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Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

As far as I know there are several other companies selling quartz as pure as Spruce Pine, they’re just more expensive because Spruce Pine has an old and well developed industry. This is an opportunity for other vendors to invest in their processes enough to take the market while Quartz Corp, et al are rebuilding.

Hereus Conamic and WACKER Chemie come to mind

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Another POV is that every shortage you and I, as laypeople, have ever experienced, has been the result of something strictly political, like trade agreements, unstable governments, poor worker rights, poor property rights, etc. When the reason for a shortage appears to be economic, like "just more expensive," it is the result of political economic decisions like tariffs, or political business decisions like certifications.

You know a lot more about quartz manufacturing: do you sincerely think that someone in China couldn't figure out how to make the quartz (or whatever) cheaply?

It’s quartz, the most common mineral on this planet. Literally any mainland country on this planet has enough to start their own industry.

China has been trying as part of its latest (14th) five year plan but there’s a reason so much of the semiconductor supply chain is in Japan, Korea, US, and Europe: labor costs aren’t the driving force. It’s energy and capital equipment and intellectual property and decades of expertise with quality control. Everything else is secondary.

How do you really know where a Japanese or Korean vendor gets their stuff? “Trust me bro?”

"How do you really know where a US vendor gets their stuff?"

I don’t, the hard truth is that most things that are reaching the scale where I can buy them on Amazon and Costco are cheaply made overseas.

Analysis of trace elements and impurities, isotopic composition, and cathodoluminescence.

According to Ed Conway, author of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization. Russia and Brazil also supply high-quality quartz, he says, but “Spruce Pine has far and away the [largest amount] and highest quality.”

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