You just threw out an insult and didn’t actually make a point so I’m not sure how to even respond.
It looks like you’re suggesting that RAM should grow only at the pace of inflation and any deviation from that is due to greed? I hope you mean something deeper that I’m just missing your point because I find it hard to believe that you’ve ever taken an economics class if you don’t understand how prices can grow faster than inflation.
If you understood economics you’d know that when the aggregate demand for a hot-ticket good (like RAM) shifts rightward faster than aggregate supply can respond, because of short-run capacity constraints (i.e. Samsung can only manufacture RAM so fast), the market-clearing price must rise beyond the economy-wide inflation rate to re-equilibrate. This demand-pull premium reflects the good’s low short-run price elasticity of demand. Quantity-adjustment is inelastic, so the burden of rationing falls disproportionately on price.
In other words, when an item is in demand the price rises. It can rise faster than inflation because the demand for RAM grows faster than the demand for all of the other goods and services. Since inflation is a measure in the increase in prices across all goods and services, any product that experiences a sudden increase in demand will necessarily see a price rise in excess of inflation.
I think I thoroughly proved with 5 minutes Googling and the links I provided that your claim that the extreme rise in memory prices was just “social media vibes”, is complete total denialist bollocks (you’re pretty much saying “not it’s no just because I say so”) as well as lazy (you could’ve easily done the 5 minutes Googling for “DDR5 price history”, same as me and avoided saying such easily disproven bollocks).
You were literally bullshitting your argument when claiming that the RAM price rises weren’t true or were exaggerated and then when it was proven out with actual sources (as you demanded, no less), claiming you’ve been insulted - yeah, well, sorry that you’re trying to bullshit your way into winning an argument, mate.
As for the rest, if you seem to understand Supply/Demand based on the simplified overview explanation of it given to people who don’t know enough Maths to understand it in depth and thus misused an Economics 101 simplified explanation of Supply/Demand which is only about aggregate price movements, to try and make an argument about individual market actors, a level that’s beyond the scope of that simplified explanation.
Supply/Demand isn’t a Law and it doesn’t work in a Formulaic way - it’s a Statistical and Game Theory process were the incentives of Market Actors on both sides constantly seek a balance, and when Supply changes and Demand doesn’t keep up or vice-versa, that changes some incentives and the result in aggregate is that price will over time move until a new price is discovered were incentives are once again in balance, and all this isn’t instantaneous and there are things such as inertia as well as overshooting and undershooting of the final price.
Market Actors aren’t directly forced to do anything, they’re just incentivized to do so by the changed market conditions and because they see an opportunity to gain more under those new conditions but how fast and how far do they follow those incentives is up to each Market Actor.
Because this is a process in aggregate, nobody actually knows the final price once a new balance is found, plus there is a lot of room for exploiting the inertia, overshooting and undershooting of the process and extracting more profits from it, it’s perfectly fair to point at a specific Market Player and say that “they’re going too far” in how far and how fast they changed their prices and are thus profiteering from the situation.
Further and specifically for situation, all that only works well in highly competitive markets, and the memory market is no such thing hence a player like Samsung owns enough of the market that they can actually influence where the new price point will be, so here it’s even more valid be critical of Samsung if they’re perceived to be profiteering because their actions in the memory market can actually push the price further since that specific market isn’t free and highly competitive so doesn’t respond in the same way.
I believe you’re attributing views to me that I didn’t state.
I never claimed the price increase itself was “social-media vibes.” My sentence referred to the belief that prices are out-running supply and demand. That belief needs data, not just anecdotal posts.
I also never said the price rises “weren’t true.” I said the cause is straightforward demand-pull from AI, not conspiracy or hoarding. Prices can rise faster than CPI when demand shifts quickly and supply is inelastic; that’s consistent with the chart I posted.
My first comment was about the aggregate RAM market, not Samsung specifically. The sentence “Memory isn’t expensive because Samsung is greedy …” was meant to rebut all of the conspiratorial comments in the thread, not to build a micro-level model of Samsung’s pricing power. You’re right that an oligopoly can amplify price moves, but that point needs margin data to separate strategic withholding from pure demand-pull. You haven’t provided that data.
If you have evidence that Samsung’s margins have expanded faster than the industry cost curve, I’d like to see it. Those numbers would tell us if the spike is market-clearing or profiteering.
And next time, lead with the data you did find instead of the name-calling; it lands better and actually backs the claim you’re making.
