Re:The RAM shortage could last years
by kev009 on Sunday April 19, 2026 @07:33PM
(#47828713)
Is the DRAM industry really capitalist? Focusing on just the Korean parties, it functions like a command economy. I would say the same about most high end semi-conductor manufacturing, TSMC, Intel, ASML are being commanded and driven by nation-state level decision making. Right now the command is to focus on high wattage centralized AI systems at the expense of everything else.
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No one at high levels is capitalist, in ideology or action. An ideological capitalist would be in favor of competition, but these people disdain it and collude regularly. The only 'capitalist' actions they take are by accident, the real goal is as much power/money as possible as fast as possible.
We don't even expect companies to plan long-term anymore, it's just moving wealth as fast as possible.
That isn't really a change, very few people could ever have been said to be ideological capitalists. (capitalist is not a word with a hard definition, but I'm considering it a different thing than the more modern pure libertarian zero-regulation ideology)
Liberalism (in the traditional economic sens) likes competition. Capitalism is a mode of production, and capitalists notoriously don’t like competition when they are the incumbents
I think the common use of the term capitalist is as a participant in capitalism.
This is distinct from someone who is a proponent of capitalism as a system, which appears to be the way you are using capitalist. For which I don't blame you.