While capitalism is a good model, it needs to be kept balanced, restricted..

Shareholder primacy is ruining everything, too much influence in politics from too many external sources.

In an interview reported by Reuters, he said he’d impose 150%–200% tariffs if China “went into Taiwan,” and when asked about using military force against a blockade he said it “would not come to that” because Xi “respects me” and knows he’s “crazy.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-says-he-would-impose-tar...

Aviation is functionally caught up, as in if PRC wants to throw together a narrow or wide body on domestic components short term, they can at scale and service domestic market with less fuel efficiently. The primary reason COMAC uses western components is for faster global certification.

PRC Semi progress beating western analysts of catchup, instead of 10 years to EUV they're looking ~7/8 years. Again global semi supply chain is just a handful of countries with fraction population as PRC. And all western semi players projected to have talent shortage in the 100,000s, so that moving goal post likely going to move slower and slower vs PRC convergence.

Semi easier medium/long term problem since PRC _only_ country projected without semi talent shortage, i.e. current trends and forces point to inevitable convergence and PRC.

Ironically aviation harder problem because exporting outside of PRC market is matter of geopolitics vs pure technical/state capacity.

Looking at trend lines, west simply not capable of staying ahead.

Or defending taiwan can be PR'd into a self-defending message.

She just won a super majority in the legislature that allows her to change the constitution.

The border was guarded about as well as the US-Canada border on the Indian side.

The surprise war caught India completely off guard. The surprise was so effective that China captured all the territory they wanted, killed thousands of Indian troops and declared a unilateral ceasefire before India could marshal a response.

Prime Minister Nehru was badly shocked by this betrayal. He never recovered from it. His health deteriorated rapidly and he died a little over a year later.

Consider that maybe a 2 minute skim of Wikipedia teaches you very little. Certainly not as much as reading many books on this subject, which I have.

The 1962 war secured the road route between Tibet and Xinjiang. Very strategically valuable.

It also had the effect of uniting India, killing some budding separatist movements. It also made the Indian government prioritise strengthening the army for the first time, which meant the army was ready to fight Pakistan to a draw in 1965 and a victory in 1971.

So the war strengthened both China and India, and poisoned relations between them. Which was fine with Mao, he didn’t really care about good foreign relations.

THis idealism always goes away once you have to buy a home, and realize you're working more hours and getting less money than your mates in other industries that are easier to get into, so you start to switch really quick.

People aren't selfless when it comes to being exploited by private sector entities, they'll always go towards the ones with the best wage/hour ratios.

People aren';t stupid. Why would they voluntarily choose to work harder and be less well off? It's not like this is working for the public good like medicine, firefighters, EMT, education, etc.

Europe is great in many ways but lacks the dynamism exactly because of its highly controlled immigration policies instead of free market ones. Bureaucrats actually are terrible at picking who should come. A major example are the Turkish immigrants to Germany, where they imported huge numbers of Turkish immigrants for their booming car industry in the 60s and instead of just treating them like normal people they did this "guest worker" thing and as a result those Turks failed to integrate and remained in the low socioeconomic status with exception for some high profile cases like the inventors of the mRNA vaccine or the Crysis founders. In other places like UK or USA, Turkish immigrants tend to have much higher socioeconomic status.

If EU end up doing its chip and energy industry push, better be following the pre-Trump era immigration policies because that's how USA got is all the workforce that make USA leap ahead in many industries. Some French or Swedish immigration officer would not be picking people better than industrialists or startup founders. Immigration and its integration are not Europe's strong traits.

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. You can't operate a fab based on coercion. It requires positive relationships. There are simply too many people involved doing things that the would-be coercers don't understand.

The idea that an entire TSMC fab is going to commit treason en mass is about as believable as thinking that NASA faked the moon landings and covered it up en mass. Large groups of people don't behave the same way as small groups of people.

If the US wants a fab, just give Intel money to build one. Trying to steal one from TSMC is a nonsensical plan. At least Intel would know how to operate their own fab.

The current US security apparatus is led by highly incompetent and corrupt people willing to sell the country down the river, so I would not count on them coming up with a plan, much less a reasonable plan, for anything.

