Comment by jjcm

Comment by jjcm 20 hours ago

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In general I would rather the government take a stake in corporations they're bailing out. I think the "too big to fail" bailouts in the past should have come with more of a cost for the business, so on one hand I'm glad this is finally happening.

On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process rather than this politicized "our president made a deal to save america!" / "Intel is back and the government is investing BUY INTEL SHARES" media event. These things should follow a strict set of rules and processes so investors and companies know what to expect. These kind of deals should be boring, not a media event.

ch4s3 19 hours ago

I’d really rather we didn’t bail out these companies at all. It clearly creates moral hazard and makes it hard for better run companies to enter markets.

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  • tw04 3 hours ago

    While that argument makes sense from a purely philosophical perspective, it doesn’t hold water in the reality of this situation.

    Nobody is entering the chip making business and growing to a size and scale to compete with Intel in 2025. If they collapse tomorrow there aren’t going to be startups filling in the gaps, there’s just going to be massive shortages of chips and chaos.

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    • woleium an hour ago

      You are saying that if intel went under, Musk or some other wouldn’t buy the assets and have a go?

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      • tw04 an hour ago

        ...no? Did you see me say nobody would buy the assets in a scenario where Intel was actually going bankrupt?

        I said if by some magic Intel ceased to exist tomorrow, there wouldn't be some startup just filling the gap. So the idea that government investment in Intel somehow prevents a startup competitor is just nonsense. To compete with Intel would require trillions in investment and probably a decade+ of time to build the requisite organization and talent.

        The government investment to prevent the catastrophe that would result in them declaring bankruptcy and the subsequent breakup of their assets has no bearing on whether or not a startup could replace them.

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  • bcrosby95 18 hours ago

    If shareholders are losing ownership it's less a pure bailout and more a strategic investment and/or takeover. It also potentially lets the average taxpayer benefit rather than just those its directly propping up.

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    • thisisit 7 hours ago

      Here I thought the point of a grant/subsidy is that it allows companies to take risk - by setting up factories, funding research without worrying about the monetary cost etc.

      Government benefits through one, generating employment - direct and indirect employment, raising taxes through personal taxes (indirectly impacting tax collection) or second the country being at the forefront of the innovation etc. That is how average tax payer was supposed to benefit.

      But I guess trying to nationalize companies and "benefiting" from company profits was something people were missing. How did no one see that? Ah yes, third world countries try this routinely for "national security" and it always leads to moral hazard pointed out by the person above you.

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      • Jensson 5 hours ago

        > But I guess trying to nationalize companies and "benefiting" from company profits was something people were missing. How did no one see that? Ah yes, third world countries try this routinely for "national security" and it always leads to moral hazard pointed out by the person above you.

        This isn't nationalizing it though, this is just an investment into it. Investments aren't bad.

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        • hellojesus 3 hours ago

          Investments can be bad. The market efficiently destroys malallocated capital through competition.

          The problem with government taking stakes in private companies is that it creates moral hazard. By taking ownership in Intel, the government has effectively "propped it up". This means that Intel competitors that made less risky decisions to remain solvent are now losing; their bet was Intel was operating poorly, and instead of capitalizing on Intel's downfall so they can fill the gap, the government has plugged the gap. This action distorts markets away from their competitive equilibrium. In the process it generates moral hazard and deadweight loss.

          Investments by the government can make sense, but generally it makes the most sense when investments support public goods (arguably also when supporting goods/services that the private market would not). Cpus are neither.

          Just like the SVB bailout, or Freddie/Fannie/Sallie establisments, this is bad.

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    • ch4s3 3 hours ago

      I think the government taking a stake creates additional moral hazard and invites corruption. The melding of corporate and government interests is a slope that is always slippery.

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    • Obscurity4340 18 hours ago

      How does the average taxpayer ever actually end up benefitting point blank?

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      • bko 17 hours ago

        Not that I agree with bail-outs, but 2008 financial crisis that resulted in a number of bail outs actually netted the treasury a profit.

        > In total, U.S. government economic bailouts related to the 2008 financial crisis had federal outflows (expenditures, loans, and investments) of $633.6 billion and inflows (funds returned to the Treasury as interest, dividends, fees, or stock warrant repurchases) of $754.8 billion, for a net profit of $121 billion

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

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      • whoisburbansky 18 hours ago

        Profits from the stake lower taxes that would otherwise be levied on you? Of course that’s moot if the deficit isn’t something being taken seriously.

