Right, that's why it's legal. We all get that
Which is a fundamental difference. When Apple extends me credit to buy an iPhone, that isn't circular financing in a problematic way. I was buying the phone anyway, the financing just made it easier.
Generally, the fact that most non-Boomer people simply don't have the means to even save up for basic consumer goods like cars, furniture or a phone but have to go into debt instead is scary. Our entire economy has become a house of cards.
Oh hell yeah. But a lot of folks are treating the existence of customer financing as damning per se. The scale is daunting. But the scale of the entire AI enterprise is massive.
Yes --- and the scale of the money being set on fire is epic. And if/when the burning comes to a screeching halt, the resulting crash wil be likewise.
Yeah because it's gotten completely predatory. That is what people are getting ever more pissed off about - advertising, social media and gamification (have you seen the ads for Tiktok, Whatnot, Wish and whatever else goes with "live shopping" recently?) leads people to go way deeper into credit than they can afford.
That makes sense. It's still an emotional misplacement. Your and my relation with our consumer lenders has nothing to do with Nvidia's relationship with OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceXAIwhateverthefuck.
Yes, but your original comment said that Apple's financing "isn't circular financing in a problematic way". It might not be the classic way of "circular" financing but it is highly problematic.
And I'd even go as far as to saying that, yes it is a form of circular financing, because Apple hands you money to spend that money on a product they make at much less cost than it costs you on paper and, that's the more important thing, serves as an entrypoint into their highly effective walled garden called App Store.