8 ms·

This is a pork bill from Intel, which used to know how to build competitive fabs and now does not. Federal pork will not make our country better at semi autoli

This is a pork bill from Intel, which used to know how to build competitive fabs and now does not. Federal pork will not make our country better at semi autolines.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jdkee 5y ago
Absolutely it is pork. Domestic production of microchips is a national security issue and should be subsidized like the manufacturing of aircraft and weapons systems.
- malchow 5y ago
  Pork doesn't work. Ask people inside DOD who are increasingly frustrated at the Primes leading DOD around by the nose with outdated ideas and outmoded products. For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors. All of the issues there are on the cost side of the ledger.
  - beauzero 5y ago
    Primes? ...sorry not familiar with the lingo.
    - stagger87 5y ago
      The major defense contractors.
    - ms512 5y ago
      Prime Contractor. It is a company that is responsible for the final integration of a system, but often fans out subcomponents to a large assortment of other companies.
    - pebcack 5y ago
      The contracting company that wins a bid for a contract is the Prime contractor. Often times these companies will then subcontract out some of that work (and sometimes it's even required by the contract to do so) to other contracting companies which would then be the Sub-contractor. That's where the "Prime" and "Sub" lingo in re: to DoD contracting comes form.
      - airstrike 5y ago
        And the sub-contractors are sometimes further broken down into Tier 2, Tier 3... depending on how far down the value-chain they are
  - vkou 5y ago
    > For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. The way to do that is massive tariffs, not pork. They will be met with retaliatory tariffs.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > Pork doesn't work. Seemed to work when Taiwan basically funded TSMC. If they can do it, why can't we do it? I mean, the USA is also funding TSMC to move to Arizona. I don't got nothing against this, but domestic chip-makers should also get a piece of the pie, right? -------------- In any case, this isn't "Pork". Pork is when you build something useless in somebody's state (aka: The Bridge to Nowhere), so that those "somebodies" vote on some other bill. Aka: Build a bridge in Alaska to nowhere, and __suddenly__ your Alaskan senators / house members starts the process of log-rolling and helps out on other bills. ------ Pork was incredibly common in the 80s and 90s, and has been cut down in the modern era. Today, its impossible to get logrolling, because too many people have demonized pork. If you want to get Senators / House members to support a large-scale bill, you HAVE to have something in there for them. Imagine how much easier it would have been to get Joe Manchin to vote for the infrastructure bill if we tossed in a few coal subsidies (aka: West Virginia Pork) into the infrastructure bill. Alas: today's citizens are ignorant to the wonders of pork. Its actually very easy to convince other senators / house members to do something useful. You just gotta give them a bit of pork. ------- Pork isn't about making the underlying thing more efficient. Its about convincing leaders to support the project to begin with and get it greenlit in the first place. Without pork, you can't effectively build a coalition. And today's Senate / House is proof of that, its incredibly difficult to get anything done because of our anti-Pork culture. Life was better with pork. We did our grand experiment over the past 30 years by demonizing pork, and it failed. Time to bring Pork back.
    - paganel 5y ago
      Pork is a pretty efficient way for the richer part of the country to subsidize back the poorer ones without making it look like socialism/communism. It partially makes up for the huge demographic subsidies the richer parts of the country receive from the poorer ones as a result of internal migration.
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Your discussion point is interesting, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to take the stance that "Pork is Good". I'm simply a pragmatist. We know Congress is perpetually deadlocked and that we haven't had a proper budget in damn near a decade. Maybe its time to whip out the old Pork technique. That's all I'm saying. Anyone who studied how these budgets got passed 30 or 40 years ago knows: Pork was essential in building coalitions (especially across party lines). You scratch my back, I scratch yours. If you help me pass X Bill, I'll write a useless thing into the Bill that benefits your state. Lets bring it back. Lets get Congressmen working together again.
