Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. The consumer in this story is the young engineer in Bengaluru who cannot afford a laptop for her daughter’s schooling, not because no laptops exist, but because the global supply of the microchips within them has been constrained by decisions made in Eindhoven, Taipei, and Washington - none of which were made with her kitchen table in mind.

She pays more for less, waits longer for repairs, watches her students fall behind - not because production has failed, but because it has been redirected. The machines that etch the most delicate patterns on silicon wafers - made by ASML, a Dutch firm holding near-total dominion over extreme ultraviolet lithography - have been restricted from export to certain regions. Meanwhile, TSMC, the world’s most advanced chip foundry, expands its capacity, not where demand is greatest, but where subsidies are deepest and geopolitics most anxious.

Let us not mistake motion for progress. Production increases in Arizona and Kumamoto, yet the global consumer still faces shortages, delays, elevated prices. The stated purpose is resilience. The effect is reorientation. And the question remains: who is this resilience for?

The producer speaks in the language of national security, of supply chain integrity, of technological sovereignty. These are not false concerns, but they are not neutral. When an industry consolidates under the banner of security, we must ask who benefits from the consolidation. ASML’s export controls are not imposed by the firm from benevolence, nor do they emerge from some natural scarcity. They are compliance with policy - policy shaped in conversation with the very firms it regulates. TSMC’s expansion is not driven by market demand alone, but by billions in public subsidy, conditional on location, on technology transfer, on alignment with state strategy.

Sympathy requires we imagine the boardroom, yes - but first, the household. The mother in São Paulo who must choose between a new refrigerator and a tablet for her son’s homework. The clinic in Nairobi that cannot upgrade its diagnostic machines because the chips are diverted to data centres feeding artificial intelligences that draft policy in Ottawa. The small manufacturer in Glasgow whose automation project stalls because lead times stretch beyond planning horizons.

Competition, that silent servant of the public, is being quietly dismissed. There are, in truth, only a handful of firms capable of producing the most advanced semiconductors. That scarcity is technical in origin, but political in consequence. When three firms dominate a supply chain essential to every modern good, their interests become concentrated, their voice amplified. The consumer’s interest - diffuse, unorganised, voiceless in lobbying halls - becomes incidental.

It is said that these controls prevent advanced chips from being used in weapons. A worthy aim. But the restriction does not fall equally. It lands heaviest on the civilian economy of nations deemed adversarial, yes - but also on the global poor, on students, on hospitals, on small enterprises, who cannot compete in the bidding for scarce components. The embargo does not stop at the border; it ripples through the price of every device, every service, every digital interaction.

And what of the expansion? TSMC builds new fabs in Japan, in Arizona, in Germany. Good. But these are not acts of charity. They are calculated investments, leveraging public funds to de-risk private enterprise. The taxpayer bears the cost of construction, the promise of stability, the burden of infrastructure. The shareholder reaps the reward of production. The consumer gets - eventually - a slightly more stable supply, at a price still shaped by oligopoly.

Let us not forget: a subsidy to the producer is often a tax on the consumer, merely routed through the exchequer. The money does not grow in the soil of Arizona. It is taken from schools, roads, care - then given to a firm that will sell the same chip for what the market will bear, not what justice demands.

There is a deeper asymmetry. The producer organises. The state listens. The consumer remains scattered, each bearing the cost quietly, individually, without coalition. One firm speaks with the weight of billions in revenue. Millions of consumers, each paying a little more, say nothing - because no forum exists for their collective voice.

This is not conspiracy. It is routine. It is the natural tendency of concentrated interest to shape the rules, always under some respectable pretext: security, innovation, competitiveness. The language is public-spirited. The outcome is not.

Competition is the only reliable guardian of the consumer. Not charity. Not regulation written in consultation with the regulated. Not appeals to patriotism. If we wish to serve the public interest, we must ask not whether production is increasing, but for whom. Not whether supply chains are secure, but secure against what - and at what cost to the ordinary person who consumes, but does not command.

The moral question is not whether TSMC should expand, or ASML obey the law. It is whether the current arrangement, in its sum, serves the many who use, or the few who make and govern. The engineer in Bengaluru does not need a chip made in Arizona. She needs a chip that is available, affordable, and not held hostage to strategies she did not design and cannot influence.

If the purpose of production is consumption, then every policy must pass the consumer welfare test. Not the GDP test. Not the jobs test. Not the geopolitical leverage test. The kitchen table test.

By that measure, the current course fails. It may succeed for the strategist, the shareholder, the national planner. But it does not serve the consumer. And when the system forgets the consumer, it has forgotten its purpose.