Why Fuck All Ever Gets Done In This Modern World

Too many leeches, barnacles upon the ship of state

So, the Americans - or the Biden Admin, or the usual tax subsidy suckers, your choice - have decided that the US taxpayer must cough up tens of billions to the chip makers. They can’t cut it at that cutting edge so the costs must be socialised and the profits privatised. Exactly the thing that everyone condemns Republicans for even thinking of is being done by Democrats. Ho Hum.

There’s really no national security explanation here either. It’s a standard of the chip business that the military always runs one to three generations behind that bleeding edge. It takes so long to design weapons as compared to an industry on 18 to 24 month cycles that that’s just the way it works out.

All the same:

In 2022, the United States fabricated 0 percent of the world’s most advanced logic chips. By 2032, that share could rise to 28 percent.

So says a new report from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and Boston Consulting Group. If the report’s prediction pans out, the country should meet U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s ambitious goal of producing 20 percent of the world’s “leading-edge logic chips” by 2030. Raimondo announced the goal in February at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a think tank.

The government’s chief tool in service of that goal is the CHIPS and Science Act, or CHIPS Act. Enacted in 2022, a key part of the much larger act dedicates US $39 billion in subsidies for creating or expanding U.S.-based semiconductor fabs and an additional $11 billion in research and development. This money alone will not create fabs from thin air, but analysts say that the funds form a promising start and that 20 percent by 2030 is a serious target.

Oh well, Ho Hum and all that. Pissing the wealth of the nation up the wall and congratulating themselves for doing so. How unlike politics that is.

But we do gain a lovely illustration of why nothing ever really gets done in this modern world. Sure, the politicians have demanded more chips in a country that doesn’t have any spare chip technicians - TSMC has had to import their own from Taiwan - and so on and so on. But there’s also this:

Having pumped billions of dollars into building the next generation of computer chip factories in the US, the Biden administration is facing new pressure over the health and safety risks those facilities could pose. Environmental reviews for the new projects need to be more thorough, advocates say. They lack transparency around what kinds of toxic substances factory workers might handle, and plans to keep hazardous waste like forever chemicals from leaching into the environment have been vague.

A coalition of influential labor unions and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, have since submitted comments to the Department of Commerce on draft environmental assessments, saying that the assessments fall short. The coalition’s comments flag lists of potential issues at several projects in Arizona and Idaho, including how opaque the safety measures that manufacturers will take to protect both workers and nearby residents are.

This is not a serious complaint. This is actually the national association of environmental studies writers spotting a gravy train passing by and desiring to dip their ladle in. And that’s all it is too. But it’s also that excellent example of why fuck all ever gets built. We’ve an entire - and politically powerful - class that makes their living producing the hundred tonne reports that accompany building anything. And they’re not going to allow anything to be built unless they get paid for writing hundred tonne reports. And, to complete the circle, if every activity requires a hundred tonne report then fuck all will ever get done.

There was, back a time, a law passed about blood minerals. The law said anyone who might use them must write to all suppliers to ask if they do. Then those said anyones must tell consumers whether they do. This cost $4 billion just in the first year. From what I’ve heard - and might take the trouble to prove one day - the bloke who led the campaign for the law requiring the letters now runs a very profitable consultancy advising large corporates on how to write the letters. $4 billion spent by society so that one bloke can gain a minor summer place in the Hamptons. This doesn’t make us richer as a whole, it’s pissing the wealth of the nation up the wall.

Carthage, it’s the only solution. The biggest problem who is who the hell would buy our nice new stock of enslaved environmental bureaucrats? Razing, salt, ploughs, these are easy but who’s mad enough to offer a positive price for the last part of the process?