Thanks for watching! As I mention at the end of this video, the previous entry in my Vape-o-nomics trilogy was falsely flagged by UA-cam's automated community guidelines systems and placed behind an age gate. Such de-monetisation and age-gating has unfortunately become a regular occurance on UA-cam, particularly when talking about controversial topics as I often do in my videos. And, it has a real impact on the work we're able to do. Whether or not they look like it, videos like these cost a lot of money to make and losing out on ad revenue can severely impact our budgets for future projects. I'm lucky enough, however, to be a part of Nebula, a creator-owned premium streaming service on which you can watch my videos ad-free, whilst supporting my work. Unlike UA-cam, if you sign-up to Nebula and follow my channel over there, you can also be certain you'll get notified when my videos get released! If you'd like to check it out and get 40% off an annual plan, head to go.nebula.tv/tomnicholas
bro thank you for making this; i've been explaining this dynamic to people over the last few years and it's fantastic to finally be able to point people towards a comprehensive breakdown of this terribly sketchy market that's been propelled by the FDA's shortsighted attempts to regulate and industry that they've clearly got no proper understanding of. Im clearly not an economist, but i am an industry expert who makes a ton of content on this. Also it's funny how a company that started out by making dry herb weed vaporizers became synonymous with the beast of big tobacco in the united states's collective conscious
@@TheAdequateMedia I've found it so hard to bring my opinion on china into words to friends. Realizing that i would sound like a lunatic with half jointed ideas barely strung together. I simply avoided the topic. Now i can just direct them to this video. Because, it aligns perfectly with my viewpoint and has had the added benefit of deepening my insight on a subject it's hard not to get a skewed view on when trying to get informed. greetings from Belgium. (i know my punctuation is horrible. you'll have to forgive me..)
Love this work of yours. I do not agree with the statement Chinese supremacy in an economic sense... I see many resembles to Japan from a few decades ago, it is crazy that Germany with its significantly smaller workforce is outpacing Japan. The current exchange rate is also unreal...
Wait wait wait... we're struggling to keep up with demand for lithium for rechargeable batteries for things that actually matter, and we're wasting it not only on vapes, but on *disposable* vapes?
I mean, I wouldn't call it waste when a person buys a lithium cell or two that lasts them years, and uses them to switch from smoking. I'm sure it takes much more resources (and deaths) to harvest a shitton of tobacco for years on end than to produce a single battery. But yeah, the disposable ones are shockingly terrible.
@@adampliszka4855the disposables make it even harder to quit. They're all the same strength here, no 0% in local stores. Can't buy replacement parts for my old modular, and I think there's either a state or local policy making it really, really hard to get liquid shipped. I just want to be off nicotine. Capitalism 🥳
@@adampliszka4855 if the people vaping were 100% former smokers I'd absolutely agree with you. However my understanding is the vast majority are people who *started* vaping. Thus I stand by my original statement. That and I have very little regard for the decision making skills of anyone who started smoking after "SMOKING KILLS!!!" was plastered on every side of packets...
@@Praisethesunson Yes it's capitalism and the housing crisis that forced the proletariat to not buy reusable vapes with reusable cartridges that are even cheaper in the long term.
You can't be serious. Surely you've seen individual packaging on candy, straws, individual utensils. Walk down a cleaning aisle at the grocery store and look at all the disposable products. Over packaging is the norm, it does not stand out in any way.
Everything bad is because of profit, just like how no one cares about biodegradable stuff and how its worse for the environment, they just care because it makes sales, share holders don't want us to enjoy nicotine and substances at a fair price, home grown, self sourced product, they want us addicted and paying against our will, at our knees begging for more
@@oleelo1999 true! the printer cartdridge bussiness model is absoluetely disgusting as well. but hey, at least they aren't fucking up people's lungs. lol
@@enzito_sdf6978 Yh thats true, and its absolutely mind boggling how we dont have regulation in place for it. Like how the fuck can they charge more for ink cartridges then a new printer? Fckn criminal
Really appreciating the throwback to the anti-globalisation movement of the 90s. Kinda miss the days where anti-globalism was rooted in an international concern for the rights and welfare of all workers across the world and not the unhinged xenophobic fever dream that reactionaries have turned it into.
@@Patrick.Weightman Caring about the rights of workers around the world is inherently related to fear of foreigners? I think both sentiments can exist at the same time, but I don’t think one is inherently related to the other.
"youth vaping market" is something that should not exist. I cannot believe we completely missed the boat on this with all the hindsight of tabacco. Terrible
i mean no matter what teenagers are never gonna stop doing drugs, in general. the issue with vapes isnt just that theyre drugs its that theyre addictive, new and unregulated, and teenagers tend to go for the new and "edgy" to assert an identity aside from previous generations. a choice which may feel akin to getting a tattoo or risky piercing to a teen ends up being potentially life ruining
@@Praisethesunsonthe addition and waste of money sucks, but at least vapes are much less harmful to your health than cigarettes. And before the incoming firestorm, I said less harmful to your health than cigarettes, not "not" harmful to your health.
the us government can just ban vapes and tobacco and cigarettes and weed all together. but they won't. because of the profits it brings. capitalism is the name of the game. china is just playing the game. its not comparable at all to the opium war.
Nah I think them supplying Mexican cartels with the precursors to fuel the opioid epidemic would be a better comparison. And also doing the vast majority of the money laundering for them as well
Yea a lot of the arguments against chinese companies can be applied to american companies, but we arent suppose to pay attention to the actual issues around compnaies all over the world being unethical only chinese companies just because we hate china? like the plot is soo lost at this point
@@al3x622 Its because its a devil saying we need to worry about the superdevil. Like, we DO have to worry about the superdevil. But the devil doesnt want to ban the stuff the superdevil is taking advantage off, because they are also doing that thing. So theyre having a hard time steering the narrative because they want to be devilish too, and if they ban the devilish behaviour to stop the superdevil, they ban themselves as well. If you dont know who the superdevil is read 1984 and understand that exists in reality right now. There is a such a thing as one thing being worse than another.
It's been about a month since I learned that disposable vapes existed and I'm still mad about it. IT'S A LITHIUM BATTERY THROWN INTO THE TRASH AFTER A SINGLE USE!
Hello, Michael. I believe that is one of your aliases, though you no longer use it. I remember you. Do you remember me? Have you forgotten, back in 1999, the massacre you committed? You thought you got all of us, didn't you? Well, I'm afraid I survived. I haven't forgotten what you did to the others, Michael. I remember it clear as a summer sky. It replays in my mind every day like a cassette tape. I've been searching for you for a while now, and now that I've found you I suggest you start running. I will have my revenge for what you did to those men. It is futile to deny it. I have no doubt I shall see you soon.
The issue with moving manufacturing to 'poorer' cheaper countries, and keeping design, R&D, and marketing in 'wealthier' countries, is it relies on viewing all foreigners as stupid and below you, much like Colonialism. The Chinese and Indians aren't stupid and certainly aren't a step below us, and companies are now paying the price for offshoring everything. They basically taught them all the hard earnt lessons of 300 years of the Industrial Revolution in 15 years, and they've taken those lessons and run with them.
@@mattias2576 Which leads to people from those countries who do want to move up in life go abroad in to richer countries, which doubles down on the "immigrant problem" that some people have
I'm not sure what that means or why you're describing that as an "issue" tbh? The fact that developing countries can engage in trade with more developed ones and use their resources to learn "all the hard earnt lessons of 300 years of the Industrial Revolution in 15 years" is good. It's why free trade is beneficial for everyone and it kinda turns the whole "economic imperialism/neocolonialism" narrative on its head. If some company has to "pay the price", then, oh well? Inefficient firms being destroyed is supposed to be one of the benefits of markets anyway.
@@TessHKM because the idea, as explained by the video, is that these people will be kept under the thumb to keep costs down. And that they're too stupid to do anything with the 300 years of industrial development they're spoon fed, when the opposite is true. Companies in the West weren't wiped out because they were inefficient. They were wiped out on cost, because people were buying cheap rubbish and were unconcerned with the quality because it is so cheap. The opinion in manufacturing is that the Chinese only wiped out the middle of the market in the West because cheap became cheap enough to be disposable. Globalism helps no one except the 1% to get richer
@@TessHKM because the idea, as explained by the video, is that these people will be kept under the thumb to keep costs down. And that they're too stupid to do anything with the 300 years of industrial development they're spoon fed, when the opposite is true. Companies in the West weren't wiped out because they were inefficient. They were wiped out on cost, because people were buying cheap rubbish and were unconcerned with the quality. The opinion in manufacturing is that the Chinese only wiped out the middle of the market in the West because cheap became cheap enough to be disposable. Globalism helps no one except the 1% to get richer
I knew "disposable" vapes existed, but until now I really thought it's just some strange marketing, because it's 2024 and nobody is stupid enough to create so much unnecessary e-waste, right? Right?!
New phones, laptops & flat screen TVs that we've known involve harsh child labor on 2 different continents for 14 years in mainstream culture hasn't bothered anyone. Individuals are not as progressive as mainstream culture believes they are.
I'm stupid enough to vape, but I'm like 39 and don't use disposables. It definitely sucks seeing people latch onto the things. I've used them to stop smoking cigarettes, which was a success, and have been steadily decreasing the nicotine dose of my liquid with the intent of stopping all together, which has been going alright so far.
Low cost of labor is no longer why companies invest in china, they turn to other south asian countries for that, but rather the supply chains and manufacturing experience of the population, especially for electronics.
This used to be true just a few years ago, but with Xi going batshit crazy, seizing western companies, investments, arresting foreign workers etc, more and more people pull out of China and are not actively investing in new ventures. China has become incredibly unreliable and risky. Not many want to invest with that risk.
It’s not about price- it’s about the huge size of the population. The only other place with that much labor is India, but when you try to manufacture in India you quickly learn that they just don’t have the infrastructure- yet. Microsoft & many other US companies have spent billions in modernizing India. We’d rather literally build facilities & train our eastern colonial brothers in India because they share western values at least insofar as they honor contract terms
The other big problem in India is corruption, and not just at the high levels of power, but it's endemic in lower echelons of society as well. In one study over 60% of people were recorded to have paid a bride to an official to get something done. @@scarletsletter4466
Yeah the whole "companies invest in China for cheap labor" is outdated nowadays - if China has a comparative advantage in labor, today it's in comparatively cheap *college-educated* labor, which is not the kind of labor people picture when they think about Chinese sweatshops
gotta love your similar take but its bad when west and when china its "well its comlicated cause west still bad, yes uighurs are in camps but consider wto!!!"
Not sure what y'all are talking about. The US is responsible for mass genocide, as are most imperial powers. China, USSR, all the major states have killed millions, because the people in power care about power at any cost, that's why they're in power, and the people aren't
@@jolp9799 how about Juul and Elfbar are equally bad? Because it's possible for two things to be bad at once, just like Israeli and Russian settler colonialism.
We also need to make them stop manufacturing faulty phone charger cords. Why is it that I was at the office the other day in a meeting & 2/3 of the people were saying their phone cords weren’t charging right & they have to replace them every few months. That’s unacceptable
China having a comparative advantage in labour meant that money and expertise could accumulate and circulate in the Chinese economy over the long term. As more Chinese workers were lifted out of poverty and China as a whole becomes wealthier, more of its citizens can afford the products they would normally sell to foreign markets and Chinese companies can accumulate the capitol required to build their own entrepreneurial and investor class. The idea almost nobody in the english-speaking world seems to want to consider is the idea that the Chinese government is simply getting exactly what it was promised when it joined the WTO.
@@CentristDad155 Did we agree to all the US lobbying and involvement in regime change like when they didn't like a certain Australian PM and got rid of him? Or when they helped Bolsonaro stay in power? China doing IP "theft" should be the least of our concerns.
@@weirdblackcat What about ism? What are we talking about now? Why don't we bring up covid and seizing of the South China Sea and anything else: everything's up for grabs in this conversation huh?
