The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics • Hacker News Board

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#201

Post by account42 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:48 AM UTC

Linosaurus wrote: post #179

richforrester wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in

> , is "man, capitalism is a mistake" Man, we need a better term for this criticism. The US right now is more harsh to live in than the US pre-Reagan, which was more harsh than many countries with a strong welfare state, but all of them are capitalistic.

Perhaps the term you are looking for is corporate feudalism.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#202

Post by account42 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 8:51 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #154

richforrester wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the most overwhelming thought, reading this, is "man, capitalism is a mistake" The amounts of money circulating whilst some of us struggle to make rent ... Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in

> Nothing fair, or just, about this world we live in We all make different choices, and so have different consequences. For example, I squandered the proceeds of a business deal on a new car. If I'd bought MSFT instead, I could have bought 100 new cars.

So what you're saying is that we all just need to become better gamblers? That doesn't exactly scream functional society to me.

Besides, this can't work for everyone - if you get 100 cars without an equivalent amount of more work put in then someone else has to do that work without being properly compensated for it.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#203

Post by vladms » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:07 AM UTC

eecc wrote: post #150

prewett wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society should care about people making profits because otherwise those people do something else instead of providing goods and services. What happened in Communism is instructive on this point. Now if you want to argue that the pursuit of maximum profit as an end is a problem, there's a case to be made. The US had something like a marginal tax rate of 90% around the 1940s/1950s, if I recall correctly, and it obvious…

Perhaps it’s not capitalism that’s the problem but the unboundedness of the greed of a few, with respect to the other needs of humanity. Also Adam Smith implied that unbounded avarice is irrational and disruptive to society. The assumption is that morality survives grotesque wealth accumulation, we see many examples proving otherwise

"Capitalism is the problem" by itself is like saying "unix operating systems are a problem". There are so many flavours, so many parameters (laws, tax, etc.) that I do not see value in generalizations.

I think morality is quite hard to define and any system should take into account unboundedness of some human attributes (being greed, stupidy or other) in some humans.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#204

Post by Maxion » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:10 AM UTC

eecc wrote: post #134

dyauspitr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because having every major company in America’s eggs in one basket is as insane as it gets, especially with China bearing down on Taiwan.

That’s an entirely different framework, one that doesn’t concern investment decisions of Apple or Google. I do agree that USA and EU could foot the bill and subsidize a couple billions in such industrial infrastructure, perhaps taking back a cut of the profit rather than privatizing all of it. But they’re not doing it, or are making pitiful efforts at that

It's just an insane amount of money to invest with the long-term effect of you oversaturating the chip market.

Throwing 20B into a chip fab in the EU would be politically a very unpopular move, if it's done as a public company or worse directly state owned, you'll royally piss of Taiwan, South Korea and China and it's likely they'd retaliate by e.g. subsidising their auto industry more in order to give the death blow to the EU auto industry.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#205

Post by strangegecko » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:11 AM UTC

account42 wrote: post #201

Linosaurus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> , is "man, capitalism is a mistake" Man, we need a better term for this criticism. The US right now is more harsh to live in than the US pre-Reagan, which was more harsh than many countries with a strong welfare state, but all of them are capitalistic.

Perhaps the term you are looking for is corporate feudalism.

Maybe, but you have very similar dynamics in China or other countries. At the root the problem is one of power dynamics, inequality, authoritarianism (whether legitimized by money or politics or both). Or said otherwise, an erosion of democratic and egalitarian ideals.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#206

Post by dnnddidiej » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:14 AM UTC

lesuorac wrote: post #33

swatcoder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if the market settles back down or the leading memory tech pivots away from what you invested all this capital and time chasing? You'd need a very strong, very particular forecast to make such a costly bet. And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet.

> And conversely, it may say something about their internal forecasts that they're not making the bet. Idk if you can read into it that way. All these companies have cafeterias but you don't see them investing into farmland so they can get their bananas a few cents cheaper. But also why bother spending 20B on a fab when you can invest 20B into TSMC and let them build the fab?

Probably for strategic reasons.

Mainland China is one concern.

