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.
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.
The same thing was said 4 years ago about NVIDIA on HN, that it's stock it's outrageously overpriced, given it's $20 bln revenue, that it should have at least 10 times more revenue to justify that stock price, which is fantasy, that there is no plausible way for such demand no matter what you think about GPT-2.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Shorting doesn’t only require you to be right. It requires perfectly timing when the market will realize you’re right.
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.
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.
Yes, it's the manufacturers fault, not the unbelievable market demand.
We are all Capitalists, until the Market comes after the stuff we love.