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.
