7 ms·

That's now how modern capitalism works. You can't open a corner store, because someone is already on the corner running a store. You can't open one on the empty

by danjoc 9y ago

That's now how modern capitalism works. You can't open a corner store, because someone is already on the corner running a store. You can't open one on the empty lot down the street, because that guy running the corner store took his profits and invested in zoning laws to prevent it. If you could, there would be a store there already. Finding an open opportunity is like finding a gold nugget. It just doesn't happen very often, and definitely not in places where people have combed for them for decades. The same applies with NVidia. You can't start a GPU company because they are the GPU Mafia. They'll run you out of business before you even get a foothold with patent suits, licensing fees, etc, etc, etc. That's why you have startup taxi companies literally breaking laws everywhere they go. Because the laws were, in part or entirely, set up to protect established interests. Softbank then, is working inside this system, from the standpoint of the Capitalist... the man with all the money. They're buying up corner stores, because in the long run, it is guaranteed to pay them back. Even if poorly run, it will pay off for years because of the lack of competition. Capitalism is set up to favor the owners of capital.

mattmanser 9y ago
So, I indirectly know someone who just sold their printing company for around $60 million. Their printing company, not their 3D printing company.
- chronic940 9y ago
  To counter your single data point, I do not know of a single person, personally, who sold a company for any amount of money. And I live in Sunnyvale.
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  What kind of printing, paper? T-shirts?
- Noughmad 9y ago
  60 million for a printing company? That must have been cheaper than buying individual cartridges.
adventured 9y ago
> The same applies with NVidia. You can't start a GPU company because they are the GPU Mafia Comically, be sure to let ARM know that that's how things work. Founded in 1990, they shouldn't exist today if what you're claiming is true, Intel should have wiped them out of existence 20 years ago. And be sure to let nVidia know that's how it works, 3DFX (given their early lead) or ATI should have wiped them out of existence early on. Or perhaps any number of a dozen other early big corporate leaders in graphics technology. And be sure to let AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Excite, et al. know that's how it works, as they should have wiped out Google. And be sure to let Walmart, Target, Sears, JC Penney's, B&N, Waldenbooks, Borders and a hundred formerly major / soon to be bankrupt retailers know that's how it works, they all should have wiped out Amazon if your premise were true. And be sure to let Microsoft know that's how it works, as they should have wiped out Redhat in ~1999. And be sure to let MySpace & Friendster etc. know that's how it works, as given their extreme scale vs Facebook in 2004, they should have wiped them out. And be sure to let Atari know that's how it works, as they should have wiped out Nintendo. And be sure to go back in time and let Steve Jobs & Co know that's how it works, as given Apple's early size they should have wiped out Dell, Gateway, and dozens of other IBM compatible clone makers before they took over the PC market. Since that's how things work and all. And be sure to let Netflix know that's how it works, so two dozen other massive global media & tech companies - from Comcast to Disney - know they should have wiped them out. And be sure to let Oracle know that's how it works, they should have already wiped out Salesforce.com (and Workday, and and and and). This list doesn't stop going.
- dman 9y ago
  ARM is not a great example since they do not manufacture their own chips.
  - adventured 9y ago
    They're the perfect example, because Intel was a thousand times larger than them during the 1990s and they're competitors. If the op premise were correct, Intel should have (must have in fact, if we're going by the deterministic concept put forth) been able to use any number of levers to crush them, easily. The op premise is trivially easy to prove wrong: it requires infallibility / perfect judgment on the part of competitors. That one thing alone is enough to end the argument put forth - and there are numerous other issues with it.
ekianjo 9y ago
> That's now how modern capitalism works We usually call that Crony capitalism. Which is, not really capitalism.
- ue_ 9y ago
  Although taking advantage of the power of politicians and the state is used to further the interest of capitalists in various occasions (the GP mentioned a few), why exactly is "crony capitalism" not capitalism? From a Marxian perspective, it fulfills all of the requirements for a capitalist mode of production. And where do people "usually" call this "crony capitalism"? In fact, I tend to see this term only echoed around libertarian (the property kind, not the social kind) corners of the web. It is also important to remember that natural monopolies can very easily form, and that the tyranny of property ownership isn't much better than the tyranny of the state granting various benefits to property owners. Proudhon in What is Property goes into this and Oscar Wilde talks about it in his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Why is the crony vs 'not crony' distinction useful, and in what ways would a 'pure' capitalist society alleviate the problems caused by crony capitalism, including but not limited to the difficulty of acquiring sufficient capital to start a business or firm, dealing with anti-competitive behavior arising out of natural monopolies, the destitution and poverty caused by the extremely low cost of labour-power in certain parts of the world? Please don't feel as though I'm attacking, I want to learn more about your ideas.
  - wav-part 9y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLibertarians/top/?sort=top&t=all&limit=100 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLibertarians/top/?sort=top&t=all... https://www.reddit.com/r/libertarianbestof/top/?sort=top&t=all&limit=100 https://www.reddit.com/r/libertarianbestof/top/?sort=top&t=a... Check out the sidebars for 10-20 more subreddits specifically dedicated to these topics.
    - ue_ 9y ago
      I've read about new libertarianism, and I don't find it convincing, especially the idea of property rights. I prefer the old libertarianism that was about people, not property.
tanilama 9y ago
I don't think you can start a GPU company that compete with NVIDIA easily. Building GPU is not like selling bagels, the barrier is much higher.
microcolonel 9y ago
Lots of people start GPU companies, the limitation is entirely the high quality bar set by the three desktop competitors. NVIDIA is taking their quality advantage and slowly adapting it to the embedded space. Literally anyone with a couple million dollars can put together an ASIC design team in a matter of months, design a functioning GLES2 GPU which gets acceptable performance, phone up a semiconductor manufacturer, and pay them about half the money to open a run for them. But even for that low bar, there is already an economic advantage to licensing somebody else's chip. When you start getting to higher feature levels and higher performance targets, the amount of real work required to design GPUs is considerably higher. That said, if you have a few billion dollars to pour into an R&D effort, you can definitely open up a GPU shop, and no GPU mafia is going to be able to stop you.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Good luck designing a GPU without violating NVIDIAs or AMD patents. Heck AMD technically owns the patent for an in memory framebuffer ;)
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    There's no way a patent on the general idea of an in-memory framebuffer would still be valid today, there was prior art for that in the early '80s, and it's been well over 20 years since the '80s (the earliest they could conceivably have applied for a patent on that).
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      Well they have patented a modern back/front buffer setup which is what used in virtually every GPU today http://www.google.com/patents/US20020113786 http://www.google.com/patents/US20020113786 They also hold the patents on simulating physics on a GPU and a billion other patents. Same goes for NVIDIA. AMD and NVIDIA violate each other's patents all day long and many more they don't sue each other since that would be a legal balckhole for both companies. But they will we very keen on sueing any new player. Intel licenses a patent portfolio from NVIDIA currently for legal protections, and Samsung and Qualcomm license their GPU IP from AMD.

