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America’s semiconductor boom [video]

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Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#111
post #70
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're in a air-conditioned environment the outside world doesn't matter. More likely he compared the 4nm yield to the 3nm yield in Taiwan?

The moisture of the outside world might not matter. But aircon doesn't protect you from earthquakes, alas.

So, how many earthquakes there were?

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They sent Taiwanese over to clean up because they just couldn't handle all the American blue-collar workers. Translation: Unions got in the way of actually efficient construction so they had to bypass them with their own people. Unions in the US, in general, are extremely luddite as any new technology improvement that's better is treated with hatred because it removes jobs from the union's control. This is how the…

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, tha…

> Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level

You mean: Capitalism is luddite at the individual level. At the aggregate level, it's the opposite.

> in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible

As opposed to...?

> Once a market is controlled by a few players - ALL TRUE GROWTH STOPS

I'm not trying to be insulting but I think you need to read a bit more about the world before capitalism. Before the Renaissance Italian and Dutch innovations in banking, company ownership, etc.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, tha…

Isn’t TSMC one of like 3 semiconductor producers on the planet? And wouldn’t that satisfy your claim of “once a market is controlled by a few players, all true growth stops”? But we’ve seen phenomenal and continuous improvements over the last few years. So which part of our situation do we have to re-interpret for your claim to be correct? Is the growth not “true”? Is 3 not “a few players”? Or is, perhaps, your outlo…

I think you can understand quite simply why that isn't a standard type of example - far, far more companies and industries exist like my example, owned and dominated by a small number of companies that operate essentially in lockstep - same pricing, branding, type of products - none of the players trying to innovate at all, as that would threaten their status quo. This is everything in life nowadays, pretend otherwise, but as soon as you realize lie 5 companies own all the brands, it's all going to to make sense.

With micro chips, 1 company has all the companies by the balls - nobody likes that, so this is a bit different bc there is also room for several companies "Top level" chip manufacturers - for sure more than 1, so although it seems like that industry proves me wrong - it also proves me exactly right also.

Think about the demand for graphic cards with a lot of ram right now for an example - ALL PF EVERYONE knew we needed more than 8gigs of ram last generation but they still rolled out them this generation and there are still even smaller 4gb cards being made - look at an HP or Dell desktops or laptops, look at Gamepass now, so much evidence of the exact formula I described - bc it's like a rule, we just didn't have enough "East India Trading Companies" and couldn't see enough of the whole picture of capitalism, before we all globally started thinking in that mindset.

Capitalism doesn't give a fuck about innovation or quality or providing or services, or the 3 ps - only money. All of us are going to start understanding this in self evident ways as our lives continue - unless we pivot.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, tha…

> Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level You mean: Capitalism is luddite at the individual level. At the aggregate level, it's the opposite. > in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible As opposed to...? > Once a market is controlled by a few players - ALL TRUE GROWTH STOPS I'm not trying to be insulting but I think you need to read a bit more about the world b…

All of that was capitalism before we invented the word capitalism. Systems of domination, like monarchy, work well as examples of the kind of capitalism we have now - if Microsoft changes something huge with digital document creation, so will all others that create documents, like how all games will find their way onto a Gamepass in the next few years.

Eventually, making a game without a subscription model will not accepted by the distributors (Xbox, Epic, Steam) and games will be made with tiers of subscription play, from conception and the drawing on up - not like DLC now, bc it couldn't be the way it will be until now - bc one player/a small number of companies have so much control.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, tha…

Isn’t TSMC one of like 3 semiconductor producers on the planet? And wouldn’t that satisfy your claim of “once a market is controlled by a few players, all true growth stops”? But we’ve seen phenomenal and continuous improvements over the last few years. So which part of our situation do we have to re-interpret for your claim to be correct? Is the growth not “true”? Is 3 not “a few players”? Or is, perhaps, your outlo…

good point, but to push back a bit, I think geopolitical factors such as Taiwan's Silicon Shield and the related AI arms race are as much responsible as free market principles for semiconductor improvements recently.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#116
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are they going to give back the money they got from the feds to build them?

Didn’t the feds just get 10% of the company?

The way that worked is that part of the CHIPs act after Intel reached a milestone the USG handed them a bag of cash.

Intel failed at finishing a bunch of milestones so there was a large pot of money Intel did not get. Trump gave them that pot of money in return for 10% stock.

You can make up your own mind about whether investing money into a company that couldn't achieve milestones is a good idea.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, tha…

> Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level You mean: Capitalism is luddite at the individual level. At the aggregate level, it's the opposite. > in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible As opposed to...? > Once a market is controlled by a few players - ALL TRUE GROWTH STOPS I'm not trying to be insulting but I think you need to read a bit more about the world b…

Bc this is HN - I will clarify. I know there wasn't capitalism, I don't even mean economic system in the start of my reply - The Medicis for example - they were very opportunistic, selfishly greedy, and exploitative, with power as their primary pursuit tho, not money.

Today money is power - power like the royal power even, so capitalism today, being late stage, will solely become about exploitation as the powerful and wealthy become further away away from the innovations, they will support innovations less and less, etc.

I don't know, I think capitalism is super broken, and now that it is broke, it can only get more broken and nobody will ever catch up to those benefiting from it being broken now - mostly just bc they were rich at the right time too. The pandemic addition of wealth to the top 1% as examples - they are all already like batman and tony, all researching life extension and blah, blah - tbh, I think everyone can understand this.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does America need to produce the talent or can they import it?

I worked at a US college that had a big semiconductor engineering and manufacturing engineering program. They were about 20-30% international, but the program wasn’t huge. Frankly, it’s shitty work. Software is where it’s at. Hardware people get paid peanuts and work really hard. When you’re a master of a particular technology, you get discarded when the next thing comes along. Ask the people at Intel or IBM. The bes…

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Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t TSMC one of like 3 semiconductor producers on the planet? And wouldn’t that satisfy your claim of “once a market is controlled by a few players, all true growth stops”? But we’ve seen phenomenal and continuous improvements over the last few years. So which part of our situation do we have to re-interpret for your claim to be correct? Is the growth not “true”? Is 3 not “a few players”? Or is, perhaps, your outlo…

good point, but to push back a bit, I think geopolitical factors such as Taiwan's Silicon Shield and the related AI arms race are as much responsible as free market principles for semiconductor improvements recently.

I completely agree - which I must also concede definitely appears to be capitalism and is even functionally capitalist (about as capitalist as can be even) tho the external factors that helped to force the internal innovation and extremely driven and dedicated investments to staying ahead weren't solely economic or profit - they were all about competition tho ;)

It's a good example of capitalism that kinda works right now - but, it could easily be the opposite... if China did takeover Taiwan, that company could easily (would likely very aggressively) do exactly all the late stage capitalism, death to innovation, money machine stuff that I've been describing - as almost/all other companies have done so with similar market positions.

tl;Dr: The only reason they are still making such good stuff is bc they needed/still need to be the silicon shield.

Re: America’s semiconductor boom [video]

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They sent Taiwanese over to clean up because they just couldn't handle all the American blue-collar workers. Translation: Unions got in the way of actually efficient construction so they had to bypass them with their own people. Unions in the US, in general, are extremely luddite as any new technology improvement that's better is treated with hatred because it removes jobs from the union's control. This is how the…

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, tha…

That's a funny take, since reading the history of Luddism I've always interpreted it to be anti-capitalist. The Luddites were peasants that had their way of making a living disrupted by a high capital expenditure technology that they could not compete against and thus took to destroying it.
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