[kragen]

Probably the beginning of that month of designing would have been a better time to order the microcontrollers than the end of it. The answer to "how did jpieper get STM32s" is "he ordered them from Mouser in early 02021": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32383312

What kind of state intervention are you thinking of? I spent some time trying to think of a state policy that would reduce the risk that small businesses would lose access to parts crucial to their products, rather than increasing it, but I couldn't think of one.

[varispeed]

The simplest intervention would be to offer state backed loans that could be used for back orders and to be repaid 3-6 months after the delivery.

It's not ideal, probably it will create further delays, but it would put small business on the level playing field with the big corporations when it comes to orders.

The criteria for eligibility may be difficult to define too, so that fraud is minimised.

Maybe such surge of demand could incentivise MCU manufacturers to secure more fab capacity.

State could also make scalping illegal. For instance buying MCUs with a sole purpose to hold on them and then resell at inflated price would be illegal. This could be done by setting maximum margin someone could ask, that should be no higher than Mouser or Digikey have. So anyone selling MCUs at 10x the price would have them confiscated and get fined. Foreign online stores that facilitate such sellers like Aliexpress would risk being sanctioned and banned.

[kragen]

The loan idea might work, but it might not. Generally big corporations are better at fulfilling criteria for eligibility than small businesses are (they can afford larger legal departments), and it might just drive up prices without increasing supply. That seems to be what happened with state-backed loans for higher education in the US, for example.

The price-controls idea would create shortages, at least locally; Mouser and Digi-Key, prohibited from allocating scarce parts to those with more willingness to pay, would allocate them according to other criteria, such as customers with the largest established volume. Companies in other countries would have a major edge because they'd have access to distributors who weren't at risk of having their stock confiscated. The upshot would be that companies in whatever country instituted those price controls would be unable to compete on the global market because they couldn't buy on Aliexpress. (I've seen this kind of thing a lot up close and personal because I live in Argentina.)

[varispeed]

Fair points!