Live data from Hacker News

U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

cnbc.com

641–650 of 765 posts

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#641

The French government owns stakes in big corporations. And why not, why wouldn't the public own some stake and government (us, in theory) have some control? Airbus being an example. Is it because Trump did it? If Biden had done it, the comments from the right would sound like the sarcasm in this message thread. Trump's temporary, he's not taking his stake home when his term expires.

If Biden had done it, SCOTUS would have struck it down as a violation of the Takings Clause or any made up theory.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current Chinese model's basically you have fully publicly traded companies, companies who are either minority or majority owned by a certain provincial government and ones who are either minority or majority owned by the central government (although this is surprisingly rare outside of key areas like telco/banking)

Something like 60% of the top of 100 companies in China are entirely state-owned. Most of the rest are government stake

key industries are all controlled by the govn't

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#644
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Branding nationalizing companies as “citizens control” is quite the spin. Chinese citizens surely own the means of production, right?

Nationalizing a company isn't communism and isn't intended to resemble it.

Indeed, it’s actually a horrific non-communist pro-capitalist version that leaves citizens much worse off - see “bailout socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for masses”.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#645
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I agree with bail-outs, but 2008 financial crisis that resulted in a number of bail outs actually netted the treasury a profit. > In total, U.S. government economic bailouts related to the 2008 financial crisis had federal outflows (expenditures, loans, and investments) of $633.6 billion and inflows (funds returned to the Treasury as interest, dividends, fees, or stock warrant repurchases) of $754.8 billion,…

To be clear, that bailout was passed by the Congress. This is a new phase of the President gets to just bail out anyone.

What do you mean? This action means Trump has removed a bailout. They were going to just give Intel a chunk of money. Now they aren't.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#646
post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalizing a company isn't communism and isn't intended to resemble it.

How is that not common/collective control of the means of production?

What would common or collective control mean? If everyone held "control" in common, it wouldn't be possible to do anything.

It is possible to nationalize a company, though. For example, Saudi Aramco is owned by the state.

How is that not common/collective control of the means of production?

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSMC's estimated costs in 2020, were $12 billion for their first fab. In 2025, their updated estimates were $65 billion for the first three fabs and $165 billion for when they get to six such facilities. So, $8.9B is a lot of money, but isn't anywhere close to getting to the equivalent to what TSMC has in Taiwan.

> getting to the equivalent to what TSMC has in Taiwan That wasn't the question. The question, at least for me, is can you build non-zero chip production, enough to start building out a sustainable business. Obviously you're not going to compete with TSMC on day one, but there's a wide spectrum between that and "garage".

How would you build a sustainable business based on old processes though? The only reason fabs exist that use old processes is because they were once new processes, and once they've been built you may as well keep them running for a while. Building a new 50 nm fab would never be viable.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current Chinese model's basically you have fully publicly traded companies, companies who are either minority or majority owned by a certain provincial government and ones who are either minority or majority owned by the central government (although this is surprisingly rare outside of key areas like telco/banking)

Something like 60% of the top of 100 companies in China are entirely state-owned. Most of the rest are government stake

https://msadvisory.com/china-biggest-companies/

Look at this list - all the big ones here which are state owned are investment banks, petro companies and telcos.

Everyone else on the list (mainly internet companies, BYD, gaming, and B2C sales/distribution) is privately owned.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism would be worker ownership. This is simply state ownership of what's seen as a strategic business. It's an abandonment of market dogmatism, but not a step towards any of the many ideologies or positions where markets have a smaller role.

So by that logic, state provided healthcare is not socialism. But a labor union providing health insurance is socialism. Can we get some of that state owned health care :-p

If we go by Marxist definitions, universal healthcare, universal education, etc. are communism, not socialism ('to each according to their need', which I interpret as capacity to provide a return on an investment of resources by society in one).

We have really little socialism in modern society, instead we have market systems combined with elements of communism. The only socialist elements we have are copyright and patents (you get them for contribution, so it follows the Marxist maxim characterizing socialism 'to each according to his contribution').

It's really a strange thing that communism, this hypothetical post-socialist stage of development, is so easy for states to adapt and so uncontroversial that elements of it are implemented today on a large scale, everywhere from the US to Africa, when socialism which Marx imagined as the stage that would give rise to communism is a relatively small element of society. I suppose the software industry has eaten a lot of other businesses though, and that it in the end is dependent on copyright, so maybe we actually are in the socialist stage, only with large middlemen intermediating 'to each according to his contribution' part. Socialism but with capitalist middlemen.

Re: U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel

#650
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.

If shareholders are losing ownership it's less a pure bailout and more a strategic investment and/or takeover. It also potentially lets the average taxpayer benefit rather than just those its directly propping up.

Here I thought the point of a grant/subsidy is that it allows companies to take risk - by setting up factories, funding research without worrying about the monetary cost etc.

Government benefits through one, generating employment - direct and indirect employment, raising taxes through personal taxes (indirectly impacting tax collection) or second the country being at the forefront of the innovation etc. That is how average tax payer was supposed to benefit.

But I guess trying to nationalize companies and "benefiting" from company profits was something people were missing. How did no one see that? Ah yes, third world countries try this routinely for "national security" and it always leads to moral hazard pointed out by the person above you.

Post reply on HN