zlacker

>>tedsan+(OP)
The US appears to be fully in the grips of centralized economic autarky. A tiny coterie of industrialists who have the President's ear decide how to allocate a gigantic amount of capital for their pet projects while the state raises tariffs and implements bans to protect them from competition.

Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be different".

>>rchaud+592
Private capital. That detail seems to derail your whole comment.

>>ahmene+Sm2
How so? Does this capital being private ensure "this time will be different"?

>>aylmao+Tn2
Capital owners allocate their capital to their "pet projects" all day every day. That is how the whole thing works.

I'm not saying "this time will be different". I'm saying this is business as usual.

>>ahmene+Ap2
$500b is not business as usual for any corporation. Centralized planning doesn't fail because of government bureaucrats, it fails because there is too much spending to be decided on by too few people.

Zuckerberg lost $30bn or more trying to create a VR amusement park. Scale that up to $500bn and see how much waste and dead-weight losses are created.

>>rchaud+Er2
1. This isn't a single corp, it is multiple corps. For a sense of scale, MSFT alone spent ~$55B in Capex last year. Check out this[1] for a sense of how much different industries spend each year. Note that this will cross several industries including Power, Telecom, Software, electrical equip, etc.

2. There is no commitment to spend in a single year

3. There is no actual contractual commit here, this is a press release (i.e. Marketing)

4. There is not actually a $500B pile of gold being spent. This is more of a "this is how big we think this industry will be and how much we may spend to get exposure to that industry"

[1] https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile...