Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant until 2022

Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by Red_Leaves_Flyy on Thursday September 30, 2021 @07:43PM (#28712628)

In a civilized society it is the governments burden and obligation to ensure scarce resources are shared responsibly. When this process is disrupted and not quickly remedied you will inevitably discover that people take matters into their hands to get what they need. They might commit white collar crimes or engage in destructive or violent robberies and protests. They might also roll out the guillotines and collect some scalps to remind society at large that the most dangerous people are those who’ve had everything robbed of them. When entire regions and communities are allowed to reach this point war is almost inevitable.

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by spectramax on Thursday September 30, 2021 @08:56PM (#28713226)

Absolutely not. “Sharing resources” doesn’t work when there is not enough to share.

A civilized society works when supply and demand intersection determines the price of goods and services.

Governments should interfere for specific cases (life emergency, masks, etc) and there are laws prohibiting scalping for these commodities - rightfully so.

Your idea of government intervention would assume that government is a rational entity. The truth couldn’t be further from it. Bribes and political favors from large companies would leave everything worse than it was before.

Imagine you're a low volume medical instrument maker and you need a dozen STM32 chips for your life saving device. Scalpers make sure that these chips are available and ready to ship, albeit at a premium which the company is happy to pay for given the circumstances.

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by pitaj on Thursday September 30, 2021 @09:45PM (#28713565)

Laws prohibiting "scalping" or "price gouging" in emergencies often makes problems worse by incentivizing hoarding and disincentivizing more suppliers from entering the market.

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by tbihl on Thursday September 30, 2021 @11:18PM (#28714091)

Price gouging laws target the products with most serious risk of shortages and guarantee shortages. I think back to the gas pipeline shutdown earlier this year, and how simply that could have been a non-issue if stations had been allowed to raise prices.

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by chii on Friday October 01, 2021 @06:49AM (#28716767)

The problem is one of optics - if life-essentials were allowed to be price-gouged, the local gov't officials get blamed for not instituting price control during the period of shortage. Even if the shortage would've been worse had there been price control!

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by treeman79 on Thursday September 30, 2021 @08:09PM (#28712829)

The government is often the cause of scarcity.

If price sky rocket, investors will increases production until prices are lower.

Government can mess with this by limit prices causing investors to stay away, meaning fewer chips get built, thus ensuing a temporary problem gets worse.

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by NicoJuicy on Friday October 01, 2021 @01:41AM (#28715007)

You can't increase production of semiconductors within 3-4 years.

Those assembly lines are highly specialized and extremely efficient. After all this time, the best they can do is 1% extra efficiency per month.

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Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by treeman79 on Friday October 01, 2021 @12:00PM (#28720130)

And factories were big and owned by the evil rich, so Russia socialized them. Thus leading to decades long shortages for all but the very rich.

A short term (1-5) year problem is no reason to takes steps to ensure a generational problem.

Free market is brutal about improving efficiency and growing with demand.

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