People have the option of just not buying stuff. I sold my Tesla in 2021 for a stupid price, drove a beater for two years, and bought another new car a couple years later. Now, certainly not everyone has that luxury, but this is computers, not real estate. Prices will crash.
glimshe 54 minutes ago [-]
Should we blame this on memory companies or the AI companies bidding for memory? How should the memory companies have acted differently?
CBLT 36 minutes ago [-]
I'd come at this from a different angle: we still want this to be market system, so we need to make this priced into the market. How can we price this in?
I would try to solve this by making the market structure reflect the underlying difficulty: we have to decide what capacity to produce years in advance, to construct the memory fabs. So this should be a futures market, and a capacity crunch would affect short-term-futures, but leave full term futures at the same price. Because the companies supplying the memory can just construct more capacity to fill those futures at the same cost regardless of the AI demand.
swdev281634 28 minutes ago [-]
I think the epic mistake was made by investors and executives who bought tales about imminent super-intelligence about to displace millions of knowledge workers from entire industries replacing them with AI datacentres.
These people are the main reason why AI companies have unlimited funding, and can afford to buy global RAM supply for years in the future despite their expenses exceed revenue by billions.
benced 3 minutes ago [-]
You can short them and make a lot of money (to buy RAM with?) if you feel this way and are correct.
amelius 7 minutes ago [-]
The main tool to fix this is to forbid companies to sell below cost price. It is part of antitrust law.
SlightlyLeftPad 50 minutes ago [-]
For one, they could have could have not massively scaled back consumer memory manufacturing as a matter of duty to customers. But money and greed must prevail.
Cyan488 27 minutes ago [-]
Isn't it the case that public companies owe a primary legal/fiduciary duty to shareholders over customers?
The question of choice between a profitable vs unprofitable venture is easy. But yeah, to what extent is choosing profitable instead of VERY profitable a breach of duty to shareholders?
csnover 10 minutes ago [-]
As far as I am aware, the answer to your question is ‘no’[0].
> Contrary to what many believe, U.S. corporate law does not impose any enforceable legal duty on corporate directors or executives of public corporations to maximize profits or share price. The economic case for shareholder-value maximization similarly rests on incorrect factual claims about the structure of corporations, including the mistaken claims that shareholders “own” corporations, that they have the only residual claim on the firm’s profits, and that they are principals who hire and control directors to act as their agents.
fiduciary duty doesn't mean you always have to do what makes the maximum profit
avoiding the destruction of good faith with consumers is a legitimate business interest
micromacrofoot 19 minutes ago [-]
both of them
memory companies could have attempted to protect consumers, at least a little, but the AI money machine goes brrrr
amelius 18 minutes ago [-]
> How should the memory companies have acted differently?
Well if your thesis is that they should have acted differently, then we should blame the laissez-faire capitalists.
iwontberude 24 minutes ago [-]
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Apreche 51 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but zoom out more. Wealth inequality and the k-shaped economy are the real culprit.
When a few people have so much wealth that they are no longer price-sensitive, they bid up the price of everything and anything of value be it stocks, real estate, computer hardware, fine arts, sports teams, etc.
The result is that a business which tries to make quality products at reasonable prices will fail. They aren’t luxurious enough for the people with money. They aren’t cheap enough for the people without. Customers in the middle hardly exist. Any valuable good that is genuinely scarce will inevitably become a luxury.
33 minutes ago [-]
annoyingnoob 1 hours ago [-]
Same for small business or any small buyer.
Rendered at 20:57:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I would try to solve this by making the market structure reflect the underlying difficulty: we have to decide what capacity to produce years in advance, to construct the memory fabs. So this should be a futures market, and a capacity crunch would affect short-term-futures, but leave full term futures at the same price. Because the companies supplying the memory can just construct more capacity to fill those futures at the same cost regardless of the AI demand.
These people are the main reason why AI companies have unlimited funding, and can afford to buy global RAM supply for years in the future despite their expenses exceed revenue by billions.
The question of choice between a profitable vs unprofitable venture is easy. But yeah, to what extent is choosing profitable instead of VERY profitable a breach of duty to shareholders?
> Contrary to what many believe, U.S. corporate law does not impose any enforceable legal duty on corporate directors or executives of public corporations to maximize profits or share price. The economic case for shareholder-value maximization similarly rests on incorrect factual claims about the structure of corporations, including the mistaken claims that shareholders “own” corporations, that they have the only residual claim on the firm’s profits, and that they are principals who hire and control directors to act as their agents.
[0] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
avoiding the destruction of good faith with consumers is a legitimate business interest
memory companies could have attempted to protect consumers, at least a little, but the AI money machine goes brrrr
Well if your thesis is that they should have acted differently, then we should blame the laissez-faire capitalists.
When a few people have so much wealth that they are no longer price-sensitive, they bid up the price of everything and anything of value be it stocks, real estate, computer hardware, fine arts, sports teams, etc.
The result is that a business which tries to make quality products at reasonable prices will fail. They aren’t luxurious enough for the people with money. They aren’t cheap enough for the people without. Customers in the middle hardly exist. Any valuable good that is genuinely scarce will inevitably become a luxury.