Hacker News Reader

Comment by hyperpape | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I'm pretty sure this clearly runs afoul of anticompetitive laws, no? Altman is intentionally sabotaging the global electronics supply chain using their existing market dominance to prevent competitors from being able to operate.

And, tangentially, I really don't know what world you lived in. The US has arrested civil rights leaders and overthrown countries and went through an entire era of McCarthyism to get here: where the US president is having investigations into his political enemies for what amounts to "disloyalty". It's basically a national given that cops plant evidence on black folk regularly.

Since when has America been this bastion of lawfulness?

Since it clearly runs afoul of anticompetitive laws, it will be easy for you to find case law that demonstrates that, alongside credible sources stating that OpenAIs actions are prosecutable that make that case.

This is big news, it's not like the folks who write about antitrust would just ignore it.

Serious question: should the principals of the RAM manufacturers be jailed?

I believe it depends on which parties are responsible for the criminal antitrust violations. Is it the manufacturers abusing monopoly power, or is it OpenAI abusing monopsony power?

I’m not a lawyer or a forensic accountant, but given how remarkably stable the RAM market was until SCAMA disrupted it, I’m inclined to think the answer to your question is a resounding “no.”

The ones that collude to fix prices need to be in jail, yes.

Clarifying because I think the downvoters maybe misunderstood the nature of my question: I meant, in the opinion of the parent commenter should the principals of Samsung etc. be jailed? I wasn’t taking a position myself, just asking what they thought.

You should look up the monopsony provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, as well as the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936 which prohibits predatory price discrimination schemes. Scam Alt-Man should be paying the same price for RAM as us plebes, if the DOJ wasn’t derelict in its duty to enforce antitrust law.

It’s wild how Bork’s fraudulent legal theories have been converted to into dogma within a generation.

mo·nop·so·ny /məˈnäpsənē/ a market situation in which there is only one buyer.

It seems like the issue we're having is that we are buyers who are competing against OpenAI, who is another buyer. There isn't only 1 buyer or 1 seller of RAM.

Like monopolies, monopsony power exists on a spectrum. For example, Walmart exercises extreme monopsony power over suppliers, despite not being the only retailer in town.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com