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Comment by lcnmrn | Hacker News Reader

Tech world needs a TSMC competitor.

not that easy. The barrier to entry is really high, many have tried and failed: https://erickhun.com/posts/world-innovation-taiwan-semicondu...

Seems like a great opportunity for a post-Brexit UK. Invest a few dozen billions in establishing a nationalised fab. They have the money, skillset and reputation to be a contender.

1. Nationalized means poorly run. Effective companies emerge through competition amongst many companies, and are guided by profit-motivated shareholders, not barely invested and highly distracted politicians.

2. A semiconductor manufacturer needs to be based in a region with a substantial semiconductor supply chain to be successful, and for the UK to develop such a supply chain, it needs a broad-based shift that makes it less-social-democratic/more-capital-friendly, i.e. a more performance oriented economy.

> Nationalized means poorly run.

This is only true if you do it wrong. Read "How Asia Works" to find out how SK and Japan built good nearly-state-owned companies through export discipline.

Here's a counter-argument to the mythologized account of MITI's role in the expansion of the Japanese economy specifically:

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/JapanandtheMythofMITI.h...

The article notes much more foundational properties of the booming Japanese economy, like a smaller portion of private sector output being taxed to support the public sector, as more likely causes of its growth.

Note that Singapore government created Chartered Semiconductor, which once was the third largest foundry in the world.

Does the UK have good electronics companies right now? (Well, there's Dialog.)

They're mostly known for building cars that catch fire and having some of the worse and siller audiophile companies that sell you special gold-plated power cables to make your MP3s sound warmer.

That's an unfair characterisation. When it comes to cars UK is known for:-

Running Europe's most productive car plant[1].

Building the world's fastest cars since 1983[2].

Being the base for most of the Formula 1 constructors[3].

When it comes to electronics innovation even ignoring companies like ARM and Imagination the UK has a large military electronics manufacturing base.

I don't think that current government is likely to do anything to challenge TSMC but to reduce all that to "gold-plated power cables" suggests that you're not really paying attention.

1. https://uk.nissannews.com/en-GB/releases/release-11576-what-...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Formula_One_constructo...

Invented the jet engine, ARM, low-cost computer (ZX-80/81)

And some of the Formula 1 teams have other arms (McLaren being one).

Maybe, but it's a huge amount of money. If it would work as a jobs program then it might have legs

UK has neither the skillset nor reputation for manufacturing. If anything, it may have the reputation of being even more skilled at financial engineering than Americans are.

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