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Comment by hebleb | Hacker News Reader

I don't see that as much better?

Try swapping the subject for something less divisive, like cars. If some calamity hit where we can no longer makes sense to produce cars, it would certainly make more sense to reallocate everyone's private cars (with compensation) to taxi services so each car can be used most efficiently, rather than sitting on a parking lot 23 hours a day.

The problem is that the RAM shortage isn't caused by some "calamity", it's being financially manufactured by companies like OpenAI. The more accurate analogy is that OpenAI starts buying all the cars, jacking up the price on consumer vehicles, and then going on a show acting like he's not influencing market conditions at all.

>it's being financially manufactured by companies like OpenAI

How is this a relevant factor as long as the demand is genuine and not some attempt the corner the market? Otherwise blame all the people/companies buying the tokens.

How do you define "genuine demand" for a process that can scale pretty much infinitely, albeit with diminishing returns? Since the RAM contracts are sized based on future projections, chances are good they are buying more than they'll actually need.

And they're already cornering the market! If memory prices hadn't quadrupled, I bet you'd see lots more commercial activity working on local models. OpenAI is actively preventing this entire market segment from growing, AND they're hurting tons of tech-dependent markets at the same time. It's no coincidence that this allows them to ask for higher prices.

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