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Comment by MangoCoffee | Hacker News Reader

>more aggressive monetization model

why Westerners always thinking about aggressive increase price? it may give you a short term profit but in the long run. your customers will start to look else where and try new technology to by pass you.

Apple stop paying Intel's tax. Apple stop paying Qualcomm's tax. Apple stop paying Samsung's tax.

i just don't understand why you want to kill your golden goose and its not like TSMC doesn't raise price. (they increase it by 20% during covid shortage). why create a lose-lose situation instead a win-win for everyone.

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Imagine thinking profit-seeking is just a Western thing. Lol.

TSMC did hike prices the moment they were able. If they can maintain and extend their lead, they will hike them further. Because they can.

I am sure they will frame this as a win-win. Victors always do.

> Imagine thinking profit-seeking is just a Western thing. Lol.

Seems pretty clear to me that the comment you're replying to is talking about short-term profit maximization, and not "profit seeking" in general.

The argument is that excessive short-term profit maximization hurts you in the long run by driving your customers to look for alternatives. Which you'll notice only makes sense as an argument if you do care about profits.

And I agree that it's debatable whether this is specifically a Western failing or not, but it's sure become a common approach over at least the last few decades in the US of A.

Isn't this a natural end state of a quasi-monopolist traded in the stock market? At some point the market share cannot go up by much anymore but your share holders want to see growth. So the only way to show the needed growth is by increasing margins.

Increasing prices seems fairly safe for TSMC though as long as they keep their technological edge and are ready to lower prices again once a viable competitor emerges.

Not every stock needs to be a growth stock - dividends exists. Silicon valley and VCs screwed tech people idea of what the stock needs to do

Aren't dividends in general mostly a thing of the past? I thought they were unattractive due to being a forced tax event.

The Intel example is particularly interesting as AFAIK Jobs wanted to go with Intel for the iPhone. The problem wasn't the different architecture but that Intel wanted significant margins. Seems definitely short sighed for a strategic deal like that.

Source: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/tsmc

> why Westerners always thinking about aggressive increase price?

Why do you unironically use the word westerner? that's like generalizing all of east asia

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