“We could hold a certain percentage of our supply off to the side for consumers so they can afford our products and have a backup for when the AI bubble bursts, but nah let’s just fuck everyone because line is going up right now and MBA brain means that’s all that matters.”
People joke about companies being too big to fail, but Samsung is the largest of a group of conglomerates that basically run South Korea. They know there’s no way the government will allow them to collapse since they would take the Korean economy down with them. Why not take the most profitable route when there’s no risk (to them, which is all they care about)?
They’re inevitable because companies already know they’re going to do everything they can to fuck us over for as much profit as they think is possible. We’ll see how this all plays out though.
Purge LARPing?
I was thinking indie games becoming more popular, people defaulting to refurbs/repairs over new stuff, and developers being forced to optimize their software, games, and OSes, buuuuut, yeah that’s a distinct possibility too.
The comments in here are starting to look like Reddit with the conspiracy nonsense.
Memory isn’t expensive because Samsung is greedy or because they’re secretly stockpiling product. It’s because AI uses a lot of memory and so people are buying a lot of memory and it takes time for the manufacturers to increase supply to meet demand. This is 100s level economics
From: https://courses.byui.edu/econ_150/econ_150_old_site/lesson_03.htm
Memory is high because there is nothing preventing them from charging anything they want above and beyond the cost of manufacture.
Yes, that would be true if they had a true monopoly.
However, in an open market when a producer offers their goods for higher than the market rate, another producer can steal their business by simply offering the products at market rate. If Samsung decides to try to price gouge then customers can buy RAM from Micron, the only time that this isn’t possible is if there is more demand than their is supply (i.e. Micron has no stock) in which case, microeconomics tells us that the market price will increase.
How naive to think they all wont do the same thing when their only goal is profit.
Now you’re suggesting a price fixing conspiracy among the two largest RAM producers, that’s quite a big claim so you surely have pretty solid evidence to support that position.
Being cynical isn’t evidence and calling people names isn’t evidence.
No I’m not. I suggesting a for modern for profit compnay will raise prices as high as they can. You know this you are just trolling. good bye.
Ok, so who is arguing against that? Certainly not me.
Yes, every company on Earth would charge you $182737854 billion dollars for their product if they could and ever seller on earth would like to buy the product for $0. The market price is the price that both of these two opposing positions agree is fair.
You said:
Memory is high because there is nothing preventing them from charging anything they want above and beyond the cost of manufacture.
It is a requirement of every successful manufacturing business that has ever existed has to charge a price that is above the cost of manufacture. The term for this in academia is profit. If a company does not charge a price above and beyond the cost of manufacture then they’re selling the product for less than it costs to make it and, unless they’re Tesla, then they will eventually go out of business.
I can admit that maybe I did misread you because I assumed that you were trying to make some deeper point, because what you said, if read literally, is that “Memory is high because companies seek profit” which is the most trivially true thing you can say about economics.
So, back to basic economics.
The thing that is preventing a company from charging ‘anything they want’ is the fact that there are other manufacturers (because there isn’t a true monopoly in the RAM market) that are competing in the same market. Nothing is preventing Samnsung from charging $150,000 for a 1GB stick of RAM, but if Micron is selling their 1GB sticks of RAM for $150 then nobody will buy from Samsung.
This a phenomena known as competition prevents Samsung from being able to sell RAM for arbitrary prices. The market sets the price, not any individual company.
I assumed you knew something so basic.
The only way a manufacturer can arbitrarily change the market price is if they are the only manufacturer, aka a monopoly (in which case the $150,000 sticks of RAM are the only ones available on the market) or they are price fixing (and Micron has secretly agreed to sell RAM at $150,000 and no other manufacturers exist).
So if you’re not alleging price fixing then your comment is basically ‘Companies seek to maximize profit’ which is like saying the sky is blue or the sun is hot.
price fixing conspiracy among the two largest RAM producers
they are well known for doing just that. two of the times they did it and got caught are briefly summed up here but you can find more about it if you search for it.
…
https://www.techspot.com/news/106834-major-dram-makers-set-halt-ddr3-ddr4-production.html
That graph is nice and simple, just like your world view. Gosh, thanks for telling us, we never knew…
they aren’t justified in crashing the world economy just because capitalism says they can if they want to.
That is true, but also not what is happening.
they can choose not to hoard all semiconductors for themselves to play with ai and not crash the world economy. memory fabs can choose not to do that too.
but they don’t, because capitalism says they can if they want to.
Who is they? Where did capitalism make this announcement? Who was the representative of Capitalism that said that it is okay to crash the world economy?
This sounds like conspiracy nonsense.
what do you mean? we are literally talking about the semiconductor manufacturers and ai companies, and their bubble.
what exactly is so conspiratorial about companies being allowed to cater to market forces and capital instead of people? this is literally how capitalism works according to you yourself two posts ago.
That isn’t the conspiracy that I mean.
When I wrote my comment, there were about 10 other comments, half of whom were saying things like ‘This is because they’re all getting together to jack up the price and hoarding stock’ complete conspiracy nonsense.
So I was posting to show that: “No, the price increase is expected based on normal market forces. There is no evidence of a conspiracy.”
You can tell people are doomed economically when they fail to grasp supply and demand.
It’s more that people want to be outraged and feel self-righteous and also the outrage bots are happy to oblige with deceptively framed stories and social media comment fabrication.
I could be wrong, and there is some evidence that Samsung is doing something shady. I think I’d know about it if it were public because I work in an office that manages large investments so news like a massive company manipulating prices would show up in the various information services that we use.
You mean Samsung who has a history of LCD panel price fixing in 2010? Or the CRT price fixing in 2018? Or the DRAM price fixing in 2005?
It’s collusion.
I mean you aren’t wrong but you also don’t understand it.
