Well, people in the PRC aren’t really working for peanuts nowadays either. They’re not making US/EU wages, but they ain’t working for free, either. China has been doing its own outsourcing of cheap labor to places like Vietnam.
Labor is nowhere near the only factor that makes Chinese sources cheaper. It’s the ecosystem. There’s an entire industry that can do every possible thing, and they’re doing it all the time, so they’re flexible and configurable and can quickly spin out a variant on your standard-issue smartphone like it’s nothing.
(Well, assuming Xi’s recent megalomania hasn’t slowly started to destroy all that…)
>Well, people in the PRC aren’t really working for peanuts nowadays either. They’re not making US/EU wages, but they ain’t working for free, either.
Mate, forget about chinese wages being livable as an argument.
First and foremost, US/EU workers aren't working in factories which have suicide nets on them, that alone shroud tell you everything.
Secondly, workers in the US have it so good that they don't even want to work in semiconductor factories of TSMC (the better paid kind of skilled factories with weight on your resume), let alone consumer electronic factories where you're a disposable cog, least ones which need suicide nets to keep you from killing yourself after your 12h shift and living in a shipping container village.
Just because Chinese labor is now statistically getting more expensive doesn't mean those Chinese workers making your iPhone or 'Black Friday impulse buy e-waste', have it that much better in terms of QoL that would get them even within spitting distance of western QoL.
I believe the USA manufactured version is the “Liberty Phone” starting $2199. The regular Librem appears to be made in China. https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/
