Nine Chip Makers Fined $400M In EU For Price Fixing 215
eldavojohn writes "In a disturbing case for average consumers, nine DRAM chip manufacturers have been fined more than $400 million for price fixing. The named companies are Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida, and Nanya. A tenth company, Micron, avoided fines by reporting the other nine to the authorities. Since all companies cooperated with the probe, they received a 10% reduction in fines, so it could have been worse. The US DoJ has had its own history with chip makers and LCD makers in price fixing scandals."
Not really that disturbing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not really that disturbing (Score:4, Insightful)
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That would create a _real_ incentive to follow the law.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Consumers around the world will be paying more for their DRAM chips, but EU citizens will be getting more services or paying less in taxes because the coffers of a nation are fed, so it kinda cancels out for consumers (non-EU nations of course should fine these companies too if they haven't already to be in the same situation).
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I have a bridge I would like to offer you at a very competitive price.
I, too, have a bridge.
Note to the OP: my bridge is nicer, despite the price similarity.
Re:400M goes to who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fines are supposed to be a punishment so that companies avoid anti-competitive behavior in the future. You're right, however: the companies either have already made enough money from their unethical behavior, or they will roll it into the cost of future products. The punishment is not nearly severe enough.
Repeat offenders should be fined in the billions of dollars as a warning to other companies. The only thing that will keep shareholders interested in executives who obey the law are a few cases where companies are fined into bankruptcy and then broken up and sold off.
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That's silly. As the various financial blow ups show: losing other people's money when you gamble with other people's money is not a big deal. Especially when you get big bonuses if you win big. It does not discourage risky/improper behaviour at all.
If you want to discourage them, send them to prison.
If a multimillionaire gets sacked because the company got huge fines, what's that to him? Though a multimillionair
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More importantly I think is the only thing that will keep executives interested in being executives who follow the law is seeing those who don't PERSONALLY fined into bankruptcy and/or sent to prison for appreciable periods of time.
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I can kind of see your point, but what do you suggest? That we don't punish companies for collusion?
Any of the manufacturers that weren't in on the price fixing should be able to undercut the cheats that have to recoup their $400M fine. - Not that I can think of a RAM manufacturer that isn't in this list, off the top of my head... I suppose collusion works best when everyone is in on it, eh?
Re:400M goes to who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets
The nine companies mentioned in the fine summary.
Towards the services provided by the EU.
CORRECTION: Consumers around the world have already paid for it.
No it isn't, it's a punishment for a group of corporations for breaking the law. You clearly haven't thought about it very much and have just been scared by the "T" word, the alternative to fines is to permit them to get away with collusion, and that will just raise prices, no. BTW I like paying the T word as it provides me with many services, not the least of which is a cheap world class medical system (Shamelessly borrowed from Shutdown -p and slightly altered).
I'm just saying you're an idiot, OK, that's a bit harsh. Perhaps you are a really intelligent person but you've just had a brain failure during that post.
Please think a bit more critically. This isn't a "tax" (gasp, shock horror) it's punishment for something they've already done. First this will end up coming out of the companies bottom line because 1. after being convicted of collusion they will be watched like a hawk and 2. now their cartel is being broken up actual competition will ensue (with all the price cutting benefits therein). I'm sick of people assuming this is a zero sum game, that prices will rise because it costs them more in fines. This thinking ignores the fact that the market will only pay for what it will bare and ultimately raising prices to cover a loss from a fine will attract more attention from the authorities as well as reduce the amount of product they can sell. The market will not automatically accept the rise of all RAM prices unless they all raise the price at once and well that's collusion, which what got them into trouble in the first place.
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Ya, price fixing sucks. But let's be real honest shall we?
Lets
Sorry, but "let's" is correct, "lets" is not.
It is an abbreviation of "let us".
I think concluding that this ruling will cause prices to fall due to increased competitiveness is being a bit optimistic. It simply isn't in their best interest to be competitive or seek to outprice each other, seeing as they are essentially all selling the same thing and profit margins need to be maintained.
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And before the anti-EU argument comes up again, I'd like to point out that Infineon is European. The US does the same btw, i. e. when they fined Daimler $500 million for corruption.
Free Markets (Score:2)
This is where "free markets" are supposed to regulate the prices keeping any one company from raising their prices above the rest. If you raise your prices, you become uncompetitive.
This fine is not going to raise prices at all, they know perfectly well that the buyers won't accept any increases. I'm not talking about consumers here, the biggest purchasers are likely the PC makers.
