Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022 • Hacker News Board

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#391

Post by bildung » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

hutrdvnj wrote: post #137

kbaker wrote: post #114

One important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on. Every IC is being bought up by new 3rd party distributors to scalp to desperate electronics manufacturers. Take a look at this chip we are just now crossing as an example, click on 'Non-authorized stocking distributors': https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r... Win Source has a bunch, but you will pay 6x th…

Scalpers are not the problem as they seem, they are like market makers for stock exchanges. They buy low and sell high, always. The factory could tell you that they're currently out of stock for the next few months, but a scalper will never be out of stock, because their prices rises so high that only very few desperate companies would buy. The point is, it's better to have the option to buy something at a high price…

> The point is, it's better to have the option to buy something at a high price

On a macro level this doesn't change anything (besides distribution in a limited way), as this doesn't increase production, or am I missing something?

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#392

Post by King-Aaron » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:27 AM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #389

King-Aaron wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a new wave of neo-capitalists who seem to be actively sympathising with (if not encouraging) scalping. "It's just the way the free market works!" "That's how retailers always worked!" "It levels out demand!". Such grubby people. In basically all my hobbies, scalping has become the norm now. Computers, Japanese cars, tabletop games, hell even kids toys. It does feel like there's been a massive increase in…

So what's your solution? If there is limited number of 3090 GPUs should they be allocated to those who order them first? By random? Auction? Scalpers at least ensure you can get it of you really need it (that is willing to pay a lot).

I don't have a solution nor do I think I need to offer one, I just think that people who engage in (and sympathise with) scalping are grubby people.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#393

Post by TheGigaChad » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:38 AM UTC

88840-8855 wrote: post #131

oblio wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, your original comment was this: > I try to simplify the root cause like this: > - people kept getting money while not working > - those people did not work, hence, no goods were produced > Same amount of money without the goods in the market. Inflation and good shortages. I believe that those government helicopter money was a huge mistake. It would have been better to lay off people; many have money sav…

I think you are wrong.

Chad answer.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#394

Post by TheGigaChad » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:39 AM UTC

88840-8855 wrote: post #17

Edit: Too many downvotes for my view that this Opel case is yet another symptom of the wrong handling of the panedmic by any governments, leading to inflation and supply chain disruptions. If opinions are downvoted then I do not need to participate.

The soylets cannot handle the truth, so they downvote :(

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#395

Post by roenxi » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:41 AM UTC

iseanstevens wrote: post #309

yholio wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalpers perform a social service by rationing demand and ensuring availability. They don't eat the whole consumer surplus, rather, they must compete amongst themselves and the price you pay is the amount that makes client N+1 walk away if total supply is N. Some of the buyers will find that close to their margin, but others, for which the product is essential in very valuable (thus socially useful) goods or services…

I think that everyone I've met with this viewpoint has been an "intermediary" or one who profits from them. Your thoughts on that?

You're probably doing a bad job of inviting people to share their actual opinions with you. The easy & practical choices here are:

1) People with more money to spend get first pick of stuff.

2) Lottery / people who get to the store-front first.

Both of those are legitimate, although #1 does have a lot of support and theoretical backing in practice. Most of the third ways that get tried devolve back into one of those 2.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#396

Post by simonh » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #168

chmod600 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against what law? Isn't speculation pretty normal in a lot of markets?

There are laws against price gouging. I believe those only apply during emergencies. Personally, I believe it's manufacturers not asking for the price the market is willing to pay and scalpers taking advantage of that. Charging real prices also can prevent hording in certain emergencies.

Manufacturers aren’t always able to charge real market prices in a flexible way. They rely of regular reliable order volumes and can’t charge different prices to different customers, and can’t vary prices easily day to day so can’t take advantage of the fact different customers are willing to pay different prices. They also often don’t have distribution and extensive dispersed inventory, so can’t offer different prices to different geographic markets, or different markets with particular volume requirements, or different order/delivery latency tolerances.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#397

Post by raducu » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:44 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #231

hutrdvnj wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalpers are not the problem as they seem, they are like market makers for stock exchanges. They buy low and sell high, always. The factory could tell you that they're currently out of stock for the next few months, but a scalper will never be out of stock, because their prices rises so high that only very few desperate companies would buy. The point is, it's better to have the option to buy something at a high price…

The way I see it, this makes sense in a hypothetical world of perfect theoretical models (you may recognize this world as being the one inhabited by frictionless, perfectly spherical cows). In this world, scalpers cause the market to price in "stickiness" - the more critical an item is to the buyer, the more they'll be willing to pay - so the supply ultimately gets allocated to the most desperate of buyers, for the p…

> And even if you think that this kind of market culling is fine, I'm not seeing why all that money should go to the first asshole who managed to secure a large loan in time to buy off the entire stock of some good.

