Thread

1. ocd · 1790861971 · focus · HN ↗

   I'm not a business guy, but I think I would be very worried if I created any opening (even on the very long term) for competition to justify itself being built up to meet demand (or national security requirements of other countries) on an industry I mostly control, because I prioritized extremely high prices for a few years that might have the effect of changing the arithmetic for potential competitors that wouldn't have done it before.

   It makes me consider whether there would be retaliation in later years against the US intellectual property system in countries other than China. While RAM is a tangible product, the areas it serves aren't really.

   1. ecshafer · 1790862934 · focus · HN ↗

      How much of this issue is self-inflicted? Micron is building a massive fab in Syracuse. They've spent like 4 years seeking approval, lobbying politicians, doing BS "environmental impact studies" (which are mostly just rent seeking and political handouts). They finally started building, but if they had just been able to put shovel in the ground we would already have this fab be producing memory.

      1. thephyber · 1790864430 · focus · HN ↗

         If only we didn't have 100+ years of factories shitting where we eat we might not have thousands of governments wanting assurances that companies don't harm people in their area.

         Silicon Valley is littered with SuperFund sites of bankrupted companies who conveniently couldn't afford to clean up the toxic mess they left behind when they became the vessel full of debt after the corporate shell game moved on.

         1. ecshafer · 1790864658 · focus · HN ↗

            Do these environmental impact studies effectively stop that? could they effectively stop this issue with a more efficient process?

            What happens now is that there are a large amount of studies, that pay consultants and organizations to generate thousands of pages of documentation. They then turn around, have some niche issues that they pay to go away. For example was Micron having to purchase a few acres of land 25 miles away as a park for some owls effectively helping stop superfund sites?

            This is basically environmentalism security theater and political grifting.

            1. thephyber · 1791201033 · focus · HN ↗

               Welcome the Abundance Agenda. There are entire books being written about how we need to streamline the bureaucracy and policies to actually accomplish the goals of the environmental movement, not just create a self-licking-ice-cream-cone of Vogons, forms/checklists, and tit-for-tat lawsuits.

               Your concern, while well intentioned, is a red herring. At best it can highlight that enforcement of negative externalities is imperfect, but then again everything is.

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