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Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance. It’s a continuation of recent trends and closi
by itopaloglu83 1y ago
Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance.
It’s a continuation of recent trends and closing markets.
Nobody in their sane mind would allow a company like ASML or the likes to be purchased by competitors.
But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose.
- bdangubic 1y agoUSA is nationalizng Intel and under this administration more of the commie shit is coming :)
- kapone 1y ago[flagged]
- bdangubic 1y ago:)
- gerash 1y agoThe argument I have heard about the US taking 20% stake in Intel is that when a company asks for federal money then it’s only fair if the federal government gets some equity in return. You can’t socialize losses and privatize gains.
- itopaloglu83 1y ago> You can’t socialize losses and privatize gains. Yes, yes, and yes. We kept doing this, a bank or company stretches too much after making record profits, and then cries for federal funding and free money. The federal reserve is a lender of last resort and they shouldn’t have given that much money without any collateral etc. Even if they just kept the stock and then sold it afterwards, we wouldn’t be in this much debt. We spend trillions covering private losses, this was plain stupid.
- bdangubic 1y agoeasiest way to get downvoted on HN is to point out that we are the largest socialist country on the planet exactly because of this. there isn’t any shit we won’t socialize losses on (farming, banking… you name it, US has got your back)
- satvikpendem 1y agoSocializing is not the same as socialist per se, the latter of which has the specific definition of workers controlling the means of production, and I don't see that anywhere in the US much less the world.
- bdangubic 1y agoyou can throw any semantics at this you want and re-define it however you see fit. but there are few things more socialist than government taking a stake in companies. if this Intel story came out or Venezuela or China we would be crying a foul saying “oh look at that socialist shit, glad I live in America”
- satvikpendem 1y agoSure, I don't disagree on the argument, I'm just saying that people have been using the word socialism wrong for so long that it now just means when the government does something, basically.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> federal reserve is a lender of last resort and they shouldn’t have given that much money without any collateral The Fed only lends against collateral.
- bdangubic 1y agoif we are not a communist country (everyone seems to think that we are not) why the F would we socialize losses?!?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> if we are not a communist country (everyone seems to think that we are not) why the F would we socialize losses?!? Hold on, the logic is any country that socialises anything to any degree is communist? Where the hell did you get that from?
- Intermernet 1y agoIf you use the word "Socialise" then the current trend of reactionary ill-informed is to assume "Communism". It's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> it's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had OP [1] is the first person to make the argument that socialising anything implies communism in this thread. The entire shtick is a straw man. It doesn't need to be argued if it's only brought up by the side tearing it down. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575045
- Intermernet 1y agoThe first in this thread. I often come across people making this claim.
- bdangubic 1y agothe terms are used interchangeably for the HN crowd but you get the point... US is the largest socialist country on the planet by far. Not communist country yet but Project 2025 is working hard on that :)
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> argument I have heard about the US taking 20% stake in Intel is that when a company asks for federal money then it’s only fair if the federal government gets some equity in return Great forward-looking concept. Terrible ex post facto. The precedent set is that the government can demand equity for past favours at any time. Also, now that the U.S. owns a stake in Intel, where does that leave competitors? We're already seeing a push to force AMD and Intel to merge [1]. [1] https://www.tomsguide.com/tech/us-government-considering-cash-infusions-amd-merger-to-help-struggling-intel https://www.tomsguide.com/tech/us-government-considering-cas...
- edm0nd 1y ago>You can’t socialize losses and privatize gains. Companies do this all the time though. For example, here in Louisiana the utility companies do this. After a major hurricane, Entergy will fix and upgrade tons of infrastructure and then get to tack on a +$15.00/m on to your utility bill for the next 5 to 10 years to recoup the costs all while they are making millions in profits each year. Why pay for it themselves when they can just force the public to do it.
- Intermernet 1y agoCalling the current US administration "commie" wan't on my bingo card. I swear most people these days have no actual concept of the things they argue against.
- bdangubic 1y agoThey are as commie as it gets but lets say heavily promoting socialism, nationalizing private companies, subsidizing farmers etc etc… and it is getting worse by the minute
- Intermernet 1y agoIf it takes a misunderstanding of communism to get trump kicked out, I'm all for it, but this is far from "as commie as it gets". What's the definition of communism as far as you understand it?
- HPsquared 1y ago"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
- itopaloglu83 1y agoI wonder how this would affect patent applications, since after such an event, some countries might not respect patents for their internal markets.