I love how you discuss comparative advantage, and in your example it is actual goods, such as wine and cloth. However, when you get to the comparative advantages with juul pods, you then get into advantages such as "lax worker safety" and "advanced financial sector." Such a sharp change, and really opened my eyes as to why so much of United States manufacturing is overseas.
disposable vapes represented the majority amount of small electronics waste according to a BBC article from last october. Absolutely nuts that we're so concerned about e-waste, yet something designed to be used a few days and discarded can be imported and sold en masse like that.
Not even a few days. I tried using them to quit smoking, each one lasted less than 2 days. The amount of waste was scary. Switched to a refillable/rechargeable after a week
@@juicedgoosefor me they lasted about a day >_> luckily i lived near a store that sells normal vapes too so now i just refill mine with refill bottles
Well, they practically banned Juul which were reusable. The whole thing about the regulation of vapes is that every law that has been passed has had other negative side effects.
combine that with the fact that most disposable vapes (and refillible bapes) are designed to be tricky to repair and reuse - its intentional planned obsolescence, its systemic land fill junk thats causing so much environmental damage jsnsnsndbsnds
I've used a rebuildable vape for years so I don't even have to buy replacement coils that will go bad, I just replace the cotton when it goes bad. The cost savings is ridiculous, I only pay for juice essentially. The coils are reusable, you just have to burn them off and replace your cotton. It's the cheapest and most eco friendly way to vape.
And Germany probably thought that this might stop people from smoking cigarettes, which are highly taxed. So 3,20€ per ml tax it is. Even for the base. That's just ridiculous. It added 32€ to a 100ml bottle of base, which previously cost about 3€ I think.
On the very rare occasion that I've bought one of these throwaway vapes, I always take them apart and keep the parts. The lithium cells are super handy if you're a tinkerer. I hate the existence of disposable vapes with a passion, tho.
I prefer to find mine, a free supply of 1500mAh batteries is quite nice. I repaired or upgraded quite a few things with those batteries, I amuse myself by fitting 2 cells into the vape body and making power banks with them that I give to people. The electronic module I use costs well under $1. (Unfortunately for me, my local government has banned disposables, so that ends that.)
@@j.f.christ8421You're potentially tapping onto creating a massive "green" electronics empire here. If you find a way to get a constant supply of these used vapes and mass produce the electronics you make with it, you're off. I wish you'd follow it up and see success with it.
Same. Me and wife keep every single one of them. Sadly the number has grown faster then I could design a way to reuse the parts lol Anyway, we mostly use reusable ones.
That's a good idea. When I lost my main vape on vacation, I started refilling a Mari-something, don't remember the name, with my salt juice. It worked well for a six-week period.
The casing is the hard part if you can buy liquid and make replacement wick. We can't buy liquid anymore where I live. Wick is easy at least. The mouthpiece on elf bars is allegedly snap-in, not glued, but it's REALLY hard to remove. You'll want to have something grippy between your pliers and the plastic to avoid cracking it. If the mouthpiece starts pulling away from the body, switch to prying it apart there with plastic tools or your fingernails. If you manage to get the top off, it's just a battery taped to the "tank" with wires running to the charging circuit at the bottom. Be gentle here. Should press back together when you're done. Look up "transparent disposable vape" to get an idea of the layout. Ironically those transparent ones are even harder to disassemble. DO NOT DRILL REFILL HOLES. Yes, I have really seen this on forums. Best case, plastic shavings in the tank. Worst case, exploding battery. It's not worth it. The wick will need to be replaced eventually anyways. Just disassemble. Lmk if you have any luck, the tops are stubborn.
Through my testing (and I'm encouraging a local shop to offer refills,) one of the most popular models around here (it's orange with a little plastic cap and is USB-C rechargable) is SUPER easy to refill. Pop off the cap and there's a decent rubber gasket sealing the literal actual slightly larger than 1g tank. I refilled with resin (and these things are meant for distillate) 3 full times before the the cheap USB connector started getting finnicky while charging (though I was NOT gentle with this thing,) and it takes a couple puffs to warm up so I think the wick is a bit tired. Still, that's more than some of the bad vape batteries i've owned.
@@jal051 Yeah true but how will restricting access help? The topic at hand is e-waste from the disposable batteries, not the health impact the invention of vaping has had, which i don't deny and have personally experienced. My mother's chronic cough was cured instantly 8 years ago when she stopped smoking and switched to vaping. But don't pretend restricting access to them would be good for anybody but whoever profits financially. I was working a manual labour job and having to cycle there when i caught a terrible chest infection, i now have asthma and lost my job because my very incompetent doctors office couldn't even speak to me for 28 days never mind get me a simple strip of antibiotics. Due this and their subsequent failings to serve the community at large this has made them less than worthless to me, they are now gatekeepers of simple, cheap devices and medicines i would rather just be able to buy. Oh and recently they've been trying to take away people's inhalers, mine too, thankfully there was a social media campaign that went viral and they've eased off since. I will take what i'm owed from them until i die however i have to, if they controlled my vaping as a prescription i'd be screwed.
@@jal051 They don't work any differently to rechargable e cigarettes though. There is essentially no advantage to disposable ones beyond arguably a slightly lower initial cost.
@@max3446 I don't remember what I said in the message you're replying to, but I'm in favor of banning the disposable ones. Most of my comments in this topic were directed to making clear ecigs are a good thing for adults who are quitting smoking, which, for some reason is the demographic everyone keep ignoring when discussing this topic. The disposable ones are probably even more expensive since you have to keep bying them all the time. I don't know about that, tbh, never had one in my hands.
the main comments focussing on the disposable vapes part while thats basically only mentioned in the first few minutes and just used as a case study in a larger phenomenon is quite something.
2:42 can't lie, juul does look like an american kickstarter guy. skinny and grey suit, asking a fortune while offering little but all alike, save for their interchangeable heads.
With regard to the US ignoring WTO rulings; they do it for every country, not just developing countries. An example of this is the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the US. Every single time the US loses a dispute, whether it's NAFTA, WTO, etc. they state they disagree and refuse to abide, but then expect other countries to still follow the letter of the law.
Yes, as a Canadian I shake my head every time I hear some group seeking a free trade agreement with the US. For example, Brexiteers arguing that being free of the EU would allow the UK to quickly negotiate a deal with the US. Setting aside the "quickly" part, the idea that they will ever have truly open access to the US market is laughably naïve. The US will allow access to their market right up until some sufficiently influential entity feels threatened by imports, then the House, Senate, or President will shut that down. Canadian lumber is of better quality and cheaper? Boom, restrictions. An American airline decides to buy a Canadian passenger jet instead of a Boeing? Boom, a gajillion dollars in tariffs. Canadian aluminum and steel are competitive (largely due to abundant hydro power)? Boom, tariffs because Canada is now a "national security threat". (What?) Canadian wheat producers are selling wheat to Mexico for less than American wheat producers? Impossible! Boom, retaliatory tariffs!
As ordinary Chinese, we take it as we were making socks, shirts, toys for you Americans, you were quite happy; however when we tried to move up the chain, building cars, airplanes, Americans accused us of over capacity. The double standard is jarring, we did’t complain when the VW Toyota cars packed our street, just as when knew, they indeed build better cars than us. I understand, trade problems are much complicated than what I described above, However, the gist of it is widely believed among us Chinese which fueled nationalism against USA, it is believed that USA is trying to blocking us from a better future (higher gdp per capita, high paying jobs for locals, better goods and services.) American officials always say they hold no ill wills against Chinese people, however what they are doing to maintaining their primacy is already hurting ordinary Chinese.
You know, I've been a nicotine user for most of my adult life until about 3 to 4 years ago when I quit the cigarette habit. I vaped for a bit and had to make an effort to quit that once it got a bit too cigarette like for me. I had a period last year where I did use disposable puff bars and elfbars and while those were very easy to quit for me, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was creating a lot more waste than if I was using the disposable pods I used for the first time. Vaping started from this cigarette alternative that would free smokers from tobacco to this new ever present clutch for folks as traditional tobacco use becomes old fashioned and disdained, even by nicotine users. It's wild to see. I'm just happy I'm not participating at all in its use anymore.
This video came at a very convenient time for me. I'm reading Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul by Jamie Ducharme right now, and working on a research project at my local college around the topic.
Modern electronic cigarette: 2000s Despite these earlier efforts, Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist and inventor, who worked as a research pharmacist for a company producing ginseng products,[246] is frequently credited with the invention of the modern e-cigarette Not Juul, its the other way around. Saw cheap Chinese e cigs and thought they could just change it a little bit to sell to the west as a mark up.
You got me going on a wild search for that fake Hamilton album!!! Wanted to listen to it so much. “Ops cheated again” must be a banger!!! Good video man! And good job with the marathon!!!
It might not be the most crucial mistake, but it's quite a grating one considering you repeat it about 20 times: Chinese salaries in the manufacturing sector especially in the Shenzhen region now exceed those of most of Eastern Europe. And there are much MUCH lower cost countries around as far as personnel expenses, think Philippines. What's special about Shenzhen is that it has been able to convert decades of low costs and infrastructure investments into a key structural advantage is that everything is THERE. Every supplier has a subsidiary there, safety testing organisations as well, and if you need a toolmaker to make custom parts with your manufacturing technology of choice, the only place in the world where you'll find one quickly and who can make the tool at a high quality is there, nowhere else. So the crucial advantage of Shenzhen is iteration speed, you get your product out quicker. Still worthwhile in spite of rising tensions and skyrocketing costs. And to think that you keep talking about low wages and never bothered to look them up?
He is pushing a well mixed bags of half truths with the "capitalism bad" agenda. Your observation about the salaries level is spot on. Another example - I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
@@timbehrens9678 Yep. Notice how he didn't mention Taiwan when mentioning the CHIPS & Science Act. It's the US hedging against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, not just beating down on poor ol' China because racism.
Shenzhen is unique, is it not? It is one city/zone The majority of China does not operate like it does there. The specialization of Shenzhen lends itself more to electronics, right? Its not like all the manufacturing in the country takes place there.
@@PraxisAbraxis Shenzhen is specialised in fast-turnaround electronics manufacturing, but all the megacities have something going on driving the rising salaries to vaguely similar levels. So there's 13 urban agglomerations with populations between 10 and 240 million residents each, comprising more than 800 million residents total. Vaguely half of the Chinese population. Shenzhen area is 70 million. Electronics manufacturers rely on supply chain largely in other megacities, boosted by deeply subsidised mail and rail infrastructure. Some economists suggest that the rapid rise of urbanisation and urban standard of living is to a large extent a result of bubble economy and may not be sustainable. But for now they are doing rather well.
As a Chinese person and long time fan, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO. I don't like some of the stuff our government do either, and I take a lot of problems with how it seems to embrace capitalism without reservation, but it's so tiring to hear people talk about my country as if it's some evil supervillian bogeyman that's one day going to dominate us all when it's the Western capitalist that's been rigging the rules for decades if not centuries. It's sad that people buy into this "China VS US" rhetoric created to divide us and justify xenophobia and racism when it really should've been us vs global capitalism all along. I was kinda worried when you said you were gonna make this video, but it turned out to be really nuanced and said what I've felt for a long time, but much better than what I could've said myself. Please keep up the good work!
This is a nice comment, but as an anti-american, i must object, China is country number 1, Xi please liberate me. Every country that opposes the yanks, i support, no questions asked. That and there isnt enough anti-american propaganda to balance out the anti-chinese propaganda, i.e. im gonna over-compensate. Its not going to change the minds of the liberals but ive no political power anyway so who cares...
I think they want to be cool they see cowboy bebop or some guy in an action movie look cool and back then the tobacco company did play on that too with the baby boomers and I think because of it people link smoking with coolness when you actually look at it what to cool about smoking your taking poison and slowing killing yourself and nerfing yourself physically also people don’t view as some guy who drink as cooler than some guy who don’t drink or drive a truck
It’s always been a problem with smoking and vaping is just the replacement still 100% a problem but it’s honestly better and is allowing governments to crack down more on smoking which 95% worse for you
I definitely wasn't expecting to hear about the Anglo-Portuguese wine and cloth trade today. The point left out is that today the treaty behind that trade is seen as a symbol of Portugal's non modernization.
As pointed out in the video, the problem with the "theory" of comparative advantage is that it has a completely ahistorical view of the world, assuming that the current global north and south divide has always existed and ignoring the effects of colonialism. Karl Marx put it best: "We are told that free trade would create an international division of labour, and thereby give to each country the production which is in most harmony with its natural advantage. You believe, perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about commerce, had planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees there." And IP laws also serve to essentially uphold western hegemony by blocking impoverished countries from being able to produce generic medicines to protect corporate profits at the expense of making these countries suffer deaths from preventable diseases. An excellent book that delves into these themes and more that I would highly recommend is "The Divide: A Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions" by Jason Hickel - it was actually personally approved by the mentioned figure Ha-Joon Chang.
IP laws are fine if the licensing regimes are reasonable and don't negate the labor advantage of developing countries. The problem as always is who determines what's "fair"
I have a non-disposable vape but I'm still upset about the fact that the coils have plastic with the housing... Looking for better options for sure. Obviously the goal at some point will be to quit, nicotine does nothing good for anyone.
Fucking with judicial appointments in a way that cannot possibly have serious long term impacts has been a real theme in the last decade or so of american political shenanigans.
18:33 I just want to give a shoutout to the "Hamilton Act 3" song titles, it's such a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment but pausing to read them all made me laugh so I appreciate the effort put into this quick frame
Excellent video! One observation about something few people know: standardization! My parents are in their 80s and both are engineers. When they started working, a machine used in some part of an industry was produced entirely by one company - therefore the industry was a hostage of the that company whenever they needed spare parts. Nowadays we have a detailed international set of standards that make it cheaper to use parts produced by someone else then to produce the whole machine in-house. It's not only the standardization but the fact that the standards became more complex and detailed so now a set of specifications defines a part almost perfeclty. Example: pin and hole -> it's impossible to make a 10mm hole on a piece of metal because ... well ... life is imprecise; the same applies for a pin. When my parents graduated there were three specifications for a hole and pin: loose, snug, fixed. That means the pin can go through the hole and move around loosely; the pin can spin snugly inside the hole or the pin wont move once it's put inside the hole. Nowadays there are around 14 types of specifications for a pin and a hole! But why the hell should I care? Well ... trucks, cars, oil refineries, ships, airplanes ... all of them have holes and pins going into holes! Globalization has no way back ... perhaps for some consumer products but for industry and similar areas there's no going back. Oh ... and that's why I can now build a CNC router at my home using open source designs!
I love how this video is about how US and global North shape all of their “foreign affairs” and “world (insert name) organizations” to continue their world domination and when someone outflanks them from within they just change the rules like nothing happened. And the entire comment section is about vapes, lmao
that's kinda sad ngl, when you use a relatable exemple to present a much more complex topic. people just pay attention to the relatable example and forget all else.
Well. Most people have knowledge of some sort or too big too fail orange crook that plague the world media since 2016... Cool that you learned life today. I learned it in the 90 with OJ Simpson...
No, they aren't. They are well mixed bags of half truths with the "capitalism bad" agenda. For example, I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
You didn't mention a huge factor in the Chinese rise prominently enough: the heavy international subsidies that enable cheap or free shipping which are paid for through expensive local shipping and mail.
@@foolishlyfoolhardy6004 when you're paying a lot to ship locally a significant portion is to pay for free shipping as a part of foreign aid to China through UPU/ The UN. For a country that has it's own space station and ICBMs and which gives out predatory loans to countries that actually should qualify for that subsidy.
@@magfal True! It's so expensive even shipping locally, but US hands out free shipping to China?! WTF! Also, I doubt China will take a big hit if that changes. I only see a possibility of improvement in the US small scale economics, and that's probably not worth the goodwill that US would lose. This explains why US still continues to subsidize the shipping ig
@@THarshavardhanReddy It's all member of the UPU which are financing China's export industry. The natural price would be in the 50USD for a tiny package range. Check the price of shipping an item from one of their neighbouring countries. There are several cornerstone companies in China that would die in a week if this goes away. Could topple the dictatorship.
I’m happy more people are starting to “dispose” of their left/right division lines, and recognize that the issue is obviously so much deeper than which team one picks. At this point it’s completely arbitrary due to how much corporate corruption has seeped into the political sphere.
Nicotine being the exception to the rule, I have had far more good experiences with drugs and alcohol than I have had bad ones. Peer pressure had very little to do with my decisions to try most drugs outside of maybe cannabis in my early teens. It’s not all bad if you are responsible and safe- I would strongly advise anyone curious to wait until adulthood before considering experimenting though. I didn’t and paid for it on more than one occasion lol
@@AgxntAqua I don't disagree with you in principle, as my choice is more personal than anything. My gripe is with normalisation and the massive peer pressure that comes with it
@@camillaquelladegliaggettiv4303Fair enough, but I think normalization may be the messy first step into rethinking how we handle drug addiction. A transitional period from focus on it as a criminal issue into a medical one. I think it’s pretty well evidenced by the needle exchanges and free-use decriminalization experiments we are seeing across the developed world- to varying levels of success ( and failure )
China has other comparative advantages outside of wages, like public infrastructure that isnt one century old and the fact that so many factories are in asia means that the company producing stuff you need can deliver the necessary parts faster, they basically built more comparative advantages overtime
Following Trump's China country of origin tariffs there has been an unexpected move of Chinese owned manufacturing into third party countries, especially Southeast Asia to avoid the tariff. His plan has promoted the increase in globalisation of Chinese owned businesses.
No, it isn't. They are well mixed bags of half truths with the "capitalism bad" agenda. For example, I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
Ive seen a few of my more "cash strapped" friends break open an elf bar and refill the fluids and even solder in a rechargable battery. This was after the found out they can't recharge the batter that comes in the elf bar... It melts quite quickly! And it surely loves up to the saying "the brightest candle burns the hottest/fastest."
Afaik, even the cylinder ones have rechargeable batteries so it's even worse :) It's cheaper to buy rechargeable batteries in bulk and leave out the charging circuit than buy a separate, much smaller order of non-rechargeables. The battery model isn't always printed on the outside, but they are standardized. Some batteries are duds. Big Clive has a video about extracting and identifying them. If he doesn't say how to charge em, I know your friends can figure that part out. It's much easier than getting the cases open, lol. Super glad they're reusing these things, I like your friends.
Seemed to even having skipped the US completely disregarding all European copyright and patents all the way up to WW2. Not just in practis like China, but in law. The Lord of the Rings, when released in US, wasn't covered by copyright because the author was British...
Disposable electronics should be illegal across the board. Solder in your battery or data storage device and your device should be considered disposable and thus illegal. The capacity of the batteries in disposable vapes is nothing to sniff at. I found one and pulled it apart, and the lithium-ion battery in it was 5.18 Wh. That's over half the capacity of the one in my phone!
There’s a book by Korean philosopher Byung Chul Han called Shanzai, it investigates the tradition of copying things in Chinese society. Their approach to ideas and ip historically has been very different to modern western notions. I’m not giving an excuse for what they do, but knowing this certainly changed my understanding of it.
It's hilarious to watch governments struggle with trying to ban something when consumers don't care about the law anymore. Government overreached with the war on drugs, and now everyone is completely comfortable getting stuff from black markets. Laws nowadays are primarily about protecting someone's profits, not a sincere concern over the welfare of citizens. If you care so much about me vaping, why aren't you also helping me pay for college? Why are we still using this antiquated healthcare system? Where are the labor regulations to keep wages up? Why is government so obsessed with this one thing? It has nothing to do with your health or the environment.
I'm fully committed to lowering the blood content of my nicotine system via vaping, but gosh I stay away from disposables! I've been using the same device for almost 2 years now, and the batteries still charge fine
I'm a big fan of the systems that use 18650 batteries, but at this point, i've gone tabletop to electrical outlet. (Since my vape system is not for nicotine... And not used outside my house) *I built my own tabletop flower vape system. I do think that systems that are refillable are infinitely better, as they last a really long time. And with battery standards there is no reason to make anything else. Unless you're a ruthless uncaring profiteer that is.
The audiophile market has been dominated by the value of the booming Shenzhen audio scene for the last decade. Small companies providing innovation and workmanship often above western companies, at a fraction of the price. I order all of my audio cables from small stores, they’re handmade and fairly priced, because the guys making them are located at the source of parts. One of the few examples of a positive industry change to come out of Shenzhen.
I think we can both be appreciative of the ingenuity and innovation of engineers in China and skeptical of a global economic model that traps all of us in an unsustainable death spiral of impoverishment and climate collapse.
I love how many people here are commenting on how the individual is the problem for the flood of disposables in the market when it's usually caused by laws and necessity. In Australia disposable vapes were pretty hard to come by, only small convenience stores sold them (illegally). but as nicotine crackdowns have gotten worse and the price of tobacco products has skyrocketed it's left many addicted people with no choice but using disposables. I wish there was a better alternative for me but you try get any nicotine product in Australia at a reasonable price without risking it being caught by border security.
It kinda defeats the whole argument he is trying to make, but well, as a well-trained communist he can hold many contrary ideas in his head without blinking.
E-cigarettes were invented and first marketed by the Chinese. What do you mean by the stealing of intellectual property? It was China's regulation regarding e-cigarettes that resulted in Juul having a comparative advantage for so long.
@@Somebodyherefornow You can't watch UA-cam in China unless you work for some foreign company with its own VPN. There might be a few other obscure tricks (like roaming). But any publicly available VPN is going to be capped in seconds. Ask me how I know.
Don't forget the current situation in the Congo using childern and sl_ve labour to mine the materials needed for something that's just being thrown out. There is so much cost that people aren't seeing from these
Talking about how bad smoking is under this video feels strange to me. A bit like a video about the global plastics industry- the functioning, the laws, the geopolitics- and all the comments being about personal recycling habits. You should recycle and you shouldn't smoke, but aren't we a bit past that? Please?
in the 2 minutes and 23 seconds the intro took I had to watch 6 different commercials in 3 different blocks or 2 commercials at a time. It took me almost 8 minutes to watch 2 and a half minutes of content. That is 6 minutes of commercials. 3x the amount of content. I didn't think youtube would destroy themselves.
Just commenting to boost the algorithm. Quality analyses like these are hard to come by on UA-cam anymore. Excellent work on this series, Tom. I appreciate your incisive takes and ability to make the connections to multiple topics. Helping everyone see the forest for the trees in an age when our attention barely makes it past the branches. Cheers from Ohio, USA.
Interesting perspective. Back in the day my political party in Canada, even some radical Conservative types and unions were not cool with it, put up the good fight against NAFTA and free trade. It was heartening another generation in the 90s opposed the WTO but way way too late. We completely lost on so many levels. The 'race to the bottom' just continues to accelerate.
Genuine question, my apologies if this sounds ignorant: what tangible products and resources come from wall street? Even diamonds have practical uses in machinery
ya and people on the west coast and in southern California are wondering why the southern California or socal homeless population is so massive is the tech heads are doing the same thing they did in the 90s. getting the highest talent to make shit then shipping it to china for the cheapest build but by doing that. they hide out much damage the process of making these things does from there public and also lower skilled labor that isnt white collar able gets shafted and left on the streets to basically die and in both cases the corps win the government wins and makes up bullshit reasons to " fight homelessness" and sink cash that just gets pocketed. as a northern Californian that only reason he has survived is due to farm work. its sad how for mega corps are willing to go to hide lie and used people in there county and even more so abroad to make a few extra bucks and no one ever sees a cent of it as is just stays in a bank account going to waste... greed is strong and the last 100 years of industry our fathers and fore fathers have let that greed grow and kill the people under them and the world we live on.
