Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

according to statista[1], the average weight of cross-border packages is about 1 lbs or so, so according to that table shipping from China would be about 1$ cheaper. As the article itself states

"You can see from the above anything under 4 ounces is actually cheaper to ship from China. From 4 ounces to 8 ounces the rates are pretty comparable. Once you start hitting about 2 lbs, the prices from shipping within the U.S. start to get comparatively cheaper and cheaper than shipping from within China."

I seriously doubt this was ever an existential in the sense of the shipping cost itself destroying a business. China is simply able to produce cheaper things because they have lower labour cost and so on, and that is actually good for American consumers. It's simply free trade.

If anything I see a much bigger threat in the ability of the US to raise the prices, because given the current administration it may be used as a protectionist tool.

[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/974065/cross-border-deli...

> It's simply free trade.

How can it possibly be free trade if one side is subsidized and one side is not.

This is a good thing, I hope same thing will happen in Europe, if it haven't already. The law/agreement in europe is to help people send hand written letters across the globe, and to help people from poor regions send letters ro the more developed regions on earth.

This was the case back then, now, the same agreement is used so that you can send stuff worldwide without any fee. That is NOT free trade.

https://www.svenskhandel.se/contentassets/5db334c2740b4b7ebe...

If you are concerned about maintaining access to the international post system for poor people, how is this change going to help?

Surely it does the opposite - someone living in the poorest country in world would have to pay rich-European country rates to access their postage system.

Btw. I strongly suspect that the international rules on charging for postage were chosen for simplicity of implementation and not out of a sense of altruism for people in poor countries.

How usual is it sending hand written letters in 2020? Even in poor countries, I believe people sending hand written letters across the world is very uncommon.

If you believe it's still neccessary to keep sending letters across the world a neccessity, well, then we could only allow thin letters that can not hold anything else than a written letter - no items, what so ever.

It is not about being handwritten or not, in many situations physical letters have a different legal weight than other mediums.

I agree, I meant to write physical letters. And if it's of legal weight, they should be able to afford shipping.

The problem is not physical letters, it's the postage of goods across the world, being cheaper because of subsizidies.

I didn't mention hand-written letters at all so I've no idea why you're asking that question.

Your original message seemed to express concern that the original purpose of the rules for international shipping was to support people in poorer countries?

If this cross-subsidisation is removed, then people in poorer countries will pay more and people in richer countries will pay less to send stuff to each other. That's simple arithmetic.

And I was wondering how someone could simultaneously support such a policy while expressing concern about access to international post in poorer countries.

Sure, you didn't mention hand-written letters, but hand-written letters is exactly what the agreement/law (in europe) was designed to take care of.[0] So I think you are missing my point.

It was definetly not designed to be abused by the world's biggest companies to be able to ship stuff for near zero cost world-wide. If you can't see how it's clearly being abused, I don't know what to say.

A trade union created in the late 1800's that made sense then, may need a change now. Although alot of damage is already made.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Postal_Union

> I seriously doubt this was ever an existential in the sense of the shipping cost itself destroying a business.

I've read many e-commerce blogs with US sellers lamenting that they can't compete with China on $5 items because shipping costs are 5X as much within US. Maybe not killing businesses, but definitely keeping many out of the market.

> China is simply able to produce cheaper things because they have lower labour cost and so on, and that is actually good for American consumers

Lower, but not nearly as low as it used to be. Minimum wage in China is almost 1/2 of US now.

There's real instances of shipping cost offsetting lower labor. Manhole covers are a somewhat famous example. They're still made in USA because shipping offsets increased labor and materials. Would it be the same for ecommerce? I'm not aware of any studies but to me, the increased cost and shipping time make it plausible

Reply on news.ycombinator.com