DRAM and GPU prices aren't going up because of "AI" - it's because the wealthy have more money than they know what to do with, so they're buying up all the assets. "AI" is just the vehicle (the excuse) - it's not the root of the problem nor is it the ultimate goal.
The super rich don't want to hold on to "liquid" money - they invest in assets. While they're buying up all the housing, now they're buying up all the computers and putting them into massive datacenters.
Whether or not the AI bubble crashes, they'll be selling you a "gaming PC in the cloud," for a monthly fee, of course. And while they kill the personal computer market, just like Netflix, once your only option is a subscription service, the price will skyrocket.
This is happening in real-time. If we want to stop it, now's the time to act.
Sources:
- Gamers Nexus: NVIDIA: WTF?
- Garys Economics: The REAL reason behind the housing crisis
- Network (1976)
Pretty sure the end game is subscriptions for everything.
It's been maddening for years now seeing how the norms changed in such a bullshit way, like Spaceballs air in a can level bullshit
It was no cakewalk, but I'm glad I gave up all my subs. Even Spotify that I've had since 2012
Enough is enough
How do you consume various media that you wish to? As a 35 y/o, I came of age during ptp/torrenting/etc but like most, lost most of the terminology and tech understanding when subscription services became so user friendly and affordable - which they are neither any longer.
I’m always interested to hear when/why/how folks cut the cable.
IDK for music, but Stremio, torrentioRD(addon inside Stremio) and Real Debrid to get all movies and shows that pretty much exist, all built into something that looks like the Netflix UI sort of, just a press of a button.
Pretty easy to setup and once it is, it's literally just as easy as watching something on a streaming service, no work to watch what you want.
I used streaming services for a little while, but honestly I've just always been poor. Though I sure as hell wouldn't use them now, I'm completely fed up with all of this, fuck them all. Do you remember before they passed that law, companies would make it incredibly difficult to cancel your subscription? Started with one and quickly snowballed to most companies
Yea that was a big tipping point, IDGAF what they say or do now, die, die as quickly as possible.
Yup. I thought I was an adult when I stopped pirating cause I could afford to pay for these services and games. Then they flipped the script stremio and real debrid for 3 years now and pirate the occasional game.
I cancelled all my non business subs this year and I've been getting by just fine.
It was shocking how many there were.
"you will own nothing and be happy"
Yup. If we don't do something now in 20 years we will own nothing while families like the Waltons and people like Jeff Bezos own everything and rent it to us. We'll be paying rent on everything from our tvs to our fucking toasters to our couches.
I'm kinda depressed about privacy/ownership views lately. Louis put it nicely recently, we thought people were nornal not crazy about this. People REALLY think money equals might and that it is okay for businesses to make money however unethically.
Exactly. We need to put people in government to put more limits on what businesses can do.
Except those people will never make it to any position where they can actually do anything. Bernie had a chance, but his own party saw what he would do to them, and made sure he didn't get it.
Yeah I love Bernie. Dude's been trying for his whole life and has made little headway. The sad reality is that there are more people like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi who would rather get rich and stay rich saying they are Democrats while stalling progress.
They're old as FUCK. Somebody should remind them that they can't take it with them. All that grift going to waste when they hit retirement and croak.
look at movies and TV shows, people stopped buying physical media a lot more
Blu-ray sales have been going down for many years now
the majority of people love the convivence of streaming a lot more
It's crazy because movies are free. Pirate that shit. Fuck these people, they dont deserve a dime at this point. In fact, they deserve to be robbed. But if purchasing something doesnt imply ownership, is it really robbery?
If buying isn't owning, is stealing theft?
Nope. Arr Matey!
And yet the SATA drive I got in august for 100 bucks is now 300.
If buying isn’t owning…
This is what annoyed me about all the people raving about Xbox Game Pass. We all know it’s a good deal, and that it made buying games outright look silly when you can have access to 100s of titles for a tiny payment per month.
That’s the point.
Why do people think Uber’s expensive now? It’s because they undercut the cab market in city centres — then raised their price.
Why do people think Deliveroo is expensive now? It’s because they more or less delivered for free at the beginning — before introducing higher fees and subscription options.
Netflix. Spotify. YouTube. Airbnb. Dating apps. All started out as why are you -not- using this? only to be hyper-monetised once the companies were happy with their subscription numbers.
That XGP price increase in October should have come as a surprise to nobody.
exactly. Consumers are also partly to blame imho. This is the playbook clear as day. Have a subscription which has tons of value and is affordable and make it shit when jt goes mainstream.
The thing is, when it goes to shit, the majority still subscribes. What happened with all the backlash with Netflix when they disallowed password sharing, adding household restrictions and added paid ad tiers? Absolutely nothing. In fact they have record profits now.
Maybe if you guys don't want subscriptions to be a thing, then don't continue supporting them? Especially when they become shit.
Seeing this in the sim racing space. Before you can buy a setup for a vehicle and be done with it. It was a 1 and done exchange per track and car. Now some of the setup builders no longer sale a setup, instead you have to sub for a month or a year to get a setup.
This crap is just getting out of hand.
You're also starting to see it with mods. Some of the crazier graphics mods are being hidden behind a Patreon subscription for the latest release.
Those ones always felt odd as they're trying to profit off the game which is someone else's work. It used to be newer versions only were paywalled for a bit but now I'm seeing more and more staying there.
So one of my hobbies is miniature painting, and I've been doing it for about 20 years now.
It was the norm for almost that whole time that if you wanted to share some sort of technique or process online, you just made a guide and shared it with people. For free. You just did it to help the community because other people in the community were also definitely doing the same thing to help you.
In the last couple years, I've been seeing people who will show off really impressive results and then tell people that they need to go to patreon to get the details on how to do it.
If I see somebody do that and I know how to do what they showed off, I tell people for free because fuck that and fuck them.
Everyone wants to make a "side hustle" now
I'm so disappointed that people allowed the idea of "You can't just have hobbies, everything you do has to make money" become a thing.
Yep
I can’t find a modern treadmill without a paywall blocking all its hardware functions with a subscription.
Imagine a treadmill that needs a subscription to watch a Netflix subscription.
Lol... I'll just run on paths like a normal person.
12 months later - my shoes won't tighten without a subscription to Adidas+. They also need to be online at all times.
Gotta increase those profits year over year, so those subscription prices also increase every other year or so. And we'll throw in some advertisements to give a lower cost option, which is actually the beginning cost of all the subscriptions. Hope that the company doesn't go bankrupt or there goes the ability to use those options also.
Not to mention the need for constant Internet connection. Oh and don't forget your data is being sold.
I've got a dumb horizon treadmill that you can put an iPad on. Has speakers and Bluetooth too which works well enough for me.
You haven’t looked very hard. There are thousands on Amazon.
this... they know the moats we break down with our own setups ruins their plans (and when Chinese computer scientists hilariously undercut their business and AI models) so they are now going after the cost of building your own setup so that we are all forced to haev shitty laptop PCs/chromebooks with nothing on them but subscription-based bloatware and adware
Capitalists have been demonising socialists for decades saying "they want to take away your private property" and now they are working towards that goal. Basically we will not own anything anymore
It’s always fun explaining that Marxists define Private property and Personal property separately for this reason. Private property is property that is privatized, that exists as a money making asset, rentals, vacation houses, factories, utilities etc.
Personal property being, your computer, car, toothbrush, TV, etc.
Most of us don’t own privatized property. And the idea is ultimately collective ownership of privatized property, making it public property. How that is accomplished is the subject of much debate of course.
They're basically privatising personal property and converting it all into a rental model. Software is pretty much moving to that model exclusively at the moment. You can't buy Adobe's suite outright anymore for example. Buying actual music is a lot less visible outside novelty purchases.
Now you know why you see "you will own nothing and be happy" everywhere since years, it's been known and planned.
"Gaming PC in the cloud" is pure nightmare fuel because it sounds so likely.
Likely? It's already a thing. You do know "GeForce Now" is a thing, right?
Even that is being ruined. Nvidia is limiting their subs to 100 hours per month, so eventually even cloud gaming will become too expensive for gamers.
Honestly anything that relies on a non neutral pipe for the data is subject to fuckery. So that’s … a lot. I feel like the subscription fees etc is just the surface of it in many ways. Start scratching and it turns into some horror movie where the characters looks in the mirror pulling their skin off
Bro OnLive was released 15 years ago. This is not a new idea at all.
Making it the only option is though. Its the silicon valley playbook at this point. Find something that already works, force your way in and cream off the profit while providing nothing new or worthwhile.
What "disruptive" means is "break the law till you can change the law".
Private Equity ruins everything. They can "buy" a profitable business, using the credit of said business, run up it's credit and default, thus destroying the business. This is somehow a legal version of what the Mafia used to do to small business owners.
Im watching The Sopranos and that’s literally what they did to that guy with the sports store.
Extortion is basically all the modern Mob has.
That and ripping the government off (see the HUD scam they did)
Still not as lucrative, reliable and untraceable as extortion of private business. It's much easier to just pay off public officials or cops. Government agencies are seen as more of a cost. The information credit days are long gone.
This is a really fun comment to reply to because based on how close you get to the truth they'll remove it. It's THAT embedded.
Lol the politicians involved with government programs are usually in on it too
Do they even do that anymore? The Sicilian mafias mostly do crypto and construction scams according to a walking tour I did in Palermo
In Sicily, the mafia clans own roughly 3% total of the annual GDP of the island. They've integrated themselves into a ton of businesses using their loose alliances with other similar Mafia families like in Corisca. They own a ton of stuff. Olive businesses, construction, shipping companies, restaurants, etc. Then there's also the less than legal stuff. Illegal (untaxed) cigarettes, human trafficking, drug trafficking, prostitution. Basically whatever they can get their hands on. But even with the blows they've been dealt, they're still far more powerful than the mafia-like families in Naples and in the North.
You didn’t hear it from me and I never said it.
But the mafia runs the docks, the waste management business and warehousing all along the east coast. A lot of the unions a lot of construction and other professions are filled with “friends” and you won’t ever get a chance if you don’t have a family member or an associate that’s inside even if you are like a master at your craft.