The missing piece is they 'sell' the product in the country with the lowest tax rate, which is here in Ireland. They get fined for doing this and Ireland spends millions refusing to collect the fine and seeking to have it overturned.
@@ablacknambercat you are veryyy right but also out of sight out of mind and with tiktok and many other things making attention harder to keep its easy for people to be distracted and straight up forget things... im no conspiracy nut but just seems like puzzle pieces
i cannot believe this is where i learned pax was the maker of juul, i used to be a massive weed vape nerd so im super surprised i never learned that sooner. who else watching while hitting a dynavap?
sticky brick for me but i do have a dyna. way better than pax ever was, and both were cheaper combined than one pax. funnily enough i learned pax was behind juul right when it was new - bc they were selling “pax pods” in some parts of california with the same form factor as juul 😅 honestly i do not understand all the juice vapes therein, when flower ones work so well and don’t involve breathing glycerin
The accusations of theft against China are exactly the same as the ones against Japan in the 60s and 70s. And another important aspect of the globalization is Pax Americana : if/when the US stops supporting world wide trade, they will stop their military role as "world police", whose goal is mainly to allow free trade.
I wouldn't say that that's their goal. Or rather, they only support it as long as they are beneficiaries. They seem to have no issue trying to comandeer Iranian ships headed for China, or block Chinese ones from heading to Iran. Basically, they are selective with their values and it betrays their true motivations: to uphold American trade dominance and political power.
@@LancesArmorStrikingMajority of Americans benefiting from international trade is an accidental by product that was temporary. The real reason for the implementation is to help the few wealthy at the cost to American masses and the rest of the world to make a few elites even more wealthy. This can bee seen repeated throughout the world with their own groups of wealthy elites.
I don't understand the concept of throwing a disposable vape on the ground instead of just holding on to it until you have access to a garbage bin for chemical waste. Unlike a cigarette butt, it doesn't smell bad, and you can literally keep it in your pocket without it getting all yucky. I'm ashamed to admit that I'm definitely guilty of occasionally throwing a cig butt on the ground, when there are no garbage bins nearby, but ... now that I've switched to disposable vapes? I literally can't conceive of any possible excuse to do something like that. Lazy, antisocial behaviour at its most extreme. The thing is tiny, it's not any sort of bother at all to just keep it in your pocket. It's barely larger than a lighter, ffs! Phones and wallets are much more bulky!
Why buy disposable vapes though when you can buy some that last for years? It's not that hard to change the coils or liquids. Disposable vapes make me think of the people who throw lighters the first time they run out of gas or the flint goes... lighters last for years but so many people just toss them within one year.
@@bondickle 1: literally don't have the money for that sort of thing 2: even if i did, ideally the end goal would be to quit the addiction entirely. this is just a temporary measure to somewhat limit the damage and render it less unpleasant. not about to make a huge investment for something that i would prefer to quit entirely as soon as possible
@@bondickle Also ... what do you mean?? none of the lighters I've ever bought ever lasted more than a couple months tops, lmao. I'm not tech-savvy enough to refill them, and it might be dangerous since it involves highly flammable substances. i can just spend 1 € for a new one, probably cheaper as well. i obviously don't throw them on the ground or in a regular garbage bin, just like the vapes
@@DaveGrean that's fair, although some were very cheap. And I guess that's part of why these terrible disposable products will always exist - because people like the convenience and how cheap they are, as many of us don't have the money to get better versions. So far I've never met someone who's given up smoking AND vaping. They normally just end at vaping, saying "it's better". Which is fair but I no longer see it as a realistic quitting method. I'm sure it's helpful for some though. Replacing the gas is super easy as the lighters have a hole in the bottom designed specifically for the bottles the gas comes in. Flints are super easy too. People don't necessarily throw dead lighters on the ground, but they're less conscious of where they end up... they'll get left behind on benches, tables etc. Just forgotten about since they're no longer useful. Drop from cars or pockets and again nobody notices since that's not the lighters they're using anymore.
Where do you even find a chemical waste bin? I've never personally encountered one as far as I remember. It's definitely not a common thing near me. Heck even regular recycling bins arent that common to run into in public. I have regular recycling in my neighborhood.
The west 1945 - 1980: Government subsidies for manufacturing? YES! (Ordinary people’s economic agency flourished…) The west 1980 - today: Government subsidies for manufacturing? NO - We’ll do QE towards banks instead! (Corporate financial agency flourished…) China 1990 - today: “Let’s just do what the west used to do 1945 - 1980, it seems to work for both people and corporations…”
@@timbehrens9678 Oh, there’s a balance between coop between industries and government (social democracy) - and outright corrupt depletion of the local currency and resources (silver). Power policies hit ordinary Argentinians hard across generations, and I guess you understand the political-economic differences here. The “west” has also had its role through time, influencing or pressuring through macroeconomic & monetary means. China was “too big”, and threw that influence overboard after their revolution. Internally as well, as a large national faction in the 1940’s wanted western alignment. Remember that socialist ideology contains a dynamic imperative, like dialectical deliberation. When it fails (humans, money, power…) socialism fails as hard as any social model. Actual adaptation would work for conservatives too, and did in Europe. Holding on to a lost reality is just stagnation - for any ideology.
for myself, i'm a firm supporter of digital piracy for similar reasons, in that i just don't cleave to the assumptions and assertions of capitalism, and this "ownership of ideas" or information (might as well throw in land, housing, medical care, etc) by gating it behind a paywall - it's simply convoluted extortion, and i delighted in the chance to subvert it harmlessly by utilizing the internet as a teenager. i never really connected the dots this explicitly because it's always just been an intuitive understanding for me, since back when i was 12 or whatever and the anarchist cookbook came into AOL and i started to participate in the information economy. but this video absolutely nailed it. and now, my aol screenname is just my junk email address, lol. my point being "intellectual piracy" is perfectly fair in this "free" market if you ask me, you gotta have scare quotes on both sides of the equation to keep it in balance, so to speak. the only reason this guy has to charge that guy is because someone else is charging him, and it's like that allll the way down till you reach the mfers that are actually just scamming you by selling you stolen land or some derivative therof and calling it profit. or just your boss, paying himself to make you do his job, taking the money off the top, as usual, so the company is making a "profit". turtles all the way down. and PS, 27:21 ???? why does this timeline look like this LMAO i feel exposed also PPS you might look at the volume changes b/t scenes LUV U
🫡 closest we can get to ethical consumption for many, many things. Now major operating systems are goin' the tablet route and important software is subscription-only... the disposable vape model is everywhere.
Idealism is great but there are natures laws... Like if I occupy a place, the place is no longer available. Then you understand land, housing, medical care, food... I think your illusion is that you lived in horrendous wealth. Go on the other side of the town and maybe you would understand the universal fight for resources that is called life...
Your videos bring a level of thought and nuance to subject that always makes for a great watch. I keep thinking "what more could possibly be said about vaping?" and then by then end of the video I'm like "Oh, THAT much more"
No, it doesn't. It is a well mixed bag of half truths with a the "capitalism bad" agenda. For example, I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
Thanks for watching!
As I mention at the end of this video, the previous entry in my Vape-o-nomics trilogy was falsely flagged by UA-cam's automated community guidelines systems and placed behind an age gate.
Such de-monetisation and age-gating has unfortunately become a regular occurance on UA-cam, particularly when talking about controversial topics as I often do in my videos.
And, it has a real impact on the work we're able to do. Whether or not they look like it, videos like these cost a lot of money to make and losing out on ad revenue can severely impact our budgets for future projects.
I'm lucky enough, however, to be a part of Nebula, a creator-owned premium streaming service on which you can watch my videos ad-free, whilst supporting my work.
Unlike UA-cam, if you sign-up to Nebula and follow my channel over there, you can also be certain you'll get notified when my videos get released!
If you'd like to check it out and get 40% off an annual plan, head to go.nebula.tv/tomnicholas
bro thank you for making this; i've been explaining this dynamic to people over the last few years and it's fantastic to finally be able to point people towards a comprehensive breakdown of this terribly sketchy market that's been propelled by the FDA's shortsighted attempts to regulate and industry that they've clearly got no proper understanding of. Im clearly not an economist, but i am an industry expert who makes a ton of content on this. Also it's funny how a company that started out by making dry herb weed vaporizers became synonymous with the beast of big tobacco in the united states's collective conscious
Vape is like inspiring the smoke of the theaters/shows. It's bad. At least if it gave you a genuine buzz
@@TheAdequateMedia I've found it so hard to bring my opinion on china into words to friends. Realizing that i would sound like a lunatic with half jointed ideas barely strung together. I simply avoided the topic. Now i can just direct them to this video. Because, it aligns perfectly with my viewpoint and has had the added benefit of deepening my insight on a subject it's hard not to get a skewed view on when trying to get informed. greetings from Belgium. (i know my punctuation is horrible. you'll have to forgive me..)
Just watched this on Nebula. Came back here to click Like
Love this work of yours. I do not agree with the statement Chinese supremacy in an economic sense... I see many resembles to Japan from a few decades ago, it is crazy that Germany with its significantly smaller workforce is outpacing Japan. The current exchange rate is also unreal...
As a responsible consumer, I only smoke crack
As long as it's domestically produced, organic, free range crack
Organic and ethical, from leaf to pipe!
A Gwar fan I see
@@teslawizardvvv3 what’s gwar
Support your local, patriotic AMERICAN crack sellers!
Wait wait wait... we're struggling to keep up with demand for lithium for rechargeable batteries for things that actually matter, and we're wasting it not only on vapes, but on *disposable* vapes?
capitalism can't avoid something if it has money in it
I mean, I wouldn't call it waste when a person buys a lithium cell or two that lasts them years, and uses them to switch from smoking. I'm sure it takes much more resources (and deaths) to harvest a shitton of tobacco for years on end than to produce a single battery.
But yeah, the disposable ones are shockingly terrible.
@@adampliszka4855the disposables make it even harder to quit. They're all the same strength here, no 0% in local stores. Can't buy replacement parts for my old modular, and I think there's either a state or local policy making it really, really hard to get liquid shipped.
I just want to be off nicotine. Capitalism 🥳
@@adampliszka4855 if the people vaping were 100% former smokers I'd absolutely agree with you. However my understanding is the vast majority are people who *started* vaping. Thus I stand by my original statement. That and I have very little regard for the decision making skills of anyone who started smoking after "SMOKING KILLS!!!" was plastered on every side of packets...
@@adampliszka4855vapes still have tobacco in them
It blows my mind that something as clearly wasteful as disposable vapes ever took off holy shit
Capitalism doesn't care about waste it can push onto you to deal with.
We had vapes that you could reuse but they got cracked down on.
@@Praisethesunson Yes it's capitalism and the housing crisis that forced the proletariat to not buy reusable vapes with reusable cartridges that are even cheaper in the long term.
You can't be serious. Surely you've seen individual packaging on candy, straws, individual utensils. Walk down a cleaning aisle at the grocery store and look at all the disposable products. Over packaging is the norm, it does not stand out in any way.
Everything bad is because of profit, just like how no one cares about biodegradable stuff and how its worse for the environment, they just care because it makes sales, share holders don't want us to enjoy nicotine and substances at a fair price, home grown, self sourced product, they want us addicted and paying against our will, at our knees begging for more
i dont think there's been anything as insultingly wasteful as disposable vapes before. it's disgusting
I think disposable vapes might be the worst, with printers coming in 2nd place
@@oleelo1999 true! the printer cartdridge bussiness model is absoluetely disgusting as well. but hey, at least they aren't fucking up people's lungs. lol
@@enzito_sdf6978 Yh thats true, and its absolutely mind boggling how we dont have regulation in place for it. Like how the fuck can they charge more for ink cartridges then a new printer? Fckn criminal
Warfare is more disgusting
fossil fuel and the industries that were grown around it. The "global economy" exists only because of massive subsidies for over a century.