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        • steveBK123 18 hours ago

          Deficits aren't real and 10% of $0 when they likely go bankrupt is $0

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    • frollogaston 14 hours ago

      They aren't really losing ownership, they sold ownership at market rate.

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      • re-thc an hour ago

        > they sold ownership at market rate

        No, they did not. The government paid less than Softbank that also just purchased a stake. Unless forced, Intel could have likely gotten a better deal.

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    • intended 16 hours ago

      This has worked REALLY well in countries like India. Where it resulted in the ability to be badly run, AND be excluded from market pressure. Which resulted in corruption and a drag on the economy.

      There are governments which can take a stake and be ok, and then there are governments which are setting up to set money on fire.

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  • user____name 7 hours ago

    I see two objections to this: The collateral damage to the surrounding economy (well ran companies might be dependent on Intel) and the loss of strategically important institutions and knowledge, especially in markets with a high barrier to entry. So I think bailing out can be justified, even if it is a clear moral hazard. The better solution I think is to prevent markets from becoming too oligopolistic and firms from becoming too big to fail. But this would require a government who isn't afraid of taking anti-trust measures to maintain market competition, but the US has been moving away from that model for decades.

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  • bongodongobob 18 hours ago

    Well as much as you don't like it, companies this big failing is terrible for the economy and in this case, national security to a degree. I'm of the thinking that when your company gets to a certain size we'd be well off nationalizing. Apple has more money than some nation states. Something that huge has the potential to affect global politics. There's lots of other reasons too, but this isn't like letting the corner store fail. The repercussions are huge. If we're going to bail out, the people should own some of it.

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    • koliber 12 hours ago

      When a company “fails” it does not disappear in a puff of smoke. It goes into bankruptcy and is sold in parts. Some of those parts are perfectly functioning divisions which will continue to function but they will be owned by someone else.

      I would rather have Intel go bankrupt, sell profitable pieces to private buyers, and if there are any pieces that are not profitable but crucial to national interests, create a company out of them and have the government buy them. This way you are not propping up a dysfunctional behemoth.

      Things must die in order for new better things to take their place. This applies to companies as well.

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    • UncleOxidant 17 hours ago

      > Apple has more money than some nation states.

      And Apple needs their chips fabbed, so why not have Apple invest $50B into Intel? Nvidia could afford to chip in too. These companies that face a huge amount of geopolitical risk because they've put all of their eggs in the TSMC basket should have to pay for this not US taxpayers.

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      • lugu 16 hours ago

        If TSMC diseaper tomorrow, people will still buy computers, with chips made from Korea, or China, who cares. What are apple or Nvidia risking? They have worked hard to lock their customer. The problem is for the US military.

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      • hluska 16 hours ago

        You’re proposing that the United States government force Apple to invest in Intel? Apple chose a different supplier than Intel; at this point it’s hard to consider Intel a competitor to TSMC but let’s pretend they are.

        You have proposed a “free market” system in which if you choose the wrong competitor you can be forced to bail out the chosen one. The economics of that don’t work at all.

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      • bongodongobob 17 hours ago

        I'd rather the citizens control the companies than the other way around.

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    • freeopinion 16 hours ago

      How is using tax money to prop up uncompetitive companies good for national security? Wouldn't it be better to replace them with competitive companies? It's super hard to be successful when your own government in backing the competition.

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      • foogazi 11 hours ago

        They did it with rail before

        US needed functional railroads and they took over the rr companies.

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      • bongodongobob 16 hours ago

        You can't build a new Intel. That would take decades. These aren't startups. They are massive fucking machines that can't just be disassembled and put back together by someone else. So the idea is to control them and get them back on track to better serve the collective interest.

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    • philistine 18 hours ago

      As a non-American, a big part of the appeal of American companies was their independence from the American government.

      Was.

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    • solatic 11 hours ago

      > I'm of the thinking that when your company gets to a certain size we'd be well off nationalizing.

      The public sector is great at two things: (1) getting literally millions of people to show up to work and do well-defined jobs (i.e. nothing outside the lines) that do not change from year to year, and (2) dumping billions into research, with very little of (2) affecting (1). Critically, the public sector has extraordinary difficulty with the agility needed for iterative product development.

