5 ms·

>evil it used to be common sense not to hand over your nation's strategic assets to potential foreign adversaries, common Americans all intuitively knew shippi

>evil it used to be common sense not to hand over your nation's strategic assets to potential foreign adversaries, common Americans all intuitively knew shipping manufacturing to China was bad. Wall Street greed and bribed politicians allowed this to happen. Evil is selling out your nation for profit

niij 5y ago
There's a stark difference between selling out and refusing to use public funds to subsidize large corporations.
- barkingcat 5y ago
  There is also the thing that American corps like to do: sell out and buy out the politicians so they can use public funds to campaign against subsidies, education, and all possible methods to regain the capabilities that they sold out to begin with. It's like American capitalism wants itself to fail. It's pretty much self sabotage at this point.
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    The tendency to destroy itself is both the good and the bad part of capitalism. Karl Marx was pretty sober about this. He always argued capitalism is a necessary stage but externalities would bottom out and the system would inevitably destroy itself.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      The interesting part is that government subsidies like pretty much every responsible government does (China AND the US obviously included) help delay the predicted collapse of capitalism. What is food stamps for Walmart and Amazon workers if not an unaccounted for government subsidy?
      - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
        By that logic, if we truly hated capitalism we could just set off the nukes and never have to worry about stupid capitalism ever again.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Are you opposed to anti-dumping legislation, too? Because I see subsidizing exports through the nose as a way of dumping on foreign markets.
- 1-6 5y ago
  There’s also a difference subsidizing large companies that relies on being at the top of the supplier chain vs those that exist somewhere near the bottom or the middle. Evaluating the tech stack is very important and usually at the very top you find trivial technologies that are not difficult to replicate. This is where you find brand, trademarks, and marketing.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    >usually at the very top you find trivial technologies that are not difficult to replicate Maybe in other markets, anything related with semiconductors has a HUGE capital barrier to entry. Exhibit A: ASML's EUV machines.
    - wincy 5y ago
      I think the concept GP was using is lowest level of abstraction to highest level. Twitter can be cloned easily. ASML’s EUV machines cannot. I don’t think he meant “high technology”
      - pmontra 5y ago
        By the way, a common pattern of technology trasfer is a company buys a product, reverse engineer it and in a few iterations (which could be many years long) it competes on price or on quality with the original manufacturer. I understand that an EUV machine is much more complex than a chisel but how difficult (in time) would be to clone one? Did anybody already start doing it? A scenario is: China invades Taiwan, the chip factories blow up so China doesn't get them, it takes years to build them somewhere else for the rest of the world but China won't have those machines from ASML ever (embargoes.) But can they buy one now and clone it in a reasonable time?
        tooltalk 5y ago
        My wild speculation: without any outsider's help, 30-40 years, or most likely never. China has barely 10 years of experience in chip industry and it's not necessarily the most profound one. China's most successful foundry SMIC was made possible by former top TSMC engineers (many with PhD's from top US universities) and it's generally understood that SMIC's most cutting edge 14nm node is really a clone of TSMC N16FFC. Many also suspect 14nm is their limit and can't advanced any further without access to the chip manufacturing supply-chain in the US/Japan/EU, who collectively own 95% of the market. Shanghai Micro Electronic Equipment, SMEE, recently announced that they developed their own 28nm lithography machines, but