Capitalism here is not the issue. If China pays more they get the workers. That's capitalism as its core. If TSMC wants to retain their workers they have to dig in their 40% profit margins and increase salaries to compete for talent. If they want to increase the price of their chips to account for that payroll increase that will make Samsung (or whoever else) more competitive and that's capitalism as well.
> Every time I hear things like "we can't find enough people" or "yeah, but then we'll just pass it along in our cost to customers," I know how much we don't have capitalism.
I agree and it makes me angry, individual freedoms are and should stay a thing. If you can't pay your employees a salary that makes them want to work for you, they are not the problem and your competitors are not the problem.
I agree completely. I was trying to comment on the Western narrative about capitalism: "Capitalism is all fine and dandy unless it impacts me negatively."
It hits at a flaw in capitalism where rich people get to dictate what poor people do, but we generally don't mind that
If you raise prices, usually unit sales will fall (although, not always) and sometimes there's a big cliff as you approach (or surpass) competitors' prices.
Your unit cost is some function based on the number of units produced. f(x)
The market will buy some number of units at any price point. S(P). Now you have two functions and you want the maximum of [ S(P) * (P - f( S(P) )) ]. Thus the market determines both the number of units sold and the price.
Of course that’s assuming you’re not selling a finite supply of something like say oil etc. And of course advertising and segmenting the market can further boost profits etc.
I remember in business school how it drilled into us that there are only two important numbers in a company. The price of your product, and the cost of your product. "You can only dictate your cost of your product because your market dictates what you can sell it for." Every time I hear things like "we can't find enough people" or "yeah, but then we'll just pass it along in our cost to customers," I know how much we don't have capitalism.