      If companies get to a certain size and their day-to-day operations are more-or-less fundamentally the same year-after-year, yeah there's an argument for nationalizing them. You see this in arguments to nationalize segments from oil refineries, apartment construction, and airlines. There's something coarse about caretaker CEOs and private shareholders getting rich, instead of the public purse, off the economic rents thrown off from a mature machine that doesn't have much more, if any, room for growth. But the key question is whether the potential for growth has been fully exploited or not; if it hasn't been, then the government certainly won't succeed at exploiting additional growth, and it's better for the company to stay in private hands, which will be motivated to privatize the wealth from achieving that growth, and the government will be paid more in taxes if they succeed.

      That's why I'm not convinced chip manufacturing is there when there is still yearly research into reducing process sizes. Maybe there's a case for nationalizing the foundry lines producing older, larger processes that are used in current weapons designs, but that's not the case for nationalizing the whole company.

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    • jjani 13 hours ago

      Then as part of the bail out break them up so that they're no longer too big to fail.

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  • JustExAWS 19 hours ago

    Chip manufacturing is too important for the US. We can’t be completely dependent on Taiwan. Nothing against Taiwan, it’s one attack away from being obliterated by China.

    No company is going to come out of someone’s garage and build a chip fab.

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    • charliea0 19 hours ago

      We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US - we've already gotten TSMC to open several fabs.

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      • re-thc 14 hours ago

        > We can definitely offer subsidies for manufacturing in the US

        The very subsidies Intel now has to pay with shares for? How is that a subsidy? Companies now and in the future would be very concerned before taking any US subsidies because the terms can always change after the fact.

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    • thayne 19 hours ago

      So we give a bunch of money to a company with a history of mismanagement and out sourcing chip manufacturing?

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    • freeopinion 16 hours ago

      Nobody is going to swoop in and buy a distressed company that owns a bunch of fabs then turn it around if that company keeps getting bailed out.

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      • pfannkuchen 15 hours ago

        Right it would make a lot more sense to let this happen and then restrict that the buyers be American (or European, I guess).

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    • gizajob 18 hours ago

      Nvidia has a market cap of 4.5 trillion dollars and everyone is committing hundreds of billions to AI CapEx in their direction - they can afford to organise chip fabs if it really came to it. Ok TSMC and ASML would need to be on board but it could be done. Should be done in fact because even a simple SWOT analysis would show the risk to their business.

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      • danielheath 15 hours ago

        No amount of money is going to create a new fab in a reasonable timeframe.

        You can buy one, if a suitable one exists, but there isn’t spare stock sitting around; the lead time is long, especially for high end nodes.

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      • viraptor 17 hours ago

        If Taiwan becomes practically inaccessible, is there any way another country can setup a competing fab (for the latest generation of chip sizes) without years of R&D? As far as I understand, the practical knowledge of how to do it doesn't exist right now. (Neither does the prerequisite tooling)

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      • lugu 16 hours ago

        What is the risk for Nvidia if TSMC diseaper? Wouldn't they simply switch supplier and pick the second best option?

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    • andrewflnr 18 hours ago

      "Someone's garage" is a straw man. There must be people here who could, with adequate funding, build a smallish but viable chip manufacturing company.

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      • K0balt 17 hours ago

        I’d love this to be true but the tech involved is Sci-fi level stuff. Neutron beams used to chop off atomically perfect slices of giant silicon crystals and wacky stuff like that.

        TBF garage fabs -are- a thing but it’s in the hundreds of nanometers scale. Thin film technology is also promising for low tech tape outs, but neither of those is going to be practical for anything better than 1980/90s tech. A modern die would be in the square meters range on those process densities, and could never achieve ghz speeds.

        That said, there are a ton of scrappy companies sending out designs to 30-100nm scale fabs, companies with 5-10 employees cranking out cool designs and custom silicon… but they are still sending their tape-outs to giant companies to fab, just on their old, obsolete machines.

        Silicon foundries are incredibly capital intensive, and short SOTA process lifespans burn through that investment at a frantic pace.

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      • mbac32768 14 hours ago

        Sadly no. There isn't really a single person who understands the entire SOTA chip fabrication process in enough detail. Think thousands of material science PhDs with master and apprentice style relationships inserted at every level of a massive tech tree.

        It's not like you can just look at the plans for a chip fab and copy/paste it into a new location and hire people to fill in who will have any idea how to work it.