Really appreciating the throwback to the anti-globalisation movement of the 90s. Kinda miss the days where anti-globalism was rooted in an international concern for the rights and welfare of all workers across the world and not the unhinged xenophobic fever dream that reactionaries have turned it into.
i think that’s just called going mask off
What if I told you they were the same thing, and one can't exist without the other
@@Patrick.Weightman
Caring about the rights of workers around the world is inherently related to fear of foreigners?
I think both sentiments can exist at the same time, but I don’t think one is inherently related to the other.
you'd be wrong?@@Patrick.Weightman
@@Patrick.Weightman *Meme of chimpanzee at a typewriter*
"youth vaping market" is something that should not exist. I cannot believe we completely missed the boat on this with all the hindsight of tabacco. Terrible
All it took to get a new generation addicted was to make the cigarettes digital.
i mean no matter what teenagers are never gonna stop doing drugs, in general. the issue with vapes isnt just that theyre drugs its that theyre addictive, new and unregulated, and teenagers tend to go for the new and "edgy" to assert an identity aside from previous generations. a choice which may feel akin to getting a tattoo or risky piercing to a teen ends up being potentially life ruining
@@tayzers69A nicotine addiction is hardly life ruining, more so a pain in the ass if you’re broke
@@Praisethesunsonthe addition and waste of money sucks, but at least vapes are much less harmful to your health than cigarettes. And before the incoming firestorm, I said less harmful to your health than cigarettes, not "not" harmful to your health.
@@RemixedVoice Saying something is better than cigarettes is setting the bar so low you'd need a shovel to find it.
China:" yo, remember that opium stuff ? Yea, us neither.. have you tried elfbars?"
the us government can just ban vapes and tobacco and cigarettes and weed all together. but they won't. because of the profits it brings. capitalism is the name of the game. china is just playing the game. its not comparable at all to the opium war.
This is just revenge then? Lmao.
Nah I think them supplying Mexican cartels with the precursors to fuel the opioid epidemic would be a better comparison.
And also doing the vast majority of the money laundering for them as well
More like karma.
"You've heard of the Opium Wars, now get ready for the Copium Wars lmao" - President Xi
They really don't seem to like when the systems they set up to exclusively benefit themselves are used to benefit anyone else.
So true
Global trade is only "fair" when it disproportionately benefits western capitalists.
Yea a lot of the arguments against chinese companies can be applied to american companies, but we arent suppose to pay attention to the actual issues around compnaies all over the world being unethical only chinese companies just because we hate china? like the plot is soo lost at this point
@@al3x622 Its because its a devil saying we need to worry about the superdevil.
Like, we DO have to worry about the superdevil. But the devil doesnt want to ban the stuff the superdevil is taking advantage off, because they are also doing that thing. So theyre having a hard time steering the narrative because they want to be devilish too, and if they ban the devilish behaviour to stop the superdevil, they ban themselves as well.
If you dont know who the superdevil is read 1984 and understand that exists in reality right now. There is a such a thing as one thing being worse than another.
A US classic
It's been about a month since I learned that disposable vapes existed and I'm still mad about it. IT'S A LITHIUM BATTERY THROWN INTO THE TRASH AFTER A SINGLE USE!
I have like 40 lithium batts that i got by scraping those. They're mostly 400-800 mah
Every time I'm caught for a crime, I just change my name. Has worked so far.
Rusty Shackleford is that you?
@@Praisethesunsonthey're onto me
Hello, Michael. I believe that is one of your aliases, though you no longer use it. I remember you. Do you remember me? Have you forgotten, back in 1999, the massacre you committed? You thought you got all of us, didn't you? Well, I'm afraid I survived. I haven't forgotten what you did to the others, Michael. I remember it clear as a summer sky. It replays in my mind every day like a cassette tape. I've been searching for you for a while now, and now that I've found you I suggest you start running. I will have my revenge for what you did to those men. It is futile to deny it. I have no doubt I shall see you soon.
@@SomaNova Wrong murderer.
@@Paint_The_Future Your attempts at diversion will not work on me you sneaky devil.
The issue with moving manufacturing to 'poorer' cheaper countries, and keeping design, R&D, and marketing in 'wealthier' countries, is it relies on viewing all foreigners as stupid and below you, much like Colonialism. The Chinese and Indians aren't stupid and certainly aren't a step below us, and companies are now paying the price for offshoring everything. They basically taught them all the hard earnt lessons of 300 years of the Industrial Revolution in 15 years, and they've taken those lessons and run with them.
Also it creates incentives to keep the workers in those countries from not improving their working conditions through higher pay etc.
@@mattias2576 Which leads to people from those countries who do want to move up in life go abroad in to richer countries, which doubles down on the "immigrant problem" that some people have
I'm not sure what that means or why you're describing that as an "issue" tbh? The fact that developing countries can engage in trade with more developed ones and use their resources to learn "all the hard earnt lessons of 300 years of the Industrial Revolution in 15 years" is good. It's why free trade is beneficial for everyone and it kinda turns the whole "economic imperialism/neocolonialism" narrative on its head. If some company has to "pay the price", then, oh well? Inefficient firms being destroyed is supposed to be one of the benefits of markets anyway.
@@TessHKM because the idea, as explained by the video, is that these people will be kept under the thumb to keep costs down. And that they're too stupid to do anything with the 300 years of industrial development they're spoon fed, when the opposite is true.
Companies in the West weren't wiped out because they were inefficient. They were wiped out on cost, because people were buying cheap rubbish and were unconcerned with the quality because it is so cheap. The opinion in manufacturing is that the Chinese only wiped out the middle of the market in the West because cheap became cheap enough to be disposable. Globalism helps no one except the 1% to get richer
@@TessHKM because the idea, as explained by the video, is that these people will be kept under the thumb to keep costs down. And that they're too stupid to do anything with the 300 years of industrial development they're spoon fed, when the opposite is true.
Companies in the West weren't wiped out because they were inefficient. They were wiped out on cost, because people were buying cheap rubbish and were unconcerned with the quality. The opinion in manufacturing is that the Chinese only wiped out the middle of the market in the West because cheap became cheap enough to be disposable. Globalism helps no one except the 1% to get richer
I knew "disposable" vapes existed, but until now I really thought it's just some strange marketing, because it's 2024 and nobody is stupid enough to create so much unnecessary e-waste, right? Right?!
Theyre everywhere
Honestly seems like most vapes are disposable these days
New phones, laptops & flat screen TVs that we've known involve harsh child labor on 2 different continents for 14 years in mainstream culture hasn't bothered anyone. Individuals are not as progressive as mainstream culture believes they are.
Enter: teenagers who are stupid enough to vape
I'm stupid enough to vape, but I'm like 39 and don't use disposables. It definitely sucks seeing people latch onto the things. I've used them to stop smoking cigarettes, which was a success, and have been steadily decreasing the nicotine dose of my liquid with the intent of stopping all together, which has been going alright so far.
Low cost of labor is no longer why companies invest in china, they turn to other south asian countries for that, but rather the supply chains and manufacturing experience of the population, especially for electronics.
Yep. Labor in china is about $3USD/hour - but Korea, Vietnam, etc are still a fraction of it with *MUCH* better US relations.
This used to be true just a few years ago, but with Xi going batshit crazy, seizing western companies, investments, arresting foreign workers etc, more and more people pull out of China and are not actively investing in new ventures. China has become incredibly unreliable and risky. Not many want to invest with that risk.
It’s not about price- it’s about the huge size of the population. The only other place with that much labor is India, but when you try to manufacture in India you quickly learn that they just don’t have the infrastructure- yet. Microsoft & many other US companies have spent billions in modernizing India. We’d rather literally build facilities & train our eastern colonial brothers in India because they share western values at least insofar as they honor contract terms
The other big problem in India is corruption, and not just at the high levels of power, but it's endemic in lower echelons of society as well. In one study over 60% of people were recorded to have paid a bride to an official to get something done. @@scarletsletter4466
Yeah the whole "companies invest in China for cheap labor" is outdated nowadays - if China has a comparative advantage in labor, today it's in comparatively cheap *college-educated* labor, which is not the kind of labor people picture when they think about Chinese sweatshops
Gotta love the "It's bad when they do it" foreign policy outlook
gotta love your similar take but its bad when west and when china its "well its comlicated cause west still bad, yes uighurs are in camps but consider wto!!!"
@@lenas6246 so you see how they didnt say that at all...
Not sure what y'all are talking about. The US is responsible for mass genocide, as are most imperial powers. China, USSR, all the major states have killed millions, because the people in power care about power at any cost, that's why they're in power, and the people aren't
A US classic. 😊
@@jolp9799 how about Juul and Elfbar are equally bad? Because it's possible for two things to be bad at once, just like Israeli and Russian settler colonialism.
Disposable vapes should be outlawed imo, you don't just make 'disposable' things that are also e-waste.
Then afterwards ban phones and laptops without replacable batteries.
We also need to make them stop manufacturing faulty phone charger cords. Why is it that I was at the office the other day in a meeting & 2/3 of the people were saying their phone cords weren’t charging right & they have to replace them every few months. That’s unacceptable
@@scarletsletter4466planned obsolescence really should be illegal, it’s completely anti-consumer
A similar product could exist without the waste, but it wouldnt generate the money so it wont happen
@@scarletsletter4466 Well. You can buy a 100$ cord... It will last almost a year...
China having a comparative advantage in labour meant that money and expertise could accumulate and circulate in the Chinese economy over the long term. As more Chinese workers were lifted out of poverty and China as a whole becomes wealthier, more of its citizens can afford the products they would normally sell to foreign markets and Chinese companies can accumulate the capitol required to build their own entrepreneurial and investor class.
The idea almost nobody in the english-speaking world seems to want to consider is the idea that the Chinese government is simply getting exactly what it was promised when it joined the WTO.
Did they agree to all the IP theft?
@@CentristDad155 IP theft is good
@@Bpinator How about the CCP being a fascist regime? Is that good?
@@CentristDad155 Did we agree to all the US lobbying and involvement in regime change like when they didn't like a certain Australian PM and got rid of him? Or when they helped Bolsonaro stay in power? China doing IP "theft" should be the least of our concerns.
@@weirdblackcat What about ism? What are we talking about now? Why don't we bring up covid and seizing of the South China Sea and anything else: everything's up for grabs in this conversation huh?
I love how you discuss comparative advantage, and in your example it is actual goods, such as wine and cloth. However, when you get to the comparative advantages with juul pods, you then get into advantages such as "lax worker safety" and "advanced financial sector." Such a sharp change, and really opened my eyes as to why so much of United States manufacturing is overseas.
disposable vapes represented the majority amount of small electronics waste according to a BBC article from last october. Absolutely nuts that we're so concerned about e-waste, yet something designed to be used a few days and discarded can be imported and sold en masse like that.
Not even a few days. I tried using them to quit smoking, each one lasted less than 2 days. The amount of waste was scary. Switched to a refillable/rechargeable after a week
@@juicedgoosefor me they lasted about a day >_> luckily i lived near a store that sells normal vapes too so now i just refill mine with refill bottles
Well, they practically banned Juul which were reusable. The whole thing about the regulation of vapes is that every law that has been passed has had other negative side effects.
I wouldn't reference the media... They've never had an agenda.
combine that with the fact that most disposable vapes (and refillible bapes) are designed to be tricky to repair and reuse - its intentional planned obsolescence, its systemic land fill junk thats causing so much environmental damage jsnsnsndbsnds
I've used a rebuildable vape for years so I don't even have to buy replacement coils that will go bad, I just replace the cotton when it goes bad. The cost savings is ridiculous, I only pay for juice essentially. The coils are reusable, you just have to burn them off and replace your cotton. It's the cheapest and most eco friendly way to vape.
And Germany probably thought that this might stop people from smoking cigarettes, which are highly taxed. So 3,20€ per ml tax it is. Even for the base. That's just ridiculous. It added 32€ to a 100ml bottle of base, which previously cost about 3€ I think.
