The strange deals on the entire future output are what was allowed. Try to do the same thing with onions and the government understands you are a criminal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act

That is quite the amusing read but it seems like a poorly constructed law. It wasn't futures themselves that were the problem there. The duo engaged in blatant market manipulation and severely disrupted part of the food supply in the process.

And now OpenAI is engaged in blatant market manipulation and severely disrupted the entire world's DRAM supply.

Cornering the market with the intent to flip the goods is not quite the same as cornering the market because you actually want the goods and intend to use them yourself.

Right, the second was a conspiracy to form a monopoly.

And it just so happens that many people will now have to use OpenAI’s products because they can’t get enough RAM to run a local LLM. What a coincidence.

It has the makings of a natural monopoly, except its compounded by RAM cartels colluding to shut out the last of the competitors.

Recently they had a second price fixing lawsuit thrown out (in the US).

Now with the state of things I'm sure another lawsuit will arrive and be thrown out because the government will do anything to keep the AI bubble rolling and a price fixing suit will be a threat to national security, somehow. Obviously thats speculative and opinion but to be clear, people are allowing it. There are and more so were things that could be done.