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Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

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Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#562
post #515
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just hope you don't loose your love for pizza.

Or lose your pizza making wages to wafer makers applying their wafer making skills to pizza making.

they already have that, it's called dominoes. there's still a market for tattooed freaks with culinary opinions throwing dough and poking a fire with a stick

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#563
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South America is very underrated. People still think about the region in 20-30 year old stereotypes, but most countries have gotten much more stable, economics have improved drastically. Workforce is highly educated, different countries share a very similar culture and mostly speak the same language, which means that a lot of things can be scaled much easier. Of course, there's also Portuguese, which is still somewha…

Venezuela's perpetual political/economic fuck-ups (going on 125 years at this point? [0]), Argentina's recurring currency fuck-ups, some really nasty left-wing vs right-wing spats between countries, and a generally weak rule of law / judiciary (in comparison with executive branches) deserve mentioning too. South America could stand to learn a LOT from ASEAN -- stability = international investment = economic growth =…

The problem is that the “stability” and invesment interventions from the USA has typically come with some rather unpleasant strings attached. I think it’s either patronising or ignorant to suggest that various Latin American countries policy decisions weren’t made with that in mind.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#565
I liked that US govt approved the Chips ACT, but I'm skeptic whether that will actually meaningfully change the manufacturing ability in-house.

The problem with US corporations is they are run by MBA management who are experts in stock price manipulation instead of manufacturing and engineering. So you could spend 100s of Billions and they don't materialize into much.

We see the same troubles at Boeing.

US has over-optimized for finance shenanigans at the cost of hard engineering.

SpaceX is perhaps something that truly stands out in terms of radical engineering mindset. If the same funding was applied to NASA they wouldn't have achieved a 10th of what SpaceX did.

Some corporations are just very inefficient. Intel being one of them.

I am for public funds being invested into companies only if they meet certain milestones, and new funding is only done if previous milestones are met.

Otherwise it goes from tax payers to some exec's pocket.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#566
Cool. So, where you getting that labor you smothered out for shareholder value all those years ago? I both hate this but support this. I hate it because no one will learn their lesson and Chicago economics will go on being a theory from autists imposed on the rest of us with constant “externality” costs. Supportive because any fool not indoctrinated into the Chicago school could have seen what happens on a long enough timeline in such a fragile situation and this technology will make or break a nation in the current zeitgeist.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#567
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it blows my mind they were able to give control of one of the most important industries in the world over to a foreign country like that.

That’s the power of slave labour. Global economy is really modern day slavery. When you are making trillions in USD in the USA, paying someone in china $2 a day would’ve been an Egyptian pharaohs dream.

Calling Taiwanese semiconductor workers “slave labor” may be the funniest take I’ve seen all week. Have you been to Taiwan??

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean .. if you want to waste a bunch of money and prepare for an unlikely war then it still doesn't make sense to worry about chips. You probably should build fallout shelters and secure things like domestic fertilizer production and the make sure agricultural equipment can be entirely made domestically Even in the most benign case, if China is for whatever reason peacefully cut off from the global economy and we h…

Preparing for supply chain issues during wartime and peacetime look very similar other than defence spending. Simplifying supply chains and reducing dependencies helps whether your concern is war, a pandemic, or economic change. We put chips in almost everything today. If we can live without chips them so be it, but assuming we'd rather not feel the full impact of have zero chips for whatever reason we'd be smart to…

What your proposing would basically entail countries indefinitely subsidizing a huge fraction of their economies so that everything is made domestically. You would just keep doing it and keep waiting for a war. It would be incredibly inefficient and make things significantly more expensive and your nation would fall behind (see North Korea). More importantly, by eliminating economic interdependence you create a much more dangerous world where demagogues can easily start wars b/c they can be sustained by these independent domestic economies

But even in this horror parallel reality of yours, cutting edge chips would still be very far down the list of things that are important. Can you provide basic sanitation without anything made in China? Transport? Medical care? Can you feed your nation? Can you maintain your nations basic infrastructure?

Having to go back a few generations in chips is just irrelevant at the scale of disaster you're envisioning

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#569
post #565

I liked that US govt approved the Chips ACT, but I'm skeptic whether that will actually meaningfully change the manufacturing ability in-house. The problem with US corporations is they are run by MBA management who are experts in stock price manipulation instead of manufacturing and engineering. So you could spend 100s of Billions and they don't materialize into much. We see the same troubles at Boeing. US has over-o…

I think that this will be a good case study in the future of whether or not you can de-MBA an organization.

I can’t remember too many cases of organizations fixing themselves in this context. Microsoft is the largest example I can think of.

Re: Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

#570
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying this with snark, but how many of those former peers work for companies with a clear pipeline to train people? Usually when I hear complaints like "We can't hire or keep good help" it's correlated with a company who isn't willing to invest in developing their workforce.

Not sure where in construction he was, but I've worked framing crews before, and the boss would hire anybody (not disabled) who said they were willing to work hard. It isn't hard to teach someone the basic tasks and most people could catch on in just an hour. Most people though realized it was physically hard work and quit in a week (even though this should be obvious). Plumbers and electricians have a good start fro…

If you are training people and they aren’t staying, isn’t the implication that you aren’t paying them enough? Those union apprenticeships are often hard to come by because 1) they pay quite well compared to other viable options and 2) people don't want to leave because of #1. If the job is demanding, the pay should be commensurate. The exception is if it’s rewarding on some other axis (e.g., socially).
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