All they did is went legitimate that’s all. Well except now we are finding out they muscled themselves into legalized gambling and sports books.
That just sounds like NFT and embezzling to me. So still in essence extortion.
Depends where you live. The Mafia runs the construction industry and the ports in my city. Very lucrative businesses.
I worked for a construction company that I kinda felt was operated by the mob, it literally had all the contracts, no competition at all, everyone worked with them.
the leader of our local mafia family owns an NBA team, a major casino brand, restaurants, and is the the current ambassador to italy. it’s crazy
It's extortion. Literal extortion. Almost nobody understands. You do, though, so that's good.
Davey never had the makings of a varsity gambler
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A grown man made wager! He lost. He made another wager! He lost again!
Sopranos quotes aside, the difference between the Sopranos and PE is size and legality.
When the Sopranos do it, it's called racketeering and punishable.
When PE does it, it's called investing, and generates returns for the investors.
Im really scratching my head here trying to figure out what’s the difference. Is kinda like “Lobbying”, if I pay a politician to pass a law for me it’s illegal, but if I “donate” to their campaign or some organization they have then it’s legal.
The difference is that institutional investors are richer than gangsters, are better connected, plus they actually give small business owners a chance. If the mafia wants your business, you're fucked or dead.
If private equity wants your business, you can at least choose to be ripped off but still sell it for some money, or be fucked, but they won't kill you.
The difference is having access to, or being part of, The Club
And you’re probably not in The Club
It's over for the little guy
Yup, COVID ensured we lost. Not in any conspiratorial 'the govt put micrchips in us' bullshit way, just that the massive acceleration in the money supply and funneling of literally trillions of dollars upward top the top 10% of earners in the US (the forgiven PPP loans for business owners, the doubling of the stock market since 2020, the crazy low rates from 2020-2022 combined with high inflation that benefits the wealthy because their debt literally shrinks as the dollar weakens while their assets grow)
Economists have been saying for the last year that we are in a recession for the bottom 80% and that the spending of the top 20% on luxury goods and AI bullshit is the only thing propping up the economy. If you make less than $110k as an individual or $220k as a household, you literally do not matter economically anymore. You could starve to death and they would applaud the decrease in the 'surplus' population.
Not even most of the the top 1% are benefiting, it's the top 0.01% that have raked in everything. Everybody else has been left behind.
That data stops at 2015... the divide has gotten much worse. Professor Jiang at Predictive History on Youtube said every revolution ever wasn't the people overthrowing the government, but the lower nobility overthrowing the upper nobility with the help of the public. If only the 0.01% are gaining, that would leave a lot of 0.02%-ers feeling jilted. The 0.02%-ers still have enough money to fund revolution. Hell hath no fury like a capitalist scorned.
It's crazy that we're getting to endgame capitalism. I wonder what the world will look like in a hundred years when one person has literally all the money in the world, what will happen then?
Not sure where those numbers are from, but that's more like a 90/10 split rather than an 80/20 split, I believe. Just to make your point more emphatic.
Most of the time, I think I subconsciously just expect it will get better. I struggle to wrap my head around the more likely reality that it won't.
Also famously displayed in the "fuck you, pay me" scene in Goodfellas when Henry helps Pauly take over a restaurant they later burn down for the insurance money after using up all of its credit.
The best is the Sears method. Sell all the real estate to another company owned by the same PE firm then lease it back to them while milking the company dry. They die a slow, painful death while the PE firm profits every step of the way.
Red lobster did the same
And then tried to blame the shrimp
Toys r us
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Red Lobster as well.
Eddie Lamprey, sucking businesses dry for 30 years
As someone that for a time worked for that company, fuck Eddie Lamprey.
they can legally bankrupt the business they bought after milking it.
dont you just love the big game companies buying all the small and medium devs studios and then just shutting them down? /s
remember when hi fi rush was a massive hit and everyone was like "finally Microsoft got a hit!"
Then they shut down the studio like two months later.
Nah it’s fine because Phil Spencer is a quirky gamer just like us! Plus he said sorry!
Microsoft is just a cancer for the computing and gaming industries.
I used to have Gamepass, I even bought a Series X as my living room setup.
I sold the X last year, it offered nothing that my PC couldn't do better.
Gamepass lost all it's value, even if the PC only one went up a few bucks a month I couldn't justify it. Canceled it September.
Flash forward to today, I am building a micro-atx media center PC for my living room setup, and I decided to skip Windows all together. I haven't decided if I want to dip my toes with Bazzite, or go more towards CachyOS.
I have Linux Mint on my old laptop and a Steam Deck, but Linux has always been like talking to someone in Spanish. I know enough to get in over my head and just get confused when things get too technical.
I will never stop being bitter about what happened to Maxis. Gone, but not forgotten.
It's great - you let suckers and employees holding the bag, and they have no power or voice, and are just desperate to survive another day. Privatize the profits. Socialize the debt.
