Made in the USA...

[Sergio Perez]

Actually they do. The average movie ticket for an Indian film is under $2. In addition, there are much more Indian films made every year attracting greater audience (tickets sold) than Hollywood. They just don't make as much money (a fraction).

I'm talking worldwide audience, not local. I'm sure chinese films in mainland China have a bigger audience there than Hollywood films. I'm talking about Global box office. A Red Camera is also a "global audience" product. As is a Sony, Panasonic, etc.

 

[Denizhan Nacar]

I'm talking worldwide audience, not local. I'm sure chinese films in mainland China have a bigger audience there than Hollywood films. I'm talking about Global box office. A Red Camera is also a "global audience" product. As is a Sony, Panasonic, etc.

Quantity and Quality my friend...

 

[Subhadip Sen]

I'm talking worldwide audience, not local. I'm sure chinese films in mainland China have a bigger audience there than Hollywood films. I'm talking about Global box office. Red is also a global product. As is a Sony, Panasonic, etc.

As am I. I am talking very much about global figures here. The last global comparison was in 2009. India made 1288 feature films selling 3.6 billion tickets worldwide. In the same year USA made 677 features selling 2.6 billion tickets worldwide. Source, BBC. Of course, this is purely talking about quantity and not quality or dollars.

 

[Denizhan Nacar]

As am I. I am talking very much about global figures here. The last global comparison was in 2009. India made 1288 feature films selling 3.6 billion tickets worldwide. In the same year USA made 677 features selling 2.6 billion tickets worldwide. Source, BBC.

What about the revenue???

 

[Liam Hall]

I think many would disagree -- and no I'm not talking about Al Gore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider

No that's wrong, but you illustrate my point that it is silly to flag wave when it comes to inventions.

Licklider had the idea of the www, he didn't actually invent it. I thought of a design for anti-gravity boots, but I haven't invented anti-gravity boots...

Tim Berners Lee is credited with the invention of the www:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

 

[Sergio Perez]

As am I. I am talking very much about global figures here. The last global comparison was in 2009. India made 1288 feature films selling 3.6 billion tickets worldwide. In the same year USA made 677 features selling 2.6 billion tickets worldwide. Source, BBC. Of course, this is purely talking about quantity and not quality or dollars.

Point taken. However, any numbers for domestic box office for Indian movies separated from their international box office? Obviously being one o the most populous countries in the world has something significant to say to those numbers. Make those tickets at the average global box office price, and see those numbers plummet... Not saying India has bad quality cinema, far from it. Just saying as global entertainment they are still very far from Hollywood, as is the rest of the world...

 

[Brice Ansel]

More and more money is going into capital instead of labor by virtue of technological innovation. On the one hand it makes a camera like the RED affordable. On the other hand, I'm glad I'm not looking for a job in manufacturing.
- Gavin

I tend to be agree with Gavin, that virtual economy is one of the main problem of our global world.
Making money with money and not investing as much as we use to do in the industrial infrastructure is like shooting ourself a bullet into the foot.
Not an ealthy attitude on the long term indeed.
The market is focusing to much on the short term rentability, you don't build a country in a couple of years.
Regards
Brice

 

[JIM MALLON]

The Future for America is QUALITY products. The ones that are starting more and more to insist on it are ironically in countries like China. I think it will be the large brands that find themsleves with such a small margins they will fail more than the Mom and Pop, small and medium sized companies like RED.

 

[Justin Gum]

The Gibson of cameras

 

[Lorenzo Straight]

Go USA.

 

[Joe Carney]

My information is that the annual turnover rate for electronic product assembly labor in Shenzen is about 30%. It's a fast-paced market and people are chasing higher salaries- nothing wrong with that- but it's not easy to get consistent work done there. Even though labor can be 30x cheaper (!) in China than in USA by the hour, if you have something complex (especially, both complex and also changing/upgrading over time) and the labor fraction of your product is low, I think Made in USA can make a lot of sense. Obviously, Jim knows all this- I'm just agreeing with him .

As for the larger picture, I think we need a lot more folks like Jim (and products like he makes).

Add to that companies like Dell are shifting to even cheaper labor markets in China where the Govt has more control over the local population. Plus the fact that China over the last 20 years has had a bad habit of ripping off western tech companies, after convincing them to set up shop, duplicating their facilities, then hiring away the personnel.
Red wisely doesn't want to expose them selves to that situation.

 

[David Battistella]

This conversation is a political one and I think that is OK in the context of what is being reasonablly discussed.

