tharmas

It isn't just Musk, there are plenty of reputable journalists and scholars who argue the same point. Noam Chomsky for starters.

Highly useful if you are building a Digital Control Grid.

Yeah, I wish journalists would just look up the EM-ployment rate and go from there. The official "unemployment" rate is based on who is collecting benefits. It doesn't count those unemployed but not collecting benefits.

>Apple has low volume sales?

In comparison. Android phones (in total) outsell iPhones because they are cheaper/more affordable. Sure Macs and iPhones may sell more than an individual non Apple brand, but collectively all together, the non-apple brands outsell Apple.

But it is certainly true that making high quality products doesn't necessarily mean low sales.

>TSMC now has fabs on U.S. soil.

It will take years to get to the level of skill TSMC in Taiwan has.

I don't think Washington should spend money and lives on defending Taiwan. My point is that TSMC is a very valuable manufacturer of chips so it will be a big loss in skill and technology for the "West".

Ultimately the destiny of Taiwan should be whatever the people of Taiwan wish but alas the world does not work that way.

Well, actually they have a new model. I call it the "Apple" model. Low volume sales on high value items where you can charge more.

Even NVidia has moved to this model: make your money from selling high-end GPUs for Data Centers and forget the low-profit margin (GeForce) GPUs for gamers/consumers.

The whole economy is moving to that model for many things.

But increasingly this describes Western countries more and more, particularly the United States.

Fair. And I agree with nearly everything in your comment.

One thing about tRump, is that he is more blatantly obvious about the "bully" side of America. He is not the first bully; just the first un-subtle American bully.

What I find disturbing is the others who enable him. I've long despised the Repugnant Party for their anti-worker ideology but under tRump 2.0 they've gone to a new low that I never thought possible. As much as I despise tRump, the other Repugnant members of congress (the odd rare exception) are absolutely disgraceful.

And then is there is the feckless Democrats...

What about TSMC?

>We have thus far been supremely lucky that irrational actors have not acquired a nuclear bomb.

Cough, cough. Who is currently in the White House?

This wasn't sarcasm. Gov't contracts are where a lot of people make a lot of money. And Palantir and ICE are definitely a thing. I know that sounds purely political but these are real things. ICE depends on Palantir a lot. And Palantir uses Data Center resources a lot.

Why is the Jensen the CEO of NVidia lending out huge sums of money for AI companies to buy their chips for datacenters? Part of the reason is the security of government contracts ala the Digital Control Grid.

I'm surprised. Usually, the gripes are the compile times or the lack of tooling compared to other languages. For functional programming its quite expressive. ZIO and Typelevel Cats.

Me too. It's my favorite language by far. So expressive. Although that can be a downside.

Aren't the AI Datacenters for the Digital Control Grid, so govt contracts?

Well their choice is as a USA/EU Vassal state or Russian one.

I'd say neither is an attractive choice.

If AI was utilized to eliminate the "shitty" jobs I'd be more enthusiastic about it. AI Robots that clean toilets so humans don't have to? Yes, please. (Yes, I get it that at present its probably still cheaper to employ a human wage slave to do this job -> the economic argument).

But at present AI seems to be just eliminating the junior programmer positions. That is, the apprentices. Once the more experienced engineers retire and die off who will replace them? AI? Who will have the knowledge and expertise to know what is crap software is and what isn't?

I would argue that it is rent-seeking and asset accumulation that is a big problem. If the wealthy elite invested in production rather than consuming assets that would improve things. I don't share his politics but someone like Elon Musk at least invests in production whereas Blackrock is heavily into asset accumulation.

However, part of the problem of why the wealthy elite don't invest in production is because of the Petro-dollar. When the USA moved to the Petro-dollar that is when the economy started to go K-shaped. The British Empire had the same problem. The Chinese absolutely do NOT want to become the World's reserve currency as they know the same fate will befall them. Perhaps the USA should have listened to Keynes with his Bancor currency after all.

Thanks. You're comment made me laugh.

Yes, THIS!!!!!!

Israel IS the USA in the Middle-East.

However, in a post-oil world will it still be a thing? For now, there's still the Petro-dollar.

It depends on what you use for sunscreen. A lot of sunscreens have aluminum in them and there are many that have it but it is not listed as an ingredient. Zinc oxide sunscreen is a much safer sunscreen.

You have a point, but remember tRump gets to pass himself off as the "good" guy. Also, there is absolutely no way that Israel gets to act autonomously. They are a vassal state beholden to the USA. The USA calls the shots when it comes to Israel. The same with Ukraine. Ukraine does not attack deep inside Russia without the blessing of the USA. Israel and Ukraine are US proxies doing the dirty work for the USA.

People voted this down without any response. Oh wow, what has happened to hacker news?

In the case of Cuba I imagine it's simply just political control, vassalage, control of the hemisphere. In the case of Venezuela it is Energy Dominance. The USA wants to control Global Energy supplies: oil and [natural] gas. It's all about China. By controlling the world's energy supplies the USA hopes to curtail the rise of China as a peer competitor and prevent other nations from achieving that status as well. Oil is price in $US. Iran was selling their oil in Yuan. That's a big no no from the point of view of maintaining US Hegemony.

On the contrary, the goal is energy dominance and it seems to be working. To be clear, I do not support how this is being achieved. In its endeavor the US has made a lot of people furious against it.

This! And they had to invest the money IN Taiwan.

>(Secretary of War and former Fox News weekend anchor Pete Hegseth was on the news just this evening saying that the USA has been in control of the Strait the whole time, so I think the USA is arguing against your (correct) characterisation of the situation.)

Essentially, the USA has indeed been the one keeping the straight closed. They wanted oil going to China stopped. That was the reason the Navy was there.

There's a theory that BB is the bad cop, USA the good cop. USA lets BB do the dirty work and gets the blame. Every time there's a pending "deal" with Iran, BB skuttles it by attacking Lebanon or Gaza etc. What BB does is with USA's blessing. USA doesn't want a deal with Iran. USA wants control of the oil and Iran regime toppled.

It's ultimately about controlling the world's oil supplies to put the squeeze on China.

Its not about nukes. Its about controlling the oil supply to squeeze China. China controls rare earths so they can put the squeeze on the USA. To counter that USA wants to control the world's oil supply.

Nordstream (Russia), Venezuela, Iran.

Agreed, which is one reason (there are others) why restaurants are disappearing.