This is why rural hospitals in the USA are closing. This is why lobbyists in countries with government healthcare are pushing for a 2 tier system, so they can "boil the toad" and get the public used to a 2 tier system and then push again to remove the gov healthcare. Just so they can take all the wealth from the hospitals in business and funnel it to themselves.
there's so much PE in healthcare these days. it's going to be a disaster.
they do not care how much suffering they cause as long as they increase their worth.
Edit: they are all liars unless they are in a situation where they are legally mandated to tell the truth. they will all individually say they care with their words but then just go on exploiting and ruining the lives of hundreds/thousands of strangers they never met but seem to think they deserve he money of the working poor more than the working poor needs money.
Private equity is a symptom, not the cause.
MBA education has been messed up for at least two generations now, it's seemingly too far gone. Everything is focused on making shareholders happy or satisfy exec salaries, at the expensen of LITERALLY everything else. It doesn't matter if the company is driven into the ground by a single person, as long as that person has positive numbers on their latest report. They'll just get hired to to the same thing all over at a new company.
There is no more customer retention or long term revenue. It's all about getting money now, and nothing else.
And it's all headed for a wall where a link in the chain fails and it all falls apart.
The part you're missing is that approach is the most powerful winning strategy in any suitably liquid stock market.
Sure, you could run businesses sustainably in a long term focused way, if you wanted. It can make money, as a strategy.
...or you could buy up a bunch of stock in a successful company, cannibalize it, and dump the stock to run off with all those sweet short term profits before the company starts to tank. And then take all that fast easy money, buy stock in another successful company, rinse and repeat.
Getting a 50% return every quarter by buying an existing company, stripping it to the bone for fast cash, and then jumping ship before it sinks, to reinvest in the next victim is wildly profitable. Far more profitable than long term sustainable business management. More profit means more to invest means more control of the market, more consolidation, more means to buy politicians and fight dirty with competitors.
It's a classic prisoner's dilemma, and doomed to continue by simple game theory unless something seriously fundamentally changes.
And given that the people profiting from this scam have control of basically the entire economy and both parties of government, they won't allow their ill gotten riches to be simply voted away through a series of common sense regulatory reforms.
Those fuckers have literally sent mercenary armies to overthrow foreign governments just to improve their profit margins on literal bananas by a few measly points. They're not even denying it now, as they gear up to invade Venezuela for private oil company shareholders.
The system is working as it's intended to. Welcome to corporate run America.
The problem here is how we define winning.
The paradigm promoted by business education, especially in the West, is exactly as you've described. However, if we define winning as legacy, then this paradigm is one of the fastest losing strategies you can run with.
Take a look at the majority of Japanese businesses (the Westernised supercorps, such as Nintendo and Sony, are turning into something of a countermovement here). For all their flaws, and there are many, their baseline policy is long term survival is good for everyone except the PE vampire - you have businesses that do nothing but serve a single curry, and they've been doing that for 3+ generations, creating a stable financial environment for several families, for multiple generations.
If we were to preach that success looks like long term stability, then all these corporate hatchetmen would look like complete fools to businessmen, the same as they do to the rest of us, and the markets would be stable.
But that's the issue. Trump and his ilk, completely at odds with their forebears, don't give two whitts about legacy. Like the majority of Americans, they buy into the "got mine" mentality, only more so and with the caveat that it's never enough.
Until everyday Americans relearn that success in life is leaving a better life for those that follow you, there is very little hope that business education will do the same. After all, why try to teach something that people don't want to believe, when you can have them pay you to say what they want to hear? At least, in a world where "got mine" is gospel.
Agree with you 100%.
Capitalism without heavy and moral regulation is cancer, and cancer demands growth even when it is killing the host.
Businesses aren’t going to regulate themselves. They exist for one thing and one thing only, and that is to make a profit. There can be no such thing as ‘moral regulation’ because corporations are amoral by design.
What we need are strong governments and regulators with teeth, so corporations caught with their hands in the cookie jar don’t simply pay a fine that is only a small portion of the profits they made doing the wrong thing in the first place; the price corporations pay must be heavy, existential. Corporations that do harm must face the threat of disbandment or nationalization, and its executives and owners charged for their crimes and if found guilty, sent to prison.
Only heavy, brutal consequences for those with wealth and power will achieve any kind of justice.
I know this is Reddit and I’m going to get downvoted to hell for saying this but when trump started saying in one of his daily rants that he wanted to change the “quarterly” reporting in Wall Street to semi annually or annual I wholehearted agree with that.
Chasing the quarterly “line always need to go up” model is killing every business because they only chase short term profits because god forbid that you miss one quarter, wallstreet will destroy you.
Exactly, corporations will do whatever is necessary to increase their capital, whether it’s violence, pollution, lying, stealing, etc. That’s why they exist. The only thing that prevents them from doing so is if the cost of malfeasance is greater than the potential gain.
This gives a whole different perspective to what Sam Altman has been up to.
He has no shares in openai but is invested in portable reactors(used by data centers), some networking hardware company(used by data centers), etc.
So he is milking the whole economy, including the government which is fuelling AI race.
Absolutely insane
But crucially, when it pops he won't lose anything, because the hardware to build it all is already sold to the now-useless datacenters.
