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Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

At the risk of asking a stupid question: why have queues instead of raising prices until demand gets nearer to the level of supply?

Not that I would want this of course, but I'd also want free bubble gum and the gum companies... they're there to make money. Why not chip makers? I don't see auctioning systems popping up, I see people in in queues for a GPU, "out of stock" pages, and purchase quantity limits being imposed.

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Because there's a price war between Intel and AMD for CPUs and between AMD and nVidia for GPUs.

Even if they're sold out there will still be preorders and people will preorder the best value.

Sure, but why bother with preorders and backlogs if you can just sell your product for more money? If one party increases prices they'll get fewer sales, but if the product isn't available to begin with that doesn't matter (up to a point). I can see the appeal of having the money before you have to produce the product (due to preordering) but it doesn't seem beneficial for the bottom line.

It's the manufactured scarcity which helps them make money most of the time. They have to create hype and desire and exclusivity... and repeat it indefinitely.

They could change out of that cycle now that it's actually scarce... but most of these chip manufacturers are too big to be flexible like that.

> They have to create hype and desire and exclusivity

That would be the same also with absurd prices right? (See brand clothing, brand phones, brand mice, etc.) It's not as if production increases when prices increase.

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