alt Hacker NewsThe high prices ("price gouging") perform a social function because some cannot afford it; they prioritize what matters to them more, and ram is left available to those who absolutely require it. Trying to get around that by forcing prices below the market price simple encourages scalping behaviors. If prices are below the market price, but at the market price you would prefer the cash in your pocket over the ram stick, then you have every reason to sell it higher than you bought it because people are willing to buy it. It is those willing to buy it that are the main culprit in establishing the true price.
In reality, it is almost never a true binary of "afford" or "cannot afford" like critics of surge pricing make it out to be; people evaluate the price according to their circumstance and make a trade off. It is because of these decisions, the state of demand, that surge pricing is possible, not because of the machinations of evil price scalpers. That is why manufacturers couldn't lower prices even if they wanted to; gpu msrp being a great example of gpu vendors being caught between consumer ignorance about economics and the facts of reality that gpus are scarce enough to warrant higher prices.
Replies
> The high prices ("price gouging") perform a social function because some cannot afford it; they prioritize what matters to them more, and ram is left available to those who absolutely require it.
This is not true at all. It isn't left available to those who absolutely need it but to those who can pay for it. Those are two very different things.
I'm definitely not saying it's a binary can/can't afford situation. The point is that people don't "afford" things equally. I might some need RAM so badly that I'm prepared to take a huge risk and spend half of my paycheck on it. But that doesn't matter because someone else has 3x my paycheck, savings, and investment portfolio and a good credit score. How much money someone can spend on somethong is no indicator of how much they need/want it.
Something like "GPUs are actually scarce" doesn't even make sense to say, since scarcity is more a function of demand than supply. The supply of GPUs wasn't exhausted because people suddenly needed more GPUs or because Taiwan couldn't produce as many of them as they used to, it was because a few rich bastards were buying into a bubble so they could make as much money a possible before it all comes crashing down. They didn't "need" those GPUs much more than even the scalpers. They were just a vehicle to make short-term profits at the expense of everyone else.
And yes, of course those willing to buy things are the ones enabling the peice gouging. But that's not a useful observation. You either need something, so you'll buy it even if it doesn't make financial sense, or it makes financial sense to buy it, so you will. Notice how scalpers also fall into that second category, along with the rich bastards draining the supply.