On the very rare occasion that I've bought one of these throwaway vapes, I always take them apart and keep the parts. The lithium cells are super handy if you're a tinkerer.
I hate the existence of disposable vapes with a passion, tho.
I prefer to find mine, a free supply of 1500mAh batteries is quite nice. I repaired or upgraded quite a few things with those batteries, I amuse myself by fitting 2 cells into the vape body and making power banks with them that I give to people. The electronic module I use costs well under $1. (Unfortunately for me, my local government has banned disposables, so that ends that.)
Well they deserves to be banned so that's good
@@j.f.christ8421You're potentially tapping onto creating a massive "green" electronics empire here.
If you find a way to get a constant supply of these used vapes and mass produce the electronics you make with it, you're off.
I wish you'd follow it up and see success with it.
@@wile123456 Well yeah, but won't someone think of the poor people like me who'll be deprived of our free batteries?
Same. Me and wife keep every single one of them. Sadly the number has grown faster then I could design a way to reuse the parts lol
Anyway, we mostly use reusable ones.
I've been seeing disposables show up in weed dispensaries around here lately. It is my mission to figure out how to refill every single one.
That's a good idea. When I lost my main vape on vacation, I started refilling a Mari-something, don't remember the name, with my salt juice. It worked well for a six-week period.
Doing the lord’s work. Good on ya
If the coils aren't replaceable it's just a longer lasting disposable at that point.
The casing is the hard part if you can buy liquid and make replacement wick.
We can't buy liquid anymore where I live. Wick is easy at least.
The mouthpiece on elf bars is allegedly snap-in, not glued, but it's REALLY hard to remove. You'll want to have something grippy between your pliers and the plastic to avoid cracking it. If the mouthpiece starts pulling away from the body, switch to prying it apart there with plastic tools or your fingernails.
If you manage to get the top off, it's just a battery taped to the "tank" with wires running to the charging circuit at the bottom. Be gentle here.
Should press back together when you're done.
Look up "transparent disposable vape" to get an idea of the layout. Ironically those transparent ones are even harder to disassemble.
DO NOT DRILL REFILL HOLES. Yes, I have really seen this on forums. Best case, plastic shavings in the tank. Worst case, exploding battery. It's not worth it. The wick will need to be replaced eventually anyways. Just disassemble.
Lmk if you have any luck, the tops are stubborn.
Through my testing (and I'm encouraging a local shop to offer refills,) one of the most popular models around here (it's orange with a little plastic cap and is USB-C rechargable) is SUPER easy to refill. Pop off the cap and there's a decent rubber gasket sealing the literal actual slightly larger than 1g tank. I refilled with resin (and these things are meant for distillate) 3 full times before the the cheap USB connector started getting finnicky while charging (though I was NOT gentle with this thing,) and it takes a couple puffs to warm up so I think the wick is a bit tired. Still, that's more than some of the bad vape batteries i've owned.
Blows my mind that these things are allowed to exist. I see them everywhere, and they are the same price as a disposable cartridge. It's insane!
These things have saved many lifes. They should only be allowed to be sold by doctor prescription, tho.
@@jal051 Yeah true but how will restricting access help? The topic at hand is e-waste from the disposable batteries, not the health impact the invention of vaping has had, which i don't deny and have personally experienced. My mother's chronic cough was cured instantly 8 years ago when she stopped smoking and switched to vaping. But don't pretend restricting access to them would be good for anybody but whoever profits financially. I was working a manual labour job and having to cycle there when i caught a terrible chest infection, i now have asthma and lost my job because my very incompetent doctors office couldn't even speak to me for 28 days never mind get me a simple strip of antibiotics. Due this and their subsequent failings to serve the community at large this has made them less than worthless to me, they are now gatekeepers of simple, cheap devices and medicines i would rather just be able to buy. Oh and recently they've been trying to take away people's inhalers, mine too, thankfully there was a social media campaign that went viral and they've eased off since. I will take what i'm owed from them until i die however i have to, if they controlled my vaping as a prescription i'd be screwed.
@@jal051 They don't work any differently to rechargable e cigarettes though. There is essentially no advantage to disposable ones beyond arguably a slightly lower initial cost.
@@max3446 I don't remember what I said in the message you're replying to, but I'm in favor of banning the disposable ones. Most of my comments in this topic were directed to making clear ecigs are a good thing for adults who are quitting smoking, which, for some reason is the demographic everyone keep ignoring when discussing this topic.
The disposable ones are probably even more expensive since you have to keep bying them all the time. I don't know about that, tbh, never had one in my hands.
the main comments focussing on the disposable vapes part while thats basically only mentioned in the first few minutes and just used as a case study in a larger phenomenon is quite something.
2:42 can't lie, juul does look like an american kickstarter guy. skinny and grey suit, asking a fortune while offering little but all alike, save for their interchangeable heads.
I never would have thought that a documentary of vaping would lead be down a geopolitical rabbit hole.
With regard to the US ignoring WTO rulings; they do it for every country, not just developing countries. An example of this is the softwood lumber dispute between Canada and the US. Every single time the US loses a dispute, whether it's NAFTA, WTO, etc. they state they disagree and refuse to abide, but then expect other countries to still follow the letter of the law.
Yes, as a Canadian I shake my head every time I hear some group seeking a free trade agreement with the US. For example, Brexiteers arguing that being free of the EU would allow the UK to quickly negotiate a deal with the US. Setting aside the "quickly" part, the idea that they will ever have truly open access to the US market is laughably naïve. The US will allow access to their market right up until some sufficiently influential entity feels threatened by imports, then the House, Senate, or President will shut that down. Canadian lumber is of better quality and cheaper? Boom, restrictions. An American airline decides to buy a Canadian passenger jet instead of a Boeing? Boom, a gajillion dollars in tariffs. Canadian aluminum and steel are competitive (largely due to abundant hydro power)? Boom, tariffs because Canada is now a "national security threat". (What?) Canadian wheat producers are selling wheat to Mexico for less than American wheat producers? Impossible! Boom, retaliatory tariffs!
As ordinary Chinese, we take it as we were making socks, shirts, toys for you Americans, you were quite happy; however when we tried to move up the chain, building cars, airplanes, Americans accused us of over capacity. The double standard is jarring, we did’t complain when the VW Toyota cars packed our street, just as when knew, they indeed build better cars than us. I understand, trade problems are much complicated than what I described above, However, the gist of it is widely believed among us Chinese which fueled nationalism against USA, it is believed that USA is trying to blocking us from a better future (higher gdp per capita, high paying jobs for locals, better goods and services.) American officials always say they hold no ill wills against Chinese people, however what they are doing to maintaining their primacy is already hurting ordinary Chinese.
You know, I've been a nicotine user for most of my adult life until about 3 to 4 years ago when I quit the cigarette habit. I vaped for a bit and had to make an effort to quit that once it got a bit too cigarette like for me. I had a period last year where I did use disposable puff bars and elfbars and while those were very easy to quit for me, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was creating a lot more waste than if I was using the disposable pods I used for the first time. Vaping started from this cigarette alternative that would free smokers from tobacco to this new ever present clutch for folks as traditional tobacco use becomes old fashioned and disdained, even by nicotine users. It's wild to see. I'm just happy I'm not participating at all in its use anymore.
Congrats. I gave it up about 6 years ago, & at times I still miss it. But we’re doing our part to be good global citizens ❤
This video came at a very convenient time for me.
I'm reading Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul by Jamie Ducharme right now, and working on a research project at my local college around the topic.
Modern electronic cigarette: 2000s
Despite these earlier efforts, Hon Lik, a Chinese pharmacist and inventor, who worked as a research pharmacist for a company producing ginseng products,[246] is frequently credited with the invention of the modern e-cigarette
Not Juul, its the other way around. Saw cheap Chinese e cigs and thought they could just change it a little bit to sell to the west as a mark up.
You got me going on a wild search for that fake Hamilton album!!! Wanted to listen to it so much. “Ops cheated again” must be a banger!!!
Good video man! And good job with the marathon!!!
I thought it was a reference to those "Historical Rap battles" videos...
It might not be the most crucial mistake, but it's quite a grating one considering you repeat it about 20 times:
Chinese salaries in the manufacturing sector especially in the Shenzhen region now exceed those of most of Eastern Europe. And there are much MUCH lower cost countries around as far as personnel expenses, think Philippines.
What's special about Shenzhen is that it has been able to convert decades of low costs and infrastructure investments into a key structural advantage is that everything is THERE. Every supplier has a subsidiary there, safety testing organisations as well, and if you need a toolmaker to make custom parts with your manufacturing technology of choice, the only place in the world where you'll find one quickly and who can make the tool at a high quality is there, nowhere else. So the crucial advantage of Shenzhen is iteration speed, you get your product out quicker. Still worthwhile in spite of rising tensions and skyrocketing costs.
And to think that you keep talking about low wages and never bothered to look them up?
He is pushing a well mixed bags of half truths with the "capitalism bad" agenda. Your observation about the salaries level is spot on. Another example - I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
@@timbehrens9678 Yep. Notice how he didn't mention Taiwan when mentioning the CHIPS & Science Act. It's the US hedging against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, not just beating down on poor ol' China because racism.
Shenzhen is unique, is it not?
It is one city/zone
The majority of China does not operate like it does there.
The specialization of Shenzhen lends itself more to electronics, right?
Its not like all the manufacturing in the country takes place there.
@@PraxisAbraxis Shenzhen is specialised in fast-turnaround electronics manufacturing, but all the megacities have something going on driving the rising salaries to vaguely similar levels. So there's 13 urban agglomerations with populations between 10 and 240 million residents each, comprising more than 800 million residents total. Vaguely half of the Chinese population. Shenzhen area is 70 million. Electronics manufacturers rely on supply chain largely in other megacities, boosted by deeply subsidised mail and rail infrastructure.
Some economists suggest that the rapid rise of urbanisation and urban standard of living is to a large extent a result of bubble economy and may not be sustainable. But for now they are doing rather well.
As a Chinese person and long time fan, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS VIDEO. I don't like some of the stuff our government do either, and I take a lot of problems with how it seems to embrace capitalism without reservation, but it's so tiring to hear people talk about my country as if it's some evil supervillian bogeyman that's one day going to dominate us all when it's the Western capitalist that's been rigging the rules for decades if not centuries. It's sad that people buy into this "China VS US" rhetoric created to divide us and justify xenophobia and racism when it really should've been us vs global capitalism all along.
I was kinda worried when you said you were gonna make this video, but it turned out to be really nuanced and said what I've felt for a long time, but much better than what I could've said myself. Please keep up the good work!
Love from Ireland
This is a nice comment, but as an anti-american, i must object, China is country number 1, Xi please liberate me.
Every country that opposes the yanks, i support, no questions asked. That and there isnt enough anti-american propaganda to balance out the anti-chinese propaganda, i.e. im gonna over-compensate. Its not going to change the minds of the liberals but ive no political power anyway so who cares...
LOL, try to tell that story about "dividing" to Xi. Maybe he will allow the rest of Chinese to watch UA-cam.
Was always baffled by people's willingness to get a nicotine addiction in high school.
I think they want to be cool they see cowboy bebop or some guy in an action movie look cool and back then the tobacco company did play on that too with the baby boomers and I think because of it people link smoking with coolness when you actually look at it what to cool about smoking your taking poison and slowing killing yourself and nerfing yourself physically also people don’t view as some guy who drink as cooler than some guy who don’t drink or drive a truck
@@USSAnimeNCC-your name/ profile picture makes everything u say automatically invalid
Nah its not to be cool, it's a social thing where you get roped in by your friend group
It’s always been a problem with smoking and vaping is just the replacement still 100% a problem but it’s honestly better and is allowing governments to crack down more on smoking which 95% worse for you
I remember feeling my heart sink when my high school best friend told me he'd been sneaking parent's smokes since he was 8.
