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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

> If the US and the EU did this, these other companies would be mega careful about to whom and how they provide services to,

There is currently more demand than supply in the entire world.

If the US and EU got together and told DRAM companies that we're going to sanction them if they don't give us cheap RAM, 10 other countries would roll out the red carpet to come bring that DRAM into their countries instead. The data centers would be built there. Then the US and EU would be compute-starved and have no choice but to go to these other countries for compute.

I suggest you read up on the history of attempts to control prices of oil throughout history. Oil is an order of magnitude bigger market than DRAM. If you think it's realistic to suggest that the EU and US could sanction entire countries into keeping some chip prices down so people can save a couple hundred dollars on their next laptop, this isn't a conversation grounded in reality.

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> 10 other countries would roll out the red carpet to come bring that DRAM into their countries instead

These 10 countries need the US/EU market for their exports.

But you keep talking as if I am saying I want to sanction those who build more DRAM. No, I want more DRAM, not less!

> we're going to sanction them if they don't give us cheap RAM

That's not what the proposal was. The proposal was to limit the ability of AI goons to completely buy the DRAM market out so that everyone else is forced to pay substantially more.

If the problem is that it feeds into general inflation then it is suddenly not merely 'so people can save a couple hundred dollars on their next laptop'.

It's like oil, it feeds into everything; manufacturing, delivery of goods to your local supermarket, flights etc. etc. you can't simply say 'hey I don't drive a car so high oil prices don't affect me'.

If enterprises and consumers alike are forced to spend substantially more on DRAM, they won't be able to spend on other things and the whole economy will slow down.

I'd argue that's incentive enough.

> But you keep talking as if I am saying I want to sanction those who build more DRAM. No, I want more DRAM, not less!

The DRAM companies would be building more if they could.

You can't sanction your way into squeezing blood from a stone.

> If enterprises and consumers alike are forced to spend substantially more on DRAM, they won't be able to spend on other things and the whole economy will slow down.

If a country came along and declared that companies couldn't buy the resources they need from other companies, the second order effect would be every major company relocating their headquarters out of that country as soon as possible, along with a sharp decrease in startups being formed in that country.

The economic impacts of this level of command-and-control government would be devastating to the economy. Much more than having to spend a few hundred dollars more on a laptop every 5-10 years.

> The DRAM companies would be building more if they could.

You keep arguing as if there's only one side to this, the producers/DRAM companies who can't scale production fast enough.

But there's two sides to a market, the producers (DRAM makers) and the consumers, (AI industry). I am arguing for increasing the supply by taking some away from the AI industry. This is BECAUSE on the production side there's no way to address this fast enough.

The DRAM producers have also agreed to work together to raise the prices in the past and are probably rather enjoying it being their turn to get a ton of money again. d Free markets break down when cartels form, because then you wind up with an effective monopoly despite having multiple suppliers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_10_...

It's not in anybody's best interest to take away supply for the AI industry. For better or worse (and whether you believe it or not), AI technologies are coming that will be transformational. If the United States decides to handicap their AI industry, China will simply say "thank you very much" and develop these technologies first. Because of the nature of recursive self-improvement, the country that develops powerful AI first will most likely have an economic lead for quite a while.

It sucks that DRAM is so expensive, but it is for a good (economically useful) cause.

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