What’s discouraging about the statism of this piece from wired.com is how reflexive and totally unexamined it is. The assumption that government intervention is required or even desirable is hardly stated, much less examined or questioned. It is, rather, proceeded from without further ado.
That hoary term so reviled by market economists, “shortage,” has become the sure tip-off to calls for government intervention.
Parallels with the effects of government involvement with the railroad industry in the Nineteenth Century would no doubt exceed by far any interest in or understanding of history that the journalist might have. Might we have to hope for jealous producers of silicon in other WTO member countries to help us avoid this folly? How ironic.
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A surprisingly large number of the people I’ve met, even in such bastions of anarchy as the IETF, are actually very much in favor of central planning to eliminate “problems”. Being that they are technicians and engineers, this is not a surprise.
The few that become entrepreneurs realize that government only interferes with the development of answers to the problems, that the “distributed development” model that capitalism fosters by its nature allows a greater variety of answers to be tried in a shorter amount of time than any central planning board could possibly evaluate.
One major reason that there are so many statists in software and hardware fields is that the anarchy they see working well every day doesn’t involve money, and no one talks about their devedlopment activities as raw capitalism, so they don’t make the leap to realize that anarchy works better with money too. Their highschool indoctrination is never challenged, because that focused entirely on money and the evils of the word “capitalist”.
Being that they are technicians and engineers, this is not a surprise.
I am an engineer, and I definitely see that propensity. If I have a problem with a bit of code working outside the bounds, I simply add a limit to it. If there’s a problem, I fix it with the most straight-forward method available. Unfortunately, many engineers make policy decisions the same. Unfortunately, citizens and markets do not react like code or steel.
The especially worrisome part about this is the immediate reaction of some companies/trade groups to resort to laws. It seems to me that many company’s list of ways to resolve problems is this:
1. Compete, if that doesn’t work…
2. Litigate, if that doesn’t work…
3. Regulate
Some even seem to put “compete” lower on the list. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction. If you can’t get what you want through normal market means, the very next thing they do is call their Public/Government Relations department.
“Their highschool indoctrination is never challenged…”
To keep up the generalization, I’d say that you’re right, the indoctrination is not challenged–even all the way up to the PhD level for those (again a generalization) who choose to stay in high school longest.
Silicon will be demanded less in the future as computer-related manufacturers start to rely on more exotic materials or full-optics for chip fabrication (Moore’s Law is just about played-out for silicon-based chips). By then, though, even solar-panel makers might not be so keen on silicon.
Perhaps a general rule of teaching Austrian economics “to the masses” should be to illustrate every instance where shortages have had state intervention as a causality villain. I suppose socialists would respond that they “don’t believe” such claims of causality. After all, statists often call for more intervention to “cure” the ills of previous intervention.
Van, all GE Plastics, which includes the Silicon division, would have to do is divert the silica it uses for calking to the chip industry, and they’d have a surplus. It’s impossible to run out of silica, because most of this planet is made from it.
Just like with petroleum, future production might take a different form than present production, but there will be production as long as people are willing to pay for it.
The absurdity of calling for regulation is that the callers cannot recognize that how they do things right now is not how things must be done, or will be done, or are even done best.
There is a principle in OpenSource software development as described by Eric Raymond in his book _The Cathedral And The Bazaar_: Don’t be so wedded to what you wrote that you will not throw it out for something better. As I said, the engineers and developers are not applying the anarchy (capitalism, really) they see working so well every day to things in general.
Ok, I overgeneralize since the supply of “solar grade silicon” is what is being talked about, not just silicon.
However, as if on cue, here’s a story just pointed to by Slashdot:
http://www.daystartech.com/govrelease.htm
Solar cells from titanium foil.
Mr Howland is absolutely right. The planet is made of silicon waiting to be used. The fact is, the more the state steps in to maintain what essentially are subsidies to the silcon based industry, the more industry won’t go anywhere.
Innovation occurs as a result of necessity. Communism’s Russian past is a testament to this. Unless the state can learn to stop being a mother hen and back off, there’s no way that new innovations in producing silcon for PV and silcon for semiconductors will take off.
As reported in this Slashdot piece today, the market, specifically Daystartech has identified the problem and is working around it.
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