  - arrosenberg 5y ago
    Pork works really well actually, it's the grease that allows useful projects to go forward. The DOD is getting lead around by the nose because they themselves insisted on consolidation during the Reagan era, and none of the administrations since have bothered to correct the problem. They've been hoisted on their own petard. > For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors. National Security should revolve around the profit motives of a handful of private actors? Hard pass.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > Ask people inside DOD... DOD is a rural jobs program. It functions as intended. Other branches of the federal government that aren't designed to be jobs programs (e.g., NSF) do tend to make good investments and get things done.
onedognight 5y ago
This may be pork from Intel, but even TSMC is getting subsidies to build fabs in the US. The US see strategic interest in chip fabs.
- consumer451 5y ago
  > This may be pork from Intel, but even TSMC is getting subsidies to build fabs in the US. The US see strategic interest in chip fabs. We sit around and argue about this while TSMC was founded by the Taiwanese government. The Taiwanese gov't is likely still a giant shareholder. I am curious as to what HN readers think is different about the two situations. As in, why can't it work in the USA? Fun TSMC fact: Morris Chang was never given any options as part of his original pay package. He used his own money to buy shares.
  - arrosenberg 5y ago
    > I am curious as to what HN readers think is different about the two situations. As in, why can't it work in the USA? Unfortunately we are still stuck with the legacy of Reaganism, which was essentially the undoing of the New Deal notion that the government could do good for the country and the average person.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >which was essentially the undoing of the New Deal notion that the government could do good for the country and the average person. The new deal involved governments giving billions in grants to multibillion dollar multinationals?
      - arrosenberg 5y ago
        The New Deal governments have a legacy of getting a ton of bang for it's buck - Rural Electrification, the Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo program just to name a few. The entire point of Reaganism was to destroy that legacy by making government ineffective, wasteful, and disdainful of the very people it is meant to serve.
mtmail 5y ago
For anybody (outside the United States) wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel "is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district."
- newbamboo 5y ago
  In other words infrastructure.
  - blagie 5y ago
    No. The Wikipedia article makes it sound that way, but a lot of pork is in subsidies to specific industries, mandatory purchasing, research initiatives, or similar. For example, if the military must buy 50,000 of something it doesn't need from some military contractor located in some senator's district, that's a canonical example of pork. The line here is subtle. The exact same purchase could be made through a competitive bidding process. If I'm doing space research, that's probably good. If I mandate that NASA do a specific research project through a specific vendor, that's probably pork. In most cases, pork isn't obvious. The bill won't say "NASA will give $50 million to Acme Inc," but rather "NASA will purchase $50 million worth of sheet metal from a veteran-owned company with at least 7 years experience in aluminum-matrix composite manufacturing, ..." and by the time you include all the requirements, what do you know, there's only one business which fits the bill.
    - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
      Pork is identifiable a mile away. Space Launch System - I think the funding line both required they use a bunch of tech (only made by certain vendors) but also prohibited any competitive bidding or evaluation of other approaches. $20B later we might get a rocket that costs $2B per launch? OUCH! More common are the funny requirements docs. 5 years of experience but not more than 10 to reserve project for "new entrants". Located in a XXX district (improvement, benefit etc).
