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TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

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Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#101

Post by bee_rider »

londons_explore wrote: post #60
sonotathrowaway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has the fastest aging population in recorded human history, along with some of the worst demographics. What exact advantages do you see in that?

I think China could easily fix their demographics if they wanted to. They have sufficient control of their population that if they said "everyone of child bearing age must try for a child this year and next", they'd probably double their population within 2 years. The 'demographic problem' is only a problem because they don't see it as an issue worth fixing.

I don't think you can fix population issues in 2 years. Takes ~20 to make an adult (unless you have a liberal, multi-cultural society -- American adult citizens could be made in an afternoon if we shifted some laws around).

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#102

Post by dirtyid »

sonotathrowaway wrote: post #55
pweezy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China overtaking the US seems a lot more likely based on sheer numbers. China’s population is over 4x larger than that of the US. So China “just” needs to reach a GDP per capita of 25% to have a larger economy than the US. This metric has been growing rapidly in the past decade or two and from a rough search, seems to currently stand around 17-18% of the US’s figure. Of course GDP isn’t the only factor in world power…

China has the fastest aging population in recorded human history, along with some of the worst demographics. What exact advantages do you see in that?

PRC demographics are extremely advantageous for great power competition / building comprehensive national power going forward. The TLDR is PRC leadership has been too preoccupied with sustaining 1.4B people, huge% of which are old and undereducated (to be blunt: a drain) that drags on her potential. Shedding quantity while improving quality will significantly improve PRC competitiveness.

Family planning / One Child Policy = concentrating resources on only kids = PRC now produces comparable STEM talent as all OECD countries combined. Demographic bomb collapists narrative fixate on absolute population decline without realizing PRC is starting to undergo the largest (by an order of magnitude) high-skill demographic divident in "recorded history" that will last decades. Meanwhile reducing net population = declining import dependency over time = more strategic (military) flexbility. Combine with massive home ownership % and high savings rate, and most of population likely settle around middle / low high income = no expectation for onerous social safety nets.

Over the next 10-30 years, we will see PRC (even with shit tier TFR) close/lead in technology due to having the largest and likely best talent pool (courtesy of PRC scale), that exceeds what US can produce domestically + immigration. Which will also erode western dominance/economy for high value niches it tried to fence off for itself. Also a PRC with increasingly less import vunerability due to lower absolute population, which mitigates much of the geographic shortcomings, i.e. first island chain "containment" nations that will be forever import dependant will lose their geographic leverage. Meanwhile increasingly burdensome social nets will drag down / destablize developed economies vs PRC who can sustain domestic serenity on relatively lean welfare estate.

Yes, generally, PRC nationals (Tier 2/3/4 cities) will (continue) to have worse QOL relative to developed societies. But in terms of overtaking US, and improving existing strategic enviroment, demographic trends are pointing up, up, up.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#103

Post by sudosysgen »

majormajor wrote: post #85
photochemsyn wrote: post #28

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.

You normally do that using a University, a national lab, an SoE, or subsidies. Not using export control and sanctions .

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#104

Post by addaon »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #99
addaon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The comment I was replying to was about advanced devices in general, not specifically TSMC.

That said, MediaTek is not the greatest example here -- they're fabless, and most of what they design is fabbed by, you guessed it, TSMC. The better counter-example would be Samsung, who fabs at least some of their own chips.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#105

Post by hnfong »

epicureanideal wrote: post #81
zztop44 wrote: 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.

Killing people is much easier than making people raise babies.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#106

Post by bee_rider »

panick21_ wrote: post #98
xiphias2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the theory would be more like, dictator mismanages economy, uses saber rattling as a distraction, and then things spiral out of control from there. I think this is still wrong in the sense that pointing toward any one thing as the only cause of big geopolitical stuff is wrong, but at least it is a coherent theory.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#107

Post by bee_rider »

xadhominemx wrote: post #53
photochemsyn wrote: post #28

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…

Respectfully, there is so much that is just factually incorrect in your comment that I don’t want to bother to even respond. Please just save us the hassle and delete, and in the future refrain from speaking confidently about topics of which you have zero clue.

How do you think you are adding to the discussion with this comment?

If you want to interject into a discussion with some new, interesting argument, that's one thing.

Interjecting into a discussion which you weren't involved in in the first place, just to say that you don't want to respond to it, is frankly bizarre.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#108

Post by breck »

chrsw wrote: post #43
breck wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though perhaps you could say they sell derivatives of software products? I'm assuming they write the best custom chip design software and that's their biggest competitive advantage (and then operational excellence and savvy business maneuvering et cetera). Though I know nothing about them just guessing as an outsider.

TSMC doesn't really write chip design software. Maybe they do at some small level but that's not their bread and butter. TSMC provides IP engineers need to design chips to be built by TSMC. That IP is used by CAD tools from major players like Cadence, Synopsys and Mentor (now Siemens, I guess). TSMC's advantage is their superior chip fabrication technology and ability to scale.

Got it. TSMC provides an Internal Protocol that others can use to get chips built. An API for physical world. Interesting. Thank you!

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#109

Post by epicureanideal »

Retric wrote: post #92
epicureanideal wrote: post #80

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. 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.

But many of those coming here are not well educated. Hard working maybe, adventurous certainly, but often economically deprived and undereducated as a result, or so I’ve read.

Re: TSMC Reports Q3 Earnings [pdf]

#110

Post by Retric »

epicureanideal wrote: post #109
Retric wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But many of those coming here are not well educated. Hard working maybe, adventurous certainly, but often economically deprived and undereducated as a result, or so I’ve read.

There is a real illegal vs legal split here, legal immigrants tend to be quite well educated. The majority of illegal immigrants have a high school degree but they are definitely less educated than the average American.

That said, while undocumented immigrants tend to be less educated being able to work when we didn’t pay for any of their education is still a boon. It’s something of a waste to pay for 12 years of education and then have someone doing manual labor.

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