Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives

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  1. Posts : 4,049
    W7 Ultimate SP1, LM19.2 MATE, W10 Home 1703, W10 Pro 1703 VM, #All 64 bit
       #180

    carwiz said:
    legacy7955 said:
    Wow you figured this out easily yet top CEOs and related execs paid a king's ransom many times over couldn't..WHAT in the HECK are they paying these people running the companies for?
    Back when I was a "suit" we made five-year plans in business. Today, the plan is annual but split into quarters. The prime objective is to make money. That's what businesses do. It's the CEO's job to make money for the investors. If you can pay someone else to make parts cheaper than you can make them, it adds black to the bottom line. If you're the maker of the parts and can do it in high volume, the parts are cheaper to make. It's called economies of scale. The more you make, the less it costs for each part. If the parts are made by 100 factories scattered all over, you loose the benefit of economies of scale and the price goes up and profit goes down.
    That's the problem.
    There is no hint of national loyalty (politicians are just as bad).
    We have the same problem here.

    Of course it's cheaper to buy goods from countries that pay their workers $0.50 per day.
    What happens, when all of the equipment that a country needs to operate its economy, is imported (all local production having long since ceased)?
    Economists and politicians never bother to ask/answer that question.

    Free trade can only work properly, when the playing field is basically level.
    If that is true, then efficiencies/improvements come from innovation.

    Those giant CEO bonuses come out of the pockets of the investors.
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  2. Posts : 1,777
    MS Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit (Family Pack Lic.) Upgrade
       #181

    Funny, I've been keeping up with this situation over the past year or so, and China has "banned" nearly all rare earth elements, with the exception of two, one of which is neodymium, which makes up the bulk of the nickle plated magnets in a HDD's . Older drives used some other rare earth's but not any that I know of anymore.
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  3. Posts : 208
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit, Linux Mint Julia, in dual boot mode
       #182

    Maguscreed said:
    .............

    ...........................................................

    Having all of one kind of manufacturing in one place makes about as much sense as stacking a bunch of nuclear reactors on top of each other in a zone prone to earthquakes and tsunamis.
    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Exactly !!!!!!!!!!!!

    And that about 2 meters from shore

    and that was done for economic reasons: easy access to cooling water. I only wonder how they were able to pull that one off and that no one said anything (e.g., the IAEC).
    A bunch of hoodlums who then (maybe) resign and get an isotopic golden handshake.
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  4. Posts : 5,941
    Linux CENTOS 7 / various Windows OS'es and servers
       #183

    Hi all
    My last word on this -- as this thread probably has run its course -- some of this stuff IS political -- for example I suppose most people want Pensions when they retire --and with most people living longer people could expect to get almost as long on a PENSION as in their WORKING period -- many youngsters today will easily live into their 90's and maybe even 100's.

    This has to be paid for -- so pension funds need to invest in companies making money (putting cash in the Bank at a miserly 0.5% a year won't help them at all). Companies are encouraged to make as much money as possible and therefore DO move production to India, China, Malaysia etc.

    The State can only provide so much wealth to distribute -- and if a country (and most are definitely not self sufficient) isn't self sufficient in what it wants then we have international commerce.

    If you want to go ahead and allow the State to be the sole provider of income, goods and services it's your choice -- that's what Elections are for -- but the only major state that tried this approach failed dismally.

    With all it's imperfections the capitalistic methods of the West have worked better than any other system in bringing decent living standards to people all over the globe.

    As living standards rise in places like India etc --off shoring this sort of stuff won't make a lot of sense especially as transport costs rise horriffically and you'll see production and services being re-patriated --it's already happening in some areas like Call centers.

    So "You pays your money and takes your choice".

    (Incidentally --technology will usually always found a way round a problem --if rare Earths are banned then someone will design a system that can get round this process -- might temporarily be more expensive but will work in the end. The more you try and prevent something from happening by manipulating a market the more you'll end up not only by exacerbating the problem you tried to solve in the first place but will also cause some major unpredictable consequences too like China having now to import HDD's for it's own use !!!).

    Cheers
    jimbo
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  5. Posts : 4,049
    W7 Ultimate SP1, LM19.2 MATE, W10 Home 1703, W10 Pro 1703 VM, #All 64 bit
       #184

    Strange


    I find it strange that corporate profits and CEO salaries continue to rise and yet returns to shareholders seem to be static and western governments are all running massive deficits.

    Despite these massive deficits (and no money for pensions) there is always money available for corporate tax cuts (and politician pay rises).

    If I didn't know better, I'd swear that someone was lying to us.
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  6. Posts : 5,941
    Linux CENTOS 7 / various Windows OS'es and servers
       #185

    lehnerus2000 said:
    I find it strange that corporate profits and CEO salaries continue to rise and yet returns to shareholders seem to be static and western governments are all running massive deficits.

    Despite these massive deficits (and no money for pensions) there is always money available for corporate tax cuts (and politician pay rises).

    If I didn't know better, I'd swear that someone was lying to us.
    Returns to shareholder static !!!!!! Not sure what planet you've been living on lately but actually a lot of companies are AWASH with cash (or flushed with money).

    The reason they aren't spending / investing is that with consumers paying off credit cards and other debts like mad these companies don't at the current time think it worthwhile to expand until the consumers start going out spending again.

    If you have a decent job at the moment it's probably a good one --however for a lot of under 25's, some pensioners, people on Social Security and people who work for the State (or used to since the State sector in a lot of countries is being cut back a lot) things aren't so hot - However this group aren't investors anyway as a whole.