I definitely wasn't expecting to hear about the Anglo-Portuguese wine and cloth trade today. The point left out is that today the treaty behind that trade is seen as a symbol of Portugal's non modernization.
Hey, I am watching “Thank You for Smoking” right as this released. Damn, the world works out sometimes.
As pointed out in the video, the problem with the "theory" of comparative advantage is that it has a completely ahistorical view of the world, assuming that the current global north and south divide has always existed and ignoring the effects of colonialism.
Karl Marx put it best: "We are told that free trade would create an international division of labour, and thereby give to each country the production which is in most harmony with its natural advantage. You believe, perhaps, gentlemen, that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about commerce, had planted neither sugar-cane nor coffee trees there."
And IP laws also serve to essentially uphold western hegemony by blocking impoverished countries from being able to produce generic medicines to protect corporate profits at the expense of making these countries suffer deaths from preventable diseases.
An excellent book that delves into these themes and more that I would highly recommend is "The Divide: A Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions" by Jason Hickel - it was actually personally approved by the mentioned figure Ha-Joon Chang.
EE already explained that the effects of Colonialism are highly over exaggerated by Leftists
Well, Argentina has tried to disprove that theory. Should I tell you how successful it was?
IP laws are fine if the licensing regimes are reasonable and don't negate the labor advantage of developing countries. The problem as always is who determines what's "fair"
If Karl Marx really said that then he was an idiot.
I have a non-disposable vape but I'm still upset about the fact that the coils have plastic with the housing... Looking for better options for sure. Obviously the goal at some point will be to quit, nicotine does nothing good for anyone.
U could use nicotine gum and give your lungs a break
“At some point”
Spoken like a true addict
Do it. After three hard weeks, you should be fine.
As a productive citizen I stick to eating paste.
5 social credits have been deposited in your account.
@@CarrotConsumerWhat’s your FICO bud?
Fucking with judicial appointments in a way that cannot possibly have serious long term impacts has been a real theme in the last decade or so of american political shenanigans.
I enjoy the refillable pods - a bit better than single-use pods like Juul, and much better than 'disposable' ones.
Do you have a brand preference? Or is it anyone that can get you that nicotine fix?
I vaped but damn the disposable market vapes just kinda scares me, especially the waste coming from it.
29:00 the person walking into this shot wearing a t-shirt featuring elmo dressed as uncle sam is a great touch
18:33 I just want to give a shoutout to the "Hamilton Act 3" song titles, it's such a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment but pausing to read them all made me laugh so I appreciate the effort put into this quick frame
Excellent video! One observation about something few people know: standardization! My parents are in their 80s and both are engineers. When they started working, a machine used in some part of an industry was produced entirely by one company - therefore the industry was a hostage of the that company whenever they needed spare parts. Nowadays we have a detailed international set of standards that make it cheaper to use parts produced by someone else then to produce the whole machine in-house. It's not only the standardization but the fact that the standards became more complex and detailed so now a set of specifications defines a part almost perfeclty. Example: pin and hole -> it's impossible to make a 10mm hole on a piece of metal because ... well ... life is imprecise; the same applies for a pin. When my parents graduated there were three specifications for a hole and pin: loose, snug, fixed. That means the pin can go through the hole and move around loosely; the pin can spin snugly inside the hole or the pin wont move once it's put inside the hole. Nowadays there are around 14 types of specifications for a pin and a hole! But why the hell should I care? Well ... trucks, cars, oil refineries, ships, airplanes ... all of them have holes and pins going into holes!
Globalization has no way back ... perhaps for some consumer products but for industry and similar areas there's no going back. Oh ... and that's why I can now build a CNC router at my home using open source designs!
I love how this video is about how US and global North shape all of their “foreign affairs” and “world (insert name) organizations” to continue their world domination and when someone outflanks them from within they just change the rules like nothing happened.
And the entire comment section is about vapes, lmao
As Beau says, it is a poker game where everyone is cheating.
Most people will never step foot in any place that has anything to do with world politics.
that's kinda sad ngl, when you use a relatable exemple to present a much more complex topic. people just pay attention to the relatable example and forget all else.
It seems like people just watched the first 5 minutes of the video
Well. Most people have knowledge of some sort or too big too fail orange crook that plague the world media since 2016... Cool that you learned life today. I learned it in the 90 with OJ Simpson...
Hi! I'm a nobody commenting to show engagement because I like your work.
Your videos are a gem in this messed up website.
No, they aren't. They are well mixed bags of half truths with the "capitalism bad" agenda. For example, I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
You didn't mention a huge factor in the Chinese rise prominently enough: the heavy international subsidies that enable cheap or free shipping which are paid for through expensive local shipping and mail.
@@foolishlyfoolhardy6004 when you're paying a lot to ship locally a significant portion is to pay for free shipping as a part of foreign aid to China through UPU/ The UN.
For a country that has it's own space station and ICBMs and which gives out predatory loans to countries that actually should qualify for that subsidy.
@@magfal True! It's so expensive even shipping locally, but US hands out free shipping to China?! WTF! Also, I doubt China will take a big hit if that changes. I only see a possibility of improvement in the US small scale economics, and that's probably not worth the goodwill that US would lose. This explains why US still continues to subsidize the shipping ig
@@THarshavardhanReddy It's all member of the UPU which are financing China's export industry. The natural price would be in the 50USD for a tiny package range. Check the price of shipping an item from one of their neighbouring countries.
There are several cornerstone companies in China that would die in a week if this goes away. Could topple the dictatorship.
I’m happy more people are starting to “dispose” of their left/right division lines, and recognize that the issue is obviously so much deeper than which team one picks.
At this point it’s completely arbitrary due to how much corporate corruption has seeped into the political sphere.
As someone who's straight edge, it's both sad and isolating to see how many people give in to peer pressure and never even realise it
yeah, same here. it sucks, a lot of people end up accidentally propagating the peer pressure as well
Nicotine being the exception to the rule, I have had far more good experiences with drugs and alcohol than I have had bad ones.
Peer pressure had very little to do with my decisions to try most drugs outside of maybe cannabis in my early teens.
It’s not all bad if you are responsible and safe- I would strongly advise anyone curious to wait until adulthood before considering experimenting though. I didn’t and paid for it on more than one occasion lol
@@AgxntAqua I don't disagree with you in principle, as my choice is more personal than anything. My gripe is with normalisation and the massive peer pressure that comes with it
@@camillaquelladegliaggettiv4303Fair enough, but I think normalization may be the messy first step into rethinking how we handle drug addiction. A transitional period from focus on it as a criminal issue into a medical one. I think it’s pretty well evidenced by the needle exchanges and free-use decriminalization experiments we are seeing across the developed world- to varying levels of success ( and failure )
Yes, addiction is purely due to peer pressure. That’s all it is. You nailed it. This is what all the literature says.
I didn't expect how informative and interesting this would be. Amazing, subbed.
China has other comparative advantages outside of wages, like public infrastructure that isnt one century old and the fact that so many factories are in asia means that the company producing stuff you need can deliver the necessary parts faster, they basically built more comparative advantages overtime
Thank you, you have eased the beginning of my week
Following Trump's China country of origin tariffs there has been an unexpected move of Chinese owned manufacturing into third party countries, especially Southeast Asia to avoid the tariff. His plan has promoted the increase in globalisation of Chinese owned businesses.
the depth and quality of these videos is incredible. Thank you for your work!
No, it isn't. They are well mixed bags of half truths with the "capitalism bad" agenda. For example, I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
America when capitalism capitalisms: 😯
Not really, China ban all they want from the west then complains when they get the same treatment
US capitalists sowing: woohoo yeah, this kicks ass. US capitalists reaping: wtf, this sucks.
Ive seen a few of my more "cash strapped" friends break open an elf bar and refill the fluids and even solder in a rechargable battery.
This was after the found out they can't recharge the batter that comes in the elf bar... It melts quite quickly! And it surely loves up to the saying "the brightest candle burns the hottest/fastest."
they're going backwards. refillable vapes were the first ones on the market lol
Afaik, even the cylinder ones have rechargeable batteries so it's even worse :)
It's cheaper to buy rechargeable batteries in bulk and leave out the charging circuit than buy a separate, much smaller order of non-rechargeables.
The battery model isn't always printed on the outside, but they are standardized. Some batteries are duds.
Big Clive has a video about extracting and identifying them. If he doesn't say how to charge em, I know your friends can figure that part out. It's much easier than getting the cases open, lol.
Super glad they're reusing these things, I like your friends.
Oh yeah, if you ever work with lithiun batteries have a sand bucket nearby and do it in a fire resistent envirinment
Seemed to even having skipped the US completely disregarding all European copyright and patents all the way up to WW2. Not just in practis like China, but in law. The Lord of the Rings, when released in US, wasn't covered by copyright because the author was British...
It wasn't copyrighted in the US because the original publisher neglected to do so, not because it was British.
Very informative. Thank you.
Disposable electronics should be illegal across the board. Solder in your battery or data storage device and your device should be considered disposable and thus illegal.
The capacity of the batteries in disposable vapes is nothing to sniff at. I found one and pulled it apart, and the lithium-ion battery in it was 5.18 Wh. That's over half the capacity of the one in my phone!
There’s a book by Korean philosopher Byung Chul Han called Shanzai, it investigates the tradition of copying things in Chinese society. Their approach to ideas and ip historically has been very different to modern western notions. I’m not giving an excuse for what they do, but knowing this certainly changed my understanding of it.
Interesting. They're even copying Western Imperialism 😂
@LaurelinTheOther I don't think they have 100 plus military bases spread across many countries around the world
The fun part is that properties of ideas started in 1800 during industrialization. Before that scholar stole each other as they liked.
It's hilarious to watch governments struggle with trying to ban something when consumers don't care about the law anymore. Government overreached with the war on drugs, and now everyone is completely comfortable getting stuff from black markets. Laws nowadays are primarily about protecting someone's profits, not a sincere concern over the welfare of citizens.
If you care so much about me vaping, why aren't you also helping me pay for college? Why are we still using this antiquated healthcare system? Where are the labor regulations to keep wages up? Why is government so obsessed with this one thing? It has nothing to do with your health or the environment.
So glad I found your channel!! Ive been needing someone to fill the Tom Scott void. Your content is really great!!
I'm fully committed to lowering the blood content of my nicotine system via vaping, but gosh I stay away from disposables! I've been using the same device for almost 2 years now, and the batteries still charge fine
I'm a big fan of the systems that use 18650 batteries, but at this point, i've gone tabletop to electrical outlet. (Since my vape system is not for nicotine... And not used outside my house)
*I built my own tabletop flower vape system.
I do think that systems that are refillable are infinitely better, as they last a really long time. And with battery standards there is no reason to make anything else. Unless you're a ruthless uncaring profiteer that is.
A Tom Nicolas video less that 90 mins? Is he even trying anymore?
Jk love your stuff ❤
The audiophile market has been dominated by the value of the booming Shenzhen audio scene for the last decade. Small companies providing innovation and workmanship often above western companies, at a fraction of the price. I order all of my audio cables from small stores, they’re handmade and fairly priced, because the guys making them are located at the source of parts. One of the few examples of a positive industry change to come out of Shenzhen.
I think we can both be appreciative of the ingenuity and innovation of engineers in China and skeptical of a global economic model that traps all of us in an unsustainable death spiral of impoverishment and climate collapse.
Any examples? I've been looking at Chifi but the prices (DUNU) have scared me away.
Chi-Fi is a revolution for sure
@@Bpinatorwhat is chi-fi?
@@tommydaniels1805Cheap audio gear from China. You can get reasonably good stuff for a lot cheaper than western companies
Honestly amazing video. I'm so excited for the others to come in this series! They're So well researched and executed!!!!
