Goodbye cheap PC components that people can easily afford, how I'll miss you.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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Back in the 1990s I paid over $500 for 16MB of ram. A production facility somewhere in Asia had burned down and ram high priced for almost a year. A month earlier and the entire computer would not have cost that much. Even though I am not hopeful I am boycotting AI. Actually AI is not artificial intelligence it is more like computerized lying.
Boycotting AI and finally popping that bubble will lower RAM prices. And energy prices. And it will preserve employment...
Boycotting doesnt work in a post-consumer market. It's over. Find a new hobby.
Preserving employment is not a meaningful goal. Jobs go away or change all the time. Between 1970 and 2010, average worker, be them blue or white collar, became 10x more productive. Do we work 3days a month for a full salary now? Ok we work just as hard but do we live better and more equally?
On free-market economy, every kind of development, every kind of change ends up screwing over working people and benefiting the wealthy. We need to work on changing the way we organize society at a more fundamental level. If it wasn't generative model bubble it would be another bullshit bubble, it will never end unless working masses decide to take some direct action.
Given the currently exorbitant prices for beef, I just thought of a perfect way to kill two birds with one stone.
preserve employment
Nope. We’ll have massive job losses as companies pivot away from billions invested into AI. Couple that with a significant Great Recession, we’re in for very very dark times when the bubble pops.
Reduce your spending, save as much money as you can, and prepare yourself.
This isn't popping, the software industry is completely changing. The enterprise versions of these tools are superior to most humans. We're all fucked, this is worse than the bubble popping. This is employment popping.
I'm not so sure about that. Businesses rarely drop prices when the demand that raises them abates. And a lot of people are going to get fired when the bubble pops.
There is no boycotting and the bubble will never pop.
Militaries and businesses are going to use AI no matter what. They will pay for it with the money we give them.
I agree that the military will always pay up, but you know that the bubble can pop without all companies going under, right? Have you heard of the dot com bubble, for example? There are plenty of those companies around still, and yet, the bubble popped.
To be clear, I'm not claiming this bubble would be identical. All I'm saying is that not all companies would have to go under for it to pop. It's really the (wealthy) shareholders that get to decide when to pull the money, and that's what would cause a bubble to pop, not pure revenue. Shareholders want a return on investment, which is something that hasn't really happened yet (other than the circlejerk between big companies, I suppose).
They will pay for it with the money ~~we give them~~ they extract from us by force.
Pretty much expected, but anything bringing more supply to the market, from a different reseller who will want you to buy their stuff instead of someone else's, will help here. It's a force that'll pull down the price more in time.
Honestly, I expect RAM prices will plummet in the future. Basically every RAM manufacturer has announced huge factory expansions, the disastrous consumer market is legitimizing these Chinese competitors that are improving and growing quickly, and I can't imagine the AI demand is permanent. Companies will get tired of spending a fortune on replacing GPUs before they've even come close to earning back their cost, and the market will be flooded with supply for a while.
RAM has gone through this cycle several times before, with all the collusion and price-fixing those companies do. If anything, these Chinese companies outside of the existing manufacturers should make a permanent improvement in the market, assuming they don't just lobby our governments into banning them for nonsensical "security concerns".
I think the hope is that China will ramp up production and improve upon on their own RAM modules in response to the scarcity and price hikes. They still depend on a lot of foreign tech for their own manufacturing, so it's not gonna happen over night.
Bought 48GB at 270€ of crucial 5600MHz yesterday on amazon. It made the price jump to 460€ after my purchase
I used Amazon
We're so fucked.
So it's all your fault then?
Guys, get him!
Right yeah we gotta wait for the production to ramp up
Yeah, it’s a global commodity, like oil but without the petrodollars.