    If you follow markets like I do you can do reasonably well on the stock market even in these times -- for example the S&P 500 (a better indication rather than just the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Index --since a large movement on just one company gyrates the index rapidly) is currently just under 1300 with a year low of around 1000 -- a win of around 34% ---


    If you'd just left you money in a Bank --- 0.5% If you are lucky -- lots of current accounts even pay ZILCH and charge you per transaction too.

    People who say Shareholder don't get any money usually don't understand how the Stock Market works --- very very few investors buy stocks just because they might (or might not) pay a dividend.

    People trade in the actual Stocks or even better but far far beyond the scope of this topic --and this is a W7 Forum not an investment one -- trading calls and puts in the options markets.

    Cheers
    jimbo
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Skyrocketing price of mechanical hard drives-stokx.png  
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  7. Posts : 4,049
    W7 Ultimate SP1, LM19.2 MATE, W10 Home 1703, W10 Pro 1703 VM, #All 64 bit
       #186

    I meant $ dividend per share (return to investors), not share price.
    So companies are hoarding cash, instead of paying dividends to the investors (that really helps the investor).
    All that does is help speculators drive up the share price (i.e. create "bubbles").

    You can get a higher return speculating (if you are lucky) on the share price.
    The trouble is a lot of this speculation is done with other people's money.

    If some joker wants to blow his money gambling that's his problem.
    If he blows my money, I'm not going to be happy.

    jimbo45 said:
    If you'd just left you money in a Bank --- 0.5% If you are lucky -- lots of current accounts even pay ZILCH and charge you per transaction too.
    Agreed.
    Banks are scum anyway (their "uncontrolled" gambling, triggered the current mess, or at least it was one of the main factors).

    My point is that National Security is more than just how many troops and planes you have (or at least it should be, IMO).
    You never hear "Economic Rationalists" demanding that the MIC be outsourced to China.
    They could supply troops and equipment at a fraction of the cost that the US can do it for.

    Communications, computers, power and weapons should all be considered to be National Security items.
    If you don't control those items, you are at the mercy of your suppliers.

    No local production means you are at the mercy of outside factors (like flooding in Thailand).
    I guess we'll just have to wait for Thailand to dry out.
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  8. Posts : 6,618
    W7x64 Pro, SuSe 12.1/** W7 x64 Pro, XP MCE
       #187

    For someone in dire need of a medium sized internal drive, this might help, until the prices go back down:

    Seagate ST31500541AS 1.5TB Hard Drive - 5900RPM, 32MB Cache, SATA-3G at TigerDirect.com
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  9. Posts : 21,004
    Desk1 7 Home Prem / Desk2 10 Pro / Main lap Asus ROG 10 Pro 2 laptop Toshiba 7 Pro Asus P2520 7 & 10
       #188

    Well shareholders profits in my view are made on the backs of individuals who earn for the most part just enough to eek out an existence,. I doubt VERY much that those greedy shareholders would want to live in the conditions or work the hours put in that those offshore workers have to put up or shut up about.

    We sit here in front of our nice new machines and talk about the price of eggs and while I agree with what someone said that it was a good idea to manufacture goods in different locales to avoids the whole manufacturing process being ground completely to a halt, then in my mind those plants should be situated in sites that are not prone to natural disaster. Now I know that nowhere is safe but for example Fukishima is to me a prime example of the lack of forward planning and was built on the back of greed, as was Bhopal in India to name but a couple.

    Take a walk down any large town street and look inside those dollar shops and I often think to myself how do they get the raw materials, manufacture the parts, assemble them, pack them, ship them , wholesale, and then transport and retail them for the say a screwdriver set for $4 ?

    For my personal view such items as hard drives should be sold on until the supply runs out - hiking the price is not the answer - has it made them anymore available - no! Has it made most of us upset - yes! But I for one would rather wait until they come on stream again and pay a decent and fair price, and also anyone who does a bit of build or repair work and doesn't keep a spare for such occasions is well nearsighted or blinkered for want of a better term.

    My gripe is that we sit and complain about off shore manufacture but do nothing to ensure that jobs stay on our own shores simply because we expect far too much in the way of recompense for what we do. Our telephone call centre for a national carrier a prime example - most of the time I can't understand what the operator is saying to me because of the lack or grasp of the English language.
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  10. Posts : 4,049
    W7 Ultimate SP1, LM19.2 MATE, W10 Home 1703, W10 Pro 1703 VM, #All 64 bit
       #189

    ICit2lol said:
    My gripe is that we sit and complain about off shore manufacture but do nothing to ensure that jobs stay on our own shores simply because we expect far too much in the way of recompense for what we do. Our telephone call centre for a national carrier a prime example - most of the time I can't understand what the operator is saying to me because of the lack or grasp of the English language.
    I couldn't survive on $0.50 per day (they probably can't survive on that in Chinese cities either).

    Nobody asked me if I wanted the telephone call centres shifted to a foreign country.
    Some executives decided that it would be a great way to boost their bonuses.

    IMO the problem was caused by the original import tariffs being an arbitrary value, instead of a calculated one.
    They should have been replaced by some sort of formula based import tariff (e.g. comparative wage levels and regulatory overheads) not just eliminated outright.
    Of course it would've required a lot of bureaucracy, as it would've had to have been calculated for each product and each country.
    Poor countries would've complained that it discriminated against them ("Why should we pay our useless peasants $15 per hour?").


    At least the current HDD situation is based on some actual event (e.g. all of the factories being underwater) and not due to some clowns speculating on the share market.
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