- dgfitz 1y agoLike… China?
- itopaloglu83 1y agoThe coke recipe has never been patented, afaik, and similarly certain high-end things were patented only because the main company was hiring a subcontractor to do something. For example, Samsung flat out copied iPhone exactly almost. So, my thinking is that there could be less patents, because they’re less likely to share the technology and patents might let others copy stuff.
- oblio 1y ago> For example, Samsung flat out copied iPhone exactly almost. Which iPhone?
- snovv_crash 1y agoThe one with the rounded corners, obviously.
- oblio 1y agoThey're similar but hardly "clones", I find that the Samsung one has enough of its own flair, especially the back. https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone-pictures-1827.php https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone-pictures-1827.php https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9000_galaxy_s-pictures-3115.php https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9000_galaxy_s-pictures-311...
- incompatible 1y agoThis has always been the case, to some degree, but I think it will be a much bigger factor now that so many have accepted that Neoliberalism is dead and no longer give it lip service.
- mc32 1y agoOf course the preferred option is what the Chinese do which is to never let that happen in the first place or if you do allow foreign investment always keep a 50.1% stake in the entity and exfiltrate any tech from the venture you need .
- itopaloglu83 1y agoI’m not very familiar with Dutch company structure but after a certain percentage you’re usually privy to trade secrets etc. so it’s dangerous even then. And my point has nothing to do with Chinese or Dutch or European, even though those are the examples I used. The main thing is that it was a mistake to sell vital industries, and some people are really hypocritical when other countries do something like this, but in this particular case they’re finding out reasons to side with the Dutch government. I just want consistency, it is seldomly okay to allow any other entity into critical industries.
- like_any_other 1y ago> But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose. As far as I understand, Samsung, TSMC, and SMIC are all closely guarded by their respective governments. And China doesn't (didn't?) allow foreign companies to operate in China without a local partner at all. So I don't see the irony - everyone practices protectionism, some are just more subtle about it than others. Some China-specific examples: tmnvix points out the perfectly analogous Chinese restriction of rare earth exports: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572420 China imposes more trade and investment barriers, discriminatory taxes, and information security restrictions than any other country by a vast margin. - https://ecipe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/DTE_China_TWP_REVIEWED.pdf https://ecipe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/DTE_China_TWP_R... As with most countries, China has adopted some policies aimed at protecting or promoting its domestic industries, including targeted quotas, subsidies to certain key industries and rejection of patents in critical industries. - https://www.rfa.org/english/news/afcl/fact-check-china-protectionism-11072023101145.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/afcl/fact-check-china-prote... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025 - government plan with securing first local, and the global key markets, for indigenous firms, the acquisition of foreign technology companies, and independence from foreign suppliers, as explicit goals.
- wagwang 1y agoWhat about the suez canal or iranian oil fields
- like_any_other 1y agoWhat about them? The claim, or rather implication, was that Western powers would never allow equivalent protectionist policies, such as preventing the export of key industries and skills, to be enacted by other countries. Yet such protectionism is routine in China (and many other Asian countries), and "whole hell" did not break loose. A few more than half century old examples don't change what we can all see is the case in the present day.
- chrisco255 1y agoIt's not a "free market" to allow a foreign communist country to own or control your companies or resources, whether strategic or not. The entire arrangement is governed by diplomacy between two states. FWIW, it never has been the case that everyone was a fan of "the world is flat" theory of capital and labor markets.
- HeavyStorm 1y agoPsst, your bias is showing! Tuck it in...
- immibis 1y agoActually that is the free market
- next_xibalba 1y agoThe Chinese heavily subsidize their companies and have large government bureaus that strategically guide industries over long time frames. For example, the CCP has been on a long, intentional path to destroying all international solar manufacturers via subsidies, dumping, etc. This is not how free markets function.
- philosopher1234 1y agoLol, how is this not a free market? Apple subsidizes dozens of organizations internally to advance its strategic interests, what’s the difference?
- next_xibalba 1y agoI'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot the difference between Apple and the Chinese government.
- philosopher1234 1y agoI’m not hearing an argument, and I won’t be thinking one up for you. Seems like only a difference of degree to me.
- maximus_01 1y agoI'm not here to debate whether free markets are good or bad, but governments have a privileged position versus private companies, and effectively operate above the law (again at least compared to private companies). Any government intervention takes us away from a free market, either a little bit or a lot, depending on the action. Apple is a private company. Anything it does is really part of the free market, at least in the original meaning of that as described by Adam Smith and co.
