RAM Makers Plan to Cut Production Even Further

XvMMvX said:
Looks like [H]ardsocialist didn't pay attention in beginner economics.

I love all the feels around here about Greed... like if you had something that could make millions you would just give it away and not maximize revenue.

LOL at this place bitching at $70-$80 more on $2000 gaming rigs. You guys act like this is limiting your ability to apply for jobs or send emails.
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If there were true supply shortages due to bonafide customer demand that was exceeding manufacturing capacity as the cause of high prices, then sure.

However, when the "big 3" of the DRAM world suddenly state that they are ALL going to purposely diminish production in order to keep prices high (or even cause a rise in pricing), then they are colluding to manipulate the market by fabricating customer demand...that is what all the bitching is about.
 
DejaWiz said:
If there were true supply shortages due to bonafide customer demand that was exceeding manufacturing capacity as the cause of high prices, then sure.

However, when the "big 3" of the DRAM world suddenly state that they are ALL going to purposely diminish production in order to keep prices high (or even cause a rise in pricing), then they are colluding to manipulate the market by fabricating customer demand...that is what all the bitching is about.
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It could be a problem if none of the companies are public but since 2 of them are public, just buy stock in one of the companies. Then all those evil profits will flow into your pocket and you'll make more than you spend on the increase in RAM pricing.
 
Seventyfive said:
The other part of capitalism, which I posted above, is you can invest in Micron. Nobody is stopping you. So if these evil greedy guys really are making so much money, why not just own the stock and now you will be making so much money.
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No thanks,
Personal belief,
the stock market is a sham at best,
I won't invest in something I don't have a connection to. My investments are all companies I have worked for and know intimately the state in which the company exists, as well as the ecosystem, meh, its some inflated fantasy based on speculation and desire rather than actual facts, precious metals and raw uncut precious stones are a safer investment and occasionally when I feel the need to gamble I play the long haul currency exchange as the gamble is based on time, not the if like the stock market is.

i realize for some people it's their cup of tea and they do amazingly well hedging and shortchanging stocks, but not my style personally and I feel like wallstreet has become a lump of shit and a cancer eating at American companies that will sacrifice the health of the company and their industry for the all mighty dollar that is reported publically to drive that stock ticket price up.

Btw rule of thumb, by the time you hear it's a good investment and are told it is good, it really isn't because it's to late, one thing Bitcoin did have in common with proper investments.
 
DejaWiz said:
That's not capitalism...it's corporatism. Know the difference.
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No it's actually capitalism, supply/demand, companies have long figured out the easiest way to affect demand is to reduce the supply thus allowing them to artificially manipulate the market do the can increase price to profit ratios based on lower amount of sales at a higher price rather than larger amount of sales with lower profit yields....

Corporatism is when the government allows them to cuircumvent trade regulations and manipulate markets with no penalties ......

They are currently already being investigated again, so there is that.
 
1Nocturnal101 said:
Btw rule of thumb, by the time you hear it's a good investment and are told it is good, it really isn't because it's to late, one thing Bitcoin did have in common with proper investments.
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As a rule of thumb, just because something is in the news doesn't mean it's good publicity. Micron was a darling on CNBC up until about $60 and now nobody is talking about it and any talk is negative. Even NVIDIA was in the news constantly from $30 up to $300. Everyone knew about NVDA at $100 but you still could have tripled your money. Now it's back down to $135.

So the rule of thumb you speak of isn't really anything. That's like "sell in may and go away". These are silly anecdotes from people who don't actually know the stock market or investing. A good investor buys a company based on cash flow, replacement cost, book value, adjusted earnings, etc... A good investor does real work, real research, and has real conviction. People who think the stock market is just a casino are people who don't understand investing.
 
New AMD & Intel Processors coming soon? We'll just cut back on production and make moar money just in time for everyone to upgrade!
 
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1Nocturnal101 said:
No it's actually capitalism, supply/demand, companies have long figured out the easiest way to affect demand is to reduce the supply thus allowing them to artificially manipulate the market do the can increase price to profit ratios based on lower amount of sales at a higher price rather than larger amount of sales with lower profit yields....

Corporatism is when the government allows them to cuircumvent trade regulations and manipulate markets with no penalties ......

