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You realize capitalism is a system for allocating scare goods, right? An auction model means manufacturers benefit directly, and unless they're in a cartel, the high prices incentivize them to increase production. We see this happen all the time in the oil marker with marginal producers entering and exiting the market. Without an auction, anyone lucky enough to win the HDD lottery will have the same incentive, only they'll sell it on ebay.

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The problem is the network effect. With GPUs, substantial effort has been done to build products and tools on top of Nvidia's proprietary framework (CUDA). The community invested in a proprietary system under the understanding that Nvidia will supply the hardware and not monopolize this investment.

Should the community have divested from Nvidia's proprietary format and spread its resources on multiple platforms? Concentrating effort can benefit everyone, but it requires trust.

In addition, part of this community investment was funded by government research grants, adding a legal/public policy aspect to the issue. Should taxpayer money be spent on creating private, abusive, monopolies?

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