There will be a dip in their profits for this or last financial year.
Do you consider the US fines to be a tax to fill your empty
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The 400 million indirectly goes to us taxpayers in the EU in some form or another. Even net contributors to the EU are also recipients of EU money (e.g. third level research).
Also it means companies even if they continue these kinds of behaviour, are more likely to pursue it outside the EU (we don't have to be sufficiently tough to stop the behaviour, just tougher than elsewhere, e.g. US).
Finally, even if these fines don't stop this behaviour in the EU, the fines make for headlines that increase public awar
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Consumers around the world who are stupid enough to buy stuff from known criminals will be paying for it, and will deserve it.
There, fixed that for ya.
You know, natural selection, survival of the fittest, and stuff...
Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like those fine capitalist companies don't like the competition part of capitalism either. They want protected profits too and screw the free market if that's what it takes.
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Where is competition mandated in capitalism?
In true, unrestricted laissez faire capitalism there is no requirement for competition, one company may become ruler of all if they choose to squash all competition and fix prices?
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Under true unrestricted free market capitalism things like patents and copyrights would not exist, so long as there were people out there with the resources to copy then there would be competition. It would mean software and other trivially copied goods would be completely unprofitable, and would either be community developed or developed as a loss leader to sell other product (eg hardware to run it on)... Hardware obviously couldn't be distributed for free because of the unavoidable costs of manufacturing
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they were all fined a combined 402 million.
They made that, and then some so it's a cost of doing business.
Corporate fines are laughable... they factor it in these days.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And then some...
No, actually, there is just one morally valid punishment: Separation.
Or in other words: Hey you, chip maker! We don’t allow price fixers in this country! You have one week to leave. If you or any sub-part of you are seen here again, you will be personally assassinated! Now GTFO!
Of course, as we are nice people, we will forgive them after a couple of years. If they still exist by then. (Considering how pretty much every other country would also throw them out.) But they will definitely
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That's insufficient. Let's say that the probability of getting caught is p. p is = 1. Now, the average cost for unethical behaviour is the same as the profits of this unethical behaviour times p. Hence, it is rational to remain unethical: you can only win.
Ideally, the penalties for such behaviour would be in a different category than profits, i.e., not money: jail time for executives who made this decision, forced donation of part of their company to a randomly selected competitor, forced public-domain
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Sorry, forgot about the HTML. p is <= 1, I meant.
Also, the downside of this approach is that the government doesn't benefit from attacking these practices directly, which decreases the motivation from enacting it.
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As far as I understand, the EU sets fines proportional to the sales over the duration of the sales, with a proportionality constant dependent on how much the infringement hurt the market. Although not many details are published on the EU website so far (EU case on DRAM [europa.eu]), the EU has published the guidelines for the fine calculation (Guidelines on the method of setting fines [europa.eu]). More details on the settlement decision will follow.
Unless there are clear indications
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They should have to give back the extra profit that they made illegally and then be fined an extra amount for doing something illegal i
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Well, the proportionality constant may be larger than 1. The upper limit is 30% of the sales value, which is usually much more than the profit.
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So they were all fined a combined 402 million. They made that,
Did they? What were the profits of the respective DRAM divisions of these companies in the period that the cartel operated (1998-2002)?
I'm not disputing your claim - just asking for evidence. Hynix lost $4 billion in 2008; the DRAM market has traditionally been highly competitive and not the huge source of profits that some people think it is.
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yep. look what one of the fuckers had to say: [elpida.com]
"Since the fine is within the range of a reserve already fixed for such issue in FY 2008, the company believes that the fine will not have a material impact on its current year (FY 2010) consolidated financial results."
"for such issue" - gotta love the Japanese.
ban one company at random (Score:3, Interesting)
I say rather than fines, we ban one of those companies from the US market forever. We repeat this process ever time there is price fixing incident. Shareholders of those companies will not tolerate the risk and management will be too scared to pull this shit again.
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How would you plan on enforcing that? Customs officials opening every stick of RAM, prebuilt computer, cell phone, router, set top box, et al, and determining if the device in question has Brand X DRAM?
Seems entirely impossible to me, with the majority of electronics being manufactured outside the US.
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Informants and random inspections. When violations are found, nail the purchasers to the wall. Soon enough there won't be many US businesses buying their chips.
They even got a discount on the fines... (Score:4, Insightful)
All the fines were reduced by 10% because the companies co-operated with the probe.