That's also what the Glazers did to Manchester United. How do you take out a loan on something you don't even own. They bought the club and put the club into massive debt they have never gotten out of. Thankfully there are rules against this now.
Well it's still the mafia they just rebranded.
I think a certain president did something quite similar to this- using other investors money only to leave them high and dry.
Private equity and tech companies have combined to ruin the Western world in the last two decades.
Back in the 90s the Swedish government/parliament did the "Home PC reform", which allowed everyone who was emplyed to tax-free lend-lease a computer, and at the end of the lease decide whether to buy it at the second-hand market value or not.
They did that in a push to have more Swedish families adapt and integrate with the PC market in a way that wasn't too costly for the families. It resulted in a lot of innovation, and an adaption rate unseen in most other countries.
To see this 180 happening right now is both sad and frightening. All in the name of "AI".
Same in the UK, where it's known as ”techscheme”. Unfortunately, the only vendors participating are Currys, and IKEA(!), unlike e.g. the equivalent ”Cycle to Work” salary sacrifice scheme that has a wide range of participating retailers.
Just to note: techscheme is just a salary sacrifice loan scheme by your employer (and bhn). It's not a government scheme and it isn't even a lease thing.
It's closer to BNPL but your employer does the loan, you also save on NI but that's it.
Damn no wonder Swedes are so good at games smh
It has genuinely been attributed to both the video game- and the music "wonder" of Sweden that took place back in the 90s and early 2000s, and continuing until this day.
It was a great time. In 1993-1995, I felt like there was a computer in every home.
The 90s had a lot of cold Scandinavian winters. Kids found the computers and it became this enchanting media.
I was biking to friends with a plastic bag wrapped around my handle bar with a 10-pack of PC disks. Coming back with Kings Quest 4, Prince of Persia, Sky Roads. My dad was all about Microsoft Works and later Adobe Pagemaker and every dad was making sure that a fellow dad got Windows 3.1. We had a huge book from Coral Draw with images of everything from Airplane to Zebra that you could print on a color printer.
Windows 95 was a game changer. There was a multimedia store in Åhlens huset bottom floor in Stockholm that was dubbed "the biggest in Northern Europe". CD-rom packages made floppy disk games flourish even more as you could now have several games on those 240 MB harddrives.
Also, LucasArts were at its peak with their adventure games. Day of the tentacle, Secret of monkey Island and Full throttle took the best of american humor and culture and popped it into our homes. The US couldnt have asked for better ambassadors.
My dad would show me Microsoft Encarta 95 with videos and I woild show him Sam'N'Max hit the road with whack a rat.
The Internet package became "the christmas gift of 1996" and soon almost every teen were making their personal web page.
The late 90s and early 2000 was "out of pocket". I remember it as a big blur of evwryone getting smaller Nokia phones, iCQ numbers, Ultima Online, new computer companies every day, national broadband expansion, Starcraft, Heroes 3, HTML, programming, building computers, Quake, everyone working with computers, Kazaa, scrolling peoples libraries in DC++ and just feeling:
"this is it, the future is gonna be awesome"
Kind of like my dad spending a grand in 1980s money to get me on a computer when I was a kid. Looking back we lived in a trailer and he could hardly afford it. I'd say the money was wasted since I didn't go on to be some IT wizard or programmer, but I did have a lot of fun with that old tandy. It would have been nice if HE used it to learn though. The man is technologically handicapped in the worst of ways and guess who gets to be tech support.
$1K for personalized tech support from the 1980s onward seems like a pretty good deal. Dad playing 4D chess.
“Now’s the time to act” by…..? Doing what exactly?
https://preview.redd.it/ku3cg6wm7u9g1.png?width=414&format=png&auto=webp&s=2be1551ab263050c3e0498c6e684e3875f472d42
goddamit Johnny
Wake up samurai, we have a city to burn
https://preview.redd.it/1ujdhep96w9g1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c260f23f16deec88384d9db21c50ebd0348695a6
*Morgan Blackhand FTFY
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It’s not. We are keyboard warriors where speaking out has no consequence.
People get used to new baselines of misery.
Take yourself for example - you’re hoping we reach a tipping point because you want people to rise up, maybe even to join - but who’s going to throw the first stone?
Nobody, because we’re the biggest batch of cowards that have been bred in the last 100 years.
We just keep getting softer.
Palantir says "we know what you are planning, we know who you are and we know where you live".
There is no revolution.
If you havent actually read 1984 (or even watch a decent adaptation). Read/watch and panic.
A notable feature of the civilizational lifecycle is the rich cannibalizing their own sources of security near the end. Palantir will be acquired and gutted for a quick buck like anything else.
Stop paying for subscriptions for everything. This is where it is going. They want you to own nothing and pay a subscription for every little thing in your life until the day you die. Spotify? Nope. Netflix? Nope. The subscription for your heated seats in your car? Nope. Housing is difficult because of the cost, so a lot of people are forced to rent. But the more subscriptions people pay for, the more this theory works.
Boicot IA companies; reuse/recycle/repair; support open source projects
This is the right question.
