Monopoly supplier of critical Pentagon semiconductors shuts down its production

Say goodbye to electric cars.

This isn't a natural law, it's the point at which antitrust stops letting them buy each other. If it wasn't for that they would merge to monopoly. And that few competitors is enough for them to implicitly or explicitly collude instead of actually competing.

But it only works if barriers to entry are high. Otherwise investors would see profit in going into competition with the cartel. Which is why they lobby for regulatory barriers to prevent that from happening.

> I would be in favor of massively progressive taxation of large companies. I just don’t see the value of them beyond a certain size but I see a lot of danger accumulating so much power in their hands.

What causes this is really the opposite, and what you're suggesting would make it worse.

Corporate expansion is a tax deduction to corporations because corporate income tax is a tax on profit and building new factories etc. to expand vertical integration is a cost. So they'd have more incentive to reinvest all their revenues instead of paying the tax. That's how you get Amazon.

The real problem there is that we double tax corporations. So Ian invests in Apple and his share of Apple's profits are $1000. If Apple pays the money to Ian so he can go invest it in a company that makes electric cars, he has to pay tax on it right away, and then he has less to invest. If he leaves the money inside of Apple and Apple expands into making electric cars, he doesn't have to pay the tax until he sells his shares and gets to earn returns on the money in the meantime.

So then investors have a preference for share price appreciation over dividends, which is equivalent to preferring conglomeration over returning profits to the investor to invest in independent companies. Then we get more and ever-expanding huge conglomerates and less independent companies that do one thing and do it well.

The solution is to make dividends a tax deduction to the corporation. Then corporations with money they don't know what to do with will do that for the tax deduction.

but i really dont want to give any credit to those guys - they certainly aren't discriminating - they'll eat, digest, extract any salable capital and just shit out whatever is left.

i suppose you can argue that they exert an evolutionary pressure to develop an immune system (?)

I can definitely buy into less regulation for most other businesses or small businesses though.

Capitalism allocates resources according to the decision making of holders of capital (assets, whether land, machinery, cash etc) - motivated by the desire to generate returns on that capital. This works pretty well, however it has a tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of the few and away from the many.

By enforcing patents etc, another asset class is constructed, ready for exploitation for revenue generation. Capitalism is thus extended - imagine if the government regulated fresh air, and allowed it to be bought and sold.

Government is not the problem, and (more) capitalism is not the solution - it is bad government enabling the worst aspects of capitalism that is the problem, and it is good government harnessing capitalism for the benefit for everyone which is the solution.

No it wouldn't, Capitalism caused the issue. Its called Regulatory Capture.

I don't understand how people can look at Capitalism and all of its failings and say more Capitalism is the solution. Maybe in theory, more Capitalism would solve it, but in theory Communism _should_ be a much fairer form of government and we all know how the USSR worked out.

To say that Capitalism didn't cause this in the first place is laughable. Its gotten to the point that corporations or special interest groups are just writing some of the laws and having lawmakers champion them as if its their own bill. its called Model Legislation.

Make no mistake this is full blown Late Stage Capitalism.

The problem with idealistically pure capitalism is that then it concentrates wealth, then people apply that wealth to control government and establish rents for themselves. Then it is no longer idealistically pure.

The ideal of capitalism where this would not happen and it would stay idealistically pure is a myth like a drug-free society.

Considering that the factory itself is in the US, it seems pretty absurd that it wasn’t taken over. Like do we ground all our B2s if we run out of spare parts and nobody is around to make them? Insane.

In any event, the Defense Production Act does not have an exception if the business is foreign-owned. The President's powers are very broad. The scenario described in TFA is exactly why the Defense Production Act exists, and I am also curious to know why it wouldn't be invoked in this case.

This comes from an obvious fact that the prime majority of public companies in USA have boards stuffed with bankers, and asset managers, because a big portion of there are owned by bankers, and asset managers.

Most people in government service administering companies also come from exactly the same banker/asset manager background for simple lack of any others.

For police, army and things like water supply, they are good. Many (including me) argue that far more services work better when state owned, eg health, education, power, infrastructure (eg roading) and public transport.

It becomes a political argument rather fast.

I was under the impression that state monopolies are a fundamental part of modern arms procurement in some instances.

A state monopoly's problems are complacency and applying government policy ( e.g. in a racist segregated country, they will apply that).

A private monopoly will absolutely bleed their customers dry out of any money they can take off them, they'll usually stagnate and become complacent ( just like a state monopoly).

Many things are natural monopolies ( infrastructure, education, healthcare) and are best left to state monopolies, even with the downsides.

But perhaps this is not in common use amongst native English speakers!

IIRC (from the days of Electronics magazine) VHDL was also defined for the purpose of allowing US DOD to be manufacturer-independent.