Another is AI being the commodity compliment to semiconductors.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#207

Post by mrandish » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:16 AM UTC

kopirgan wrote: post #196

mrandish wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems they'd be a prime candidate to spin up their own memory fab. While Apple et al certainly have the money to tilt up their own fab, they're savvy enough to understand the memory market's long history of constant boom/bust cycles. I still remember the huge DRAM shortage in late 80s forcing my startup at the time to delay launching our new product for a year. People assume Apple cares about vertically integrat…

This has become like opec's best years. Only there's no cartel at least not openly. But there's another key bottleneck. Even with all the money in the world, getting those machines that etch the RAM could be a multi year ration shop queue. And they're not making those companies every day!

> This has become like opec's best years

Yes, except no DRAM maker is taking this as a signal to go deep into debt to double or triple capacity. It takes a minimum of 3+ years to dramatically increase capacity and no one expects this inflated demand bubble to last that long. Because they've seen this cycle before, they'll bump next gen capacity up a bit more than planned, maybe 15-25% because the current windfall profits are enough to build a buffer to absorb the hit if that excess capacity comes online in the next DRAM demand crash.

In the meantime, they'll just apologize to everyone for the "market conditions beyond our control" while banking as much of these crazy profits as they possibly can while it lasts. But deep down they remember they were starving just yesterday and know they'll be starving again tomorrow.

I understand why everyone's pissed at the "evil DRAM makers" but I also remember boasting about how I scored some crazy cheap RAM sticks not so long ago. None of us were shedding tears when they were selling at a loss just to survive.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#208

Post by Tuna-Fish » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:19 AM UTC

mrandish wrote: post #65

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #15

What was most surprising about all this to me was this line: > So modern DRAM manufacturing is an extraordinarily complex and expensive process. Building a single state-of-the-art DRAM fabrication facility, a “fab,” will cost you about $15 to $20 billion; acquiring all the necessary equipment, like lithography tools and etching machines, will cost you another few billion; and then it’ll take you a few years of produc…

> it seems they'd be a prime candidate to spin up their own memory fab. While Apple et al certainly have the money to tilt up their own fab, they're savvy enough to understand the memory market's long history of constant boom/bust cycles. I still remember the huge DRAM shortage in late 80s forcing my startup at the time to delay launching our new product for a year. People assume Apple cares about vertically integrat…

> I still remember the huge DRAM shortage in late 80s forcing my startup at the time to delay launching our new product for a year.

That one was caused by manipulation by politicians, not market forces. Micron started a price war with Japanese memory manufacturers, the Japanese cut prices to compete, Micron sued them for "dumping". The saga ended with the 1986 U.S.–Japan Semiconductor Agreement, which, among other things, created production controls that limited the total dram supply. The level was set based on then current demand, and due to the rapid growth of demand at the time it almost instantly caused a massive global supply deficit.

The agreement also caused the rise of the South Korean memory industry, because the Japanese companies offloaded their now surplus equipment for cheap.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#209

Post by account42 » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #171

richforrester wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has little to do with what I said. A third of the world lives in poverty. That's the fault of capitalism.

About 90% of the world lived in poverty before capitalism. Besides, America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.

> Besides, America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.

Only if you define the standard of living in a consumerist way.

Re: The memory shortage is causing a repricing of consumer electronics

#210

Post by autoexec » Fri, May 22, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #160

autoexec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you would define as "non-capitalistic" or why you'd limit your options to only those countries, but the idea that people can just pack up and go to live wherever they feel like is incredibly naive. The reasons Americans don't just move to whatever country they think they'd enjoying living in the most are often the same reasons most people all over the world don't. They have a life here. Family, frie…

Some countries have walls to keep people in, some have walls to keep people out. > the idea that people can just pack up and go to live wherever they feel like is incredibly naive. That's how America was populated. In the last 5 years, millions of people walked from South America to the US. Walked! The tax increases in New York, California and Washington have resulted in an exodus of wealthy people.

America was populated by giving people land in exchange for doing the hard work of settling the country so that the government could expand farther west. The land wasn't empty before then, but it wasn't populated like it is now either. It was hard work and bodies were needed so immigration was strongly encouraged. The existence of illegal immigration today is another thing entirely.

I have absolutely no problem with wealthy people who refuse to pay their fair share of taxes leaving. Good riddance. If they want to act like parasites let them leech off the people some place else. Eventually those people will wise up and ask them to pay up or get out too. It's that or bow down and spend their lives in serfdom to their rich lords and masters. I prefer freedom over robber barons.