The crime was done in the name of money, profits. But the punishment, monetary, was reduced for cooperation. So basically what companies can learn from this is: price fix as much as possible, once caught cooperate as much as possible, then keep more of the profits from the price fixed products.
A 10th chip maker, Micron, was also part of the price-fixing cartel but escaped a fine in return for alerting the competition authorities.
And if you blow in the competition you get to keep ALL of your price fixed profits. What kind of a system is this? Am I missing something here? How exactly are these companies being punished so that they won't do this again? Hell they are probably already learning from their mistakes and looking to secure another price fixing scam for the immediate future.
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Kind of like game theory.
Suppose there are several companies. They can either price fix or not price fix. If they're price fixing, they can alert the authorities and keep their 'winnings' while the other price fixers lose a certain amount of money. Whether or not they price fix will be determined by the fine they receive. If extra revenue > fine, then price fix. If extra revenue fine, don't price fix.
But all of the price fixers should rat each other out. In theory, they'd all get to keep their pro
Re:They even got a discount on the fines... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how they catch them. It creates a nice Prisioner's Dilema where the first to break ranks get's away with it.
Countries that have laws for this experience much higher rates of catching price-fixing cartels than those who don't.
After they have proven themselves as snitches, who exactly would trust them and get in a price fixing cartel with them?
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IMHO they should make even very small jail time for that. That would be something a bit harder to factor in.
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By encouraging breaking the conspiracy you make it more short-lived. A price-fixing conspiracy is based on mutual trust shared between all the partners. If you violate the trust, the conspiracy can't exist. If you provide a good incentive to destroy the trust, you fight it efficiently.
Actually providing the "traitor" with long-term market benefits (say, a tax relief) that give them an upper hand above competition would be even better, breaking up the conspiracies even earlier.
Also, by setting the fine above
EU (Score:2, Funny)
That damn Marxist, communist, fascist EU fines perfectly good companies for no reason.
Luckily good ole US of A well let companies do their business without intervention. The market will sort out the price fixing.
Could have been worse? (Score:2)
Since all companies cooperated with the probe, they received a 10% reduction in fines, so it could have been worse.
Surely you mean, it could have been better. Reducing the fines is a negative from where I am sitting.
There was hardly a loss for the consumer. (Score:2)
You know what the most disturbing thing is?
Most DRAM companies have operated at a net loss when taking into account the accumulated earnings of the last decade. There is incredibly fierce price competition within the industry.
Do you really feel ripped off when you buy a product that is composed of billions of transistors, has tens of billions of R&D costs behind at at a price of $1 ? (That was the price of a 1Gbit chip not long ago) I don't want to sound like an industry advocate here, but I find this
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Most DRAM companies have operated at a net loss when taking into account the accumulated earnings of the last decade. There is incredibly fierce price competition within the industry.
And yet, without price fixing, that competition would allow the incompetent companies to drop out of the market and the players capable of making a profit to operate the market. Instead, what we've got is protectionism for the failures.
That's a start... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's so wrong about it? Everyone does it. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Disturbing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it the fine that is disturbing?
The thing that was disturbing to me is that the consumer lost out here and the government is pulling in $400 million. When will the actual victim (people who made DRAM purchases) receive restitution? Never.
Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, the gov't will reduce our taxes by the $400 million...
Hahaha, I knew I couldn't write that with a straight face!
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Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Funny)
What's this dollar you mention?
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$400M CAD... isn't that all of them?
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In any event, if done fairly government prosecution does both A) clean up the marketplace and B) raise government revenues. It's an overlooked funding source many times. Given how most governments are teetering on bankruptcy, one wonders why there isn't a focus on oversight activities -- every little bit helps. Oh right. Because of bribes from private industry. Never mind.
Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Disturbing? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I found interesting was the amount: an average of about $44 million per corporation ($400M / 9). Contrast that with the profits each one made on this scheme.
What annoys me is that a lot of this stuff is so pervasive that I cannot in anyway knowingly boycott any purchases of DRAM from these companies. There's probably DRAM in any piece of electronics you buy whether it be Sony, Nintendo or an actual Samsung product.
And then what happens to the companies who take a $44 million hit? You think their CEOs just sit down and eat that? They don't take their medicine, they slightly markup their product and again the consumer loses! This sort of price fixing fixed by fining model is just not working.