Very well said, but I'd go even further -- scalpers know other scalpers will do the same and create artificial shortage so they are actually preying on legitimate customers, so there's an adversarial component to the behavior of scalpers as well.

We rationed toilet paper during the lockdowns and there was a legitimate reason people were hoarding it, but we do nothing about scalpers who have no legitimate reason for their behavior.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#398

Post by roenxi » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:53 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #300

skybrian wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty seats mean someone screwed up but how can you tell that a group of empty seats is unused due to a scalper, versus some group of people who couldn’t make it? When speculators don’t screw up, one fewer part being sold now means one more part that can be bought later. Delaying sales of some parts makes the shortage worse earlier and better later. Keeping inventory is a service to people who didn’t plan ahead. Some…

Your right concerts make it hard to tell why seats are empty however unsold inventory is part of the basic business model of reserving a section of supply at higher prices not simply a mistake. Airline seats are a better comparison. Airlines keep raising prices as inventory gets sold and flights near. However, that approach means they generally fly with significant unused excess capacity. The reverse approach where p…

That needs to be sourced from somewhere; the classic understanding of airlines is they usually overbook [0] and rely on people not turning up.

In fact, the whole "lets not sell our inventory, we'll make higher profits!" idea here is suspect. The idea that having unsold inventory in the model is a good idea is just false; having inventory left over is always undesirable. If it was sold at the last minute then they would have more profits. The scalpers are incentivised to minimise leftover inventory to the point where it isn't going to be a big deal.

[0] https://www.travelperk.com/blog/overbooking-airlines-quick-g...

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#399

Post by Kliment » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 7:54 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #287

lenzm wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to know what the pandemic is specifically to plan for a global market shock. Knowing that you have a critical component with a long inelastic supply chain is enough.

And then what? Just stockpile a year of everything? At every company along the supply chain? It is the first time in my life, professional in SCM and otherwise, that something like Covid and a global trade disruption happened together with a global shortage of one class of products. No way you for see or prepare for something like that. Hindsight in 20/20, just imagine the automotive OEMs would have gotten rid of the…

That's not the issue here. The issue is automotive are capricious, nasty customers. They know they're a big contract so they dictate disgusting terms, like 9 month payment terms and extremely strict delivery windows and changing deliveries on very short notice. Suppliers get fined at certain auto manufacturers for not delivering within a 15 minute window, forcing their truck drivers to circle around the facility for hours to ensure they can meet that. The carmakers require extreme delivery flexibility from their suppliers on short notice. In effect, they're still holding stock, but they're forcing their suppliers to hold it for them, and without said suppliers getting paid, or even having the ability to plan for how much they'll get paid.

Because of those extremely hostile contract terms, the carmakers could just turn around and go "oh yeah, all that stock we said we'd order this year, you can make it if you like but we're not going to take deliveries or pay for it" which is what set this whole pile of bullshit in motion. At that point, their suppliers were holding and/or producing lots of stock for them, but got informed they would not be getting paid for it, had to cut their losses, and this ended up disrupting manufacturing for months as lines had to be reconfigured mid-batch and a lot of product got scrapped. While this was happening, the automotive fuckers changed their minds and requested more, meaning the suppliers had to scramble to produce with now limited resources because the scrapped stuff was still clogging the pipeline, so resources got redirected away from every other part.

In short, religious JIT could only have this kind of impact here because the automotive companies are absolute shits to their suppliers and could force them to jump one way and then the other, causing disruption upstream which then spread downstream to everyone using electronics. This is a purely artificial crisis caused by the car manufacturers and is not an inevitable consequence of either the pandemic or the logistics disruption. Air cargo is barely affected and semiconductors and their precursors (except for water) are light and easily transportable by air, and certainly valuable enough that this does not impact their cost. This is a problem that would not have existed without the automotive industry, covid or no covid. They brought this upon themselves, and now everyone else is suffering (and auto execs go on TV and blame work-from-home and remote education for the shortage, which is just adding insult to injury). Screw them.

Re: Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

#400

Post by Cthulhu_ » Fri, Oct 01, 2021, 8:11 AM UTC

kbaker wrote: post #114

One important part of the chip shortage is the massive amount of price gouging going on. Every IC is being bought up by new 3rd party distributors to scalp to desperate electronics manufacturers. Take a look at this chip we are just now crossing as an example, click on 'Non-authorized stocking distributors': https://octopart.com/tps2052bdgnr-texas+instruments-699312?r... Win Source has a bunch, but you will pay 6x th…

Scalpers - and others willing to pay a premium from the supplier - will in all likelihood (IANAEconomist etc) cause a whiplash / bullwhip effect; scalpers create high demand, manufacturers increase production and continue to do so until the market is saturated, then suddenly the scalpers have huge stocks of e.g. chips and can no longer sell them at a premium, making them drop prices to match the manufacturer's.