Have you seen the US security apparatus's track record at coming up with reasonable plans for what happens after the military victory? See Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

It’s easy to ignore or work around it though, just like it routinely happens for every other constitution in the world.

If you just do nothing within half a decade or so you'll be far behind the cutting edge and at that point the decline gains its own momentum

Even if this fab is 3 times more expensive then other ones, the result of not having one will tank the entire economy and GDP of a nation if things go bad.

We speak here about trillions of damage while a fab costs only a few billions.

This is like a complete non brainer.

And how are we gonna do that exactly? EU runs on national interests of those footing the bill, mainly France and Germany as the largest net contributors.

When you're relying on national subsidies to build and run a factory and adjacent infrastructure in a country, you're tied to national interests and demands of those countries footing the bill for all that infrastructure.

So the likes of France and Germany aren't gonna give billions in subsidies from their taxpayers' money to semiconductor companies so that they can incorporate in Netherlands to dodge taxes and then create jobs in low-cost Poland and Romania instead of at home, even though that's already been happening to an extent in other industries over the last 20+ years.

It's the same with arms purchases now. France blocked Ukraine from using its money to buy British made weapons that are already available, since it expects that money to go back into the French economy, not to the economy of a competitor, even if the much needed weapons will arrive much later.

Yeah I know, UK isn't EU anymore, but the point still stands, as EU nations are still economically competitors to each other and they're not gonna spend their tax money to fund competing economies even in the EU block.

Airbus currently has two factories finalizing the airplane assembly: one in Toulouse and one in Hamburg. You could copy this model and just open different fab in different countries to spread production.

Also, another model is one country making wafers, one country making EUV-lithography machines and parts, one country mining and refining silicon, etc.

China didn't become the manufacturing giant it is because of a single product, they did because the whole supply chain was moving there while the EU and US were only concerned about higher-margin products and activities.

I'm sure some town in Italy wishes it was still the world's #1 diode manufacturer or something.

"a fab" or "the fabs"? We are commenting on news about TSMC building fabs in 3 countries across 2 continents, multiple fabs in each - I counted 23 of them here [1].

Surely, the EU can commit to a few fabs and research labs in different countries, semis are equipment and labor intensive, there's work for more than the EU. There's no need to build all of them at once, a clear commitment will suffice.

[1] https://www.tsmc.com/english/aboutTSMC/TSMC_Fabs

> Wow, how convenient that millenials who age out of military conscription , become more pro-military conscription.

The youngest millenials are still ±30 now, they would still be eligible for conscription until 45.

> Also, check the stats, majority of EU youth don't want to fight to even protect their own country, let alone other EU countries. For example Only 16% of Germans would "definitely" take up arms to defend Germany if attacked.

First of all, you decided to be cute and pick the country that is the most reluctant about war, due to having an uneasy past. Like Japan. But let's roll with it. That poll says 16% "definitely", but also an additional 22% "probably". 59% would "probably not" fight. But of those who would not fight, 72% are women who would be unlikely to be in conscripted combat roles, so the real percentage of refusals would more likely be 17% (59% - 42%). And there's also the factor that a people gets incensed when their homeland is actually attacked, so the actual willingness is likely to be higher under pressure.

> Go fight and die to protect your landlord's, Blackrock's and Vanguard's wealth?

You're so unknowledgeable you confused BlackRock with Blackstone. Anyway, all three of those own minimal percentages of EU (or US, for that matter) housing stock.

Landlords are another matter, a huge amount of stock is in the hand of small 1-5 domicile owners. They are mostly boomers.

You are right to be irate at how millenials, gen z and gen alpha are getting the shaft right now. But that has nothing to do with war or the EU's economic situation, and everything with policy choices of the past 30-40 years that coddle boomers (housing stock, pensions, healthcare) at the cost of everyone else.

> N'ah bro, I'm packing my bags and fleeing across the border any way I can.

Good riddance, no one in the EU wants to host a seditious clown.

> So no, the "EU army" fantasy is not happening

The train of progress steams ahead unbothered. A couple of decades ago the EU or the euro "fantasy wasn't happening". And the current population is more pro-EU than ever, and the like has only been trending up since the EU's inception.