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      • msgodel 18 hours ago

        I think one of the people who got closest to that was Sam Zeloof.

        He kind of had everything going: extremely clever and motivated, cooperation with his parents (who also worked in the industry), access to equipment. Kind of hard to improve on that.

        He was able to replicate most of Intel's SOTA process... from 50 years ago. That's more than almost everyone else has managed in their garage but that's about the best you can expect without insane capex and ramp up (and again, it's not like he didn't have access to capital, it just wasn't monetary.) Even still it took five or so years to work everything out.

        The SOTA today is really kind of insane. It's right at the frontier of what all of humanity is capable of. Of course as time goes on we'll push that out and today's SOTA is tomorrow's commodity but that won't change everyone's concern with being unable to replicate the contemporary best process.

        The reality is all our "defense" needs (and arguably most other needs too) are far more than adequately met with processes a decade old now. It's really not the big deal everyone makes it out to be.

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        • andrewflnr 15 hours ago

          > The reality is all our "defense" needs (and arguably most other needs too) are far more than adequately met with processes a decade old now. It's really not the big deal everyone makes it out to be.

          Right, this is why I think in-sourcing chip manufacture is totally viable (that is, if we were actually interested in that and not just using it as an excuse for corruption). The interesting exceptions I've heard about are things like, IIRC, high-power local AI for autonomous drones. But for SAMs and such, old tech will probably do it.

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      • tjwebbnorfolk 18 hours ago

        It is not a straw man.

        There is no amount of scrappy cleverness that gets you from zero to manufacturing cutting-edge chips without shitloads of capital investment, years/decades of R&D, a huge manufacturing workforce, and big contracts.

        There's no such thing as starting small and scaling in that business.

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      • scarface_74 18 hours ago

        There is no such thing as a “smallish” chip manufacturer that can manufacture leading edge chips. It’s about scale.

        If it were that easy, Apple, Amazon, Google AMD, Nvidia, etc who all design their own chips would have done it.

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  • xyst 19 hours ago

    Why is this so hard for people to understand? Intel for years had a massive lead in the market. Instead of investing in the business the clevel suite instead opted for idiotic stock buybacks.

    The only good news is that C-level suite can continue to do the same shit over and over again.

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sethev 19 hours ago

The government took 79.9% of AIG in that bailout - which was the biggest of the "too big to fail" bailouts from the past. People seem to forget that the owners of these companies that were bailed out got almost completely wiped out and instead focus on management compensation (which famously stayed high).

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  • claw-el 12 hours ago

    One challenge with the government taking large ownership in private companies is that it creates an opportunity to offload the ownership later, and that offloading might happen during a different presidential administration from the one that acquired it, and the offloading process can also be an opportunity to enrich someone else.

    One example that comes to mind is the current Fannie Freddie Mac.

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  • georgeecollins 13 hours ago

    That's an over simplification. AIG was bailed out. And it's investors were wiped out. But AIG owed a huge amount of money to banks and investment firms that had enormous benefit from the bail out. Those are the people who paid no price.

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treyd 19 hours ago

If a company has truly become too big to fail that it makes sense for the federal government to bail them out, then why are we even leaving the welfare of the company up to private industry in the first place? It's just asking for ways to siphon taxpayer money out of the government through their willingness to buy shares. It inflates the stock price because it shows that the government might buy more share in the future at market rate. Its operations should be required to be more transparency, since if they're large enough that their failure would dramatically impact the welfare of the whole country, their operations should be subject to more direct democratic will (at least, more direct than the many steps removed from what is happening to Intel).

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  • justonceokay 6 hours ago

    Maybe. I have worked in the corporate world for decades. My partner works in the government. My perspective is that the government office wastes so much time (and therefore $$) that I often have to keep my mouth shut to maintain peace in our relationship. There is no “disagree and commit” mentality. More like 9 months into a project and someone starts to feel “uncomfy” about something and we’re back to the drawing board.

    I do believe the government is in a better position to provide services to the poor, but they are in no way going to be cheaper in the long run.

    That being said, I do live in Seattle, which has a particularly “bogged down” government. Look up the “Seattle process” for some horror stories

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  • hluska 19 hours ago

    Intel is public and their financials have indicated this would happen. Even at my most irrationally exuberant their stock buybacks didn’t make much sense.

