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Intel might be too big to fail

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Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#91

Post by t-3 »

treis wrote: post #72
r053bud wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why not nationalize it?

It's not like the nationalized companies do that great. The USPS is in perpetual crisis and eventually the Federal Government is going to be on the hook for 10s of billions in pensions.

Nationalized industries are nationalized because they shouldn't have to care about profits and losses beyond a basic duty to use resources efficiently. The existence of the nationalized service is deemed to be so important that it must be run by the state to prevent any possible instability or interruptions.

With that being said, the situation of the USPS is not simple - it's been suffering political interference from elected officials for literally centuries. A very good example of why giving too much oversight power to elected officials and having too many political appointees is very dangerous.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#93

Post by homebrewer »

vorpalhex wrote: post #56
insane_dreamer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalism raises everyone hopefully this is sarcasm

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.

> complaining that not everyone can buy a house

In my ex-Soviet country you were guaranteed to get a free apartment provided by the government. Everyone I know who lived in a city got one, right up to 1991. All you needed to do was to register in a queue and wait for a few years (2-5 depending on several factors like family status — single moms were prioritized, for example). Now we're complaining that "not everyone" can buy an apartment (forget a house), just like you. Not just "not everyone", it's out of reach for most people, and things keep getting worse. At least we have jeans and burgers instead, I guess.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#94

Post by ocdtrekkie »

from-nibly wrote: post #78
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure? The profit motive isn't a factor when nationalized. Where would the waste come from?

From the fact that you can get profit by removing waste. Without profit there is no reason to remove waste. Waste isn't a thing you add intentionally if you have a reason. Waste is entropy it happens unless you continually clean it out. If you don't HAVE to clean out the waste it doesn't get cleaned out.

You also apparently need to wipe out the profit occasionally or else the company gets sucked dry of functional capability out of greed.

Perhaps we need a cycle of allowing capitalists to remove waste, nationalization to remove profit, and then capitalists to be allowed to begin again removing waste.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#95

Post by ta1243 »

from-nibly wrote: post #78
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure? The profit motive isn't a factor when nationalized. Where would the waste come from?

From the fact that you can get profit by removing waste. Without profit there is no reason to remove waste. Waste isn't a thing you add intentionally if you have a reason. Waste is entropy it happens unless you continually clean it out. If you don't HAVE to clean out the waste it doesn't get cleaned out.

Your definition of waste is likely different to other peoples.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#96

Post by kyrra »

jessfyi wrote: post #8

Any part of "saving" Intel should include a mechanism barring them from putting any more money that should be spent on R&D towards stock buybacks ($152B since 1990 as of September.) That said quoting the former Intel CEO (who still owns 3,245,986 shares) as "[one of the] expert[s] who says breaking up Intel won't do any good" seems like journalist malpractice--and makes me all the more certain it should be subsumed b…

Most companies do stock buybacks as a way to pay out bonuses to employees and execs with a lower tax rate. Since RSUs are taxed lower (I think), companies pay employees with those. But those grants are given by creating new shares. To not dilute the value of these shares, the company needs to keep buying back shares.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#97

Post by avazhi »

Well I’m sure intel hopes they are.

But given the positions of AMD, Apple, and Nvidia, they aren’t. The only real concerns would be warranty obligations, but it isn’t like Intel would just disappear over night - they’d be gobbled up by somebody bigger (which at this point is literally everybody else in the industry) and presumably as part of an acquisition or Chapter 11 the buyer would have to agree to honor warranty claims for it to pass regulatory or court approval.

Gonna be one hell of a show watching them death spiral. 60ish years of inertia and corporate ego will will surely not go quietly into that good night, even when it’s inevitable.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#98

Post by ta1243 »

homebrewer wrote: post #93
vorpalhex wrote: post #56

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.

> complaining that not everyone can buy a house In my ex-Soviet country you were guaranteed to get a free apartment provided by the government. Everyone I know who lived in a city got one, right up to 1991. All you needed to do was to register in a queue and wait for a few years (2-5 depending on several factors like family status — single moms were prioritized, for example). Now we're complaining that "not everyone"…

Housing is the cause of 90% of the problems in the west, and that's driven by democratic policies to restrict the supply, not by capitalism.

Re: Intel might be too big to fail

#100

Post by PopePompus »

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…

It's not just the investors and creditors that need to be wiped out. Above all else the managers need to be fired, with no bonuses or golden parachutes.
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