    - newbamboo 5y ago
Server6 5y ago
I don't understand why people are so opposed to pork spending? Pork is how things got done historically. Sure on the surface it's wasteful, but it promotes compromise and greases the wheels of government. None of the great works in the US would have been completed without it. Pork reform in my opinion is one of the reasons why things are so partisan these days - everyone is in their own corner and there's no incentive for Democrats to help Republicans and vice versa.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  And how some of the biggest boondoggles got built. Never mind bridges to nowhere. The Arkansas river has a multi-billion dollar lock and dam system. To take all those Arkansas products to market presumably. From a state near the bottom rank in GDP. That's pork.
  - Server6 5y ago
    Yeah, I agree there's some waste and boondoggles. I'm just arguing that they're necessary in order for government to function.
    - lazide 5y ago
      How do? It’s clear corruption. They could do the same thing with a competitive bidding system more cost effectively no?
    - 1123581321 5y ago
      I see what you’re saying, but it’s only true in the sense that dysfunctional government refuses to operate without a dysfunctional incentive. It is possible to improve the percentage of wisely chosen projects.
  - analognoise 5y ago
    On the other hand, if a state has the bottom rank in GDP, wouldn't we want to provide infrastructure to lift them up? Saying "They're already poor, let's not invest in their infrastructure" sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me - they'll stay poor unless we invest in them?
zitterbewegung 5y ago
You always should be giving the pork bill to the company doing the worst to increase competition. Giving it to the best only gives their margins. Giving it to the worst possibly gives it the ability to innovate . Also Alder Lake looks somewhat promising.
- joconde 5y ago
  Performance is probably correlated with good governance, so that has a high risk of wasting money on a company that's unable to spend it efficiently. It even gives their leaders a break from having to improve efficiency, because the pork keeps them from going bankrupt whatever they do.
  - zitterbewegung 5y ago
    Totally agree with your statement. Yes you are wasting money on a company so that they are still selling something at the end of the day regardless of quality or sales . That is my point .
blagie 5y ago
It's a bill from Intel and friends, but I don't think it's pork. Chip manufacturing (like food, energy, etc.) is a national security issue. Specialization is more efficient in the short term. Free market pushes chip manufacturing to be a monopoly or duopoly. That's not resilient, though. I don't mind my tax dollars subsidizing these industries remaining in the US, though. Indeed, I think it's good policy to have all major regions of the world be self-sustaining (e.g. not France, but the EU as a whole).
- lazide 5y ago
  Just because it is a national security issue doesn’t mean the spending and way it will be allocated isn’t a corrupt waste of time (unfortunately). If it is a corrupt waste of time, it’s pork.
- rapsey 5y ago
  Yes but how do you know the money actually will be spent productively. The main problem is this kind of money often just lines pockets.
  - blagie 5y ago
    The trick, really, is good governance. These problems have been solved before. For example, the government can: 1. Provide market incentives. For example, the federal government can give a 25% subsidies for school Chromebooks/laptops/etc., require the CPUs and RAM to be manufactured in the US. 2. Provide guaranteed markets. The US military is an efficient place to do this. 3. Provide subsidies with outcomes. If Intel wastes the money, Intel stock moves from investors to taxpayers. Personally, I'm also a big fan of tariffs. Free trade zones are great, but tariffs between free trade zones on essential goods can encourage local production. If US CPUs cost 25% more in the EU, and EU CPUs cost 25% more in the US, there's a strong incentive to have local manufacturing infrastructure.
    - rapsey 5y ago
      Well they obviously can make sure the money is spent as intended. The problem is they wont.
trzy 5y ago
If Chinese pork can make them competitive, American pork can make us competitive. If implemented properly. Is it anti-competitive and will it reinforce inequality by picking winners? Unfortunately, yes.