    I’m not sure what “more transparency would look like to you, but publicly traded companies with audited financials are quite transparent. As for the part about siphoning money, history has shown that taxpayers do well. In 2008, the US government took roughly 80% of AIG, sold off their stock by 2012, made a roughly $15 billion profit and AIG is no longer considered too big to fail. It worked and did what it was intended to do. There are reasons to be positive about this.

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    • WorkerBee28474 18 hours ago

      Don't forget that the US government took roughly 80% of AIG in a move that was later declared illegal and made a roughly $15 billion profit.

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      • hluska 15 hours ago

        > in a move that was later declared illegal

        To be fair, a lower court ruled it “illegal exaction” but awarded $0 in damages as the illegal exaction prevented bankruptcy which would have zeroed out the investment anyways. Then the Federal Court of Appeals tossed that ruling as the plaintiffs did not have standing to pursue action.

        There is no current ruling that the acquisition was illegal.

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UncleOxidant 17 hours ago

I think it would've been much better to incentivize the likes of Apple and Nvidia to make investments in Intel. They need to have their designs fabbed, they have a good amount of geopolitical risk. They also have a lot of money on hand. Didn't Apple say they were going to invest $600B into the US? (not that that's really going to happen), ok, so why not put $50B into Intel?

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  • electriclove 14 hours ago

    Because that is not a good use of Apple’s $50B.

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    • mensetmanusman 4 hours ago

      Their dragon’s hoard of cash is only being used for financial engineering.

      Their finance team axed a meager $10B dollar investment to improve Siri thereby making Apple the laughing stock of the tech industry players who say they are working on AI.

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      • electriclove 2 hours ago

        Oh, Apple definitely has problems but putting $50B into Intel doesn’t sound like a good idea.

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colmmacc 18 hours ago

It's not otherwise related to all this but a real bug bear of mine is that municipalities don't get part ownership - along with controlling rights for matters like sales or relocations - of sports teams when we subsidize their stadiums through taxes.

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  • foxglacier 11 hours ago

    The municipalities could negotiate for those rights when they agree to pay for the stadium. It's on them if they risk it.

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    • colmmacc 3 hours ago

      Organizations such as the NFL forbid it, only the Green Bay Packers are grandfathered in as an exception. Owners are encouraged to threaten moves. Collective action is needed to undo the race to the bottom.

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thisisit 11 hours ago

Government shouldn't bail out anyone. Period. It should enact preferential policies like grants, tax cuts, subsidies etc. for industries they want to promote. It is done all the time. That is what happened with the CHIPS Act.

The moment 10% stake was announced this became political. While the stated reason might be national security etc, in reality something else might be at play.

One, this government and its supporters have been talking about government "wasteful" spending. So, a stake shows that they got something in return for that public money. The money is now "well spent".

Second, it helps boost the political "dealmaker" image of POTUS and we all know how much he cares about his image.

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  • azinman2 2 hours ago

    Except if Intel goes there’s no leading chip manufacturer left. You can’t just (easily) tax cut your way to having that concentrated knowledge and market position.

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    • thisisit 2 hours ago

      It's like you intentionally chose the ignore other government actions and focus on taxes just to fit your narrative. Read it again:

      > It should enact preferential policies like grants, tax cuts, subsidies etc. for industries they want to promote.

      And read the announcement again. Intel has not been given extra money. CHIPS Act money has been converted to stake. That means Intel wasn't going away, if that is your concern.

      Government routinely provides grants or preferential treatments to certain sectors or industries. Like Tesla and the EV grant. That works fine. It doesn't mean government needs to acquire stake in Tesla and put their thumb on the market scale.

      In case you miss it, let me repeat - industries needs to be supported. It is called CHIPS Act not Intel Act for a reason. Given the current POTUS propensity to hold aid/grant without a quid pro quo, we can guess what happened here. Intel doesn't gets the grant money unless they kiss the ring and polish POTUS' image.

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      • azinman2 2 hours ago

        “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”

        I’d encourage you to “read again” the HN guidelines.

        > Government shouldn't bail out anyone. Period. It should enact preferential policies like grants, tax cuts, subsidies etc. for industries they want to promote.

        If Intel is at risk of going under, saving it is what’s understood to be “bailing out.” A grant that’s meant to save a major multi-billion dollar company isn’t quite what most people think of as a grant.

