US Intel

Very well argued. It's such a stunning dereliction the US let things get to this point. We were doing the "pivot to Asia" over a decade ago but no one thought to find TSMC on a map and ask whether Intel was driving itself into the dirt? "For want of a nail the kingdom was lost" but in this case the nail is like your entire metallurgical industry outsourced to the territory you plan on fighting over.

From this lens, the silver lining of the software layoffs going on may be to stem the bleeding of semiconductor workers to the field. If Intel were really smart, they’d be hiring more right now the people they couldn’t get or retain 3-5 years ago

Agriculture is much slower, every iteration may be is a year, or (in tropical climates) half a year. Microelectronics is comparably slow, and even more unforgiving about making mistakes. Building robots does not scale ls easily as producing chips, let alone software.

These areas need a different model of investment, with a longer horizon, slower growth, less influence of fads, better understanding of fundamentals. In some areas, DARPA provided such investment, with a good rate of success.

What VC capital is not interested in is regular fuel, which can burn steadily and expand gradually, without a shock wave. Such companies can be quite important. Say, GitHub was such a company for many years, before it took a large VC investment and got acquired MS. Investing in such companies requires much more diligence and foresight, maybe too much predictive power to work at mass scale.

VCs' math only works because a single 1000x hit easily pays for a hundred of duds. If ROI per hit is 2-3x, and research required is 10x more deep, the prospects likely start to seem too bleak for folks with billions seeking return.

I especially dislike the way VC funded startups use VC dollars to effectively be a “loss leaders” for years to choke out the rest of the market.

Who wants to risk their own capital or privately pooled funds against THAT?

Show them your finances and collateral to demonstrate that you'll be able to pay off the loan.

>I especially dislike the way VC funded startups use VC dollars to effectively be a “loss leaders” for years to choke out the rest of the market.

It's a fair point, but it's a point which does not apply to the industries we are discussing, which do not receive VC investment.

I actually really like your point about Masayoshi Son-style investments which are just an attempt to entrench a monopoly. I'm no socialist, but if socialists called for identifying and taxing such investments, I wouldn't object. The trick is to distinguish between the WeWorks of the world, and the Boom Supersonic type companies which genuinely need gobs of capital for breakthrough innovation.