It's really simple.

As consumers we have choices. If you think minor choices do not make a difference then look at how President Obama financed his campaign.

When you go to a dollar store, you are basically buying something that is the last step from the land fill. Also, you might be purchasing goods that are full of lead or other toxic metals.
Do you need a 10 cent ceramic cup that badly?

Do not fool yourself into thinking that buying third world goods from warehouse outlets means you are doing a good charitable deed. Most of the time you are supporting some form of slavery.
Low prices = Slavery in many cases

So choose. Look at labels. Decide whether you really need to consume. Try to buy stuff that supports your community. I'm not saying boycott, but just by being a conciencious consumer you can really change things.

Think of the price tag when looking at the price tag. How you personally move your money makes a difference.

Moving it toward RED is a way of supporting an idea Jim expressed in this thread, but open up that awareness and it can create massive change.

David

 

[Eric Rodemann]

We pride ourselves in the fact that we do almost everything in CA. That is rare these days. We can only hope that other companies will realize that it is possible to make things here.

Jim

Depends.
"Solar Panel Company Goes Bankrupt, Leaving Taxpayers On The Hook For $535 Million In Stimulus Loans."

Apparently they simply could not compete with Chinese made solar panels. I don't think any US based manufacturing company could successfully compete with the Chinese based solar panel companies.

I could be wrong, but I think you'd go broke if you tried.

So yes, possible for some things, but others, probably not. I don't think I'd invest in a company planning on building a solar panel manufacturing plant in the US.

 

[Eric Rodemann]

This conversation is a political one and I think that is OK in the context of what is being reasonablly discussed.

It's really simple.

As consumers we have choices. If you think minor choices do not make a difference then look at how President Obama financed his campaign.

When you go to a dollar store, you are basically buying something that is the last step from the land fill. Also, you might be purchasing goods that are full of lead or other toxic metals.
Do you need a 10 cent ceramic cup that badly?

Do not fool yourself into thinking that buying third world goods from warehouse outlets means you are doing a good charitable deed. Most of the time you are supporting some form of slavery.
Low prices = Slavery in many cases

So choose. Look at labels. Decide whether you really need to consume. Try to buy stuff that supports your community. I'm not saying boycott, but just by being a conciencious consumer you can really change things.

Think of the price tag when looking at the price tag. How you personally move your money makes a difference.

Moving it toward RED is a way of supporting an idea Jim expressed in this thread, but open up that awareness and it can create massive change.

David

I don't think this is a realistic view of the way economics works.

Consumers will purchase the goods that satisfy their wants for the lowest price. You have to change the goods, not the people. The Consumer will never change. They will always on average purchase goods that satisfy their wants and needs for the lowest price. Anything else is thinking that people will stop being human and is just counter productive.

This is true even for the consumer that purchases "green" products for a higher price.

That consumer is paying to satisfy a need. The need is not the cup, but the need to feel like they are saving the planet. That consumer will pay the lowest price possible to feel like they are saving the planet. But most consumers just need a cup.

Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds

 

[David Battistella]

So consumers are a just powerless flock who go for the lowest price no matter what?

Shit.

I was really starting to believe that people are genuinely good again.

Oh well. I will do my tiny little part and try to push the meaningless butterfly effect out through the universe.

David

 

[Daniel Browning]

I feel like we're getting too efficient to sustain a healthy economy.

I disagree. Every increase in efficiency is a net benefit to the health of the economy. Scythes to combine harvesters, buggy whips to horseless carriages, it always results in increased goods, services, and quality of life. Even if you take it to the logical extreme where every manufacturing job is replaced by a more inexpensive machine, would we really have lost anything? Take away combine harvesters and you've suddenly generated hundreds of millions of jobs for Americans, laboring 12 hours a day in the fields, but I don't consider that progress.

 

[Chris Parker]

succint, and bang on mr. batistella. as usual. you still in Italy?

 

[David Battistella]

you still in Italy?

Yes sir.

PMing you now...

David

 

[Michael McLaughlin]

solar is possible

solar is possible

Eric I grew up and visit back all the time my birthplace of Perrysburg Ohio.

First Solar has based one of their manufactoring plants there.

http://www.firstsolar.com/en/contact.php

Off the 795 or the 80/90 turnpike, their buildings dominate the area.

http://www.greenenergyohio.org/page.cfm?pageId=387

http://apps.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=36091


The Solyndra thing was shady from the beginning, it started during the Bush adminstration and
was carried on thru the Obama administration. Why they let something like that continue was
idiotic. The technology was "good on paper" bad in the field and so on and so fourth.

http://www.grist.org/solar-power/2011-09-13-bush-admin-pushed-solyndra-loan-guarantee-for-two-years

To me it was a poison pill meant to do exactly what happened, win win win for all the crooks behind it.
Got the money, put a big bullet in the side of the Obama adminstration, and can smear green tech as a
joke again.