This is a pork bill from Intel, which used to know how to build competitive fabs and now does not. Federal pork will not make our country better at semi autolines.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jdkee 5y ago

Absolutely it is pork. Domestic production of microchips is a national security issue and should be subsidized like the manufacturing of aircraft and weapons systems.

malchow 5y ago
Pork doesn't work. Ask people inside DOD who are increasingly frustrated at the Primes leading DOD around by the nose with outdated ideas and outmoded products. For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors. All of the issues there are on the cost side of the ledger.
- beauzero 5y ago
  Primes? ...sorry not familiar with the lingo.
  - stagger87 5y ago
    The major defense contractors.
  - ms512 5y ago
    Prime Contractor. It is a company that is responsible for the final integration of a system, but often fans out subcomponents to a large assortment of other companies.
  - pebcack 5y ago
    The contracting company that wins a bid for a contract is the Prime contractor. Often times these companies will then subcontract out some of that work (and sometimes it's even required by the contract to do so) to other contracting companies which would then be the Sub-contractor. That's where the "Prime" and "Sub" lingo in re: to DoD contracting comes form.
    - airstrike 5y ago
      And the sub-contractors are sometimes further broken down into Tier 2, Tier 3... depending on how far down the value-chain they are
- vkou 5y ago
  > For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. The way to do that is massive tariffs, not pork. They will be met with retaliatory tariffs.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > Pork doesn't work. Seemed to work when Taiwan basically funded TSMC. If they can do it, why can't we do it? I mean, the USA is also funding TSMC to move to Arizona. I don't got nothing against this, but domestic chip-makers should also get a piece of the pie, right? -------------- In any case, this isn't "Pork". Pork is when you build something useless in somebody's state (aka: The Bridge to Nowhere), so that those "somebodies" vote on some other bill. Aka: Build a bridge in Alaska to nowhere, and __suddenly__ your Alaskan senators / house members starts the process of log-rolling and helps out on other bills. ------ Pork was incredibly common in the 80s and 90s, and has been cut down in the modern era. Today, its impossible to get logrolling, because too many people have demonized pork. If you want to get Senators / House members to support a large-scale bill, you HAVE to have something in there for them. Imagine how much easier it would have been to get Joe Manchin to vote for the infrastructure bill if we tossed in a few coal subsidies (aka: West Virginia Pork) into the infrastructure bill. Alas: today's citizens are ignorant to the wonders of pork. Its actually very easy to convince other senators / house members to do something useful. You just gotta give them a bit of pork. ------- Pork isn't about making the underlying thing more efficient. Its about convincing leaders to support the project to begin with and get it greenlit in the first place. Without pork, you can't effectively build a coalition. And today's Senate / House is proof of that, its incredibly difficult to get anything done because of our anti-Pork culture. Life was better with pork. We did our grand experiment over the past 30 years by demonizing pork, and it failed. Time to bring Pork back.
  - paganel 5y ago
    Pork is a pretty efficient way for the richer part of the country to subsidize back the poorer ones without making it look like socialism/communism. It partially makes up for the huge demographic subsidies the richer parts of the country receive from the poorer ones as a result of internal migration.
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Your discussion point is interesting, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to take the stance that "Pork is Good". I'm simply a pragmatist. We know Congress is perpetually deadlocked and that we haven't had a proper budget in damn near a decade. Maybe its time to whip out the old Pork technique. That's all I'm saying. Anyone who studied how these budgets got passed 30 or 40 years ago knows: Pork was essential in building coalitions (especially across party lines). You scratch my back, I scratch yours. If you help me pass X Bill, I'll write a useless thing into the Bill that benefits your state. Lets bring it back. Lets get Congressmen working together again.
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  Pork works really well actually, it's the grease that allows useful projects to go forward. The DOD is getting lead around by the nose because they themselves insisted on consolidation during the Reagan era, and none of the administrations since have bothered to correct the problem. They've been hoisted on their own petard. > For national security, we need a state of affairs wherein it is profitable to build and run a plant in the U.S. that responds primarily to the dynamic needs of private actors. National Security should revolve around the profit motives of a handful of private actors? Hard pass.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > Ask people inside DOD... DOD is a rural jobs program. It functions as intended. Other branches of the federal government that aren't designed to be jobs programs (e.g., NSF) do tend to make good investments and get things done.

onedognight 5y ago

This may be pork from Intel, but even TSMC is getting subsidies to build fabs in the US. The US see strategic interest in chip fabs.

consumer451 5y ago
> This may be pork from Intel, but even TSMC is getting subsidies to build fabs in the US. The US see strategic interest in chip fabs. We sit around and argue about this while TSMC was founded by the Taiwanese government. The Taiwanese gov't is likely still a giant shareholder. I am curious as to what HN readers think is different about the two situations. As in, why can't it work in the USA? Fun TSMC fact: Morris Chang was never given any options as part of his original pay package. He used his own money to buy shares.
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  > I am curious as to what HN readers think is different about the two situations. As in, why can't it work in the USA? Unfortunately we are still stuck with the legacy of Reaganism, which was essentially the undoing of the New Deal notion that the government could do good for the country and the average person.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >which was essentially the undoing of the New Deal notion that the government could do good for the country and the average person. The new deal involved governments giving billions in grants to multibillion dollar multinationals?
    - arrosenberg 5y ago
      The New Deal governments have a legacy of getting a ton of bang for it's buck - Rural Electrification, the Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo program just to name a few. The entire point of Reaganism was to destroy that legacy by making government ineffective, wasteful, and disdainful of the very people it is meant to serve.

mtmail 5y ago

For anybody (outside the United States) wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel "is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district."

