No. RAM prices skyrocketed because the major manufacturers that supplied the consumer market shifted their production capacity toward AI data centers, creating a supply shortage in the consumer market. This effectively turned RAM into a high-demand commodity rather than the relatively accessible consumer product it once was.
RAM continues to be expensive because competing manufacturers have not stepped in to meaningfully increase supply for the consumer market. Instead, manufacturers are prioritizing the substantially more lucrative AI data center market, leaving consumers with fewer options and less competition for available supply.
Judging by the title of your post, I’m convinced you don’t understand what competition actually means in the context of economics. Competition isn’t simply the existence of multiple companies. It’s the willingness and ability of those companies to enter a market, increase supply, and compete for consumers by offering better prices.
Absolutely. Large public companies like nothing more than to corner the market and be the only supplier circumventing the necessity to compete with other companies. Ideally legislation would prevent this from happening. Alas, this is the world that we live in.
Even though I agree with you, I think OP is saying the same thing but in a nutshell and with more emotion than logic. They’re not wrong but not correct because it’s not the full answer.
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, a billionaire, said he thinks it’s terrible for people have RAM. He said it in the context of being against local inference. It’s really not hard to see what they really think. They want to hoard all the RAM and make you rent it from them.
We live in a weird late stage capitalist situation where the producer sees the consumer as competition which is why we’re seeing the artificial scarcity and GPUs just sitting idle in warehouses.
Once again, you are misusing the word competition. Consumers aren’t producing RAM, adding supply to the market, or competing with another company for sales.
If these companies want to rent computing power to consumers while reserving the RAM supply for themselves, they are consolidating control over the market. That’s a supply-side market concentration issue, not competition between consumers and manufacturers.
Sam Altman, OpenAI, and other tech executives don’t view the consumer base as competition. They view consumers as potential customers for their computing services. They want to own the infrastructure and rent access to it. A consumer renting computing power from a company isn’t competing with that company.
You’re confusing two entirely different economic concepts. You’re wrong, and I’m not saying that to be mean. I’m simply pointing out an objective distinction in how competition works in economics.
No, you just don’t really understand what you’re reading and you’re arguing shit the guy isn’t even saying.
ITT: Talk of ECONOMIC COMPETITION in the sense of a multiple companies chasing the same consumers, and there is also LITERAL FUCKING COMPETITION FOR WHO GETS TO USE THE LIMITED AMOUNT OF CHIPS PRODUCED.
He keeps talking about the second point and you keep pointing at the first one, which isn’t really what he was fucking talking about.
No. RAM prices skyrocketed because the major manufacturers that supplied the consumer market shifted their production capacity toward AI data centers, creating a supply shortage in the consumer market. This effectively turned RAM into a high-demand commodity rather than the relatively accessible consumer product it once was.
RAM continues to be expensive because competing manufacturers have not stepped in to meaningfully increase supply for the consumer market. Instead, manufacturers are prioritizing the substantially more lucrative AI data center market, leaving consumers with fewer options and less competition for available supply.
Judging by the title of your post, I’m convinced you don’t understand what competition actually means in the context of economics. Competition isn’t simply the existence of multiple companies. It’s the willingness and ability of those companies to enter a market, increase supply, and compete for consumers by offering better prices.
It’s very likely also due to cartel behavior between the big three memory manufacturers, something for which they have been convicted in the past.
I think they used the AI demand shock as an excuse to raise and maintain their prices to the insanity they are today.
Absolutely. Large public companies like nothing more than to corner the market and be the only supplier circumventing the necessity to compete with other companies. Ideally legislation would prevent this from happening. Alas, this is the world that we live in.
Even though I agree with you, I think OP is saying the same thing but in a nutshell and with more emotion than logic. They’re not wrong but not correct because it’s not the full answer.
CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, a billionaire, said he thinks it’s terrible for people have RAM. He said it in the context of being against local inference. It’s really not hard to see what they really think. They want to hoard all the RAM and make you rent it from them.
Ah that’s a didn’t perspective. I see what you’re saying now. Well done.
We live in a weird late stage capitalist situation where the producer sees the consumer as competition which is why we’re seeing the artificial scarcity and GPUs just sitting idle in warehouses.
Once again, you are misusing the word competition. Consumers aren’t producing RAM, adding supply to the market, or competing with another company for sales.
If these companies want to rent computing power to consumers while reserving the RAM supply for themselves, they are consolidating control over the market. That’s a supply-side market concentration issue, not competition between consumers and manufacturers.
Sam Altman, OpenAI, and other tech executives don’t view the consumer base as competition. They view consumers as potential customers for their computing services. They want to own the infrastructure and rent access to it. A consumer renting computing power from a company isn’t competing with that company.
You’re confusing two entirely different economic concepts. You’re wrong, and I’m not saying that to be mean. I’m simply pointing out an objective distinction in how competition works in economics.
Why would I buy what they’re selling when I can run their product on my gaming computer?
I have no idea… Why would you buy what they’re selling if you can run it on your gaming computer?
You doing something on your own in the same way a company would do it for profit still isn’t competition as defined by economics.
You still don’t know what competition means.
No, you just don’t really understand what you’re reading and you’re arguing shit the guy isn’t even saying.
ITT: Talk of ECONOMIC COMPETITION in the sense of a multiple companies chasing the same consumers, and there is also LITERAL FUCKING COMPETITION FOR WHO GETS TO USE THE LIMITED AMOUNT OF CHIPS PRODUCED.
He keeps talking about the second point and you keep pointing at the first one, which isn’t really what he was fucking talking about.