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Private equity is killing private ownership: first it was housing, now it's PCs

89 points by akyuu

by satvikpendem

3 subcomments

Aside, why not link the original video instead of a reddit post?
This point about "private equity" being a boogeyman is such a tired take, the vast majority of equity of companies are held privately, and the vulture PE firms do exist but are not as prevalent as people make it seem online. It's a meme that many people seem to have latched on when the vast majority of PE firms and companies work perfectly fine, buying a company, growing it, then selling it for a profit.

by Havoc

4 subcomments

It’s like everyone on social media learned about PE in the last ~3 years and now sees it lurking in every shadow
Also not particularly enjoying this new ragey vibe Steve has going but I guess it must be getting clicks because each video seems to have it turned up another notch

by astral_drama

1 subcomments

The current admin wants even cheaper money, which is likely to embolden well connected borrowers to pump up whatever they think will hold a bit of value. It was housing, which hit an equilibrium (can't milk it much more), then stocks, then gold and now silver and memory chips of all things.
I wouldn't limit this to PE, although they are feeding on cheap dollars too, but the general trend of big capital out competing mom and pop for future resources. We're all short on real goods (need to buy food, shelter, ram, etc... in the future) and big capital is putting the squeeze on our short position by bidding up real resources with cheap dollars. Regular folks cover at a loss, or we go bust, and that's the gamble we're being put in.

by anukin

1 subcomments

The problem with this argument is that there are players who are incentivized to play on the opposite side of the PE memory hoarders or cloud everything people. One of the most valuable company namely Apple have been playing around with local everything for a while now. Housing is a regulation(mostly) problem and govt has 0 incentives against the lobbyists and nimby crowd who support reelection bid vs largely marginalized or non voter crowd of immigrants. It’s false equivalence in its full glory.

by osiris970

1 subcomments

I dislike these sensationalist headlines, but the housing one irks me the most. PE didn't make housing expensive, your neighbors, grandma and grandpa did by restricting new construction. In cities dumb policy like the rent control did. Stop blaming Boogeymen and actually look into issues. The ram thing is unfortunate, but i don't really see a solution to it, for now.
46k up votes for this shit, Jesus Christ everyone's insane these days man

by dadrian

2 subcomments

PE didn’t kill housing. Private equity owns 2-3% of homes.

by redleggedfrog

0 subcomment

Dead rich people don't own own anything, their heirs do. Keep that in mind.

by biophysboy

0 subcomment

The internet is so awful right now man. The illiterate, incurious populist rhetoric is getting so tedious. We are beating a dead scapegoat.

by lr1970

0 subcomment

About four years ago, during COVID, there was a shortage of chips for cars, fueled in part by PE scalpers hoarding chips. Sounds familiar?
EDIT: more accurate language

by ultrablack

0 subcomment

Buying memery is surely a future proof investment. It certainly was for my Amiga 500.

by bbor

1 subcomments

This is just patently absurd:
```
  "AI" is just the vehicle (the excuse) - it's not the root of the problem nor is it the ultimate goal. 
```
People are investing in AI because they believe the scientists' warnings that the Frame Problem[1] has been solved (or, in other words, "AGI is suddenly within reach").
You can say they're fools if you want - you might even be right! But pretending like hundreds (thousands?) of board members across the world are conspiring to build a buyer's cartel (monopsony?) in order to starve out the PC Gaming market of all things is just myopic.
I hope I'm not too vitriolic, especially if the guy in the video is here -- I certainly share a lot of politics with him, and absolutely share his priors regarding PE. I just think it's extremely clear that this particular subreddit has "lost the plot" as the ~~kids~~ mid-30s nerds say. If anyone's not familiar, I highly recommend a perusal through the top posts of the past week/month...

0 subcomment

by saagarjha

2 subcomments

It is always amusing to me to watch people (gamers, in this case) slowly end up at “capitalism must be destroyed” when the market affects something they care about (PC parts becoming more expensive because of AI).

by lilwobbly

4 subcomments

I feel like everyone online is becoming some anti-capitalist socialist and losing all critical thinking and it's making me crazy.
Firstly, institutional investors own ~3% of single-family homes in the US , even in hot markets, they rarely exceed 10%. The lack of supply is outweighs the private equity problem.
GPUs are manufactured goods where production scales with demand. When AI investment inevitably contracts, that fab capacity will redirect to consumer products. I don't know where this idea comes from that NVIDIA is conspiring with these companies to never sell consumers GPUs. It only takes so many GPUs to build out a streaming service, would they just stop making GPUs entirely? It doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than 2 seconds.

by ryandv

2 subcomments

[flagged]

by shmerl

1 subcomments

It's messed up and should be illegal in a normal functioning society.
Another recent video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvahiVBvn9A