alt Hacker NewsThe important question isn’t so much “are people trying to get the best deal possible for themselves?” but rather “how well is this market functioning?” Or phrased another way, “how competitive is this market?”
This particular market is pretty clearly not functioning well, and there are textbook Econ 101 reasons why a market may not function well. Of those textbook reasons, I suspect the most obviously applicable one here is large barriers to entry.
> and there are textbook Econ 101 reasons why a market may not function well. Of those textbook reasons, I suspect the most obviously applicable one here is large barriers to entry.
Econ 101 would be understanding that you can’t snap your fingers and have a new DRAM factory online overnight, and that this isn’t an indicator that the market is not functioning.
You’re defining a market “functioning well” as meaning the price is low for you and all demand is satisfied immediately without raising prices.
That’s not really what is meant by functioning markets. A functioning market does allow the price to increase as this is what spurs investment into new capacity and new developments.
It also allows the DRAM to go to the most profitable activities. This is actually what the whole Georgism and Land Value Tax people advocate for with property taxes, which bizarrely many people think they like: The idea is to raise the price of something (in that case, your property tax) to ensure it’s not being “wasted” on an economic activity that isn’t optimal. The most optimal economic activity is the one that can afford to pay the most, which is the one that captures the resource.
It’s not fun when your use case isn’t the one that can pay the most, but that’s literally how markets work.