4 ms·

Even so, isn't the overarching theory of monopoly changing now to not just be about the customers but national defense as well. As we've seeing with Boeing if

Even so, isn't the overarching theory of monopoly changing now to not just be about the customers but national defense as well. As we've seeing with Boeing if we let a critical company kill of or buy up its rivals, once it achieves dominance it decays, leaving the host nation with nothing.

Dalewyn 2y ago
If succeeding means failure, then nobody is going to bother succeeding. Nvidia is a monopoly in the sense there is no competition, but unlike monopolies that are illegal this one came about as a result of the rest of the market simply not bothering to play while they kept pressing on. Succeeding so hard by legitimately outcompeting every other fucking bastard in sight shouldn't mean getting slapped with antitrust.
- _nist 2y ago
  There is succeeding, then there is your company being overvalued to insane levels because of some hype boom. It also doesn't mean that just because you outcompete, then you can artificially reduce supply and only support a select few OS's (ie. windows) while producing modest performance gains in your GPU's. It's a modern day Tesla in waiting more than likely.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  This is not an honest interpretation of how we practice this. We do not terminate the company that achieves monopoly, we don't even stop them from succeeding. We simply ensure that others can continue to compete as well. Occasionally when called for we have broken up companies that are in too many spaces at once -- but even then we tend to do that extraordinarily rarely. It's a bummer when the chosen line of argument is this straw man victimhood a la Atlas Shrugged.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >We simply ensure that others can continue to compete as well. And there's the million (trillion?) dollar question: What is Nvidia doing to stop others from competing? No, "their product is too good" (which they are) is not a valid argument. If you argue Nvidia is deliberately not producing as many GPUs to keep prices high, first you'll have to see if they're just not getting bottlenecked by TSMC and second you will also have to bring in AMD and possibly Intel along for price fixing which by definition isn't a monopoly.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > What is Nvidia doing to stop others from competing? Locking down CUDA for one.
      - bryanlarsen 2y ago
        Is Nvidia doing anything to prevent ZLUDA or ROCm from succeeding?
      - hot_gril 2y ago
        They made CUDA though. And they still support the open standards.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  there are other aspects to look at, its any anticompetitive behavior, or action that reduces competition. Exclusive or privileged contracts regarding supply could be the lowest hanging fruit here. Has nothing to do with the market simply choosing Nvidia if that's the criteria. The antitrust violation wouldn't look at that at all. but I agree in that it makes it hard to do normal business. smaller businesses do all these anticompetitive things and its the most rational thing to do. when does it flip to being sanctionable? when does it move away from "hey you didn't maximize shareholder value so you're the problem and a judge will agree" to "hey, now you maximized shareholder value and the government thinks you're the problem and a judge will agree"
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Monopolies aren't illegal. Only abusing a monopoly is illegal. Nvidia has 95% market share. It's probably a monopoly. But the trillion dollar question is whether they are abusing that monopoly: which are behaviors like tying, price discrimination, exclusive dealing, etc.

Dalewyn 2y ago

If succeeding means failure, then nobody is going to bother succeeding. Nvidia is a monopoly in the sense there is no competition, but unlike monopolies that are illegal this one came about as a result of the rest of the market simply not bothering to play while they kept pressing on. Succeeding so hard by legitimately outcompeting every other fucking bastard in sight shouldn't mean getting slapped with antitrust.

_nist 2y ago
There is succeeding, then there is your company being overvalued to insane levels because of some hype boom. It also doesn't mean that just because you outcompete, then you can artificially reduce supply and only support a select few OS's (ie. windows) while producing modest performance gains in your GPU's. It's a modern day Tesla in waiting more than likely.
tsunamifury 2y ago
This is not an honest interpretation of how we practice this. We do not terminate the company that achieves monopoly, we don't even stop them from succeeding. We simply ensure that others can continue to compete as well. Occasionally when called for we have broken up companies that are in too many spaces at once -- but even then we tend to do that extraordinarily rarely. It's a bummer when the chosen line of argument is this straw man victimhood a la Atlas Shrugged.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >We simply ensure that others can continue to compete as well. And there's the million (trillion?) dollar question: What is Nvidia doing to stop others from competing? No, "their product is too good" (which they are) is not a valid argument. If you argue Nvidia is deliberately not producing as many GPUs to keep prices high, first you'll have to see if they're just not getting bottlenecked by TSMC and second you will also have to bring in AMD and possibly Intel along for price fixing which by definition isn't a monopoly.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > What is Nvidia doing to stop others from competing? Locking down CUDA for one.
    - bryanlarsen 2y ago
      Is Nvidia doing anything to prevent ZLUDA or ROCm from succeeding?
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      They made CUDA though. And they still support the open standards.
yieldcrv 2y ago
there are other aspects to look at, its any anticompetitive behavior, or action that reduces competition. Exclusive or privileged contracts regarding supply could be the lowest hanging fruit here. Has nothing to do with the market simply choosing Nvidia if that's the criteria. The antitrust violation wouldn't look at that at all. but I agree in that it makes it hard to do normal business. smaller businesses do all these anticompetitive things and its the most rational thing to do. when does it flip to being sanctionable? when does it move away from "hey you didn't maximize shareholder value so you're the problem and a judge will agree" to "hey, now you maximized shareholder value and the government thinks you're the problem and a judge will agree"
bryanlarsen 2y ago
Monopolies aren't illegal. Only abusing a monopoly is illegal. Nvidia has 95% market share. It's probably a monopoly. But the trillion dollar question is whether they are abusing that monopoly: which are behaviors like tying, price discrimination, exclusive dealing, etc.