They are currently already being investigated again, so there is that.
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That's not true. Corporatism does NOT allow circumvention of trade regs and penalty free manipulation. Crony corporatism usually does.

The instant these "competing" DRAM companies collaborated to reduce production simultaneously is the instance when free market capitalism ceased and a corporatist oligopoly took over.
 
Gigantopithecus said:
Because the last meaningful anti-trust suits were undertaken by the Clinton administration against Microsoft,
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Meaningful...
Your definition of that word must be different from mine. Just what was so "meaningful" about it, Windoze 10?
 
Call it price fixxing. Want to be high permanently. Gouging people who can least afford RAM. or Always been slap on the wrist for doing so.
 
XvMMvX said:
Looks like [H]ardsocialist didn't pay attention in beginner economics.

I love all the feels around here about Greed... like if you had something that could make millions you would just give it away and not maximize revenue.

LOL at this place bitching at $70-$80 more on $2000 gaming rigs. You guys act like this is limiting your ability to apply for jobs or send emails.
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[H] is kind of strange. Most here seem to have libertarian/right-wing tendencies—like me—except when it comes to anything tech related, then it's all-hands-on-deck for government intervention and regulation.
 
TheOne&OnlyZeke said:
Isn't ECC also a lot slower then consumer ram?
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Glock24 said:
Yes and no. ECC RAM usually does not have ultra-low timings as performance oriented modules have, but the timings agre comparable to mainstream RAM modules.
My experience had been that you can use lower timings in ECC modules than what the SPD advertises.
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Phoronix found that ECC DDR4 OCs pretty well. I thought we linked it in a front page article, but maybe we didn't:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ECC-DRAM-Overclocking-TR

But I didn't know consumer boards would take it... Hmm, that actually sounds like a nice way around high consumer RAM prices.
 
DejaWiz said:
That's not capitalism...it's corporatism. Know the difference.
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For me, corporatism isn't just about greed as capitalists can and often are greedy too. It's more about collusion and corruption, working (usually in secret) with others to shaft the customer as much as physically possible. Not only that but corporatism also shafts other companies, usually smaller ones and even down to the self employed.

It's nothing to do with efficiency or survival of the fittest, it's about merciless cheating vs playing fair to the detriment of the whole of society. I know it's easier to call that capitalism and have done with it, but that's not really taking into account the nuanced differences between the two.
 
Seventyfive said:
As a rule of thumb, just because something is in the news doesn't mean it's good publicity. Micron was a darling on CNBC up until about $60 and now nobody is talking about it and any talk is negative. Even NVIDIA was in the news constantly from $30 up to $300. Everyone knew about NVDA at $100 but you still could have tripled your money. Now it's back down to $135.

So the rule of thumb you speak of isn't really anything. That's like "sell in may and go away". These are silly anecdotes from people who don't actually know the stock market or investing. A good investor buys a company based on cash flow, replacement cost, book value, adjusted earnings, etc... A good investor does real work, real research, and has real conviction. People who think the stock market is just a casino are people who don't understand investing.
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Investments are always a risk, there is no guarantees, thus it is gambling, it always was and always will be, grant it as you have stated there are those who do massive research or hire people to do the research for you thus minimizing risks; however, no matter how much you do there is always a risk, not to admit it is extremely folly. Even W. Buffet says that, but it boils down to still gambling, just because some consider it intelligent high brow gambling doesn't make it any better.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Pure and simple dressing it up like it's a Swan just makes it more embarrassing when it quacks back in your face.
 
Oh No's ... not the RAM prices again !!!

Hudsucker-Proxy-1000.jpg
 
TheOne&OnlyZeke said:
Oh those motherfuckers
First they are creaming everyone on prices, now when prices are possibly returning to somewhat normal, they think its ok to artificially keep the prices high
I thought this kinda tactic wasn't allowed?
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It isn't allowed, and is one of the legitimate roles of government. Colluding, or price fixing, is illegal. It destroys the Free Market. Collusion is hard to prove, but it has been successfully prosecuted. Airlines used their ticket pricing software to "float" price fixes to their competitors, for example.

