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Intel might be too big to fail

tomshardware.com

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Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#191

Post by stego-tech »

commandar wrote: post #79
stego-tech wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 option is not a binary between "let it fail" and "no strings attached bailout." If things get bad enough for Intel, the precedent that makes the most sense is to follow the model that was used with GM: the company enters bankruptcy, existing investors and creditors are wiped out, and a new corporate entity backed by the fed.gov steps in and assumes the assets and operations of the company. Once things have suffic…

Admittedly my language was deliberately more inflammatory than it had to be, because I wanted to challenge folks to basically post what you just did. Rather than an endless reform-a-palooza, seizing upon current apathy to champion “let it fail” forces folks to reckon with the reality that nothing is permanent, and if the status quo is unworkable, how do we destroy and rebuild in a constructive way?

Excellent response, gave you the upvote so others will hopefully read it.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#192

Post by stego-tech »

tredre3 wrote: post #179
stego-tech wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, and having been through that hell myself, anything involving both American Bureaucracy AND immigration is just a gigantic suck salad.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#193

Post by stego-tech »

lupusreal wrote: post #76
stego-tech wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that happens, it’s because our Government failed to intervene sooner, and is a damning indictment of Western Capitalism in general. All the more reason to let Intel (or Boeing, or whoever) fail hardcore while we have time to adapt. Intel falling isn’t going to result in a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but it would smack the hell out of politicians and consumers both that globalism, while a nice idea in times of peac…

So let me get this straight; Intel fails and the American government drops the ball, therefore Western Capitalism itself is indicted and China should be free to start a war and send Taiwanese people to reeducation camps? It sounds like that's what you're saying. Here's a tip; part of that "Western Capitalism" thing is governments sensibly not binding themselves to extreme libertarianism and being willing to protect s…

I was going to take this response seriously and write a thought-out retort, but…

> Here’s a tip;

You’re not looking for discourse so much as to have someone agree with your anxiety about a perceived potential conflict and its stakes, and I am not going to be that person to you, sorry.

I made my statements and I stand by them. If you’re extrapolating to the extremes to justify your point of view, then I hate to break it to you but you’re treading ground my OCD has already mapped down to the millimeter. The “National Security” defense is not a valid one absent plans to prevent the exploit of that reasoning by bad actors.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#194

Post by stego-tech »

V_Terranova_Jr wrote: post #190
stego-tech wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something is critical to National Security or Human Survival, it should be Nationalized. So if Intel, or Boeing, or electric companies, or ISPs, or banks are really that necessary to the American Government that letting them fail would jeopardize our national security, then those entities shouldn’t be publicly-traded or privately-owned enterprises, full-stop. Unfortunately, that policy is wholly incompatible with…

I don't know about full-on nationalization, but we have plenty of evidence to show the incentives for publicly-owned for-profit companies whose primary customer is the Government are strongly misaligned with the non-economic interests of the public. I don't have a pat solution to this, but for example, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon have little reason to improve when they have a captive custo…

Excellent comment. As someone who spent time in the MIC, I’m always glad to see others make the same sort of callouts about exploitation of the Government by entities unaligned with and detached from the goals of the people.

Extremes rarely work; rational compromise is what moves the needle forward, bit by bit.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#195

Post by nothercastle »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #187
nothercastle wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The 'the only reason a company exists is to make money for the stockholders' is why we're in this mess right now. Because that's the regime management is operating under. And they are delivering what's demanded. Yeah management is looting companies to the detriment of their long term health. But that's allowed because it aligns their incentives with predatory capitalists.

Stockholders are secondary to c suite. The executives are looting from everyone stockholders included

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#197

Post by hakfoo »

commandar wrote: post #79
stego-tech wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 option is not a binary between "let it fail" and "no strings attached bailout." If things get bad enough for Intel, the precedent that makes the most sense is to follow the model that was used with GM: the company enters bankruptcy, existing investors and creditors are wiped out, and a new corporate entity backed by the fed.gov steps in and assumes the assets and operations of the company. Once things have suffic…

Conrail might be a better alternative model. It really did succeed well enough to re-float and become a competitive endeavour.

The state probably did a better job than a private takeover could have because: - They had effectively infinite backstop-- they could afford to spend years and front load a lot of costs to fix the mess - They had a mandate to restructure the sector beyond a single company. I'd expect a nationalized Intel would have an easier time pivoting to new models, while private investors might be too afraid of killing their current golden geese for, say, a full fab spin-off or becoming a more aggressive x86 licensor.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#199

Post by hakfoo »

bluecalm wrote: post #112
catlikesshrimp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want this (likely) scenario: -Intel Fails -Production stops worldwide. (Not just development) -US scrambling to sort out the supply chains -China invades Taiwan -US Fails Intel must be replaced domestically. At least wait until there is another fab within the US mainland.

The important strategic part of Intel is the foundry business. You can spin it off. It will keep making CPUs designed by multiple other competent US companies. You can let the rest fail.

It might in a few years, but fabs aren't really interchangeable widgets.

Their contract-fab business has been a sporadic joke up to now. Until there's an established toolchain and pipeline, and a history of reliable delivery, will there be anyone designing parts to use the Intel fab capacity?

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#200

Post by Schiendelman »

wg0 wrote: post #25

On a tangent, why there is a general feeling of decline everywhere from Adobe's frustrated customer base to Boeing to Intel and Google's search returning pages and pages of sponsored ads? What's happening?

This is normal, interestingly.

The companies you're used to are aging. New companies are supplanting them as new ideas win. More and more computing is done on phones, meaning Apple, TSMC, Qualcomm, and others are replacing Intel.

Adobe is being supplanted by Pixelmator, Blackmagic, and even Instagram.

Some of Boeing is being supplanted by SpaceX. Some will be replaced with companies like Boom, and Anduril. This is the hardest one - military contractors have a thumb on the scale from our government.

What you're seeing is not decline - it's that these industries are changing in ways that are hard to recognize.

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