Sounds like hyperbole. Yes the world is connected yes we are seeing shortages, yes the market is imperfect and it lags but this is how things get fixed. Prices are sorted out, manufacturers make bets on long term capacity. Some will be losers, some will be winners.

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embedding-shape a day ago | parent | next [-]

My guess is that many of the current people saying "technology is over and no one will afford their own computer" might have been born after the previous shortages, so it's in reality their first shortage and they have no memories (nor interest reading about) the previous ones, that all eventually washed over, even if at those points there were also people claiming that "No one will have their own SSD in the future, because prices will always be super expensive for consumers from now on".

That's my hypothesis I spent a whole of 30 seconds thinking about anyways.

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gck1 a day ago | parent | next [-]

This is a different kind of shortage though. Previous ones were cyclical and caused by supply/demand mismatches or natural disasters. This one is structural. The manufacturers are actively choosing to prioritize AI because the margins are dramatically higher, and AI market has virtually unlimited money right now.

> eventually washed over

Eventually is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Several years of constrained supply have real consequences for people and businesses. Hardware manufacturers are saying most of their capacity is already sold out to AI customers through 2026, and possibly even through 2027 and 2028, with the rest of the markets getting what's left over. This is a fundamentally different market dynamic.

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embedding-shape a day ago | parent [-]

> caused by supply/demand mismatches

How is that different from today? The scale might be different, but it's quite literally a "supply/demand mismatch" right now.

I don't think what we're seeing today can be described as "structural", at least because it's way too short to make such proclamations today, if it ossifies, then yeah maybe I'd agree with you, it's become structural.

> Several years of constrained supply have real consequences for people and businesses

Indeed, but lets see if it'll go as far as being "several years", the prices already stopped increasing, and supply still isn't planned to be expanded, if either of those changes you might have a point, but as of today it seems like an exaggeration.

	▲	Silhouette 19 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The "scale might be different" matters quite a lot in this case. We're not just talking about demand slightly outpacing supply and resulting in prices going up 10%. We're talking about large parts of our societies and economies no longer having reliable access to technology that we now depend on for normal operation. We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out essential utilities and then exploit their natural monopolies to charge the public 10x as much for access to water or electricity. We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out all the companies that maintain our roads or rail networks and then charge 10x the established prices for maintaining that infrastructure. We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out all the phone networks and then deny people access to communication because they didn't pay some exorbitant protection fee. No-one thinks regulation of these markets and interference with these kinds of corporate transactions is a crazy idea. Why do so many people here apparently think we should let the funny money funded AI giants distort the entire global tech supply chain in the hope that their silly valuations won't come crashing down for a bit longer? We can't afford to wait "several years" to see whether the invisible hand will fix the problem. The markets have already allowed this situation to develop over a period of several years. The damage is too severe and it's happening right now and it's getting worse. Governments need to start swinging the regulatory axe now.

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nottorp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> it's in reality their first shortage

... or their first bubble.

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gck1 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Market is fixing it. Memory makers prioritized HBM and enterprise NAND, some, like Crucial, went out of consumer business entirely.

At the same time, the rational market is behaving rationally - they're not increasing production because they're fearing AI bubble could burst, leaving them with oversupply and expensive factories.

The market, apart from AI market, is behaving exactly as it's designed and as it should. But it doesn't mean outcome is good for everyone.

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infecto a day ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

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Silhouette 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Why not? The point of regulation is to fix things when market forces haven't been sufficient. You keep talking about winners and losers but it's unclear to me who you think is actually winning in this situation.

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infecto 17 hours ago | parent [-]

and what market forces haven’t been sufficient here. Demand went up, price has gone up. Price has been fairly stable since the initial run up. It’s unclear to me why you think who the winners or losers matters. My position is it’s incredibly difficult to regulate short term supply and demand. You will always introduce unintended consequence. Regulation in my opinion works best where there are external costs that are hard to measure. This is not one of them.

	▲	Silhouette 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Market forces have not been sufficient because the funny money moving around in the AI sector is starting to significantly damage other parts of the economy. I'm not sure how I can say this any more clearly. If the AI sector wants to take a big risk that either pays off or it doesn't then that's one thing. If the danger is contained and the people taking the risks are the only ones who will suffer if things don't work out then that's their choice. The important point is that the danger in this case is not contained. It's not just the AI sector being affected now. It's not just the people choosing to take the risk in the hope of a big profit who are being harmed. I don't think it's realistic any longer to treat this as some sort of short term supply-and-demand problem with luxury products. It's been building up for several years already. We're seeing public statements from some of the big companies involved that already run through 2026 and beyond that imply the supply chain situation continuing to worsen for everyone else. And the components in question are now necessary for a lot of normal operations and day-to-day life. If we just wait and see for another 2-3 years as some are suggesting then in the meantime real businesses who were operating responsibly and doing nothing wrong will be failing to grow as they should, putting up prices for their customers, letting staff go, or even failing completely. Governments will be redirecting tax revenues to basic IT infrastructure instead of public services. People who just wanted to buy a normal device for their own personal use won't be able to afford one or maybe to find one at all and their quality of life will fall. I can see no reason why we should allow these harmful outcomes just because some already rich VCs and some AI tech bros are playing games at the scale of the global economy to try to sustain the unrealistic valuations of the big tech companies for their own benefit. It's increasingly unlikely to work anyway and it's a realistic possibility that the bubble will burst this year so trying to contain the fallout from that as much as possible instead of allowing the bubble to inflate even further is not a bad idea either.