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Comment by 0xDEAFBEAD | Hacker News Reader

I found an interesting thread on the /r/semiconductors subreddit discussing what it is like to work at TSMC

https://reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/1m96m4f/my_expe...

Reading that post, all i felt what a splendid luxury it is to live in the united states and be paid much better than those in other nations because of the country’s brand.

Not for much longer

... while having a 38th-in-the-world healthcare system that can completely bankrupt you, and an obscenely puny PTO allotment.

Tradeoffs.

I’m not sure if people are aware, but there’s a little-known secret about America not having state-funded healthcare. Did any of you know? Don’t forget this important fact! It’s related to every single American topic.

Technically we have a fair amount of state-funded healthcare (Medicare/Medicaid).

> 38th-in-the-world healthcare system that can completely bankrupt you

That’s what my Canadian passport is for, I can just go back home if I get cancer

> They sent Taiwanese over to clean up because they just couldn't handle all the American blue-collar workers.

Translation: Unions got in the way of actually efficient construction so they had to bypass them with their own people.

Unions in the US, in general, are extremely luddite as any new technology improvement that's better is treated with hatred because it removes jobs from the union's control. This is how the longshoremen have basically permanently prevented any technology improvement at our ports because they refuse to accept any automation and lobby heavily to prevent it.

In general though that post just comes off of "disgruntled former employee who doesn't understand high-intensity work cultures".

I disagree with your assessment, the poster is obviously disillusioned but they just detail their point of view. You can't just write off safety violation and toxic environment as "high-intensity work culture". You also just work in your own anti-union discourse without any basis in the actual text.

Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level - if their isn't competition, there is absolutely no reason to innovative, change, or maintain a quality level - so, in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible, above all other things, bc at some point, they really will become "too big to fail" - whether in a small monopolized niche or a massive but dominated industry, that is always true, without fail as profits are always most important.

It works with everything in a capitalist system too - all production, resources, and outputs of a society that allows unchecked greed, will grow until it stops due to market consolidation (not always nefarious either). Google search as an example, we all picked it first, then they got greedy - even if they were saints that always was going to play out like that, bc of capitalism.

Once a market is controlled by a few players - ALL TRUE GROWTH STOPS and bare minimum, most cost effective to profit ratio "limited/controlled/planned" growth follows.

Hard drives for my adult life are my singular example. Lots of tech is like that actually.

Capitalism without competition will naturally evolve into full on Feudalism and Serfdom if it is allowed to.

Isn’t TSMC one of like 3 semiconductor producers on the planet? And wouldn’t that satisfy your claim of “once a market is controlled by a few players, all true growth stops”? But we’ve seen phenomenal and continuous improvements over the last few years. So which part of our situation do we have to re-interpret for your claim to be correct? Is the growth not “true”? Is 3 not “a few players”? Or is, perhaps, your outlook somehow incorrect?

I think you can understand quite simply why that isn't a standard type of example - far, far more companies and industries exist like my example, owned and dominated by a small number of companies that operate essentially in lockstep - same pricing, branding, type of products - none of the players trying to innovate at all, as that would threaten their status quo. This is everything in life nowadays, pretend otherwise, but as soon as you realize lie 5 companies own all the brands, it's all going to to make sense.

With micro chips, 1 company has all the companies by the balls - nobody likes that, so this is a bit different bc there is also room for several companies "Top level" chip manufacturers - for sure more than 1, so although it seems like that industry proves me wrong - it also proves me exactly right also.

Think about the demand for graphic cards with a lot of ram right now for an example - ALL PF EVERYONE knew we needed more than 8gigs of ram last generation but they still rolled out them this generation and there are still even smaller 4gb cards being made - look at an HP or Dell desktops or laptops, look at Gamepass now, so much evidence of the exact formula I described - bc it's like a rule, we just didn't have enough "East India Trading Companies" and couldn't see enough of the whole picture of capitalism, before we all globally started thinking in that mindset.

Capitalism doesn't give a fuck about innovation or quality or providing or services, or the 3 ps - only money. All of us are going to start understanding this in self evident ways as our lives continue - unless we pivot.

good point, but to push back a bit, I think geopolitical factors such as Taiwan's Silicon Shield and the related AI arms race are as much responsible as free market principles for semiconductor improvements recently.

I completely agree - which I must also concede definitely appears to be capitalism and is even functionally capitalist (about as capitalist as can be even) tho the external factors that helped to force the internal innovation and extremely driven and dedicated investments to staying ahead weren't solely economic or profit - they were all about competition tho ;)

It's a good example of capitalism that kinda works right now - but, it could easily be the opposite... if China did takeover Taiwan, that company could easily (would likely very aggressively) do exactly all the late stage capitalism, death to innovation, money machine stuff that I've been describing - as almost/all other companies have done so with similar market positions.

tl;Dr: The only reason they are still making such good stuff is bc they needed/still need to be the silicon shield.

> Capitalism is Luddite at a fundamental level

You mean: Capitalism is luddite at the individual level. At the aggregate level, it's the opposite.

> in a capitalist economy all participants are always incentivised to grow as large as possible

As opposed to...?

> Once a market is controlled by a few players - ALL TRUE GROWTH STOPS

I'm not trying to be insulting but I think you need to read a bit more about the world before capitalism. Before the Renaissance Italian and Dutch innovations in banking, company ownership, etc.

Bc this is HN - I will clarify. I know there wasn't capitalism, I don't even mean economic system in the start of my reply - The Medicis for example - they were very opportunistic, selfishly greedy, and exploitative, with power as their primary pursuit tho, not money.

Today money is power - power like the royal power even, so capitalism today, being late stage, will solely become about exploitation as the powerful and wealthy become further away away from the innovations, they will support innovations less and less, etc.

I don't know, I think capitalism is super broken, and now that it is broke, it can only get more broken and nobody will ever catch up to those benefiting from it being broken now - mostly just bc they were rich at the right time too. The pandemic addition of wealth to the top 1% as examples - they are all already like batman and tony, all researching life extension and blah, blah - tbh, I think everyone can understand this.

All of that was capitalism before we invented the word capitalism. Systems of domination, like monarchy, work well as examples of the kind of capitalism we have now - if Microsoft changes something huge with digital document creation, so will all others that create documents, like how all games will find their way onto a Gamepass in the next few years.

Eventually, making a game without a subscription model will not accepted by the distributors (Xbox, Epic, Steam) and games will be made with tiers of subscription play, from conception and the drawing on up - not like DLC now, bc it couldn't be the way it will be until now - bc one player/a small number of companies have so much control.

That's a funny take, since reading the history of Luddism I've always interpreted it to be anti-capitalist. The Luddites were peasants that had their way of making a living disrupted by a high capital expenditure technology that they could not compete against and thus took to destroying it.

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