There are several obstacles wrt these three manufacturers:

1. They are not based in the US/EU, therefore different laws may apply. (The jurisdiction applies to what is imported and then gets tangled by treaties and agreements.)
2. You've got to find proof of collusion. (Explicit or implicit, such as all of the raising prices NOT due to suppliers, and that it is coordinated.)
3. The barrier to entry in this manufacturing field is quite high. If I dumped a bucket of sand into a kiln, I daresay it would take me a long time of trial and error (and cash) to get a working and competitive DDR4 module. This barrier, and the work that it takes to overcome it, are recognized. If you ban them, who will replace them?

The solution is to fine the bejeesus out of them...after securing a conviction. And then jail the executives.
Also, suspend/revoke their patents. Lower that barrier and let new manufacturers enter the field.

It all hinges on whether this pricing scheme can be considered price fixing AND if the appropriate government entities think it's worth the effort to pursue.
 
I disagree.

Corporations and capitalism go hand-in-hand. Not only is this reflected in the history of both, but it extends to present day.

Capitalism is about those with money spending it to drive industry, or stimulate society in other similar ways. Whereby their "invested" money will grow the money/value it represents, be it through appreciation, returns, or some other mechanism.

At certain points in history in North America, you needed to be a corporation to own land, or perform other forms of asset investment. This was originally due to the logistics of communications being hard (pre-rail), so records of who is/owns what, needed to exist in a government records regard.

Transition to today, and Corporations are used as a way to strategically secure your Capital investments. Your liability is reduced, but you still get to make the decisions of how the money/investment is handled, who sees returns, and things like that.

Typically, "Capitalists" that don't embrace Corporationism, don't stay Capitalists for very long.

DejaWiz said:
Much to learn you have, Padawan.
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1Nocturnal101 said:
Investments are always a risk, there is no guarantees, thus it is gambling, it always was and always will be, grant it as you have stated there are those who do massive research or hire people to do the research for you thus minimizing risks; however, no matter how much you do there is always a risk, not to admit it is extremely folly. Even W. Buffet says that, but it boils down to still gambling, just because some consider it intelligent high brow gambling doesn't make it any better.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Pure and simple dressing it up like it's a Swan just makes it more embarrassing when it quacks back in your face.
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Driving involves the risk of getting hit by a drunk driver. Walking your dog down the street involves the risk of being stabbed and robbed. Eating food involves the risk of choking. Are these things gambling? They involve death. Death is more serious than losing money. But you don't go around saying those things are gambling. Why?
 
Seventyfive said:
Driving involves the risk of getting hit by a drunk driver. Walking your dog down the street involves the risk of being stabbed and robbed. Eating food involves the risk of choking. Are these things gambling? They involve death. Death is more serious than losing money. But you don't go around saying those things are gambling. Why?
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In a way, yes, they call it gambling with your life as the ultimate stake, you gamble every time you walk out that door, every time you drive with a car not serviced properly a mechanic will tell you" You are gambling with your life." It's a proverb you would do well to learn, we minimize chance bit everyday we take risks there is zero certainty just ask a chaos theory physics major.
 
1Nocturnal101 said:
https://www.forbes.com/quotes/11185/
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https://www.quotespeak.com/professional-quotes/money-quotes/best-expressive-stock-market-quotes/

To further drive home the point, but the sentiment is ussually the same denying that the market is gambling is being in denial, and people should seek professional help that are convincing themselves otherwise before they lose everything, and the larger the ego the greater the chance it will happen. No matter how well informed or how much research you do reality is very quick to assert the folly, just ask all those that jumped out of windows when wall street crashed on Friday October 1929, because their gamble, well it didn't go so well, they lost.
 
U-238 said:
Well shit son, when you're making 60-80% gross on product why the hell wouldn't you try to keep it that way? Memory is (A) used in damn near everything from PCs/Laptops to all the "Smart™" devices running around and (B) a market you can't just waltz into because, as with a lot of things manufacturing, there's a significant capex at startup and you probably won't see returns on that until a ways into the future.

As for the hootin' and hollerin' over this being illegal: Unless there's verifiable evidence that all three are colluding to fix prices (which, if you read the article that doesn't appear to be the case) you can't go after companies for playing "follow the leader". Yea, from a consumer aspect this would seem to be pretty shady but think of it this way: If you, Jim and Bob are selling bottle caps in your town and Jim and Bob are selling for 2.00 a piece and making lots of money while you're only selling for 1.00 a piece making barely any are you going to hope that you can outsell Jim and Bob and cause everybody to race to the bottom where nobody makes any money or, are you going to raise your price to 2.00 and you, Jim and Bob can all make good money and everyone's happy?
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Don't drag me into this...
 