- philosopher1234 1y agoWe’re talking about China subsidizing goods that it sells in another country. This is bread and butter “free market” behavior. Literally every company in the world does this one way or another.
- FpUser 1y ago>But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose." We live in a "Rules Based Order" - one rule for thee, another one for me.
- roughly 1y agoIt gets a lot less contradictory when you realize the principles are window dressing for the interests. Early America had no regard for intellectual property rights because all the good media came from abroad - then we built Hollywood and saw the light. The west pushes deregulation and free trade because we've got the money and the only thing that can keep us from sucking a market dry is government intervention. The Dutch just seized a company because a geopolitical opponent was using it to exercise leverage, which is also how TikTok became a sub-brand of Oracle. Nation states will use whatever words are necessary to justify their actions, but the game is and always has been power, leverage, and interest. Given the rise of China, I'm guessing we're going to get a lot more opportunities to tut and shake our heads about how hypocritical western governments turn out to be with regards to national economic interests. (And, to be clear, I'm not saying this is like it's a good thing. I'm not a government, I'm a person, so all I get is the pointy end of all this happy rhetoric.)
- motorest 1y ago> It gets a lot less contradictory when you realize the principles are window dressing for the interests. I don't think this is the epiphany you think it represents. The whole point of laws and regulations is to protect interests. Do you think that any regime passes and enforces laws that are detrimental to their best interests? In free market economies, laws and regulations are put in place to foster competition, and antitrust legislation is in place to prevent anticompetitive practices. However, laws and regulations are also in place to prevent strategic interests from being captured or even threatened. The motivation is rather obvious and to the point. Where is this window dressing you speak of? > Nation states will use whatever words are necessary to justify their actions, but the game is and always has been power, leverage, and interest. Your post shows some degree of confusion, specially by the way you imply inconsistencies. There are none, and the whole point is rather on the nose. Internal competition and level playing fields are promoted as they pressure companies to improve their competitiveness. "Competitiveness" is the operating principle. Having a rival third-party perform an action that threatens your competitiveness is obviously not acceptable.
- themgt 1y ago
- onetimeusename 1y agoThat has happened and not a lot came of it. Venezuela nationalized American oil projects under Hugo Chavez. If by hell breaking loose you mean law suits I guess so.
- Sloowms 1y agoAh yes, Venezuela famously only has lawsuits that happened to them. Maybe look up Guaido, the 3% polling self and US declared president of Venezuela.
- zinodaur 1y agoAnd the huge American military force currently positioned off their coastline, blowing up boats!
- paulryanrogers 1y agoHow many decades after nationalization? The motive for recent boat bombings is supposedly stopping illegal drugs. Though IMO it has more to do with distracting from the release of certain human trafficking records. This US administration seems bent entirely to the will and ego of one person. (Which isn't to say the US has clean hands. Our list of attempted coups in South America is long.)
- thesmtsolver 1y agoIsn't Venezuela a defacto dictatorship now? Not sure the 3% is correct under these conditions.
- pmontra 1y agoThey left 3% to the opposition? The government won the general elections in Italy with 98.5% 96 years ago.
- toyg 1y agoIt could have maybe gone a bit differently if the US government had resisted the urge to interfere, like in the bad old days of the cold war. They isolated Chavez and then Maduro, which backfired just enough to justify the slide into full-on dictatorship. People voted for Chavez and then (at least once) for Maduro because the massive inequality was unsustainable. If the US had accepted that and worked with them instead of against them, maybe we'd be in a different place right now. But the interests of oil companies always come first, sadly. (obviously this does not absolve the Venezuelans from their responsibilities.)
- hopelite 1y agoThat’s not quite correct. It wasn’t the foreign entity purchasing something, or they wouldn’t have allowed all the foreign entities purchasing things. It is more accurate to say they didn’t care as long as they thought they had the advantage and letting the foreign entity buy critically important companies and industries was a means for grooming them or working them to serve your interests. What “America” has realized is that their plan to develop China into an asset/ally simply did not work, nor that they’ve totally empowered them and likely the Chinese were intentionally sharing false data to give false understanding of how they were doing overall. We’ve recently seen a major reversal on China in particular, because it has dawned on people they were being played, not that they were the player.
- hulitu 1y ago> Nobody in their sane mind would allow a company like ASML or the likes to be purchased by competitors. But they did it.
- noobermin 1y agoThe age of globalism and unfettered free trade is over, and good riddance.
