• _pi
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    the CHIPS act is the grift that keeps on grifting

    These problems are often presented by Americans a cultural but in reality they are the problems of global capital.

    Taiwanese and Chinese Bosses think that the US system of bribery is too inefficient and that US workers are too expensive compared to their lack of skill and dedication. (See American Factory, it’s really good at laying this out)

    These economic realities are different in China and Taiwan because they are not the imperial core. This experiment was doomed to fail because reindustrialization is fighting against the direction of the market and regardless of who controls the coin purse, nobody is going to take on that risk. The CHIPS act and things like it, give away free money which incentivizes failure because in order to derisk the proposition the US government has to make it profitable regardless of the success of the venture. It’s almost like reindustrialization of these key industries needs to be based on a nationalized industrial capacity, especially if we’re going to view it from the basis of national security.

    But alas Americans are too capitalist brained to even understand 20th century nationalist logic anymore.

    • RNAi [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 month ago

      I didn’t understand your explanation, why would such mega profitable industry wont work in yankland? I understand it if it was growing bananas or whatever at international commodity prices, but this

      • urmums401k [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 month ago

        Youre assuming owners can accept less than optimal outcomes ever. Once they get a 10% return literally anywhere, they just will not fuck with 9.999% ever again for any reason even if they gave the excess capital laying around doing nothing. Its just not Sexy, doesn’t feel like winning.

        There’s a great “well there’s your problem” episode on freight rail and the fucking ratio.

      • _pi
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        Because if you break down the cost to unit economics, the biggest pieces of the pie are labor, profit and overhead. If the price of processors cannot go up, the pie needs to be adjusted for the workers. TSMC claims that in Taiwan it averages $76K USD yearly per worker, a country where the average wage is $21k. So roughly this translates to the employee mix for TSMC being 3x more expensive than the average wage. In the US this translates to $59k USD population average to $177k USD TSMC average, which is 2.3x the cost. In reality they’ll get that down to ~2x because ASML median salary is around $132K. So now you have to shift that pie to be less profitable or cut into overhead. Some share of overhead is actually executive perks/salaries/inefficiency so we get into the agency problem. Some share of overhead is the maintenance of favorable political connections which are more expensive in the US. Some share of overhead is maintenance on loans for capital expenses such as the buildings, machines, training, etc. Profit is obvious why it can’t be cut. They demand the same or increasing rates of profit.

        This also assumes that the output between the two countries is comparable which is not true due to workforce mix and may never actually be true due to labor laws and cultural expectations of workers.

        This doesn’t get into the more complex financial realities like, training and retaining a workforce who has no experience fabbing chips, the differences in work culture and expectations of workers between the two countries, etc.

    • merthyr1831
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 month ago

      the funniest thing about CHIPS is that supposedly not a single penny has been given out yet, despite all these fabs spending fuckloads to build up to take the free money.

      even funnier if the money takes too long to materialize and these fabs go broke before they pump out a single wafer

  • Bureaucrat@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 month ago

    We should Apply! 100% they will not hire us because we are a pup collective consciousness super poster! Then we can sue them for racial discrimination and use the money to by a tennis ball launcher and we will be forever entertained!

    • eldavi
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 month ago

      you joke, but that’s exactly the problem; the americans that they’ve hired are largely union and they keep fighting back whenever the management tries to abuse them like they’re taiwanese. the problem has gotten so bad that the management literally flies in taiwanese workers in to abuse rather than higher americans.