The 3 RAM manufactures know this too, from painful experience. There won't be a glut this cycle because there are no capacity build-outs. Instead of increasing capacity, some OEMs left the consumer segment to focus on enterprise AI.

> Calling this kind of demand economic damage is odd.

It's not odd at all because the complementary industries are being damaged - possibly permanently: manufacturers of motherboard, cases, fans, and the entire consumer PC supply chain are being negatively impacted. Expect bankruptcies and consolidation if this lasts for 2 more years.

Sentiment is the right word here. None of us really know, and go by feeling. If you perceive the AI boom as approaching tulip craze levels of irrationality, it feels pretty dire.

The RAM is a commodity and may be repurposed afterward. This kind of thing is a bit like a debt jubilee when the dust clears and survivors scavenge the dead. But a lot of other build-out may essentially be waste. To me, apologists for this boom seem to be harboring a variant of the broken windows fallacy. Not all economic activity is productive.

The other kind of damage is opportunity cost. How many players in other industries are being strategically harmed by this situation? We can't all just live on AI token output if these other industries retract too far.

No such thing as a free lunch. Whilst a lot of industries are doing extremely well right now (i.e. everything involved in datacenter construction), everyone else has to actually pay for it.

Therein also lies the damage; The economy wasn't doing so great to begin with, and now this massive multi-trillion-dollar expense has been added.

The direct expenses come out of the pockets of Big Tech, but all the indirect stuff like the DRAM crisis affect the wider economy directly.

Smaller businesses in particular - not so long past the COVID disruption and already facing significant challenges in areas like logistics and energy supply costs - will not necessarily have the reserves that older and larger businesses often do to withstand another multi-year price shock.

There's smaller businesses that I know _need_ data capacity (hard drives) that can't afford them and are facing serious CAPEX challenges.

I work for a start up that helps folks move off of existing on-prem virtualization solutions and every small to medium company across every sector you can think of aren't just able to not afford additional storage and memory, they can't find them either.

There isn't as much stock as you think. I can't wait for this AI bubble to pop. It's been absolutely terrible for 90% of the industry.

The evidence coming out is saying otherwise.