Can’t they use the defense production act or something to take over the company or the factory?
>the Pentagon relied on one production line for key chips, and that production line, owned by Abu Dhabi-controlled Global Foundries, just sold it off to a firm that will shut it down.
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.
You have to be really careful with this. Most of the natural monopolies are very narrow.
You can't just say "infrastructure" or even "telecommunications." The natural monopoly is limited to the physical plant in the last mile. Transit is a competitive market. You don't want to extend the monopoly an inch more than it needs to be.
Almost nothing in "healthcare" is a natural monopoly. Maybe emergency services, and even then it's not a "real" natural monopoly (which is characterized by high fixed costs and low variable costs) but rather a market failure as a result of being unable to make a rational choice between providers while you're unconscious. It certainly doesn't apply to, for example, cancer treatment, where there are many providers and people are willing to spend as much time as necessary and travel long distances in order to receive the most competitive care.
And there is no sense in which any education is a natural monopoly whatsoever. It is the exact opposite -- a competitive market whose costs are predominantly variable (per-student) rather than fixed.
There is a case to be made for the local government to do the thing which is actually a natural monopoly, but that doesn't mean you can just reclassify a bunch of random stuff you want the government to do as a natural monopoly when it isn't.
The thing that worries me about this kind of thinking is that, while it's technically correct, privatizing education, or treating it as a competitive market, gives you bad outcomes. The rich can afford to send their kids to the best schools, which keeps the rich families rich. The poor can only afford to send their kids to the worst schools, or the chronically-underfunded public schools, and this keeps the poor families poor.
We already see this in some (many?) US school districts with our hybrid public/private system, largely because public education is underfunded and private schools are generally out of financial reach for most folks.
Who runs the schools is a separate question than who pays for the schools. You can have the government provide school vouchers to everyone without having the government operate any/all of the schools.
The existing system is what gives you the thing you oppose. The rich can afford to pay for private schools no matter what, but the middle class can't both pay property taxes to fund public schools and also pay for private schools. The poor can't even afford to live in the neighborhood that allows them to attend the middle class public schools.
Give everyone a voucher and the poor kids can go to the better schools because getting accepted into a particular school has nothing to do with the price of your house.
Of course, the really market-based solution is to give parents cash rather than vouchers. Because maybe you want to home school and spend the money on books or field trips rather than a prepackaged education bureaucracy, or pay one of the parents for their time in teaching the child themselves, and why should only the rich kids have access to that?
* high upfront cost and/or high maintenance
* takes up valuable/limited space
* access to it is important for the whole population, so should be everywhere and not discriminate, and should be accessible
* choice between providers isn't viable ( there isn't enough need for multiple providers) or practical ( e.g. some people might travel an extra hour to the "cheaper" or "better" airport or train station, but it's better for everyone if they don't clog up transit capacity over that and use the fastest to reach one)
All infrastructure falls here. You can't really have competition between railroads or regular railroads, and it'd be a colossal waste of space and money. Telecommunications infrastructure costs a lot, and without heavy help/regulation can easily become monopolised ( at least regionally). For instance here in France, if an ISP puts down fiber in a neighborhood, they have exclusivity with it for a few years(iirc 3), afterwards they have to share it with the competition. That ensures a healthier market.
As for education, it's mostly a natural monopoly due to the fact that it should be accessible and present everywhere. Switching providers is complicated ( you might have to move, the kid might not enjoy the stress, transportation can become harder and longer, etc. etc.)
Healthcare should be close to you - do you imagine a cancer patient having to travel hours for treatment? Or having be far away from friends and family for that treatment? Or you get an operation 3h away, and nobody can come see you or help you get home.