this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 323 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Samsung has decreased its output by 50% since September, though the market has already seen price bumps due to inventory being cleared out.

So they artificially create a shortage to hike up the prices. Nice.

[–] Retiring@lemmy.ml 106 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That’s capitalism for you 😉

[–] themurphy@lemmy.world 26 points 2 years ago (4 children)
[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 68 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Yes, capitalism will always choose the most efficient path to acquiring capital, which is evidently acquisition + mergers until they can artificially limit supply, then exploit and extort society wholesale; regardless of the consequences.

Yep… Doesn’t matter if the answer is war, famine, mass incarceration, crippling debt, homelessness, mental illness, pollution, climate change, ecocide, or genocide — capitalists will always find the most efficient path to the acquisition of capital.

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 33 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Monopolies are the natural, direct result of unbrindled capitalism. So yeah, capitalism at work.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The only higher Return On Investment than creating yourself or finding and securinb a monopoly position and squeezing costumers is, maybe, buying politicians and having laws written to favour you, so naturally people guided only by the personal upside maximization idology will engage in both if they think they can get away withnit (or the penalties if caught are less than the profits).

It is absolutelly natural in Capitalism for companies to seek and even create monopoly positions and then squeeze customers, and to corrupt those who make the laws and regulations as well as those who enforce them, and often these things are combined: notice for example how the artifical monopoly which is Copyright has been repeatedly extended in duration to well beyond the point were there is an upside for Society, and now none of us will ever see the works created during our lifetime become Public Works.

[–] doppelgangmember@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Never, not in our free markets!

At least a duopoly for the illusion of competition

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 46 points 2 years ago

To be fair they did far over produce them which is why they’ve been so dirt cheap lately.

But companies did learn over Covid that if you just don’t make something you can charge whatever you want for it and people will pay it.

[–] akrot@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There are plenty of other players on the SSD marker. Crucial, WD, etc. I predict that their prediction will be wrong

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

If Samsung publicly announces cutting back production and the rest do the same I don't think it's considered collusion.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Yeah but they probably have all the same suppliers and even if one keeps their prices low for now eventually someone there is going to wonder why they are doing the same work as everyone else but getting paid less for it.

This is why you need a healthy market. You need lots of competitions selling a lot of different products. Not 4 companies all seeing the same crap.

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[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 222 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Spreading rumors of price hikes, to justify later price hikes and quell customer outrage over it.

Capitalism 101.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 41 points 2 years ago (4 children)

They all cut way back on manufacturing last year due to the price drops from significantly reduced demand. So it's 100% expected that prices will go up because they've created a reduced supply.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s like there is a SSD OPEC.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

There's an unofficial open for everything these days, food, medicine, computer components, etc... there's a handful of companies that corner the market for everything now and they all are perfectly happy matching supply and pricing.

[–] 4lan@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

so they are treating computer parts like diamonds now? Faking supply shortages to increase demand, therefore prices?

Capitalism is so efficient.

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[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

They're reducing supply because they can't make any money with this supply/demand mismatch, Micron for example didn't have a single profitable quarter and lost something like $6B total over the course of 2023

The only reason SSD prices have been this low is because we've been paying less than the cost to produce them as they try to recoup some of their losses and shed inventory

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[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

Yep pure market manipulation

[–] doppelgangmember@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

Butter the bun before the bake

[–] doublejay1999@lemmy.world 137 points 2 years ago (3 children)

By what magik are they able to “predict” a 50% price increase ?

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 128 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Market Manipulation Lvl 1: Hyping

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[–] MisterD@lemmy.ca 45 points 2 years ago

Setting expectations..

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 25 points 2 years ago

They plan to raise prices 50%, then they raise prices 50%.

My employer isn't any better. We raised prices on our second biggest product line about 6 months ago.

[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 69 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well that's not great... They're already pretty expensive as it is.

[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 50 points 2 years ago (5 children)

yeah i thought 4TB would be like $50 now. whatever happened to moore's law

[–] Lath@kbin.social 48 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Unregulated capitalism some would say, I say cheap production costs with little to no consequence whatsoever for them doing this kind of thing.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Exactly, if forced scarcity was regulated, we’d be in an entirely different situation. For instance diamonds would be practically worthless.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Moore's law has been dead for a long long time.

E: if you're downvoting this it's because you don't have a clue what you're talking about. Moore's law was the observation that transistor density would double every ~2 years. That's not happening and hasn't for a long time.

[–] neclimdul@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

No need to downvote this. It's an insidery technically correct statement. We've redefined how we measure Moore's law several times to make it "keep working" and some people designing chips, not selling them, think it's not only outlined it's usefulness but also not true anymore.

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[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

SSDs are absurdly cheap at the moment. 2023s demand glut led to a huge over abundance of SSDs and dirt cheap prices.

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[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 66 points 2 years ago

Greeedflation bullshit

[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 59 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Looks Iike a good year for deleting things.

[–] laverabe@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

nothing like a little digital Swedish death cleaning to free up space

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 38 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Maybe this will encourage devs not to make games over 100GB.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 62 points 2 years ago

Hahahaha! Good joke mate :)

[–] b3an@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
[–] Sheltac@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago
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[–] n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 years ago

Glad I just bought a 4tb gen 3 drive for dirt cheap

[–] Alpha71@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Well, guess I'm buying that new NVME in January after all...

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[–] Smacks@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago

PC part prices are already extremely high, how in the hell can anyone build or buy anything with prices so high?

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

I wonder if it's gonna be a fire or a flood this year. They always make stuff up to raise it.

[–] Squizzy@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

I was on crucial last night half interested in an M2 drive but they're a little out of range, guess I won't be getting one for the time being

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