that's also with help and components from Japan. The 28nm processing is hardly a cutting edge tech and that's not even under US sanction. Even Taiwan/South Korea depend almost entirely on supply-chain from the US/Japan/EU (except wafer). Now, the key idea here is "outsider's help." It's not impossible if China is allowed to poach engineers from their suppliers/competitors, steal IP, or import highly sensitive, cutting-edge components and materials from the US/JPN/EU. The problem as I see it is, there is obviously no shortage of American multinational companies, such as Apple, Nike, etc,... willing to sell out America's national security or economic interests to make more doh's in China. And Apple isn't just a very profitable US company with the largest market cap in the world, but also it's very well politically connected -- just look at the shenanigan Apple pulled against Qualcomm with their operatives at FTC. The orange man was somewhat of an anomaly and managed to stop this flow, but I'm not so sure about Biden or whoever comes next. The recent revelation, or $270B deal between Tim Apple and Xi, clearly shows what Apple intends to do and where this is going to go if Apple is left unchecked.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Well, it pretty much requires a large corporation to crank out high-quality OLED displays. It's not the kind of thing that can be hand-crafted by a one-person shop on an artisanal basis.
- wsc981 5y ago
  Import taxes could also protect a countries strategic industries and in that case subsidies might not be needed. I kinda feel using import taxes on foreign goods that are a threat to local industries are a better approach that providing subsidies.
  - enaaem 5y ago
    The foreign company will still have an advantage in other places of the world if your company wants to export to the same locations.
- xtian 5y ago
  In what way has the US refused to use public funds to subsidize large corporations?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
addicted 5y ago
Common people have benefitted greatly from shipping manufacturing to China. Americans are richer than ever. The problem in America, however, is that the distribution of that wealth has become completely lopsided so it’s concentrated in a few hands. That’s a domestic policy issue. Outsourcing manufacturing is different, however, from shopping away strategic assets and not investing in keeping strategic manufacturing capacity alive, which once again is a failure of US domestic policy.
- bojangleslover 5y ago
  Wealth inequality isn't necessarily bad http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html
  - patentatt 5y ago
    Please tell me again how a billionaire says wealth inequality is OK. Didn't read the whole piece, but on its face it's farcical to listen to anything someone so wealthy has to say on the subject, even if it's pg.
    - bojangleslover 5y ago
      It means the rich can get richer without the poor getting poorer since they are creating wealth, not taking it in a zero-sum or rent-seeking way. So relative inequality increases but the mean standard of living for everyone including the poor rises. "Poverty and economic inequality are not identical. When the city is turning off your water because you can't pay the bill, it doesn't make any difference what Larry Page's net worth is compared to yours. He might only be a few times richer than you, and it would still be just as much of a problem that your water was getting turned off."
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > It means the rich can get richer without the poor getting poorer since they are creating wealth, not taking it in a zero-sum or rent-seeking way. Except outside of the most abject poverty that is fairly rare in the developed world, utility/disutility is more a function of relative economic status than absolute economic status. So, in the only sense that matters, this is at least oversimplified; you have to improve absolute wealth on the lower end considerably just to offset the disutility of increased equality and break even. It is possible to increase inequality and have everyone better off in utilitarian terms, but improvements in the usual economic measures are not sufficient to show that because those are poor proxies for utility.

