Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

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The Chinese are absolutely capable of making some of the highest quality products in the world. Pretending that it is some unique feat of German engineering to make a good pencil sharpener is ridiculous.

You are right that quality matters, which is why the Chinese producing cars of the same quality for 70% of the costs is such an existential threat to the German car industry.

Associating China with cheap products is a false way to look at things. They absolutely are capable of excellent engineering and manufacturing.

>I will never need to buy another.

What a bizarre statement. The only hard part of the sharpener is the blade. This blade needs to be made of the proper material and sharpened the right way, you will absolutely need to buy new blades at some point in time. You can buy them here: https://www.moebius-ruppert.com/produkt/standard-ersatzmesse... they are user replaceable. If you put them into a Chinese made one you get the exact same quality of sharpening.

Lastly, these are pencil sharpeners. Being the best in the world at pencil sharpeners is irrelevant. Germany needs its car industry and they need to catch up to the quality of the Chinese if they want to keep it.

Yes, of course I need to buy new blades... What I don't have to do is to buy a new sharpener because the old one made of "stainless steel" rusted.

Yes, Chinese companies CAN do high quality products. Of course they can, they're not lazy or stupid. But if the price difference isn't too big, I'd rather buy something made close-by, to keep the money in the local economy (my country or Europe), instead of bleeding it into some faraway place.

Some people do not consider that aspect, they only look at the price in numbers and think that's the end-all, which it isn't. There is an "invisible cost" added. On the surface it might be cheaper for me, but it ends up hurting the local industry, it will create unemployment, at some point social problems, and so forth; in short: it will harm the place I call my home.

For this reason, to me a Chinese (or US, whatever) product would have to be vastly cheaper than something made close-by, yet have a parity in quality to be worthwhile at all. And the equation of vastly superior quality for a substantially cheaper price is rare.

As for the car industry and cheaper Chinese cars: I don't see the how German industry is "dying", as it's not really a level playing field. It's easy for Chinese producers to be cheaper when the Chinese government subsidizes the exports. I'm sure Germany could do higher quality cars cheaper than the Chinese, if the German government were to subsidize a large part of each produced car. Would government subsidies then mean that the industry is "not-dying"? I don't think so.

That German car leather interior is ridiculous. They call it engineering! My gaming chair has the same feel.

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