What I think should happen is that all the products that were price fixed should be entered into the public domain in the country where the price fixing was conducted and the company was found guilty. Meaning all patents and designs of those products are now owned by the public. The public overpaid for them so force the companies to give something back to the public. The manufacturing processes and techniques can be kept secret but all the chip design and patents should be open for competitors to step in and make a better cheaper product. I know a lot of people will think that's overly harsh but frankly the DRAM manufacturers should have thought of that before they started price fixing. You think times were tough when you tried to turn some illegal profit? Try now when everyone knows everything about your product. Really, that's the only way to 1) make them think twice about price fixing and 2) actually give something valuable to the victim that has a positive result instead of a negative result.
If that's the way business works in Korea, Taiwan and China then I don't care. But they need to learn that price fixing is not acceptable when they do business in the US and the EU. It blows my mind but it seems to happen everywhere in the world of circuitry and electronics. Since the companies just seem to be taking these fines in step and repeating or continuing with their practices, you have only one option: up the stakes.
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Nations like the US and EU
One mistake, there. The EU is not a nation.
Contrary to what may happen in the US, their rulings in such cases are completely driven by ideology (or personnal benefit which doesn't appear to the case here).
You can see this mix of the two driving forces: "competition must be upheld at all cost", and "private property is the most sacred right there is"
End result? The guilty companies are slammed with a penalty which probably amounts to less than what breaking the law allowed to rake in, and the only one
Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
You have it backwards. The European markets are "golden geese" to the chip makers! There will always be yet another competitor that would happily sell and profit in the European market(s) should the competition die off. This is basic economics, but I don't expect more on Slashdot.
And what tax revenue are you referring to? These companies sell their products in Europe, but the profits are sent back home. The majority of the companies mentioned are not European. The only tax revenue Europe sees in this case is sales tax on the items and a limited tax on the profits, after deductions, of the European branches.
The real issue is abusing the markets you operate in, if you want do business in Europe or the US you have to follow the local rules. I really hate the way ignorant Slashdotters rant when they talk about the EU and fines! Never mind that the US does exactly the same thing, however when Europe and the EU decides to act according to our identical laws "you" dare criticize and pass judgment on matters you have no understanding of!
The EU is acting to regulate markets in accordance with law, the motive is clearly to keep markets healthy for producers and buyers alike. The guilty parties are the chip makers!
I don't think most Americans understand how fervently nationalist they sound on the web.
Re:Backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
There will always be yet another competitor that would happily sell and profit in the European market(s) should the competition die off. This is basic economics, but I don't expect more on Slashdot.
Actually, it is one of the assumptions of quite a few economic theories. One that, if you ask me, is stretched all too often. For example chip markets are far from ideal, lots of government involvement (subsidies), institutionalized cartels (patents), and sky-high entry barriers.
Go ahead, 'just' start another competitor. After all, if the others are fixing the prices it shouldn't be too hard to compete.
Re:Backwards (Score:4, Insightful)
The only tax revenue Europe sees in this case is sales tax on the items and a limited tax on the profits, after deductions, of the European branches.
Given that VAT is 15% or more in pretty much all of the EU (over 20% in some places), and the typical margin for memory chip makers is under 10%, the various governments probably make more per sale than the chip makers.
The EU is acting to regulate markets in accordance with law, the motive is clearly to keep markets healthy for producers and buyers alike. The guilty parties are the chip makers!
As a parent poster pointed out, a fine of $44m per company is probably significantly less than the profits that the company made from participating in the scheme. That means that it's not going to deter this kind of behaviour significantly, it's just going to reduce the total profits by a little bit. This looks more like the EU taking its cut from the scam than actually trying to prevent it. If they really want to prevent price fixing, they should take the fine and invest it in a new competitor for these companies. $400m is enough to build a chip fab, and I'm sure some companies like Intel and IBM would be interested in licensing them the required designs...
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Nations like the US and EU don't want to punish companies too harshly.
The stated aim [europa.eu] of fines due to EU competition policy is to "deter companies from setting up or continuing cartels". Think of it in the same regards as the FSF and GPL enforcement - the aim is to bring companies into compliance, not to generate funds by way of punishment. Obviously a fine will also act as a form of punishment - the difference is that the policy is to bring companies into compliance with the law, rather than bring companies to the edge of bankruptcy.
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The trouble with fines is that they just become another cost of doing business, and will get weighed up against the expected profits from actually doing the illegal activity in the first place. In other words, breaking the law is just business as usual only with a relatively low risk.
Punishments need to be far more damaging so that companies become unwilling to risk breaking the law, possibly even hold the owners personally responsible and throw them in jail.