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charliea0 19 hours ago

The government should avoid bailing out big, uncompetitive corporations. If the government is acting as lender-of-last-resort in some crisis, then it should demand senior debt to that it gets paid back before any shareholder.

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vlovich123 16 hours ago

The heavily criticized auto bailout was precisely this way and actually turned a profit once the government sold its stake. This is different and I can’t imagine the government will ever sell its stake.

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  • pfannkuchen 16 hours ago

    Did it turn a real profit or a nominal profit, I wonder? I remember hearing a brrrr sound around that time.

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    • vlovich123 14 hours ago

      I was wrong. The $80B TARP program lost quite a bit of money on GM. The program overall lost $9B while saving millions of jobs and stabilizing the economy.

      But it still took a share in companies that participated in TARP which is why some payed back the loan instead of letting it convert into ownership shares if I recall correctly.

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radium3d 19 hours ago

I think it's a good choice for Intel as they are one of the very few who own fabs and fabs are extremely valuable pieces of equipment. Just because of 3 consecutive annual CPU "bugs" in essence, they should not shut down forever. Try try again.

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GypsyKing716 18 hours ago

Government is starting to be to big to fail. Living in the Great Lakes region its just the reality of it, as the geopolitics of the region are outplayed by idiots in other parts of the state.

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rpmisms 15 hours ago

I actually am interested in the government having a voting share in big companies. They have an interest too, and seeing what it is is neat. Basically, I see this as bringing certain dealings above board.

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anon291 18 hours ago

The government is not 'bailing' Intel out. Intel's CPU business is profitable. Their manufacturing is not. America gave intel grants to build better manufacturing to secure America's national security interests. Congress did not authorize any acquisition of Intel shares.

All the talk about this from a business / investment side leaves out the simple fact that this is not actually authorized by anyone with the power to actually do such a thing.

Essentially, the government, elected by the public, voted to offer grants to intel, and then intel shareholders woke up today to find their equity had been diluted.

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ants_everywhere 18 hours ago

They're converting a grant, so Intel is worse off due to this move.

The only real benefit I can see is it looks more revenue neutral because the government getting something of value and Trump is unpopular for spending so much money on unfunded tax cuts.

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  • electriclove 14 hours ago

    It is going to help ensure that Intel doesn’t just waste the $8.9B they are getting

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holmesworcester 19 hours ago

I think I agree overall, but "these kind of deals should be boring, not a media event" make me doubt that position, because "deal becomes a media event" seems so eventually-inevitable given how democracy works.

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renewiltord 19 hours ago

In the end, it turns out that people didn't dislike Chinese policies of nationalized industries. They only disliked that the Chinese were doing it.

I can't wait for the "I don't think social credit scores are a bad idea. Cancel culture is good actually".

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  • creato 18 hours ago

    "People" you are referring to want a level playing field. If the Chinese government is tilting the field, there aren't a lot of good options. You can either watch the Chinese subsidize draining most productive capacity from the rest of the world, erect trade barriers (my preference, but it would require cooperation with other countries, which... ain't gonna happen for a while now), or try to tilt back.

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    • aurareturn 15 hours ago

      If you truly think Chinese subsidies are artificially depressing prices, then just buy Chinese goods to take Chinese’s people’s hard earned money.

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      • vlovich123 14 hours ago

        Are you unfamiliar with the concept of cornering a market? Sure, uber was offering lower prices subsidized by VCs until taxis were driven off. After the fact they raised prices back up. Or what Amazon did with diapers.com? It is not wise to let your geopolitical foe gut the productive capability of your economy. It’s how America took over dominance from the UK by taking over the high tech business of the day back then (textiles).

        It’s fine for the consumer in the short term but a flawed long term strategy.

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    • frankzinger 15 hours ago

      Yeah sure but then you do it properly. Why did Trump have to coerce them into the deal (by threatening to fire the CEO)? Just imagine what's going on behind closed doors.

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  • sunaookami 7 hours ago

    There is no social credit score system in China.

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  • verzali 14 hours ago

    I don't even think thats a joke. Trump doesn't dislike cancel culture, he just wants to be the one doing the canceling. And credit scores? You are already half way there with the way the government is acting.

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charliea0 19 hours ago

I think punishing interest rates are better than an equity stake. As Intel's rally shows, having the government as your equity holder is actually amazing for investors.

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softwaredoug 16 hours ago

The “our president made a deal!” part of it makes me skeptical of actual long term patterns past a Trump administration.

