Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants • Hacker News Board

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

#651

Post by sovande » Sun, Mar 24, 2024, 8:13 AM UTC

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #591

fransje26 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiding behind "it's complicated" is an over-used excuse to avoid a more critical look at a problem. A one year point is a crude approximation, but it does illustrate the order of magnitude mismatch between what they could pay their employees vs what they actually pay them, which was the short point being made. More broadly, TSMC had no problem shelling out $9.9 billion to shareholders that same year (or $123,000+ per…

Our markets, not even remotely isolated to semiconductor, are saturated in these bloated old businesses that are running on the razor's edge of financial ruin, yet every quarter are paying out catastrophic amounts of money in stock buybacks and generous compensation packages for the executives running them into the ground. It's beyond fucking parody at this point. Also I wonder what the excuses will be once all the u…

The effect of globalization is that the west is bringing the rest of the world over the poverty line at the cost of deteriorating ourselves. Hard to say how this will end.

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

#652

Post by rhelz » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

gen220 wrote: post #648

rhelz wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raising taxes in an inflationary environment is scarier than raising taxes in a deflationary environment. I know it can be scary, but, we are going to have to muster the courage to try unorthodox things--like actually paying the bills. Raising taxes in an inflationary environment can be a very beneficial move. Why? Higher taxes reduce demand, which helps fight inflation. This takes some pressure off of the Fed. The…

I mean I totally agree with you, I just don't think there's political willpower to swallow the pill and actually pass legislation that would increase taxes. Because, all else equal, capital owners (who set the policy agenda in Congress) would prefer to keep their wealth continue rolling the dice until they can't anymore.

Its easy to forget--but we are the many; they are the few. And Trump hasn't quite succeeded in rendering our votes moot. Capital owners can only control congress by persuading us that we should let them.

I believe its a very good thing that we have billionaires--look at what China's economy did once they let some people become billionaires. But in China or anywhere else, there are only billionaires because we believe that their existence benefits us--that we are better off if there are billionaires around.

If it doesn't benefit us to have them around, eventually we will all figure that out and change things so that once again they do benefit us.

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

#653

Post by rhelz » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 9:59 PM UTC

hnfong wrote: post #649

rhelz wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you do? Build two fabs and make $48 billion, or build two fabs and make $80 billion? It might be hard to remember now, but Intel was in the position NVIDIA is today: they could sell absolutely every x86 processor they could make, at pretty much any price they cared to name. So even if Intel could have built another fab (which, btw, it couldn't, the world only graduates so many solid-state physics Ph.D.'s p…

Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta sunk billions into ventures that aren’t half as profitable as your hypothetical 8B deal, and shareholders haven’t sued yet. Of course the founders have majority voting shares, but that doesn’t prevent them from being sued. It only prevents them/their designated CEO from being fired.

Theres a few differences between Intel and Google here. The first two points are from Peter Thiel:

1. Google really didn't know what to do with its excess money, which was why it was just stockpiling it and not using it to invest in its own business.

Intel, by contrast, always knew (at least in the Noyce/Grove era) what to do with its money.

2. Google's "side projects" were false-flags and smokescreens to make it look like it wasn't a monopoly. (Thiel says it much better himself in his article and speech titled "competition is for losers"-highly recommended).

Intel did a similar thing around the turn of the century, when it started making ARM chips--not because they were the most profitable thing they could be doing but because they didn't want to look like a monopoly.

And, of course, you really hit the nail on the thumb here:

> Of course the founders have majority voting shares

Yeah. The executives of google and facebook just don't face the same accountability from the shareholders that the execs of any honestly-governed public company does.

Its a two-edged sword: if google or facebook needs to spend a lot of money to pivot, they have the flexibility to do that in a way which other companies don't. However, the flip side implication is that, e.g. Zuckerberg can just spend $10 billion on a huge project, without being at all held accountable if it fails.