newbamboo 5y ago
In other words infrastructure.
- blagie 5y ago
  No. The Wikipedia article makes it sound that way, but a lot of pork is in subsidies to specific industries, mandatory purchasing, research initiatives, or similar. For example, if the military must buy 50,000 of something it doesn't need from some military contractor located in some senator's district, that's a canonical example of pork. The line here is subtle. The exact same purchase could be made through a competitive bidding process. If I'm doing space research, that's probably good. If I mandate that NASA do a specific research project through a specific vendor, that's probably pork. In most cases, pork isn't obvious. The bill won't say "NASA will give $50 million to Acme Inc," but rather "NASA will purchase $50 million worth of sheet metal from a veteran-owned company with at least 7 years experience in aluminum-matrix composite manufacturing, ..." and by the time you include all the requirements, what do you know, there's only one business which fits the bill.
  - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
    Pork is identifiable a mile away. Space Launch System - I think the funding line both required they use a bunch of tech (only made by certain vendors) but also prohibited any competitive bidding or evaluation of other approaches. $20B later we might get a rocket that costs $2B per launch? OUCH! More common are the funny requirements docs. 5 years of experience but not more than 10 to reserve project for "new entrants". Located in a XXX district (improvement, benefit etc).
  - newbamboo 5y ago

Server6 5y ago

I don't understand why people are so opposed to pork spending? Pork is how things got done historically. Sure on the surface it's wasteful, but it promotes compromise and greases the wheels of government. None of the great works in the US would have been completed without it. Pork reform in my opinion is one of the reasons why things are so partisan these days - everyone is in their own corner and there's no incentive for Democrats to help Republicans and vice versa.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
And how some of the biggest boondoggles got built. Never mind bridges to nowhere. The Arkansas river has a multi-billion dollar lock and dam system. To take all those Arkansas products to market presumably. From a state near the bottom rank in GDP. That's pork.
- Server6 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree there's some waste and boondoggles. I'm just arguing that they're necessary in order for government to function.
  - lazide 5y ago
    How do? It’s clear corruption. They could do the same thing with a competitive bidding system more cost effectively no?
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    I see what you’re saying, but it’s only true in the sense that dysfunctional government refuses to operate without a dysfunctional incentive. It is possible to improve the percentage of wisely chosen projects.
- analognoise 5y ago
  On the other hand, if a state has the bottom rank in GDP, wouldn't we want to provide infrastructure to lift them up? Saying "They're already poor, let's not invest in their infrastructure" sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me - they'll stay poor unless we invest in them?

zitterbewegung 5y ago

You always should be giving the pork bill to the company doing the worst to increase competition. Giving it to the best only gives their margins. Giving it to the worst possibly gives it the ability to innovate . Also Alder Lake looks somewhat promising.

joconde 5y ago
Performance is probably correlated with good governance, so that has a high risk of wasting money on a company that's unable to spend it efficiently. It even gives their leaders a break from having to improve efficiency, because the pork keeps them from going bankrupt whatever they do.
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  Totally agree with your statement. Yes you are wasting money on a company so that they are still selling something at the end of the day regardless of quality or sales . That is my point .

blagie 5y ago

It's a bill from Intel and friends, but I don't think it's pork. Chip manufacturing (like food, energy, etc.) is a national security issue. Specialization is more efficient in the short term. Free market pushes chip manufacturing to be a monopoly or duopoly. That's not resilient, though. I don't mind my tax dollars subsidizing these industries remaining in the US, though. Indeed, I think it's good policy to have all major regions of the world be self-sustaining (e.g. not France, but the EU as a whole).

lazide 5y ago
Just because it is a national security issue doesn’t mean the spending and way it will be allocated isn’t a corrupt waste of time (unfortunately). If it is a corrupt waste of time, it’s pork.
rapsey 5y ago
Yes but how do you know the money actually will be spent productively. The main problem is this kind of money often just lines pockets.
- blagie 5y ago
  The trick, really, is good governance. These problems have been solved before. For example, the government can: 1. Provide market incentives. For example, the federal government can give a 25% subsidies for school Chromebooks/laptops/etc., require the CPUs and RAM to be manufactured in the US. 2. Provide guaranteed markets. The US military is an efficient place to do this. 3. Provide subsidies with outcomes. If Intel wastes the money, Intel stock moves from investors to taxpayers. Personally, I'm also a big fan of tariffs. Free trade zones are great, but tariffs between free trade zones on essential goods can encourage local production. If US CPUs cost 25% more in the EU, and EU CPUs cost 25% more in the US, there's a strong incentive to have local manufacturing infrastructure.
  - rapsey 5y ago
    Well they obviously can make sure the money is spent as intended. The problem is they wont.

trzy 5y ago

If Chinese pork can make them competitive, American pork can make us competitive. If implemented properly. Is it anti-competitive and will it reinforce inequality by picking winners? Unfortunately, yes.