But the question is more important than the answer, because we need to keep asking it until we have the right answer - a solution.
And if you feel powerless to stop it, maybe it's the right question is, if I live in a democracy, why am I powerless to affect change?
Because we live in a democracy facade - a veil that feels like the people are in control, when they’re not. We get a ticket for a popularity contest and nothing more.
If the masses realise what actual power we have, we could instil change. Most people can’t be bothered tho, so we’ll stay like this until it collapses.
By getting involved in the political process
It's way more than voting
A government of the people
If the people don't govern, they get governed
Google "<my county> democratic party" and see what the most local level of organizing is in your area and show up to the next meeting
Before you parrot "both parties are the same" consider: Lina Khan is a Democrat
Edit: added more specifics to the Google suggestion after feedback from a commenter
One of the conditions of Sanders winding down against Harris was Biden take in certain conditions, Lina Khan was one of them, and she was recommended by Warren.
Even the one credit that people attribute to Biden's Admin doesn't belong to him, it still goes back to Sanders.
That's why you need to get involved in the political process all year long, not just right before a presidential election every four years
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Write your representative and make it clear that the existence of billionaires is a threat to affordability for the average individual.
Edit: I am Canadian. For you Americans, well, you've dug a hole so deep that not even the 2nd will save you. You're cooked.
99% of them aren't even close to being an "average" individual. They don't care. They are a part of the problem. Not the solution.
You mean the same representatives that are gambling on the stock markwt and own shares of NVDA?
No, vote out the boomer. Vote in the young who have been fucked over by the system. We are the only ones that will reform it.
Oh yeah that will change things. Because politicians would never cater to their donors. The eat the Rich guy is more reasonable than this.
Eating them is somehow a more realistic approach than "well maybe if you write them a nice letter asking to not be fucked over anymore"
Oh, so you want us to tell the people who are profiting off this scheme to stop?
Yeah, that'll go over well.
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It's not even just computers. It's happening across a range of electronics. Rent this washing machine with a monthly sub or fridge and so on. Insane shit.
This probably won’t be seen but medical and vet groups are being ruined.
My uncle was a vet his whole career who retired right as corporations started buying up all the practices. 10 years later it's gotten so out of hand and for extreme profit / private equity its disgusting.
Hang dry and bicycle washers, and salt and honey + smokers
Problem solved! We just live like it's 1400 again.
Not to worry. Just subscribe to my salt+ subscription to keep salting your meat.
PE kills everything good
You can see it coming a mile away but the greed in western society, No matter if it's housing, Food or computers, Will lead to a collapse and it's going to be very ugly unless some type of reset happens.
These rich corporate billionaires buying all the assets would rather hoard everything on short term and have society collapse than invest the money to enhance humankind's future.
The comparison to a cancer is oft repeated but it is all too apt. If the dream of your average person is to be comfortable, unbothered and free to pursue their happiness these people directly violate that. If the dream of humanity is to prosper, progress and answer the mysteries of this universe, these people directly impede it.
A cancerous fucking growth who knows nothing but consumption and continued unending growth at the detriment of everything else. It's about time we've had an immune response. There are social, group and pack animals on this planet who deal with their own when a few threaten the whole. We should be no different.
The problem is though, is that these same parasitic "elites" have been so effective with there division tactics, that nobody can agree on anything anymore and therefore it seems we're not longer capable of grouping together to make change.
That's what happens when you grow up the in a world of abundance. They've never been told no. They've never had to give up anything. They get everything they want. Anyone who cares to try and stop them disappears from their life because being told no is akin to being controlled, and they will never allow anyone to control them. They are the boss. No one tells the boss what to do. All of humanity is beneath them and that population of peasants is like a roach infestation in their mind. We are not human, we can't be, we're too poor. Billionaires are not like the rest of us. They're an invading force of parasites that must be dealt with otherwise they're going to drag us all down with them. If something isn't done soon, very soon, like within the next 3 years, we're done. Humanity is done. We can't sustain this level of chaos without there being a critical event.
The part that sucks is there is no ceiling for greed, but there's certainly a floor of basic necessities... and they'll push as hard as they can on that floor if it means they push up just a few millimeters higher. There's nothing reasonable that stops them from trying, but eventually people are going to default on things and starve.
Assuming technology doesn't get in the way, it'll have to hit a breaking point. People don't take stuff lying down, eventually you reach a critical mass of people thinking they've got nothing to lose by violence, and hitting that causes ~problems~
If you're fortunate, widespread protests followed by concessions. If not, it's civil disorder followed by the implementation or installation of an authoritarian government. Either the old order cracking down hard, or the new order coming in and, as is so often the case in these incidents, the leaders not having much interest in democracy.
The sad part is that the people who are responsible for it are well aware their behavior is going to lead to a collapse, that's why so many billionaires are building gigantic underground bunkers. They see the end of (western) civilization happening in their lifetime.
and what will they do in these bunkers? sit and pray that society doesnt rebuild and come looking for them?
I have only two goals in a system collapse and one of them is to go looking for them well before society rebuilds itself. They hope society would not.
Do you have a source on these underground bunkers? I’m intrigued.