niij 5y ago

There's a stark difference between selling out and refusing to use public funds to subsidize large corporations.

barkingcat 5y ago
There is also the thing that American corps like to do: sell out and buy out the politicians so they can use public funds to campaign against subsidies, education, and all possible methods to regain the capabilities that they sold out to begin with. It's like American capitalism wants itself to fail. It's pretty much self sabotage at this point.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  The tendency to destroy itself is both the good and the bad part of capitalism. Karl Marx was pretty sober about this. He always argued capitalism is a necessary stage but externalities would bottom out and the system would inevitably destroy itself.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The interesting part is that government subsidies like pretty much every responsible government does (China AND the US obviously included) help delay the predicted collapse of capitalism. What is food stamps for Walmart and Amazon workers if not an unaccounted for government subsidy?
    - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
      By that logic, if we truly hated capitalism we could just set off the nukes and never have to worry about stupid capitalism ever again.
nine_k 5y ago
Are you opposed to anti-dumping legislation, too? Because I see subsidizing exports through the nose as a way of dumping on foreign markets.
1-6 5y ago
There’s also a difference subsidizing large companies that relies on being at the top of the supplier chain vs those that exist somewhere near the bottom or the middle. Evaluating the tech stack is very important and usually at the very top you find trivial technologies that are not difficult to replicate. This is where you find brand, trademarks, and marketing.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >usually at the very top you find trivial technologies that are not difficult to replicate Maybe in other markets, anything related with semiconductors has a HUGE capital barrier to entry. Exhibit A: ASML's EUV machines.
  - wincy 5y ago
    I think the concept GP was using is lowest level of abstraction to highest level. Twitter can be cloned easily. ASML’s EUV machines cannot. I don’t think he meant “high technology”
    - pmontra 5y ago
      By the way, a common pattern of technology trasfer is a company buys a product, reverse engineer it and in a few iterations (which could be many years long) it competes on price or on quality with the original manufacturer. I understand that an EUV machine is much more complex than a chisel but how difficult (in time) would be to clone one? Did anybody already start doing it? A scenario is: China invades Taiwan, the chip factories blow up so China doesn't get them, it takes years to build them somewhere else for the rest of the world but China won't have those machines from ASML ever (embargoes.) But can they buy one now and clone it in a reasonable time?
      - tooltalk 5y ago
        My wild speculation: without any outsider's help, 30-40 years, or most likely never. China has barely 10 years of experience in chip industry and it's not necessarily the most profound one. China's most successful foundry SMIC was made possible by former top TSMC engineers (many with PhD's from top US universities) and it's generally understood that SMIC's most cutting edge 14nm node is really a clone of TSMC N16FFC. Many also suspect 14nm is their limit and can't advanced any further without access to the chip manufacturing supply-chain in the US/Japan/EU, who collectively own 95% of the market. Shanghai Micro Electronic Equipment, SMEE, recently announced that they developed their own 28nm lithography machines, but that's also with help and components from Japan. The 28nm processing is hardly a cutting edge tech and that's not even under US sanction. Even Taiwan/South Korea depend almost entirely on supply-chain from the US/Japan/EU (except wafer). Now, the key idea here is "outsider's help." It's not impossible if China is allowed to poach engineers from their suppliers/competitors, steal IP, or import highly sensitive, cutting-edge components and materials from the US/JPN/EU. The problem as I see it is, there is obviously no shortage of American multinational companies, such as Apple, Nike, etc,... willing to sell out America's national security or economic interests to make more doh's in China. And Apple isn't just a very profitable US company with the largest market cap in the world, but also it's very well politically connected -- just look at the shenanigan Apple pulled against Qualcomm with their operatives at FTC. The orange man was somewhat of an anomaly and managed to stop this flow, but I'm not so sure about Biden or whoever comes next. The recent revelation, or $270B deal between Tim Apple and Xi, clearly shows what Apple intends to do and where this is going to go if Apple is left unchecked.
Turing_Machine 5y ago
Well, it pretty much requires a large corporation to crank out high-quality OLED displays. It's not the kind of thing that can be hand-crafted by a one-person shop on an artisanal basis.
wsc981 5y ago
Import taxes could also protect a countries strategic industries and in that case subsidies might not be needed. I kinda feel using import taxes on foreign goods that are a threat to local industries are a better approach that providing subsidies.
- enaaem 5y ago
  The foreign company will still have an advantage in other places of the world if your company wants to export to the same locations.
xtian 5y ago
In what way has the US refused to use public funds to subsidize large corporations?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

addicted 5y ago

Common people have benefitted greatly from shipping manufacturing to China. Americans are richer than ever. The problem in America, however, is that the distribution of that wealth has become completely lopsided so it’s concentrated in a few hands. That’s a domestic policy issue. Outsourcing manufacturing is different, however, from shopping away strategic assets and not investing in keeping strategic manufacturing capacity alive, which once again is a failure of US domestic policy.

bojangleslover 5y ago
Wealth inequality isn't necessarily bad http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html
- patentatt 5y ago
  Please tell me again how a billionaire says wealth inequality is OK. Didn't read the whole piece, but on its face it's farcical to listen to anything someone so wealthy has to say on the subject, even if it's pg.
  - bojangleslover 5y ago
    It means the rich can get richer without the poor getting poorer since they are creating wealth, not taking it in a zero-sum or rent-seeking way. So relative inequality increases but the mean standard of living for everyone including the poor rises. "Poverty and economic inequality are not identical. When the city is turning off your water because you can't pay the bill, it doesn't make any difference what Larry Page's net worth is compared to yours. He might only be a few times richer than you, and it would still be just as much of a problem that your water was getting turned off."
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > It means the rich can get richer without the poor getting poorer since they are creating wealth, not taking it in a zero-sum or rent-seeking way. Except outside of the most abject poverty that is fairly rare in the developed world, utility/disutility is more a function of relative economic status than absolute economic status. So, in the only sense that matters, this is at least oversimplified; you have to improve absolute wealth on the lower end considerably just to offset the disutility of increased equality and break even. It is possible to increase inequality and have everyone better off in utilitarian terms, but improvements in the usual economic measures are not sufficient to show that because those are poor proxies for utility.