by danjoc 9y ago

mattmanser 9y ago

So, I indirectly know someone who just sold their printing company for around $60 million. Their printing company, not their 3D printing company.

chronic940 9y ago
To counter your single data point, I do not know of a single person, personally, who sold a company for any amount of money. And I live in Sunnyvale.
tehwebguy 9y ago
What kind of printing, paper? T-shirts?
Noughmad 9y ago
60 million for a printing company? That must have been cheaper than buying individual cartridges.

adventured 9y ago

> The same applies with NVidia. You can't start a GPU company because they are the GPU Mafia Comically, be sure to let ARM know that that's how things work. Founded in 1990, they shouldn't exist today if what you're claiming is true, Intel should have wiped them out of existence 20 years ago. And be sure to let nVidia know that's how it works, 3DFX (given their early lead) or ATI should have wiped them out of existence early on. Or perhaps any number of a dozen other early big corporate leaders in graphics technology. And be sure to let AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, Excite, et al. know that's how it works, as they should have wiped out Google. And be sure to let Walmart, Target, Sears, JC Penney's, B&N, Waldenbooks, Borders and a hundred formerly major / soon to be bankrupt retailers know that's how it works, they all should have wiped out Amazon if your premise were true. And be sure to let Microsoft know that's how it works, as they should have wiped out Redhat in ~1999. And be sure to let MySpace & Friendster etc. know that's how it works, as given their extreme scale vs Facebook in 2004, they should have wiped them out. And be sure to let Atari know that's how it works, as they should have wiped out Nintendo. And be sure to go back in time and let Steve Jobs & Co know that's how it works, as given Apple's early size they should have wiped out Dell, Gateway, and dozens of other IBM compatible clone makers before they took over the PC market. Since that's how things work and all. And be sure to let Netflix know that's how it works, so two dozen other massive global media & tech companies - from Comcast to Disney - know they should have wiped them out. And be sure to let Oracle know that's how it works, they should have already wiped out Salesforce.com (and Workday, and and and and). This list doesn't stop going.

