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Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

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Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what's the solution? Seems like the government is the only entity that can intervene if market forces are counter to supply chain resilience. This is partially the justification for agricultural subsidies in the US, so clearly there is precedent.

> Then what's the solution? Time and capital investment. It's like this generation of people have never heard of production and supply disruptions, and were oblivious to such things being possible. Frankly, this doesn't matter very much, it's not a critical situation. The auto market malfunctioning short-term due to a pandemic doesn't present a strong argument for government intervention. Tesla can't make batteries f…

> Toyota won't sell as many vehicles. So what.

Thousands of employees lose their livelihoods as factories shut down?

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a puzzle to me why companies like nvidia didn't just raise prices and instead left both customers and profit to the dirty world of scalpers. I guess it's "brand damage" but I feel there would be something more fair and honest if in times of tight supply they ran their own ebay-like store and auctioned them off. It wouldn't feel like a price hike and prices could automatically settle as supply/demand reaches pari…

They probably did, the only cards they produce under the Nvidia brand are the Founders Edition cards and those are sold for MSRP. Everything else is made by their partners and those cards increased in price.

Yes, soon after posting I realised I was referring to Asus/MSI/Palit etc. rather than Nvidia. It means either two levels of auction or the Nvidia chip sale is a % of the end unit sale.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#363
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with dropping 5K on a bike is that they get stolen

In the US city that I live in, cars get stolen an awful lot too. And not just puffers (cars left with the keys in the ignition to warm up on a cold day) -- I've heard of plenty of locked recent-year cars stolen from private locked garages with no keys at all. I believe car theft is up at least 500% from pre-covid. And that's to say nothing of the opportunistic catalytic converter thefts if you park your car on the st…

Where I live I'd guess the rate is 100 bikes stolen for every car.

With a bike you don't expect it to be there after locking it in the street for more than 15 minutes. I don't know anybody personally whose car was stolen.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#364

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

How the essential farma became nearly 100% reliant on foreign manufacturers is I think the most exemplary case of this nonsense.

I read some year ago that there were laws in US which at least somehow discouraged the pharma from shipping manufacturing abroad, and it was the big pharma itself which lobbied these laws out.

This is how China held US at gunpoint in the early days of COVID — "Stay put, or we pull 90%+ of your antibiotics supply"

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#365
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the DARPA derived internet, no less.

DARPA funded the basic research. Then the actual Internet was largely built by for-profit private sector companies. That hybrid model seems to usually be the most effective for major new innovations.

DARPA funded most of the grant money used by research entities to create the various parts of the IP stack. That's not "basic research". Simply put, were it not for DARPA, we wouldn't have the Internet of today. We'd probably have something like it, but something a lot more closed off and walled garden-esque.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#366

Toyota was one of the few (only?) companies to keep a large stockpile of chips on hand to continue production in case of a supply interruption. They kept something like two years worth on hand. I guess 18 months of doing the extremely heavy lifting for the whole industry has taken its toll and now they're in the same boat.

Maybe this is a dumb question, but does anyone still produce cars without chips? It's possible, and in the current environment it seems like it would be a major competitive advantage-- and might be more reliable in general.

No. US cars got chips starting in the mid-80’s, so almost 40 years ago.

And they were actually much more reliable and efficient. Fuel injection was light years ahead of carburetors.

And I’d argue it would be impossible to meet emissions without computer control of the engine.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#367
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a positive feedback loop, not a negative feedback loop. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback .

It’s negative WRT the chip production rate.

No, still positive. Negative feedback is self-righting, while positive feedback is amplification (to speak in very broad terms.)

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the opposite. Need to let people raise prices to encourage slack in the system. Let’s prices settle where chip makers can produce new chips. There are market failures where the government needs to step in, but this isn’t one. Even with climate change (where they should step in) the government can’t get to the point of saying it’s ok for gas prices to be high. We don’t want the government to pick winners and lose…

> Need to let people raise prices to encourage slack in the system. The scalpers can absorb the rising prices until the desperate companies no longer can afford the increase. That will cause the market crash, which is not good for anyone. I think government should regulate that space so that businesses engaged in scalping could no longer purchase nor sell the chips.

A “crash” in chip prices would be good for those buying chips

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#369
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a positive feedback loop, not a negative feedback loop. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback .

It’s negative WRT the chip production rate.

It does have negative external effects, as you observe, in the sense of a viscious circle. But even a viscious circle, mathematically, has positive feedback, resulting initially in a positive exponent growing against time, not a negative exponent damping out in time.

Re: Chip shortage: Toyota to cut global production by 40%

#370

Many countries have a funny concept of strategic industries. In mine, dairy is a strategic industry that is coddled by government so that we can have a local source. But every country thinks that so there’s foes and allies that can supply us UHT or powder milk on a moment’s notice. And if our milk supply disappeared tomorrow, everyone over 1y could substitute with 10000000 different things for nutrition. Cars are ano…

> picking and choosing which industries are important voting bases.

And on a bribes and corruption basis, to some extent, too?

For example, I never thought about what are the strategic industries, when voting.

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