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So glad I took the plunge for 32GB of RAM two years ago literally RIGHT before the prices skyrocketed. Paid $150 for a set of RAM that now costs $280. My system should hold me over for at least another 2 solid years.
 
1Nocturnal101 said:
https://www.quotespeak.com/professional-quotes/money-quotes/best-expressive-stock-market-quotes/

To further drive home the point, but the sentiment is ussually the same denying that the market is gambling is being in denial, and people should seek professional help that are convincing themselves otherwise before they lose everything, and the larger the ego the greater the chance it will happen. No matter how well informed or how much research you do reality is very quick to assert the folly, just ask all those that jumped out of windows when wall street crashed on Friday October 1929, because their gamble, well it didn't go so well, they lost.
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Got it, so everyone at goldman sachs, jp morgan, bridgewater, point 72, etc should all seek professional help... LOL. Sounds reasonable.
 
Seventyfive said:
Got it, so everyone at goldman sachs, jp morgan, bridgewater, point 72, etc should all seek professional help... LOL. Sounds reasonable.
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Not really, they are well aware of what they are doing and the danger of failure, hence why they will state there are no investments without risk(In fact even in commercials for them), shortchanging and hedging against companies in fact I am 100% sure that they have to state it before taking on a client otherwise they get fined by the security exchange commission and risk losing their license to operate.
 
RealBeast said:
The drug manufacturers make the big 3 memory makers look like hacks when it comes to gross overpricing.
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Total misnomer. It costs billions to get a drug through clinical trials. Even when a drug has initial public funding for research, that's the cheap easy part. Taking promising publicly funded research and turning it into something marketable takes more than a decade and costs many billions.

Businesses need to make money or they go out of business. Some mass market drugs can be sold affordably, because the volumes make up for it. Some very specialized gene therapy cancer drugs that only help a small number of patients need to be sold at much higher pricing to break even and have a chance of making a profit.

Remember if there is no profit, no one makes the next treatment.

Drugs are very high risk. For every one that succeeds and becomes a blockbuster, there are very many that fail. This is just the nature of the business. The successful drugs need to pay for all of those that are unsuccessful too, again, or the drugmaker goes out of business and cant develop any new treatments.

Now, there are exceptions of course, that douche Martin Skreli bougth the rights to an already developed drug on the cheap, and then cranked up the price. Then there was Mylan, the makers of the Epi-pen, taking a mature well understood chemistry and technology, the Epinephrine autoinjector and cranking up the price for no other reason than that they could. Martin Skreli and the people who ran Mylan are utter pieces of shit (and Shkreli is now a convicted felon), but this is not reflective of the industry as a whole.

The high prices of drugs are reflective of the astronomical costs of developing them, the fact that it takes tens if not hundreds of failed drugs before one is successful, and the fact that if anything goes wrong, it is very very costly. Whenever anything is risky in finance, there is also an expectation of higher return. That's why someone with poor credit gets higher interest rates than someone with good credit.

Developing a drug is very very risky. You could easily spend billions and wind up with absolutely nothing to show for it, even if you do everything right. Because of this, investors demand higher returns than if they put their money in a safer investment.

The comparison to the Memory cartel is completely off base. Here you have a small group of manufacturers rather than competing, intentionally restricting supply of a mature product (DDR4) in order to drive up the cost and thus their profitability. This is not only scummy, but highly illegal, and I bet regulators are watching.

Justice moves very very slowly though, so who knows when we will see them be fined for it. It will come eventually though, I am pretty sure of that, and when it does, I am also pretty sure that the fines will be small compared to what they made from the illegal practices. That is almost always the case, and why companies like these can keep getting away with it. If you could illegally make a billion dollars, and your only punishment would be some bad press and a ten million dollar fine, wouldn't you?

