[ericd]

Are things too expensive now, or was that miraculously cheap because of a glut of supply relative to demand at the time? I think my first SSD was something like $600 for 160 gigs, one of those intel drives that came with a speed demon sticker, so let's appreciate what we have for a sec. Or we could go back to 5 megs of spinning rust for $thousands.

Things will normalize, semis are a boom and bust industry, and it takes a massive amount of capital investment to increase supply. Because of that boom and bust, the producers are wary of growing their supply to keep up in lockstep with demand, because they might end up with a glut that they have a hard time selling, and a large pile of debt from building out that glut. Semiconductors at the leading edge take very large, very expensive, very rube goldbergian machines to make them, and a very skilled workforce to make those work.

If this stuff stays this expensive/profitable, industry will grow capacity to boost earnings until they overshoot, there's not some grand conspiracy to make you rent everything. We're just in a massive dislocation right now because we've discovered this awesome new tool that's boosting demand by a ridiculous degree. Last year we were at ~$300B of capital investment in DCs in the US, this year it's looking like ~$750B.

[overfeed]

> If this stuff stays this expensive/profitable, industry will grow capacity to boost earnings until they overshoot, there's not some grand conspiracy to make you rent everything

Production cartels exist to prevent individual greed from "ruining" it for the rest of the group. OPEC does it in the overtly, memory manufactures do it covertly, and have been convicted of conspiring in multiple jurisdictions, on multiple occasions.

[ericd]

Good point re cartels. But I still don’t think there’s a shadowy group trying to make owning things impossible for normal people as an explicit goal.

[overfeed]

It's not a goal, but a secondary effect. Companies that build long-lasting products for sale to customers will have lower profits than those that rent-out cheaply made goods. Over a multi-decade window, with some bankruptcies, consolidation roll-ups and astute leadership, you can guess which model will win, based on nothing but market forces and imperfect information. The collusion is based purely on P&L performance.