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

#654

Post by rhelz » Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 10:10 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #622

ericmay wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the US would come to the defense of Taiwan, it would use assets in the region so that includes naval and air assets. The air assets are based in locations such as Guam and Japan (among others). The US would launch sorties from those bases amongst others. Can you think of a scenario in which China would attempt the worlds all-time largest amphibious invasion of Taiwan and then let the US just fly missions and dr…

>Since the US would come to the defense of Taiwan, it would use assets in the region so that includes naval and air assets. Such use of American forces based in Japan would require consent from the latter, which is not a given. >Article 4 suggests that the United States will consult with Japan in some manner on how it uses the U.S. troops based in Japan.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperat…

The US will never come to the defense of Taiwan. The US and China will never go to war with each other. Nuclear powers do not fight each other directly, they do it through proxies, like we are doing with Ukraine vs. Russia.

The U.S. might send money and materiel, they might get the U.N. to issue statements, but an actual shooting war between China and America? Forget it. It will never happen, because if it did happen, life would not be worth living anywhere on earth for the next 50,000 years.

And even sanctions are highly doubtful. Personally, I really like being able to design a circuit board and get it fabricated and shipped to my front door from China for $25. And massively interrupting the trade flow between China and the U.S. would lead to a world-wide depression which would make 2008 and the great depression look like boom times.

Surely Taiwan knows this, and I suspect that is why TSMC wants to build fabs outside of Taiwan.

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

#655

Post by hnfong » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 2:54 PM UTC

rhelz wrote: post #653

hnfong wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google/Alphabet and Facebook/Meta sunk billions into ventures that aren’t half as profitable as your hypothetical 8B deal, and shareholders haven’t sued yet. Of course the founders have majority voting shares, but that doesn’t prevent them from being sued. It only prevents them/their designated CEO from being fired.

Theres a few differences between Intel and Google here. The first two points are from Peter Thiel: 1. Google really didn't know what to do with its excess money, which was why it was just stockpiling it and not using it to invest in its own business. Intel, by contrast, always knew (at least in the Noyce/Grove era) what to do with its money. 2. Google's "side projects" were false-flags and smokescreens to make it loo…

Right, and the ironic thing is that the founder having majority voting shares was allegedly justified by the idea that it would solve the innovators dilemma by not having the founders ("proven" capable of building successful products) being accountable to the short-term whims of the shareholder.

That said... my original point was that the shareholders don't sue in such situations. Rather, they just vote out the board (and hence CEO). If they could sue the board/CEO for not making as much profit as theoretically possible, they would have already sued Meta or Alphabet already despite having only minority shares. Proving to a court that the board/CEO isn't acting in the shareholder's best interest isn't as easy as comparing the projected returns of two mutually-exclusive deals -- they can argue that the ostensibly less profitable deal actually has great long term benefits.

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

#656

Post by rhelz » Tue, Mar 26, 2024, 4:43 PM UTC

hnfong wrote: post #655

rhelz wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a few differences between Intel and Google here. The first two points are from Peter Thiel: 1. Google really didn't know what to do with its excess money, which was why it was just stockpiling it and not using it to invest in its own business. Intel, by contrast, always knew (at least in the Noyce/Grove era) what to do with its money. 2. Google's "side projects" were false-flags and smokescreens to make it loo…

Right, and the ironic thing is that the founder having majority voting shares was allegedly justified by the idea that it would solve the innovators dilemma by not having the founders ("proven" capable of building successful products) being accountable to the short-term whims of the shareholder. That said... my original point was that the shareholders don't sue in such situations. Rather, they just vote out the board…

> don't sue in such situations. Rather, they just vote out the board

cf. with the shareholder suit against Tesla. Why did they sue instead of firing the board of directors?

To vote out the board, you need >50% of the shareholders to back you. To sue the board, all you need is 1 disgruntled investor.

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

#657

Post by shiroiushi » Thu, Mar 28, 2024, 4:13 AM UTC

anonuser123456 wrote: post #471

shiroiushi wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It's why authoritarian and/or single-party nations have so much more potential to succeed. It's why China did so well for a while. However, in practice, as we've seen with China and others, authoritarianism only works well when the people at the top are really smart and don't have some major character flaws (i.e., the "benevolent dictator"). Eventually, you get a dictator who's a narcissist or moron or fruit…

Seems to have worked for Russia.

It has? Russia has a dictator now who's obviously some kind of narcissist, and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. His hold on power is tenuous at best, and there's a good chance he'll be deposed before long.