[iancmceachern]

Yes, but the two (software and hardware) scale very differently.

Once software is "done" (we all know software is never done) you can just copy it and distribute it. It is negligiblehow much it costs to do so.

Once hardware is done you have to manufacture each and every piece of hardware with the same care, detail and reliability as the first one. You can't just click copy.

Often times you have to completely redesign the product to go from low volume high cost manufacturing to high volume low cost. A hand made McLaren is very different than an F-150.

The two simply scale differently, by nature of their beasts.

[aeternum]

China has shown that they don't scale all that differently. Yes the tooling is hard to build but after that you hit go and the factory makes the copies for you.

It's not quite startrek replicator but much closer to that than the US view of manufacturing where you have your union guy sitting in front of the machine to pull the lever.

[iancmceachern]

This isn't true. They've showed that slave (or nearly) labor is cheap or even free.

[aeternum]

This was somewhat true at once point but is a highly outdated view. Labor is no longer cheap in China relative to other nearby countries and there's a huge amount of automation with some factories that don't even turn on lights because they are effectively 100% automated.