am i crazy for not caring if a company in a foreign country obtains trade secrets and manufactures the same thing? like we're all humans and we all want access to whatever it is they're building, it seems like more people building the thing is a good thing. if that impacts Samsung's profits, why do I care? its not like corporations give a shit about me
Well who are you? Maybe there is no reason for you to care.
TSMC alone is 12% of Taiwanese exports. The entire semiconductor industry is 25% of Taiwan's GDP. It's obvious why the Taiwanese government and society, to say nothing of TSMC's shareholders, would care.
Yes, because if you tolerate that you disincentivize actually developing the IP in question in favour of stealing everyone else's, which leads to nothing being developed.
Some countries have all the talent and manufacturing and sourcing advantages. Once they take the lead, you might never be able to keep up.
Your engineers lose their jobs, your businesses go bankrupt, you exit that entire field entirely for your entire population. Slowly your ability to do work begins to evaporate.
It's happened before and it'll continue to happen.
> Slowly your ability to do work begins to evaporate.
To be clear about this, you can still physically do the work same as before, it's just become uneconomic/not competitive. It's not all bad though. Having another country take the bulk of the market leaves you free to differentiate and specialize in one or more profitable niches that are not being served well by what is now the main supplier. You might end up dominating some fraction of what's now a vastly bigger market, with improved economies of scale that you're free to exploit as well.
That's a bit like an exercise left to the reader. Or wishful thinking.
We hope that it works out that way, but there's simply no guarantee. It's not an economic law.
If the country supplying said thing can have domestic companies deliver at lower margin, you're still kind of screwed. Their internal competition fills out the niches, which they can then export.
there's something that rubs me wrong about the argument of "we need IP laws because otherwise someone else might do the same thing as us, but better, and we won't be able to compete"
I really can't answer that, it's your call if you care or not.
I think that the more of a free for all folks stealing tech as they wish will push companies who do the development work towards more proprietary / DRM and similar solutions ... I don't like that.
Allowing people to profit from their inventions / investments encourages more such development, and without that discourages it or encourages less good options.
But when push comes to shove if manufacturing is cheaper in a country where lots of folks want to steal your things. -shrug- Short term profits win.