable kill switches, running fully
| free software, recommended by the FSF, with good working
| convergence mode and so on.
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