We need to change the fine structuring, so the minimum fine is the total revenue from the illegal practice, plus a damages multiplier. Then we'd have a chance of stopping shit like this. (We'd also put the first few companies who got caught out of business, but IMHO that's a small price to pay.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Total misnomer. It costs billions to get a drug through clinical trials. Even when a drug has initial public funding for research, that's the cheap easy part. Taking promising publicly funded research and turning it into something marketable takes more than a decade and costs many billions.

Businesses need to make money or they go out of business. Some mass market drugs can be sold affordably, because the volumes make up for it. Some very specialized gene therapy cancer drugs that only help a small number of patients need to be sold at much higher pricing to break even and have a chance of making a profit.

Remember if there is no profit, no one makes the next treatment.

Drugs are very high risk. For every one that succeeds and becomes a blockbuster, there are very many that fail. This is just the nature of the business. The successful drugs need to pay for all of those that are unsuccessful too, again, or the drugmaker goes out of business and cant develop any new treatments.

Now, there are exceptions of course, that douche Martin Skreli bougth the rights to an already developed drug on the cheap, and then cranked up the price. Then there was Mylan, the makers of the Epi-pen, taking a mature well understood chemistry and technology, the Epinephrine autoinjector and cranking up the price for no other reason than that they could. Martin Skreli and the people who ran Mylan are utter pieces of shit (and Shkreli is now a convicted felon), but this is not reflective of the industry as a whole.

The high prices of drugs are reflective of the astronomical costs of developing them, the fact that it takes tens if not hundreds of failed drugs before one is successful, and the fact that if anything goes wrong, it is very very costly. Whenever anything is risky in finance, there is also an expectation of higher return. That's why someone with poor credit gets higher interest rates than someone with good credit.

Developing a drug is very very risky. You could easily spend billions and wind up with absolutely nothing to show for it, even if you do everything right. Because of this, investors demand higher returns than if they put their money in a safer investment.

The comparison to the Memory cartel is completely off base. Here you have a small group of manufacturers rather than competing, intentionally restricting supply of a mature product (DDR4) in order to drive up the cost and thus their profitability. This is not only scummy, but highly illegal, and I bet regulators are watching.

Justice moves very very slowly though, so who knows when we will see them be fined for it. It will come eventually though, I am pretty sure of that, and when it does, I am also pretty sure that the fines will be small compared to what they made from the illegal practices. That is almost always the case, and why companies like these can keep getting away with it. If you could illegally make a billion dollars, and your only punishment would be some bad press and a ten million dollar fine, wouldn't you?

We need to change the fine structuring, so the minimum fine is the total revenue from the illegal practice, plus a damages multiplier. Then we'd have a chance of stopping shit like this. (We'd also put the first few companies who got caught out of business, but IMHO that's a small price to pay.
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Sure, but the "big pharma" reputation comes from buying out drug patents and then inflating the price for that established (already developed) drug a thousand fold. :/
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It costs billions to get a drug through clinical trials......Businesses need to make money or they go out of business. <snip rest of pro pharmacorp rhetoric>
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You realize that the drug companies spend more on marketing than they do on R&D and have for at least over a decade now right?

They were spending about $19 on marketing for every $1 they spent on R&D back in 2013 for instance.

Drug R&D isn't and hasn't been the driver of drug costs or drug price hikes for a very long time. Its flat out impossible to say otherwise and still be honest.

edit: also apparently it typically doesn't take billions to go through all the R&D and drug trials either, normally the cost difference, while still very much substantial, is quite large from what you think it is:
https://imgur.com/a/8YZNr52

Zarathustra[H] said:
Remember if there is no profit, no one makes the next treatment.
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The drug companies rake in $10's of billions of dollars worth of profits every year.

They're not in any risk of not making money any time soon.

The govt. could implement price controls and force prices down by 50%+ across the board and the drug companies would still be wildly profitable.
 
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1Nocturnal101 said:
60-80% profit margin......yeah see this is the kind of thing that I hate about Capitalism artificial price escalation for the sake of greed, I don't mind if some of it goes to furthering future r&d but come on.....
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Meh, you are talking about an industry with ~5B minimum investment tranches with historically extreme volatility and a massive graveyard of companies. None of the big manufactures want a return to the days where they were basically selling at cost and they know that other competitors are right around the corner so they are building their war chests to survive the next blood letting.
 
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