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TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

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Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#91
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is wildly off base. Lots of them don’t want to have kids. The government has many ways to influence the public. But I don’t think it’s true to say that they have so much control over their populace that they could do anything like double their population in 20 years, let alone 2. People in China are just people, right? Many of them don’t want to have kids. What’s the government gonna do? Of course, hypot…

> People in China are just people, right? Many of them don’t want to have kids. What’s the government gonna do? See the Cultural Revolution and Great Famine etc for examples of what it can do. Basically anything.

> See the Cultural Revolution and Great Famine etc for examples of what it can do. Basically anything.

Even assuming China is all powerful and can achieve "anything" here, the policies would still have a latency of an entire generation. Unless you include time-travel as part of "anything".

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing that needs solved. It's ideal to shrink the global population while boosting per capita quality of life. The focus should be on improving per capita, not on expanding the overall economic size or population numbers. Providing housing to young families will not make a meaningful dent to declining demographics in the affluent world. People do not want to have so many children (3-5 or more) and it's not…

> There's nothing that needs solved. It's ideal to shrink the global population while boosting per capita quality of life. The focus should be on improving per capita, not on expanding the overall economic size or population numbers. Then why do we simultaneously import millions of workers each year to make up for the supposed shortage of natural population growth (caused by policy)?

In part because importing people without paying for 12 years of public education is an economic bargain.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> less for some (like oil and gas) If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. Whereas China has a huge amount of not-good-for-much desert and mountains which could become a solar powerhouse.

> If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. 2nd and 3rd world countries are going to bathe in cheap oil when/if the 1st world bans it. How do you plan on enforcing the bans globally?

We kinda enforce "don't trade slaves" globally... And "No child labour"... And "don't steal other countries ships when they sail near your country".

"Don't emit more than your fair share of carbon" is just another rule like the others. If most countries agree, but there are a few dissenters, we can deal with it like other international disagreements - warnings, then sanctions, then war.

Currently, we're far from that, because we don't have a majority of countries agreeing on carbon caps.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. position on the entire Chinese semiconductor industry is getting increasingly ridiculous. It's not just chips, since China is the one country that's developed efficient monocrystalline silicon ingot production at scale, and solar panels made with that material are far superior to anything made in the USA currently. The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technol…

> The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technological infrastructure capability, and China is now in the lead - so the response is, stop trading with China on all things silicon? "Force people to try to come up with alternatives rather than rely on that single external source that short-term thinking created" seems a lot smarter than you give it credit for.

Hmm, and wouldn't that work both ways? What's stopping this from being an impetus for China to stop being dependent on US-allied countries for semiconductor fabrication?

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. position on the entire Chinese semiconductor industry is getting increasingly ridiculous. It's not just chips, since China is the one country that's developed efficient monocrystalline silicon ingot production at scale, and solar panels made with that material are far superior to anything made in the USA currently. The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technol…

> The USA's financialized short-term thinking has resulted in a failure to develop basic technological infrastructure capability, and China is now in the lead - so the response is, stop trading with China on all things silicon? "Force people to try to come up with alternatives rather than rely on that single external source that short-term thinking created" seems a lot smarter than you give it credit for.

This is one advantage of tariffs. Increase the costs. For some applications there are easy substitutes, for others it is harder which incentivizes the creation of alternatives.

Of course the downside of tariffs are also well-known. Retaliation tariffs that damage your own industry. Increased costs being passed own downstream in the economy resulting in less value creation. The overall deadweight loss of not utilizing comparative advantage.

It still might be worth it, but you don't get that "force" for free.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If worldwide carbon caps and tariffs become a thing, the oil and gas in the ground suddenly becomes nearly worthless if you can't use it. 2nd and 3rd world countries are going to bathe in cheap oil when/if the 1st world bans it. How do you plan on enforcing the bans globally?

We kinda enforce "don't trade slaves" globally... And "No child labour"... And "don't steal other countries ships when they sail near your country". "Don't emit more than your fair share of carbon" is just another rule like the others. If most countries agree, but there are a few dissenters, we can deal with it like other international disagreements - warnings, then sanctions, then war. Currently, we're far from that…

So the British Navy is gone blockade Africa so they cant import oil from the middle east? Great plan.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's everything but ridiculous. China is developing its military at incredible speed and currency wars usually lead to economic and then real wars. It's a terrible thing that none of us wants, but happens anyways.

I imagine the Raytheon/Lockheed/etc. crowd does want increased military tensions with China to justify bloated MIC budgets into the foreseeable future, and of course that's one of the few manufacturing centers in the US that hasn't been heavily outsourced to sweatshop labor zones. It's not very productive in the long run, however - for example, a tank is only 'economically productive' if your economic model is based…

US isnt outsourcing to sweatshops. China is actually innovating manufacturing and often do things better.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the Raytheon/Lockheed/etc. crowd does want increased military tensions with China to justify bloated MIC budgets into the foreseeable future, and of course that's one of the few manufacturing centers in the US that hasn't been heavily outsourced to sweatshop labor zones. It's not very productive in the long run, however - for example, a tank is only 'economically productive' if your economic model is based…

War is a general consequence of monetary system problems, so just blaming it on the military wanting to be bigger (which is true for every organization) doesn't look totally at the big picture. I love Shelling out: The origins of money blog post from Nick Szabo as it's a great explanation of how having a hard monetary system with small inflation shared by everybody the parties to be more peaceful. US had a trade rela…

War for the most part is not the result of currency problems. Unless you consider dictators wanting more currency to be a currency problem.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#99
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"nearly everyone has"? I doubt more than 30% owns their advanced hardware e.g hardware created after 2017

1.5 billion cell phones were sold in 2018. This represents 20% of the world population, assuming a negligible number of people buy two phones in the same calendar year. Between 1.4 and 1.5 billion cell phones were sold in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (projected), representing roughly another 6 billion cell phones. That is, there is roughly one cell phone per person in the world "created after 2017." Obviously, a signif…

Outside of the first world those phones are often running on other brand processors, e.g. mediatek

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#100

When the world population is ~ 8 billion people, thats only a little over $2 per person spent at TSMC in Q3. Which really doesn't seem like much for the company that makes the most expensive part of gadgets nearly everyone has.

> most expensive part of gadgets nearly everyone has I think that's where your assumption might be flawed. It's the most expensive part for PREMIUM offerings on the market that command high price points (e.g. iPhone, AMD Server chips, etc). The everyday person, globally, can't afford such luxury items.

Between samsung, mediatek, allwinner and other lower end brands theres a lot of non tsmc processors
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