dman 9y ago
ARM is not a great example since they do not manufacture their own chips.
- adventured 9y ago
  They're the perfect example, because Intel was a thousand times larger than them during the 1990s and they're competitors. If the op premise were correct, Intel should have (must have in fact, if we're going by the deterministic concept put forth) been able to use any number of levers to crush them, easily. The op premise is trivially easy to prove wrong: it requires infallibility / perfect judgment on the part of competitors. That one thing alone is enough to end the argument put forth - and there are numerous other issues with it.

ekianjo 9y ago

> That's now how modern capitalism works We usually call that Crony capitalism. Which is, not really capitalism.

ue_ 9y ago
Although taking advantage of the power of politicians and the state is used to further the interest of capitalists in various occasions (the GP mentioned a few), why exactly is "crony capitalism" not capitalism? From a Marxian perspective, it fulfills all of the requirements for a capitalist mode of production. And where do people "usually" call this "crony capitalism"? In fact, I tend to see this term only echoed around libertarian (the property kind, not the social kind) corners of the web. It is also important to remember that natural monopolies can very easily form, and that the tyranny of property ownership isn't much better than the tyranny of the state granting various benefits to property owners. Proudhon in What is Property goes into this and Oscar Wilde talks about it in his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Why is the crony vs 'not crony' distinction useful, and in what ways would a 'pure' capitalist society alleviate the problems caused by crony capitalism, including but not limited to the difficulty of acquiring sufficient capital to start a business or firm, dealing with anti-competitive behavior arising out of natural monopolies, the destitution and poverty caused by the extremely low cost of labour-power in certain parts of the world? Please don't feel as though I'm attacking, I want to learn more about your ideas.
- wav-part 9y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLibertarians/top/?sort=top&t=all&limit=100 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskLibertarians/top/?sort=top&t=all... https://www.reddit.com/r/libertarianbestof/top/?sort=top&t=all&limit=100 https://www.reddit.com/r/libertarianbestof/top/?sort=top&t=a... Check out the sidebars for 10-20 more subreddits specifically dedicated to these topics.
  - ue_ 9y ago
    I've read about new libertarianism, and I don't find it convincing, especially the idea of property rights. I prefer the old libertarianism that was about people, not property.

tanilama 9y ago

I don't think you can start a GPU company that compete with NVIDIA easily. Building GPU is not like selling bagels, the barrier is much higher.

microcolonel 9y ago

Lots of people start GPU companies, the limitation is entirely the high quality bar set by the three desktop competitors. NVIDIA is taking their quality advantage and slowly adapting it to the embedded space. Literally anyone with a couple million dollars can put together an ASIC design team in a matter of months, design a functioning GLES2 GPU which gets acceptable performance, phone up a semiconductor manufacturer, and pay them about half the money to open a run for them. But even for that low bar, there is already an economic advantage to licensing somebody else's chip. When you start getting to higher feature levels and higher performance targets, the amount of real work required to design GPUs is considerably higher. That said, if you have a few billion dollars to pour into an R&D effort, you can definitely open up a GPU shop, and no GPU mafia is going to be able to stop you.

dogma1138 9y ago
Good luck designing a GPU without violating NVIDIAs or AMD patents. Heck AMD technically owns the patent for an in memory framebuffer ;)
- microcolonel 9y ago
  There's no way a patent on the general idea of an in-memory framebuffer would still be valid today, there was prior art for that in the early '80s, and it's been well over 20 years since the '80s (the earliest they could conceivably have applied for a patent on that).
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Well they have patented a modern back/front buffer setup which is what used in virtually every GPU today http://www.google.com/patents/US20020113786 http://www.google.com/patents/US20020113786 They also hold the patents on simulating physics on a GPU and a billion other patents. Same goes for NVIDIA. AMD and NVIDIA violate each other's patents all day long and many more they don't sue each other since that would be a legal balckhole for both companies. But they will we very keen on sueing any new player. Intel licenses a patent portfolio from NVIDIA currently for legal protections, and Samsung and Qualcomm license their GPU IP from AMD.