> you just had to watch the EU's share of global GDP completely slide into oblivion over the last 20 years

The EU actually had the biggest economy from 2008-2015, although that was more an artifact of exchange prices. The last decade has indeed been mismanaged but we have certainly not "slid into oblivion".

The US has had an economically amazing decade, and China was always going to become number 2 considering the population it has. And then on top of that, lots of countries in SEA, South America and some in Africa have grown to be a much larger slice of the global economic pie. And that's good! A rising tide raises all ships.

In general, the economic center of gravity was always slowly going to shift to Asia, and thus the Pacific seaboard.

> More EU military will not change that balance unless the EU military can somehow surpass US and CHina combined

The US military doesn't surpass the combined militaries of China and the EU either.. nor has it used its hegemon power to "dictate world politics", even if it has meddled in other's affairs sometimes. The main mission of the US military is (was?) security for itself and global stability & free shipping lanes to allow as much trade for the US as possible.

Since when is the quality of arguments and the understanding of economics and politics tied to the age of your account? Is this how arguments are won here? Age discrimination goes against HN rules. Your opinion on global events is not automatically more correct than others just because you've been on HN 10 years longer than others.

>posting doubious takes like this

Universally recognized and factually proven facts = dubious to you?

What (counter-)arguments do you actually bring to this discussion, other than throwing ageism and baseless accusations at people as your strategy to discredit their opinions you dislike?

That's exactly the opposite of the HN rules.

If you do not see how someone like US or China can play 27 individual countries and divide Europe by propping one nation and discrediting another, for example recent Trump admin meddling with Poland, or Musk fiddling with German and Spanish government, then it's going to be difficult having this discussion with you.

Another aspect... Spain stopped being a dictatorship 51 years ago, half of the continent was under Soviet influence until something like 35 years ago, communist for that matter. The continent has been consolidated over the last half a century. Painting EU as the root of all evil is not a way forward.

Isn’t this exactly how the United States and every other country works?

There indeed won't be equal benefits, but instead France, Germany etc are going to benefit a lot more in this kind of situation than without the integration. We've already seen the massive benefits of the single market integration for example for the German economy and industry. It'd be strange to think that further erosion of barriers and better integration wouldn't bring further benefits to the economies involved.

> How is this not communist tyranny with extra steps?

Um, by the fact that the EU wouldn't be taking over the means of production when it'd be integrating? Like come on, this is just silly, to call a block dedicated to free market principles and social capitalism "communist tyranny".

I swear, this kind of economic illiteracy is going to be the end of us all.

> How do you expect those people footing most of the bill to give up their status quo and voluntarily sign up for something like this? Oh wait, I remember, that's why they're pushing chat control and digital-ID on us.

The EU isn't pushing for the Chat Control and whatever, it's only certain member countries like Denmark doing that. They should absolutely be reprimanded for that, but nevertheless the difference is important.

Also, the people "footing most of the bill" would also be benefiting massively, for example by making sure that we would no longer have a situation like the Greek debt crisis messing everything up for the entire currency block.

Even the extremely Eurosceptic Orban seems much happier in the EU than out.

My evidence was (as you typed it yourself) that with the war in Ukraine and arms demand flourishing, France only spends money on subsidies with the guarantee that money is going back towards its own economy, as does every other major EU economy, not just for arms, but for semiconductors too.

If you were too thick to get that, or you refuse to belive it on some ideology, or want to die on a hill over a technicality, then I'm sorry, but nothing more I will do or say will convince you, when you've already made up your mind otherwise.

Where, when and how were the samples for that barometer taken?

If they're really so confident those number being accurate, why don't we have referendum and we can decided there and ink it to make it official.

EU citizens understood and recognize that economic supremacy of some private sector industries is pointless if the gains all go to the hands of a few tax dodging trillionaires with sex trafficking private islands, while the externalities get outsourced to the environment and the public sector to deal with leading to increased wealth inequality, homelessness, crime, drug addiction, etc

That's why they want to see policies that will first address the environment and quality of life, before shareholder returns, even if that makes them less economically dominant.

EU people don't want to live in a world of fent zombies on the streets, cars with smashed windows from petty crime, food deserts, homeless people, all in the name of economic superiority.