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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%

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Permanent layoffs are an unlikely response to a temporary supply disruption, and unemployment aid covers any short term furlough

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A negative feedback loop in semiconductor supply seems like a situation where a government should just step in manage the market a bit.

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

You're assuming that increased profit margins will automatically increase supply chain buffers. But rather, the same incentive to hire too many financialists that "save the company money" will exist, and the extra profit margin will just go to increased dividends.

And increasing the supply chain buffers won't help much right now either, it has to be done during good times. In fact I'd say most of the shortage is from companies deciding to increase their buffers, in the same way as what happened to toilet paper. "Hoarders" and "speculators" are easy illustrations to point to, but the real demand comes from regular consumers silently buying twice as much as they usually do.

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

#383

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.

Indeed. The goal is to not have the government pick industries. Politicizing who gets aid to any greater degree would only serve to further subdue innovation.

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

#385

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.

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

You're clearly not a dairy producer in Wisconsin, a military contractor in Virginia/Maryland, or a property owner in Southern Pines, NC.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're an established adult who owns a house and two cars, your assets have skyrocketted. You're having a great time.

how? can you capitalize on that upside somehow? sell them, live in a tent until prices are down?

I bought another house and am renting the old one out. The new house has an interest rate at 2.3% while inflation is over 5% with conservative estimates.

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

#387
post #325
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly just a reflection of the fact that the value of the dollar has declined precipitously over the last 18 months. Dollar prices are sticky, so it can take a bit of a shock for inflation to “kick in”, but we’ve had plenty of shocks to go around.

I don't think it's fair to attribute "most" of this to inflation. Car prices have been rising much faster than many other components of CPI, so even in real rather than nominal dollars cars are getting more expensive.

The stuff people actually care about has been rising faster than CPI. Cars, housing, meat, metals, lumber, etc. are all going through the roof. Inflation is a vector, and any reduction to a scalar involves taking the dot product of that vector with a weight vector. Under my personal weight vector, and I suspect most people’s weight vector, inflation is a lot higher than CPI.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to a market inefficiency isn't to involve a more inefficient entity.

That sounds nice, but a singular entity within a government, entrusted with the necessary power to regulate the relevant parts of the market without too much coordination overhead with other government entities, is actually much more efficient at resolving market inefficiencies than the free market. Case in point: production of vaccines. That's also obvious: the inefficiency in governments originates largely from coo…

The government did very little in managing vaccine production other than act as purchaser, how is this an example of them managing a market?

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

#389

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…

> Every country props up its auto industry, so why worry about a domestic supply?

War. In the event a war breaks out, a running auto plant can be re-tooled relatively rapidly into a light and heavy armor plant. It's not even a question of whether allies could supply tanks and troop transports; it's about having domestic capacity to make them because enemies could execute blockades and disrupt allied resource supply.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the Herbert Hoover approach.

I wonder how many of these people rant about how bad the government is while using GPS to navigate their way to work on government funded roadways.

They can't even manage a trivial task like maintaining roads and bridges properly.

You could have hardly picked a worse example than the government roads system (including our thousands of dilapidated bridges), which is in absolutely horrific condition and is a humiliating example for the government. It's the opposite of a good example.

That's all due to lack of funding, one might suggest? They're not lacking for funds. They spent our money on blowing up other countries and then (occasionally) attempting to rebuild them. Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Korea and 497 other cases of meddling and foreign adventurism. There rests $10 trillion in infrastructure money. No, they have had plenty of our money to spend, and they chose to squander it.

What ever would we do if we didn't have those hyper incompetent clowns to manage our roads.

GPS is trivial. If Russia can do it, various US private corporations could easily do it just the same.

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