[Matl]

> What’s the proposed regulation that would help here? Price controls? They don’t work.

The proposed regulation would be that if a single company/industry buying up supply to the point it starts driving significant inflation for such and such goods, they would be severely restricted from doing so going forward.

[Aurornis]

It’s a global phenomenon. The latency concerns for data centers are minimal, so they could be built anywhere.

If your country restricted a company from buying too much of a product they need, 10 other competitor companies in other countries would be formed the very next day offering to do the work in their country for a minimal fee.

This is a global market. Supply and demand isn’t going to be cancelled out by politicians in one country trying to squeeze the market.

If you did restrict companies from buying things they need, you would see all future companies in that space incorporated in other countries.

[JumpCrisscross]

Yeah, imagine doing that for oil. American and EU companies that “hoard” oil get punished. The net effect would be everyone else gets to buy more and prices remain exactly the same.

[testing22321]

The old race to the bottom.

[Aurornis]

It’s the old supply and demand in a global market.

It’s weird to read all of the calls for regulation to fix this when the DRAM and chip production is happening in other countries.

[Danox]

On third of the Memory Stooges is in the United States...

[m4rtink]

Not saying this is the solution, but strategic reserves of important commodities exist.

Maybe we need the same now for computer parts, that are now so important for everything in our modern digital society ?

So that feverish investor speculation and shady circular financing deals don't cause sudden 30+% inflation on any technological device.

[alex43578]

Good news, you get the DDR2 that has been languishing in a salt cave for the last 20 years.

Reality check: a strategic reserve of modern technology components in volumes needed to impact consumer prices is completely infeasible and illogical.

I’d be fine with the idea of the government maintaining supplies of defense industrial inputs, critical minerals, etc; but as we see with our efforts for rare earths (and even petroleum) you can never stockpile consumer supply levels.

[sib]

A strategic reserve of a commodity that (historically) depreciates at ~50% per year is a terrible trade for occasionally avoiding demand-driven price spikes.

[win311fwg]

So, in practice, if, say, the agriculture industry buys up the supply of seeds (they already effectively do) and we see it start driving significant inflation for food (a common concern), the agriculture industry would be restricted from buying seeds?

[Matl]

Yes, because we can't apply specific regulation for specific industries where it makes sense, we have to write them as if we were LLMs so they can be proven to 'not work'.

[win311fwg]

We can, but that isn't how the proposed regulation is written.