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You just threw out an insult and didn’t actually make a point so I’m not sure how to even respond.
It looks like you’re suggesting that RAM should grow only at the pace of inflation and any deviation from that is due to greed? I hope you mean something deeper that I’m just missing your point because I find it hard to believe that you’ve ever taken an economics class if you don’t understand how prices can grow faster than inflation.
If you understood economics you’d know that when the aggregate demand for a hot-ticket good (like RAM) shifts rightward faster than aggregate supply can respond, because of short-run capacity constraints (i.e. Samsung can only manufacture RAM so fast), the market-clearing price must rise beyond the economy-wide inflation rate to re-equilibrate. This demand-pull premium reflects the good’s low short-run price elasticity of demand. Quantity-adjustment is inelastic, so the burden of rationing falls disproportionately on price.
In other words, when an item is in demand the price rises. It can rise faster than inflation because the demand for RAM grows faster than the demand for all of the other goods and services. Since inflation is a measure in the increase in prices across all goods and services, any product that experiences a sudden increase in demand will necessarily see a price rise in excess of inflation.
I think I thoroughly proved with 5 minutes Googling and the links I provided that your claim that the extreme rise in memory prices was just “social media vibes”, is complete total denialist bollocks (you’re pretty much saying “not it’s no just because I say so”) as well as lazy (you could’ve easily done the 5 minutes Googling for “DDR5 price history”, same as me and avoided saying such easily disproven bollocks).
You were literally bullshitting your argument when claiming that the RAM price rises weren’t true or were exaggerated and then when it was proven out with actual sources (as you demanded, no less), claiming you’ve been insulted - yeah, well, sorry that you’re trying to bullshit your way into winning an argument, mate.
As for the rest, if you seem to understand Supply/Demand based on the simplified overview explanation of it given to people who don’t know enough Maths to understand it in depth and thus misused an Economics 101 simplified explanation of Supply/Demand which is only about aggregate price movements, to try and make an argument about individual market actors, a level that’s beyond the scope of that simplified explanation.
Supply/Demand isn’t a Law and it doesn’t work in a Formulaic way - it’s a Statistical and Game Theory process were the incentives of Market Actors on both sides constantly seek a balance, and when Supply changes and Demand doesn’t keep up or vice-versa, that changes some incentives and the result in aggregate is that price will over time move until a new price is discovered were incentives are once again in balance, and all this isn’t instantaneous and there are things such as inertia as well as overshooting and undershooting of the final price.
Market Actors aren’t directly forced to do anything, they’re just incentivized to do so by the changed market conditions and because they see an opportunity to gain more under those new conditions but how fast and how far do they follow those incentives is up to each Market Actor.
Because this is a process in aggregate, nobody actually knows the final price once a new balance is found, plus there is a lot of room for exploiting the inertia, overshooting and undershooting of the process and extracting more profits from it, it’s perfectly fair to point at a specific Market Player and say that “they’re going too far” in how far and how fast they changed their prices and are thus profiteering from the situation.
Further and specifically for situation, all that only works well in highly competitive markets, and the memory market is no such thing hence a player like Samsung owns enough of the market that they can actually influence where the new price point will be, so here it’s even more valid be critical of Samsung if they’re perceived to be profiteering because their actions in the memory market can actually push the price further since that specific market isn’t free and highly competitive so doesn’t respond in the same way.
I believe you’re attributing views to me that I didn’t state.
I never claimed the price increase itself was “social-media vibes.” My sentence referred to the belief that prices are out-running supply and demand. That belief needs data, not just anecdotal posts.
I also never said the price rises “weren’t true.” I said the cause is straightforward demand-pull from AI, not conspiracy or hoarding. Prices can rise faster than CPI when demand shifts quickly and supply is inelastic; that’s consistent with the chart I posted.
My first comment was about the aggregate RAM market, not Samsung specifically. The sentence “Memory isn’t expensive because Samsung is greedy …” was meant to rebut all of the conspiratorial comments in the thread, not to build a micro-level model of Samsung’s pricing power. You’re right that an oligopoly can amplify price moves, but that point needs margin data to separate strategic withholding from pure demand-pull. You haven’t provided that data.
If you have evidence that Samsung’s margins have expanded faster than the industry cost curve, I’d like to see it. Those numbers would tell us if the spike is market-clearing or profiteering.
And next time, lead with the data you did find instead of the name-calling; it lands better and actually backs the claim you’re making.