The one part i disagree with is pricing; the huge scalping companies are now firmly locked onto the computer/ console market ; these same people write bleeding edge bots to bypass the security for trainers / concert tickets / clothes / toys and are now seeing profit streams in computers. When RTX 4000/7000 (PS6 and xbox something) is launched, expect hedging on the products at any price because FOMO and the perception of low availability. Not mining at all, but the entire capitalist trope of demand > supply.
The fact is all of the tech companies,shipping companies,AIB partners and everyone is using "pandemic" excuses. They are simply increasing prices way above any actual cost increases - record margins and profits at every level. If these companies had flat revenue and margins it might be what you say it is - but the reality is everyone is trying a fast one.
Its like if the price of flour went up by 20% and a loaf of £1 bread a baker makes,uses 40p of flour. So instead of increasing the price by 8p,they push it up to £1.20,by telling their customers flour costs 20% more so the
FINAL PRICE costs 20% more. Then someone buys all the loaves and sells them for £1.40,which is where the scalpers come in.
Look at all the tech companies for example - the same massive investment houses own shares in all of them,so you can see who is pushing these prices higher and higher. Then a lot of these CEOs and upper management's wealth is in shares - this is when you realise they couldn't give a rats arse about consumers or even their own employees(many companies have been firing employees despite decent earnings).
AMD when it was first started by people like Jerry Sanders was was not so profit orientated.
He steered the company through hard times as well. In 1974, a particularly bad
recession almost broke the company. Through many difficult recessions he refused to lay off employees, a reaction to the rampant layoffs that had occurred at Fairchild earlier. Instead of reducing employees, he asked them to work Saturdays to get more done and get new products out sooner. There were also good times for the company. Sanders gave each one of his employees $100 as they walked out of the door during AMD's first $1M quarter. AMD implemented a cash profit-sharing employee compensation program, where employees would regularly get profit checks of $1,000 or more.
His maxim was "People first, products and profit will follow!" This was given as a printout for each AMD worker who started a job at AMD in Dresden until Sanders's retirement.
That is the AMD I grew up with. The moment he left,AMD moved towards being a typical corporation,and their current upper lot,are typical Silicon Valley types who care more about the massive investment houses.
As a result they have to be treated the same as each other.
Multiple new millionaires(and probably billionaires) have been made out of this pandemic,because everyone can use "human malware" as an excuse to jack pricing up.
People in a few years time will realise this,when all these companies will have made record profits out of the pandemic and got record levels of tax breaks and government(taxpayer) money which we will be footing the cost for.
People's salaries are mostly not increasing at the rate of inflation,and people will be in real terms getting poorer and poorer. Plus we will be all paying more tax,and all the said people who profiteered will have quietly avoided as much tax as they can.
The worst aspect of this is the small and medium businesses appear to have gotten little of the financial help,the larger companies have received so they are weathering the storm far better. I suppose Ralph Nader was right that true capitalism is only preached by smaller businesses,and the rest is almost some form of weird socialism.
Edit!!
Plus it wouldn't surprise me one bit the actual engineers who get all the blame for decisions are not the wrong party here. It's all the accountant types who make these decisions anyway whilst getting zero of the blame. They are controlling the segmentation in reality. They are controlling the supply too - its in their own interest to restrict supply to our market to keep pricing as high as possible,and justify idiotic RRPs.
Anyway,I am not going to talk more of this here. People need to realise the 2018 crypto boom lead to Turing.
That was another period where abnormal dGPU pricing lead to a horrendous value generation of dGPUs at launch. Luckily there was enough pushback to partially rectifiy this,but this time I really don't know. The issue is the same people excuse making for the same relative pricing back then are doing it now and attacked people when they criticised the pricing. They are the main reason Turing happened - they have learnt nothing and are destroying this hobby. They are addicted to buying stuff and can't understand not buying is also a thing.
Trying to find Diamonds in a pile of turds.
They "NEED" to pick a side.
This is the madness affecting modern politics - its all about "relative" positions not absolute ones,so we end up with the modern political discord which is verging between more and more extremes,and the centre being dunked on.