While not walked back completely, a lot of what Trump does is minimized and scaled back after the initial theatrical moment. Still in a bad place, but usually some TACO moment happens.

And then, in the end, it’s some executive action that lasts as long as the current president is in power.

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  • rpmisms 15 hours ago

    Democrats will not walk this one back. Having a stake in a hugely important industry is valuable. Being able to directly shape Intel's path is going to be historically important.

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    • georgeecollins 13 hours ago

      Right because capitalism rules and socialism is for fools! Just kidding, but can we please let the phrase "free market" die?

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Terr_ 11 hours ago

> On the other hand, I wish it were a more formalized process

It must at least involve Congress!

What's happening here is crazy: It's the same as if Congress authorized $X for a city bridge and Trump comes in and holds up the funds demanding a cut/kickback of the tolls.

The Constitution does not give the Executive the power to arbitrarily modify what Congress has authorized, converting between grants versus loans versus stock-purchases versus plain extortion.

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  • rnrn 5 hours ago

    I thought this too, but after reading some of the other comments here I read some of the text of the chips act and the 2021 NDAA (mostly section 9902) and AFAICT Congress appropriated a bunch of money for financial assistance for semiconductor companies and gave the Dept of Commerce the authority to determine the funding type.

    That they were grants instead of any other instrument appears to be a Biden Commerce decision, not a congressional one.

    I’m no lawyer and could certainly be missing something i the law that says it has to be grants but from what I see it looks like figuring out what to do the the money was pretty much delegated to dept of commerce with limited direction about eligibility and review criteria.

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georgeecollins 13 hours ago

That makes sense. I think the thing that would make capitalism better is if the government did more to own the means of production.

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sergiomattei 19 hours ago

What bothers me is the double standard.

When the public asks for fully publicly-owned railways, universal healthcare, or any basic social safety assurances—“socialism”.

When a megacorporation struggles, immediately to the rescue.

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  • foxglacier 19 hours ago

    Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness, they're for specific reasons like preventing greater economic problems (2008) or national security (probably Intel). You might disagree that those are the best ways to address those risks but that's why we elect the government to make those decisions and act on them instead of letting the country collapse - which is arguably more important than social services which won't really matter if there's no money to fund them or the country has been taken over by some hostile enemy.

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    • iammrpayments 19 hours ago

      Is like the country is not already collapsing due to lack of social services compared to the supposed enemy which already has higher lifespan while having 10x lower gdp per capita.

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      • AuryGlenz 12 hours ago

        The US is not “collapsing” and we have plenty of social services.

        Our lifespan is lower because we’re fat.

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      • s1artibartfast 18 hours ago

        Not a serious problem in the same sense that a military conflict would be. Different categories and different concerns.

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    • bcrosby95 18 hours ago

      > Bailouts aren't following some rules of fairness

      And people wonder why populism came back. Huge transfers of wealth aren't about 'fairness', its about preventing greater economic problems that the people who received the bailout say will happen if they don't get bailed out.

      At the end of the day, this line of thought is going to fuck over the country far more than any depression would.

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    • chiefalchemist 18 hours ago

      That’s fine. But when the gov is picking winners and losers, that not a free market. What it is, it is. But it’s not a free market based system.

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  • hopelite 19 hours ago

    It’s not a double standard, you just don’t understand the standard.

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    • llllm 19 hours ago

      It’s a triple standard you just can’t count.

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  • ivewonyoung 19 hours ago

    One big difference is management control. People feel that government administered services tend to have poor management and citizen services more often than not. One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee. Or the passport issuance, or applying for permits. Or unemployment benefits, the list goes on and on.

    Imagine if the DMV and passport services had even the possibility of competition like a private company has. You bet all of a sudden the service would get much faster and better and with fewer mistakes and red tape with the same or fewer number of employees. Or someone would set up a competitor and imagine how many people would even pay extra just to not waste several hours of their time.

    It's tax payer money so there is a lot more waste than even at big private companies. For example, the costs to just administer and operate the social security administration(not including any money paid out to recipients) is $15 billion dollars with a big B. There is no incentive for anyone to save the tax payer any money and there would be a huge pushback from govt contractors, unions and employeees. See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

    Any large IT project in the government in almost any country and at any goverment costs huge amounts while not returning much value if any. Look at the state and costs of local metro stations and trains in almost any city.