A lot more will come out on this I guaruntee and both parties will get nailed.

Mind you there were some decent people who at low levels worked there. But I remember reading about
it back in 2007 and thinking to myself this is a profoundly stupid way to go about PV when their were already
rumblings about silcon dropping etc.

Of course had Obama stopped it immediately when he came into office he would of been called a partisan
hack blah blah blah for stopping a green company that was started and about to be loaned money by a
republican Bush adminstation and backed with Walton family money etc.

Damned if he did damned if he didn't.

Didn't also help when so called Democratic donors jumped in on the act (to invest in the company).

He should of seen this was a set up from the beginning and just taken the lumps by killing it in the
grave and working with a real company like First Solar, which has a proven track record.

We need real american companies with good leaders and strong vision that understand the geopolitical
competitiveness. Not pie in the sky pushed ideas bond to fail.

 

[David P Johnson]

Last data I could find listed $225k in revenue per OO employee (of course as you say ignoring suppliers).
...
I feel like we're getting too efficient to sustain a healthy economy. But there's no turning back from the march of progress either. More and more money is going into capital instead of labor by virtue of technological innovation. On the one hand it makes a camera like the RED affordable. On the other hand, I'm glad I'm not looking for a job in manufacturing. ....

- Gavin

Posts like these ARE dangerous, because they are uninformed emotions dressed as something rational or quantitative. The analysis is nonsense.

The arch of civilization, from barter economy thru to modern capitalism is one of SPECIALIZATION brought thru efficiency. Human civilization is founded upon pooling of intellectual capital, matched to labor and capital.

At the base level, humans first congregated in order to compensate for our physical limitations that made us prey to other animals and the environment. The design of hunting and defensive weapons, the control of fire, shelter, water systems, sanitation, medicine...every human advance requires specialization, which can only occur by gains in efficiency. What do I mean? Try making a living as a focus puller on a boner pill commercial shoot, when you and everyone around you spends 10 hours a day as a hunter/gatherer.

The supply chain that has been built around us is necessary to sustain modern civilization, or at any point that has existed before us. This is possible only because time has been freed up to allow individuals to experiment and invent. These inventions fulfill a real or percieed need or want. And those needs and wants have been refined over 8,000 years.

Like music? Well you don't NEED an iPod. But that invention created an entire ecosystem of suppliers and manufacturers. So, to suggest that innovation [=efficiency] leads to unemployment is crap. It sounds to me like you want people to spend less, but yet you bemoan wage growth.

US steel output peaked in 1970. Today, most people would SWEAR that the US doesn't make it anymore. This is NONSENSE. The US produces virtually the same tonnage, today, as we did 40 years ago. It's much less labor intensive to do so. AND we have gone up-market in the types and grades of steel that we make. Not all steel is an I-beam for use on a skyscraper.

The US is still responsible for 18% of GLOBAL MANUFACTURING OUTPUT, on value-add basis. This is equal to China, which has 4.5x the US population. Second place is waaaaaaay behind. The value-add measure is the best way to infer actual manufacturing, not simply what passes through our manufacturing chain. We are still the world class economy.

Besides, a wealthy country is not one of unskilled labor, working in crude smokestack factories. Don't believe me? Ask yourself this, "why don't I work in a blast furnace"? Do you hope that for your children? There are still plenty of them around. Nothing wrong with it. But it is not what people aspire to. God help us, when Americans, or any citizen of the world, reaches such low expectations.

The analysis provided in the above post implies that progress is a cycle of doom. Fair enough, if the argument is really about the sustainability of the consumer age.

But, the tone reads like we just need to stop....BS. By that thinking, you can argue that movies should not exist because, dammit, they put a bunch of stage actors out of business. And, hey, stop fiddling with that moveable type! We have scribes to think about. Wait a minute, take that windmill and water wheel away. Don't you know the implications of this energy revolution?

Make the damn camera. Cuz' when you do, I'll make a low budget documentary about something I otherwise couldn't have been able to do.

Human civilization is about the exchange of ideas, while you're alive. Stop whining.

P.S> The Economist magazine has an excellent survey on labor markets in this weeks issue.