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Intel might be too big to fail

tomshardware.com

171–180 of 253 posts

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#171
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is why I look forward to the day machines take over millions of peoples jobs. Yes there will be a hard transition but if there are millions of people without the funds to add to the machine how can the machine continue? It is a senseless waste of time having a human stand in front of a hot pot of oil dipping fries and moving them over to a customer. I look forward to the day humans move beyond that. When so many…

> if there are millions of people without the funds to add to the machine how can the machine continue?

Identifying natural resources, extracting them, transforming them, improving the technology of all those steps, selling the results to the rich who own shares in any of those steps.

Even if it is all machines doing the work, there is an economic cycle that continues.

If the machine doesn't need people, by definition it is doing well without them.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which manager receives golden parachute? wtf?

Executive mis management is why companies fail. The majority of the bad decisions are made at the executive level.

I'm asking which managers are receiving golden parachute.

Managers and executives are different groups of people.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not that Intel sales are down. It's that it's spending a massive amount ($160B) on fabs. Fabs are expensive, and much more so if in the US than in Taiwan. It's costing TSMC $65B to build one on Arizona. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-spent-over-160-000-1147...

Yes, every company should ditch their fabs it's not profitable. Oh wait...

The point is that foreign fabs are a very real multi-national security risk. Even if we decide that friend-shoring is acceptable, the best 'we' (folks in the US or the 'west') can do outside of Intel is Samsung.

Depending on TSMC in Taiwan is a disaster waiting to happen, and it also makes a great power conflict there more likely as the asymmetric advantages increase for non-western powers if they were to capture the island. Game-theory would probably suggest that the west should do whatever they can to bring fabrication home, because subsidizing fabs is less expensive than war.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalize and waste removal is an oxymoron.

The IRS is one of the most effective government agencies out there, despite continued lack of funding and political mismanagement. NASA still leads space exploration, despite Congress intervening in its agendas. The mismanagement and waste come from a Congress more obsessed with its re-election and petty politics than it is actually running a gargantuan empire in a sustainable manner, not the agencies themselves, wit…

Have you tried calling the irs ?

If you gave google the authority to jail customers who didn’t buy their services with 25% of income, even google might provide some customer service, but would surely provide better api’s.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#175
some of these crucial companies -- gvt should own the at least 40%. fuck the free market. because of the expertise needed - if the expertise leaves your country, it will never come back.

Intel is one of those companies - where the gvt gets two board seats, while being close to a majority shareholder. not 50% but 40% ish.

I have libertarian leanings btw.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every major communist country has been left in the dust by capitalist ones. Poverty is at a historical low. We have gone from people dying from starvation to complaining that not everyone can buy a house. Nearly everyone has a universally connected borderline supercomputer in their pocket.

Communism is so terrible as a system of government that the U.S. has seen fit to forcefully intervene every time it’s been attempted. Everyone is free to their own opinions, of course – and I’m not wholesale defending communism as it has been attempted – but I find it odd that something which is supposedly so awful can’t just be left alone to wither on the vine, and prove their point.

[deleted]

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#177
post #9

Awesome, I can't wait for me the taxpayer to breathe life into the smoldering shell of a company where the executives and unlimited layers of useless middle management used financial engineering to fool investors about the internal situation while extracting as much money as possible and then bailing out on golden parachutes and landing in soft thick piles of bonuses. Remember when we did this in 2008 under the Obama…

Literally my same conclusion since 2008. Hundreds of thousands of people without jobs? Let it fail. No more domestic semiconductor company? Let it fail. No more domestic aerospace company? LET IT FAIL. We keep avoiding making the hard policy decisions by funneling taxpayer money into the hands of the already-wealthy who promise that this time it’ll be different, this time they won’t give it to shareholders and payout…

The difference between this and the auto industry bailouts in 2008 is that in many peoples' views, the semiconductor situation is a national security concern.

Things are building toward war with China over Taiwan, with TSMC being a major factor.

Militarily there is nothing short of a full-scale open war with China that can prevent this and perhaps not even that.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it dies, hundreds of companies will rise from it's ashes. One of the big problems America has is the tech giants hoovering up all competition. The 70s,80s and 90s weren't boom times because of the fact these tech giants got their break at that time. It's because the market still had 5-7 major semiconductor companies. Fairchild, Motorola, TI, Intel, Zilog, and that's without really thinking about it.

My following question isn’t meant to be snarky or anything besides inquisitive. Question: what about if the thing they’re worried about isn’t about letting it fail, but rather geopolitical and military risk? Could the lead time to get the new companies up and running to fill In the gap be too long for them to not consider it too big of a risk of letting them fail?

    geopolitical and military risk
Yeah, I think that's what's largely missing from this discussion and why the auto industry bailouts of 2008 are a poor comparison point.

There is a non-zero chance that China decides to simply seize Taiwan in the next decade or two.

Militarily there's absolutely nothing to prevent that unless we're willing to go nuclear or launch a land invasion of China (lol) or something; the idea of our carrier groups being an effective deterrent under a constant rain of missiles a couple hundred km from China's mainland is beyond delusional.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalize and waste removal is an oxymoron.

The IRS is one of the most effective government agencies out there, despite continued lack of funding and political mismanagement. NASA still leads space exploration, despite Congress intervening in its agendas. The mismanagement and waste come from a Congress more obsessed with its re-election and petty politics than it is actually running a gargantuan empire in a sustainable manner, not the agencies themselves, wit…

> The IRS is one of the most effective government agencies out there

It is one of the most cost effective agencies because their entire reason d'être is finding missing money and collecting it.

It doesn't really say anything about them being one of the most effective in the sense of good management and having minimal waste. I had to deal with them as an immigrant and it was a nightmare of wait times.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel clearly doesn't have the competence.

Intel is already doing what only a few nations in the world can do, and at a more advanced level than our rival superpower. The view of incompetence is because they are a few years behind cutting edge, and as such, are losing orders. There is absolutely no reason to believe our government is competent enough to solve that particular issue. Heck, China hasn’t succeeded in solving it; and only recently began mass produ…

    The view of incompetence is because they are a few years 
    behind cutting edge, and as such, are losing orders.
Thank you. I thought I was going crazy.

Everybody's talking about Intel like they are turning out absolute garbage. It's true they're lagging the cutting edge, but from reading this discussion you'd think they were trying to sell 2003 P4 Netburst chips in 2024.

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