It isn't really a secret they are building bunkers. Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and quite a few others has publically spoken about it. Just google "billionaire" and "bunkers" and you are bound to find many.
But here is one source if you cannot be bothered - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly17834524o
We are living in a very strange world, pals... I haven't got house or flat or anything... And now, even I can't buying a damn PC to myself... It's sad, so sad. 😞
Sorry to say this, but the way to break the cycle lies in violence. Look to history and see that when the 1%, oligarchs, kings or rulers went to far, it was violence that ended up being the answer.
Things always get fucked as time goes on, but the reset button lies in the people banding together and taking back power.
Revolutions happen for exactly these reasons.
(Watch me get banned by the Reddit nobility who refuse to acknowledge history, and who suckle at the teet of their billionaire overlords.)
If the company fails, file for bankruptcy. Your consulting fees and selling off assets should make you break even or come out ahead. Everyone else gets to lose their job and the company dies, the community is starved of the circulating money of the employees, the government is starved because no taxes from the company are coming their way.
Donate some $ to your favorite politicians to keep regulation and oversight soft. Find another company. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Yessss class consciousness lets goooo
wouldn’t jump the gun too soon lmao people here are still defaulting to going “oh it’s the greed in western society” instead of just saying it’s capitalism
Capitalism is a concealed religion in the US. Poor motherfuckers over there live in one of the richest countries in the history of mankind, yet still find ways to blame communism, trans people, people of colour, liberals, etc for their shitty individual economic conditions before capitalism.
Cool. How?
Mega corporations and billionaires ruin everything for everyone except themselves. The literal personification of fuck you i got mine. They will steal everything they can from you just to rent it back to you at a thousand times the price you should pay, and the things they can’t just steal they will make up fake crisis and artificial inflation just for the excuse to steal it from you. Gaming and personal computers are just the next thing on the chopping block for them.
This is because the people vote against their self interest in elections. Human nature dictates it’s almost impossible for people to come together for a common goal when it requires coordination, they need a spark, something that ignites the need to vote a specific way. The cycle of oppression has been going on since the dawn of civilization and it will never end because we are not different on a core level
Or, you know, people are just being manipulated. People always laugh at how stupid others must be to be brainwashed by some dictator, without realising that the same has been done to them.
They have been brainwashed into fighting against their own interests. That's why they divide us into white- and blue-collar workers, the lower, middle and upper classes, and so on. It's a classic technique called divide and conquer. It's much easier to deal with small groups, especially if you can cause fights between them.
Late stage capitalism in a nutshell.
Unlimited growth is unsustainable. Greed is unsustainable.
Will we destroy the planet (as we need it for our lives) and society before we wake up?
All signs point to…nope.
That's what happens when you let the top 1% establish build up +$53 trillion in wealth. They are going to find new ways to use that extra wealth to make more wealth. THe bottom 90% combined barely approaches that level of wealth.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBLT01026#:~:text=Table_title:%20Net%20Worth%20Held%20by%20the%20Top,2025::%20Q2%202024:%20%7C%2051%2C852%2C980:%2047%2C771%2C986%20%7C
When the GOP crashes the economy again like they did in 2008 the billionaires will come out way ahead again. Instead of making 3m an hour doing nothing the Waltons will be making 6m an hour doing nothing.
It's not the top 1% that is the problem. It's the 0.1% and smaller that are the problem. And even then, it's mainly the billionaires.
For example, an orthopedic surgeon can make over $700K a year, which puts them in that 1% earning category. And let's say they have a net worth of $10m by the age of 50.
And let's consider Clark Hunt. He just got like $2b in public handouts from the state of Kansas to build a new stadium. The Hunt Family is worth 24.8 billion.
What's the difference between you and me, and the Hunt family fortune? $24.8 billion.
What's the difference between the Hunt Family and that orthopedic surgeon making $700K? $25.79 billion.
It's the people who make money passively. They don't work, they don't create, they just own things that extract value from the labor of others. They do not add anything to the process, and they are not a necessary part of the process. Yet they seem to have convinced themselves and the rest of the world they not only deserve the wealth, but they deserve it by being smarter and better than the rest of humanity by having the cheat code of daddy's money.
There is no good reason why income tax tops out at 37% for people actually getting paid to do things, whereas capital gains is 20% for sitting and doing nothing. And then the people are pissed at that 20% and do all they can via donating appreciated assets, asset backed lines of credit, trusts, and all the other tricks to avoid even paying that 20%.
Yup and some of them were smart enough to start buying up USA media outlets to ensure they could push talking points that benefit them.
So now we have 6 massive corporations run by millionaires and owned by billionaires controlling almost all media in the USA. Your local news broadcasters/channels are probably all owned by the same company.
iHeartMedia owns the vast majority of radio stations in the USA.
Exactly, we should also get rid of this whole "I deserve it because I am hard working and smarter than you" ideology. Oh yeah you sure are a billion times smarter than most people. In reality there are millions of people of more hard working and smarter people than billionaires and they don't even have 0.0001% of their wealth.
You mean $24.79. You were off by a billion dollars but in your example it was just a rounding error. Which kinda proves your point.
