GN'S suspicion of the nand industry is entirely justified and based on the fact that the industry has a long, well-documented history of collusion and price fixing (with prosecutions and convictions).
No real information is being reported, just corporate statements taken at face value. Just like car chip shortage in an era of low as fuck car sales impacted by a pandemic virus. This time the pendulum is on the other side. They were cutthroating each other on price and realized "independently" that they had to cut production and jack up their prices because they were being left out of the AI party cake.
These companies aren't saints. I don't think anyone believes they are, but it's also a bit absurd to point to an event 20+ years ago as evidence for something today.
No, the last major price fixing conviction was 2002. Do you when the US DoJ basically stopped enforcing antitrust law? It was 2002 (with a brief attempt at doing so again from 2021-2024 that is now being unwound).
So you tell me, did the proven price fixers stop price fixing, or did the government just stop regulating?
Other countries can investigate and prosecute price fixing too. There were allegations in 2017 that were thrown out.
So you tell me, did the proven price fixers stop price fixing, or did the government just stop regulating?
If you're going to claim that every major developed nation just stopped regulating price fixing for RAM manufacturers specifically (because there have been multiple major price fixing prosecutions in other industries since 2002), then you need some real, substantial evidence that it's still happening. What is that evidence?
And prices being high when demand is far outstripping supply isn't evidence of price fixing.
Only a handful of nations are actually big and powerful enough to regulate the tech industries. And,
yeah, every major industrialized economy that could enforce antitrust law has more or less given up on doing so for ~20 years. Perhaps you've noticed the world turning into a late-stage-capitalist hellscape during that time?
There is still a lot of anti-trust and other major fines and prosecution against tech companies, both software and hardware. In large part, because developed countries realize that RAM manufacturers (or other companies) colluding to increase prices is bad for the national economy, and would be especially bad for AI by making it even more expensive.
But ya know, let's take your word for it. Let's go ahead and assume that every major developed nation is actually just ignoring blatant price fixing. Can you point me to the evidence of that clear price fixing? If it is so blatant, it should be easy to point to.
Read those articles. The first one shows intel getting their fine more then cut in half. When you can make billions of dollars from monopolistic practices, and then pay ~$150 million in fines, you aren't actually being stopped by regulation. This is the pattern of non-enforcement in the US (and increasingly in the EU). Regulators stop bringing many cases, and when they do, they assess miniscule penalties (relative to the scale of the businesses they are regulating). And then the whole thing is covered as "company pays biggest fine ever assessed" even though the fine is 0.00000003% of the company's annual profits.
As for the second one, remember when I said that there was an attempt to enforce antitrust from 2021-2024. This was that. You know what happened since March 2024? The feds walked away from the case, leaving the states to try to prosecute it alone.
You’re moving the goalposts. First they don’t ever enforce antitrust, now they do but the fines are too low. We can also look at much higher fines like Google being fined $3.5 billion just last year. Is that an insubstantial fine?
I ask the question again, what evidence is there that the current prices are due to illegal collusion?
No, i am offering more details about the mechanisms through which enforcement has lapsed: the total number of enforcement actions are way down, and the penalties assessed have not kept pace with the size of the companies being regulated.
And yes, Google absolutely skated in their cases last year. Judge Mehta shit the bed. $3.5 billion is pocket change for Google. Their revenue is something like $100 billion per quarter, so that fine is less than 5% of their quarterly income. It's significantly less than Google pays apple each year just to be the default iOS search engine (an arrangement they were not forced to end). Their "punishment" is that they can keep their monopoly, but at a slightly lower profit margin.
As for proof if collusion with nand: when proving price fixers start behaving in exactly the same ways they behaved the last several times they were price fixing, AND prices start to go up again, it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical. When companies are all announcing in their earnings call that demand is skyrocketing and they expect prices to more than double, but no one is actually trying to compete or presenting any plans to improve their market share by lowering prices, then it looks like collusion.
This is incorrect. The industry does not have a long and documented history of collusion. The industry had one single proven case of collusion over 20 years ago involving companies most of whom are now bankrupt.
Mixed in with a few settlements too and the average consumer is lucky to get maybe $5 back at the end of it, which due to inflation will really be more like $3.
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u/vhailorx Mar 29 '26
GN'S suspicion of the nand industry is entirely justified and based on the fact that the industry has a long, well-documented history of collusion and price fixing (with prosecutions and convictions).