I love how many people here are commenting on how the individual is the problem for the flood of disposables in the market when it's usually caused by laws and necessity. In Australia disposable vapes were pretty hard to come by, only small convenience stores sold them (illegally). but as nicotine crackdowns have gotten worse and the price of tobacco products has skyrocketed it's left many addicted people with no choice but using disposables. I wish there was a better alternative for me but you try get any nicotine product in Australia at a reasonable price without risking it being caught by border security.
I cant get over complaints about China subsidizing.
Only the U.S, U.K(and it's offshoots) and Europe are allowed to do that!
-Economists
I know the real issue is the IP theft. And the fact they're a fascist dictatorship
China's labour ain't so cheap as it used to be... which is a good thing right?
It kinda defeats the whole argument he is trying to make, but well, as a well-trained communist he can hold many contrary ideas in his head without blinking.
E-cigarettes were invented and first marketed by the Chinese. What do you mean by the stealing of intellectual property? It was China's regulation regarding e-cigarettes that resulted in Juul having a comparative advantage for so long.
Ok China
USA : "I say free market now, free market forever"
China: "Ahh yes, we agree with your free market ideas"
USA: "Mommy I wanna go home!"
Except that it is not a free market. For example, you can't watch UA-cam in China.
@@timbehrens9678what?! lmao i think you should actually read what one can and cant do in china
@@Somebodyherefornow You can't watch UA-cam in China unless you work for some foreign company with its own VPN. There might be a few other obscure tricks (like roaming). But any publicly available VPN is going to be capped in seconds. Ask me how I know.
4:23 thank you for talking about the deindustrialization. It’s never talked about or taken seriously enough for the damage that’s been done.
Don't forget the current situation in the Congo using childern and sl_ve labour to mine the materials needed for something that's just being thrown out.
There is so much cost that people aren't seeing from these
Talking about how bad smoking is under this video feels strange to me. A bit like a video about the global plastics industry- the functioning, the laws, the geopolitics- and all the comments being about personal recycling habits. You should recycle and you shouldn't smoke, but aren't we a bit past that? Please?
Engagement comment. Can't believe this video didn't make numbers. It's one of the good ones.
in the 2 minutes and 23 seconds the intro took I had to watch 6 different commercials in 3 different blocks or 2 commercials at a time. It took me almost 8 minutes to watch 2 and a half minutes of content. That is 6 minutes of commercials. 3x the amount of content. I didn't think youtube would destroy themselves.
Just commenting to boost the algorithm. Quality analyses like these are hard to come by on UA-cam anymore. Excellent work on this series, Tom. I appreciate your incisive takes and ability to make the connections to multiple topics. Helping everyone see the forest for the trees in an age when our attention barely makes it past the branches. Cheers from Ohio, USA.
Interesting perspective. Back in the day my political party in Canada, even some radical Conservative types and unions were not cool with it, put up the good fight against NAFTA and free trade. It was heartening another generation in the 90s opposed the WTO but way way too late.
We completely lost on so many levels. The 'race to the bottom' just continues to accelerate.
Genuine question, my apologies if this sounds ignorant: what tangible products and resources come from wall street? Even diamonds have practical uses in machinery
“Grab your iPad and look at the back of it” Uh if I look at the back of it I won’t see the video.
Beautiful shot of Porto at 17:24. Just came back from Porto last week and took many photos from that exact spot!
ya and people on the west coast and in southern California are wondering why the southern California or socal homeless population is so massive is the tech heads are doing the same thing they did in the 90s. getting the highest talent to make shit then shipping it to china for the cheapest build but by doing that. they hide out much damage the process of making these things does from there public and also lower skilled labor that isnt white collar able gets shafted and left on the streets to basically die and in both cases the corps win the government wins and makes up bullshit reasons to " fight homelessness" and sink cash that just gets pocketed. as a northern Californian that only reason he has survived is due to farm work. its sad how for mega corps are willing to go to hide lie and used people in there county and even more so abroad to make a few extra bucks and no one ever sees a cent of it as is just stays in a bank account going to waste... greed is strong and the last 100 years of industry our fathers and fore fathers have let that greed grow and kill the people under them and the world we live on.
The missing piece is they 'sell' the product in the country with the lowest tax rate, which is here in Ireland. They get fined for doing this and Ireland spends millions refusing to collect the fine and seeking to have it overturned.
@@ablacknambercat you are veryyy right but also out of sight out of mind and with tiktok and many other things making attention harder to keep its easy for people to be distracted and straight up forget things... im no conspiracy nut but just seems like puzzle pieces
1:24
“This video is part of a miniseries that I’m releasing over the coming months in which I’m exploring threeways” 😏
"The company has been based since its founding" can't say I agree with that
Thank you Tom!! Hope that you get to make the third installment one day. ✊
i cannot believe this is where i learned pax was the maker of juul, i used to be a massive weed vape nerd so im super surprised i never learned that sooner. who else watching while hitting a dynavap?
sticky brick for me but i do have a dyna. way better than pax ever was, and both were cheaper combined than one pax.
funnily enough i learned pax was behind juul right when it was new - bc they were selling “pax pods” in some parts of california with the same form factor as juul 😅
honestly i do not understand all the juice vapes therein, when flower ones work so well and don’t involve breathing glycerin
The accusations of theft against China are exactly the same as the ones against Japan in the 60s and 70s.
And another important aspect of the globalization is Pax Americana : if/when the US stops supporting world wide trade, they will stop their military role as "world police", whose goal is mainly to allow free trade.
I wouldn't say that that's their goal. Or rather, they only support it as long as they are beneficiaries.
They seem to have no issue trying to comandeer Iranian ships headed for China, or block Chinese ones from heading to Iran.
Basically, they are selective with their values and it betrays their true motivations: to uphold American trade dominance and political power.
@@LancesArmorStrikingMajority of Americans benefiting from international trade is an accidental by product that was temporary. The real reason for the implementation is to help the few wealthy at the cost to American masses and the rest of the world to make a few elites even more wealthy. This can bee seen repeated throughout the world with their own groups of wealthy elites.
Free trade enabled by the US patrolling the oceans has lifted billions out of poverty. It's not just the US who benefits.
"You dare use my own spells against me, Potter?"
Must... consume.. tobaccoo...
It's very interesting how many of the ideas and points made in this video can also be applied to the ongoing situation with TikTok as well.
I don't understand the concept of throwing a disposable vape on the ground instead of just holding on to it until you have access to a garbage bin for chemical waste. Unlike a cigarette butt, it doesn't smell bad, and you can literally keep it in your pocket without it getting all yucky.
I'm ashamed to admit that I'm definitely guilty of occasionally throwing a cig butt on the ground, when there are no garbage bins nearby, but ... now that I've switched to disposable vapes? I literally can't conceive of any possible excuse to do something like that. Lazy, antisocial behaviour at its most extreme. The thing is tiny, it's not any sort of bother at all to just keep it in your pocket. It's barely larger than a lighter, ffs! Phones and wallets are much more bulky!
Why buy disposable vapes though when you can buy some that last for years? It's not that hard to change the coils or liquids. Disposable vapes make me think of the people who throw lighters the first time they run out of gas or the flint goes... lighters last for years but so many people just toss them within one year.
@@bondickle 1: literally don't have the money for that sort of thing
2: even if i did, ideally the end goal would be to quit the addiction entirely. this is just a temporary measure to somewhat limit the damage and render it less unpleasant. not about to make a huge investment for something that i would prefer to quit entirely as soon as possible
@@bondickle Also ... what do you mean?? none of the lighters I've ever bought ever lasted more than a couple months tops, lmao. I'm not tech-savvy enough to refill them, and it might be dangerous since it involves highly flammable substances. i can just spend 1 € for a new one, probably cheaper as well. i obviously don't throw them on the ground or in a regular garbage bin, just like the vapes
@@DaveGrean that's fair, although some were very cheap. And I guess that's part of why these terrible disposable products will always exist - because people like the convenience and how cheap they are, as many of us don't have the money to get better versions. So far I've never met someone who's given up smoking AND vaping. They normally just end at vaping, saying "it's better". Which is fair but I no longer see it as a realistic quitting method. I'm sure it's helpful for some though.
Replacing the gas is super easy as the lighters have a hole in the bottom designed specifically for the bottles the gas comes in. Flints are super easy too. People don't necessarily throw dead lighters on the ground, but they're less conscious of where they end up... they'll get left behind on benches, tables etc. Just forgotten about since they're no longer useful. Drop from cars or pockets and again nobody notices since that's not the lighters they're using anymore.
Where do you even find a chemical waste bin? I've never personally encountered one as far as I remember. It's definitely not a common thing near me. Heck even regular recycling bins arent that common to run into in public. I have regular recycling in my neighborhood.
Bro the idea of the series is genius and did a fantastic job of explaining a complex topic - keep it up 👍
What all this proves my friend is that VALUE is generated by the labor of workers.
The west 1945 - 1980: Government subsidies for manufacturing? YES! (Ordinary people’s economic agency flourished…)
The west 1980 - today: Government subsidies for manufacturing? NO - We’ll do QE towards banks instead! (Corporate financial agency flourished…)
China 1990 - today: “Let’s just do what the west used to do 1945 - 1980, it seems to work for both people and corporations…”
Well, Argentina also tried those subsidies. Have you seen how those Argentinians flourished?
@@timbehrens9678 Oh, there’s a balance between coop between industries and government (social democracy) - and outright corrupt depletion of the local currency and resources (silver).
Power policies hit ordinary Argentinians hard across generations, and I guess you understand the political-economic differences here.
The “west” has also had its role through time, influencing or pressuring through macroeconomic & monetary means.
China was “too big”, and threw that influence overboard after their revolution. Internally as well, as a large national faction in the 1940’s wanted western alignment.
Remember that socialist ideology contains a dynamic imperative, like dialectical deliberation. When it fails (humans, money, power…) socialism fails as hard as any social model.
Actual adaptation would work for conservatives too, and did in Europe. Holding on to a lost reality is just stagnation - for any ideology.
for myself, i'm a firm supporter of digital piracy for similar reasons, in that i just don't cleave to the assumptions and assertions of capitalism, and this "ownership of ideas" or information (might as well throw in land, housing, medical care, etc) by gating it behind a paywall - it's simply convoluted extortion, and i delighted in the chance to subvert it harmlessly by utilizing the internet as a teenager. i never really connected the dots this explicitly because it's always just been an intuitive understanding for me, since back when i was 12 or whatever and the anarchist cookbook came into AOL and i started to participate in the information economy. but this video absolutely nailed it. and now, my aol screenname is just my junk email address, lol. my point being "intellectual piracy" is perfectly fair in this "free" market if you ask me, you gotta have scare quotes on both sides of the equation to keep it in balance, so to speak. the only reason this guy has to charge that guy is because someone else is charging him, and it's like that allll the way down till you reach the mfers that are actually just scamming you by selling you stolen land or some derivative therof and calling it profit. or just your boss, paying himself to make you do his job, taking the money off the top, as usual, so the company is making a "profit". turtles all the way down.
and PS, 27:21 ???? why does this timeline look like this LMAO i feel exposed
also PPS you might look at the volume changes b/t scenes LUV U
🫡 closest we can get to ethical consumption for many, many things.
Now major operating systems are goin' the tablet route and important software is subscription-only... the disposable vape model is everywhere.
@@radishfest yea it's kinda like, an inevitable conclusion of a capitalist system, i guess.
Idealism is great but there are natures laws... Like if I occupy a place, the place is no longer available. Then you understand land, housing, medical care, food... I think your illusion is that you lived in horrendous wealth. Go on the other side of the town and maybe you would understand the universal fight for resources that is called life...
Your videos bring a level of thought and nuance to subject that always makes for a great watch. I keep thinking "what more could possibly be said about vaping?" and then by then end of the video I'm like "Oh, THAT much more"
No, it doesn't. It is a well mixed bag of half truths with a the "capitalism bad" agenda. For example, I would really like to know which countries and how exactly were "forced" in the WTO.
"Videos in which I'm exploring three-ways" nice!! 😅