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by throwaway821909 1340 days ago
It's an example of the general problem, it would be better if Intel (and some "competitors" to keep prices low) could always perfectly adapt to new technologies etc, and retrain people.

When they can't it's good companies come and go, or Kodak would still be blocking digital cameras (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kodak-bankruptcy-idUSTRE8...) but the price we pay is things like wasted effort on re-implementing everything that didn't need to change at the new place, good people can't always move to it as you mention, etc.

Different countries at different times adopt different positions on the scale between inefficient (?) state-linked monopolies with jobs for life and letting the market do its thing. I'm not sure what factor means that sometimes we end up with Samsung and other times British Leyland.

That itself is an example of capitalism as the least worst option... similarly how much effort goes into trading currencies or commodities or whatever just so people get a fair price and aren't screwed over by whoever is the only person selling at the moment they need something. But we're self-interested, biased, and this is the workaround (or the system that emerges from our nature - self-interest is turned into the energy behind it all and "greed is good").