- jojobas 1y agoToo little too late. China will catch up on everything of importance, and we're on the hook for pretty much everything else.
- cies 1y agoOnly they will not admit it. The capitalist propaganda, "freedom", is so ingrained that we cannot easily paddle back on it. So we will become helplessly hypocritical instead.
- globalnode 1y agofree for me but not for thee
- motorest 1y ago> free for me but not for thee That's rich, coming from a country which outright bands foreign corporations from even operating within their borders, and those who they allow have to operate through a state-controlled corporate minder.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago>That's rich, coming from a country What country do you know Globalnode is coming from? Just interested in the high level of assurance.
- yvdriess 1y agoHe was talking about china because that's the subject in this story, not the poster's residence.
- 1y ago
- skinkestek 1y ago> But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the whole hell would brake loose. Russia has nationalised a number of Western companies since 2022, even McDonalds. Nothing happened.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- notTooFarGone 1y agoI have a feeling the function that tell us "if hell breaks loose" has something to do with number of nukes ready and waiting.
- padjo 1y agoYeah relations between Russia and the west are famously normal right now.
- mschuster91 1y ago> Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance. The problem with China is that the "free access" was always one-sided as we did not insist on reciprocity - not for the Internet, not for tourism, not for companies, not for goods. We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them virtually full access to our economic market, we gave them access to the Internet, we gave them seriously discounted shipping rates and customs exemptions. And look where that got us. They lock in their population in a way reminding me of the GDR/Stasi era - if you're not an obedient citizen, you don't get permission to travel, everything is subject to surveillance and the one will of the Party -, they use their access to the Internet to steal, hack and run secret police organizations while locking their population behind the Great Firewall, they buy up our companies and shift crucial knowledge back to China. And in the meanwhile, good paying jobs in our countries were lost en masse to China, what used to be high-quality products that would last many years if not decades got replaced by China made ultra cheap junk.
- khana 1y ago[dead]
- yupyupyups 1y agoWe got back slave labour and offshored manufacturing pollution. Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage.
- mschuster91 1y ago> offshored manufacturing pollution One might be tempted to say that offshoring the manufacturing pollution was the point - the Silicon Valley is the US' top Superfund site for a reason [1]. Now it's not Western countries that get to deal with the legacy of a few decades of exploitative capitalism, it's China, Taiwan and India which are out of sight, out of mind to us. > Personally, I'd rather pay extra for high quality goods made ethically than some planned obsolescence or plastic garbage. Indeed but that's a niche market which means R&D costs alone make products so much more expensive that it's basically impossible to compete... and for the stuff that is made domestically, manufacturers love to go for "planned obsolescence" and other strategies to turn consumer spending into recurring revenue - always remember BMW and subscription seat heaters. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silicon-valley-full-superfund-sites/598531/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/09/silic...
- chvid 1y agoThere is a difference between blocking a sale on natsec grounds and first allowing a sale, taking in billions of investment, and then 7 years later nationalizing the company on natsec grounds.
- TacticalMalice 1y agoThe company has not been nationalized.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nashashmi 1y agoWhen these kinds of procedures were first promoted, China was a non-communist entity, aligned with western countries. After China was overtaken by CCP, China is now considered “adversary” after being called “non-aligned”, in similar vein to Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Not even Cuba is on this list. So it is true that the Western first world aligned countries have greater access to each others assets. And there is a dark network at play at trying to limit the same to second world and third world nations.
- retor 1y agoDid it take over ownership as well or just the administration of the business?
- polytely 1y agoThey didn't take ownership, they just paused decision-making and now major choices can veto'd by the ministry of economic affairs if they are deemed not in the interest of the Dutch company (which is part of a larger Chinese holding).
- UpsideDownRide 1y agoCase in point Chile and Salvador Allende.
- rcxdude 1y agoEurope isn't really a hotbed of this kind of thing, anyway. In fact, a frequent criticism of the EU from socialists is that the free competition rules generally prevent nationalising companies, and this is a little unfair because a lot of countries in the EU have nationalised industries that have been grandfathered in.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoFair points, but in this case the company has not been nationalized. The Dutch gov can veto certain decisions, but that's not at all the same as the company becoming an asset of the state (nationalization).
- Yizahi 1y agoWhat do you mean "were to do"? It's already happened, probably many times, it just a single human can't keep up with all world news of every industry. Here is an example how China raided and took over Chinese ARM subsidiary, along with all stolen western IP. https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-the-century https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heis...