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    • devinplatt 18 hours ago

      That's interesting example to choose, as I've actually heard often that the Social Security administration is an example of an efficient government administration.

      For example, a quick Google search shows administrative overhead as around 0.5% of benefits: https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/top-ten-facts-...

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      • ivewonyoung 17 hours ago

        Just one instance.

        https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...

        > The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns

        For the main system they're still using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.

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    • standardUser 18 hours ago

      > See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies.

      I don't think many people believed DOGE was ever intended to improve government efficiency in any real sense.

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    • LPisGood 17 hours ago

      > See how much hate DOGE gets for even proposing cuts or higher efficiencies

      I think you should be aware that “proposing cuts” is not why people why DOGE got hate. I find it disappointing that serious people believe that.

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    • thayne 18 hours ago

      Well, my local DMV is much more efficient and friendly than the private health insurance company I have to deal with.

      But part of that is lack of competition. I can't really switch to a different insurance company, because the one I am with is heavily subsidized by my employer.

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    • badpun 26 minutes ago

      > One big example is the DMV since almost every has experience dealing with it, long queue times are almost universal because no one gives a crap and it's very hard to fire a government employee.

      I don't know what's wrong with the US, but here in Poland, there are hardly any queues at the (equivalent of) DMV. And we're nowhere near US's wealth levels, so public services here (in Poland) should be worse, not better. There's something very wrong in how the US is organizing its DMVs, if the queues are such an universal problem. But, it's not an issue with government services per se, just with this one instance of government service.

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    • cyberax 18 hours ago

      In my entire life, I spent much less time in DMV offices than on the line calling AT&T's customer support.

      USPS has also been great overall.

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      • ivewonyoung 14 hours ago

        I switched away from AT&T. You even keep your number. Switching govt services not an option unless you take more extreme measures.

        > USPS has also been great overall

        USPS is an independent agency which is funded by its own fees charged to users, not taxpayer money. It's not like the other agencies.

        From Wiki:

        > The USPS is often mistaken for a state-owned enterprise or government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business

        It's also far from a monopoly unlike most other govt agencies and has competition in the form of UPS, Fedex, DHL, Amazon etc.

        So it's not surprising that it runs better, if it loses user fees, it directly affects the bottomline and thus would have to downsize, no blank check from the taxpayer like other agencies have.

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    • cyberax 17 hours ago

      And BTW, I agree that Social Security overhead is unacceptable. It should be privatized and increased to at least $500 billion to be comparable with health insurance companies.

      It's not acceptable at all to make private companies look bad.

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      • ivewonyoung 17 hours ago

        If it was a company it'd have failed already.

        > The program, called the Disability Case Processing System, or DCPS, was designed to improve case processing and enhance customer service. But six years and $288 million later the program has “delivered limited functionality and faced schedule delays as well as increasing stakeholder concerns

        https://fedscoop.com/problem-project-threatens-progress-soci...

        And that's just one instance.

        Can you imagine raising $288 million from VCs for a software application while delivering so little?

        But taxpayer money? Free and easy money to keep wasting coz no one cares. Tragedy of the commons.

        For the main system they're also using COBOL, which has no Date data type, causing issues even in 2025.

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FollowingTheDao 19 hours ago

I agree. In fact, I think the government should own all utilities like they do in more socialist countries. It gets rid of price gouging, and the stabilizes the market in things that are necessary for human life.

The natural resources of the country should belong to all of us. Not just a select few.

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  • JustExAWS 19 hours ago

    Utilities are already strictly regulated by cities including prices. There is no price gouging when it comes to utilities.

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mempko 19 hours ago

On a related story. Tesla was saved by a $500 million bailout loan from the DEO loan office. Part of the agreement was that the US government would take a stake in Tesla UNLESS they pay back the loan ahead of schedule. That's why Tesla paid it back ahead of schedule, Elon didn't want the government to take a stake. But he spun it as a victory for the US tax payer.

EDIT: Before downvoting, tell me where I'm wrong.

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  • vel0city 17 hours ago

    You're wrong because it wasn't some bailout it was a normal government loan available to to a wide range of companies. I'm not Tesla stan but it's massively misrepresenting the loan to call it a bailout. It's the kind of market investing the government should be doing, underwriting somewhat riskier loans to push the envelope on technology.

    https://www.energy.gov/lpo/advanced-technology-vehicles-manu...

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