2008 is a direct line to the next crisis. Not holding anyone criminally accountable for the financial crisis was a permission slip to further financialize everything.
Yup those with money found out they could be so reckless as to crash the entire economy and not only would they NOT be held accountable for it but they'd come out hella richer...
My God this bro figured it out! Elon Musk got mad after everyone made fun of him playing Path of Exile and now he's using his wealth to fuck over gamers by buying out all the RAM.
Sam Altman but yeah
Literally the most punchable face in America, and there is stiff competition for that honour
And by putting the money into assets i.e housing, land, stocks etc. they avoid paying any tax on it because its all speculative. They don't "have" a hundred-thousand dollars, a million dollars, a billion dollars etc. because its "not real" since its all tied up in assets, and yet this is perfectly fine to use as collateral for loans or sales which then give them access to more money to buy more assets.
Tax assets. Tax capital gains. Break up monopolies and make more businesses to increase competition.
Edit: I should've mentioned that I don't live in the USA, but we still have similar problems where I am from and so the points being made are still somewhat relevant.
What are you talking about? They pay property taxes on whatever housing or land they own, and they pay more in taxes as housing values increase.
Private equity bought the united states presidency and removed oversight over everything. Were Billy fucked
By god that's the worst kind of fucked! 🐐
I might be going against the grain here, but I don't think Gamers Nexus is correct. I really do think that the pull back from hardware companies on gaming business lines is because to AI investment and valuation.
Looking at this tom's hardware article we can see that NVIDIA only made about 4.2 billion dollars in their gaming business unit, compared to north of 51 billion from their Data Center (AI) product lines.
I can't find anything hard to back this up, but their 2021Q4 margins were about 62% (Before AI bubble), and in 2025Q4 those have risen to about 72%, which I believe indicates simply a higher margin on cards sold to data centres. Given silicone valley will buy every card they can get their hands on, why would you sell to an individual consumer when a business will pay more for the same thing?
The thing about this is that I don't think this is a sustainable level of investment by data centre companies. Eventually, funding will run out, whether it's just because one company "won" the AI race, or a bubble has collapsed. When that happens they will need consumers again as a sales base. It doesn't matter if private equity wants to rent you a GPU, NVIDIA will want to sell you one simply to make that +1 sale.
I think this general idea applies to a lot of what is happening in PC hardware right now. I really don't believe that cloud computing is the future of personal computing, for the simple reason that they make more money off of you if you are buying your own hardware. Maybe one day that will change, but it just doean't make sense to me in the near future.
Okay! Gotcha, ready to act. What do we do?
and until we pull another french revolution they're just going to keep getting away with more and more
My wife inherited her grandmother's house, and four days a week we get offers through the mail asking to buy it for twice what it is worth.
First they came for the houses. I said nothing because I already owned a house.
Second they came for the graphics cards. I said nothing as I already had a card.
Then they came for the RAM. I said nothing as I already had RAM.
Now they’ve come for my booty hole. No one said anything as there was no one left.
What? No.
People are willing to pay 30k in enterprise instead of 3k for the SAME silicon in your graphics card. The product difference is changing from GDDR to HBM. The 4090 and 5090 series both have almost the exact same silicon as the enterprise version. The enterprise version has the best "quality" of silicon. 4090/5090 also get top quality.
A business, with shareholders, will choose to sell a product at 10x the price ALWAYS.
None of this should come as a surprise. Welcome to capitalism.
Those cards? They ALL need HBM memory. Those servers? They ALL need RAM.
Look at data center build out. Look at Coreweave. Coreweave got a sweetheart deal from Trump in the "Big Beautiful Bill". They can write off 100% of expenses at the end of year, AND they can take a loan out against the datacenter they build to build ANOTHER datacenter.
Honestly? It should collapse. Probably a year at most. It will be similar to the dotcom bubble where infrastructure spend vastly outstripped demand.
People act like this is unexpected. It's capitalism.
Gary (the economics one) is an arsehole and a grifter who has been ‘debunked’ by almost every economist and politician alive. He’s a populist turd who isn’t worth listening to for longer than is necessary to see how ridiculous his claims are
100% - he's playing to a very specific audience of disenfranchised, and he knows exactly what to say to get them riled up. He never offers any actual solutions, or numbers behind his ideas. It's just basically; Tax the rich. Now buy my book.
I asked the commenter below you the same question, but curious of your perspective on it. Why is taxing the rich not the major solution?
So stop consuming.
As long as they're making money, as long as people are paying, nothing will change.
It's as easy as that.
Bro they don’t need gamers buying…that’s the point. Demand > supply right now
“Rich people don’t have anything to do with the money they don’t need so they’re forced to buy assets…”
And there’s the problem. The wealthy, even the “moderately rich” guy in the video, cannot conceive of a life where they’re not chasing more money. “I have to buy assets so I can have more money so I have to… buy assets”. Do you hear yourself, for real?
Stop. You have enough. Stop gaming the system and rigging it for your benefit and let others have a decent quality of life.
You’re so close. They’re not gaming the system - that is the system. Winner takes all.