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Taxes? What taxes? Check out how much GE paid in taxes this past year. I'll save you the research and tell you here: $0.
Im not saying each listed company paid zero dollars in taxes to the US, but it would be a safe bet that they softened the blow with overseas loopholes.
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If that's the way business works in Korea, Taiwan and China then I don't care. But they need to learn that price fixing is not acceptable when they do business in the US and the EU.
The companies involved are Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Elpida and Nanya.
A 10th chip maker, Micron, was also part of the price-fixing cartel but escaped a fine in return for alerting the competition authorities.
I've bolded the US and EU companies for you. It's not just an Asian problem.
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What I think should happen is that all the products that were price fixed should be entered into the public domain in the country where the price fixing was conducted and the company was found guilty. Meaning all patents and designs of those products are now owned by the public. The public overpaid for them so force the companies to give something back to the public. The manufacturing processes and techniques can be kept secret but all the chip design and patents should be open for competitors to step in and make a better cheaper product. I know a lot of people will think that's overly harsh but frankly the DRAM manufacturers should have thought of that before they started price fixing. You think times were tough when you tried to turn some illegal profit? Try now when everyone knows everything about your product. Really, that's the only way to 1) make them think twice about price fixing and 2) actually give something valuable to the victim that has a positive result instead of a negative result. /quote.
THIS. THIS. Punishments that don't hurt are ineffective. This doesn't just hurt, it slays.
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Kind of an interesting cross of chicken and prisoners dilemma.
Could you elaborate? I'm not familiar with the chicken dilemma.
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Wiki description
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That's because she crossed the road at the wrong time. Now no one will ever find out where she was going.
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Well Micron made even more since they benefited but didn't have to pay the fine. Kind of an interesting cross of chicken and prisoners dilemma.
However, they are not getting any more party invitations.
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I'm pretty sure they no longer have public beheadings.
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Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not like you had to pay extra taxes yourself, like salex tax and... oh... right.
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So? What do you suggest for punishing these companies?
It's all nice and fine to bitch and whine but I don't hear you proposing a decent solution.
I, for one, at least am happy that someone is doing someone about breaking these kind of price-fixing sceme's. But please, keep on enjoying you 'free market' over there on the other side of the pond.
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Fining corporations is a dubiously useful exercise because, if small, the fines are simply a cost of doing business(and, since the rational decision maker will discount the possible fines according to the probability of get
Re:Disturbing? (Score:5, Insightful)
price fixing is not free market, nub.
Say what ? Price fixing is *absolutely* "free market". Huge cartels (if not just one big monopoly) is exactly where the "free market" would end up without this sort of regulation.
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And what evidence do you base that on?
How much it already happens even with regulation in place, plus a reasonable helping of rational thought.
How would your big monopoly stop competitors from emerging?
Often they wouldn't need to - the simple costs of market entry would be sufficient. If that was not, then some loss-leader products would hammer the last few nails into the coffin.
Care to provide any examples of where such huge monopolies did happen and survived for any length of time?
Monopolies are
Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Insightful)
What would _stop_ a cartel or monopoly from forming ?
Cartels are inherently unstable and rarely form at all. What is the advantage to the most efficient company in a particular market in joining a cartel with less efficient ones when it can beat them in the competition and take their market share? Even when a cartel does form (say to fix the price to a higher level) a strong incentive is always there for each of its members to undercut the others and take their market share.
Once a few companies have gotten together, or a single one has gotten large enough, how is a new competitor going to enter the market when the established ones can either buy it out, or just undercut it until it runs out of cash ?
If the monopoly is setting the price to high (say 30% profit margin) then it is presenting an incentive for every investor, every company in a similar industry which might already have infrastructure in place, and every foreign company in the same industry to enter into the market and set its margin to 20% and steal much it the monopoly's market share while still raking in a large profit. At some point pretty soon the monopoly will not be able to buy them all out. If the monopoly is setting the price very low in order to discourage competition then where is the problem? The free market is working through the possibility of competition if not actual competition.
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It fucking happened! The market was in effect, they fixed the prices. Only afterwords regulation corrected it. Or are you saying the cause and effect are reversed and it was the fine that cause the price fixing?
About Friedman: "Oh, let's reduce import tariffs and let external companies to compete and finish those national monopolies"
That's all nice and dandy, but those monopolies aren't national. In this case, they affect the whole Europe. What do you do when we have a
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The billion dollar cost of a chip fab line is already a pretty good barrier to entry. DRAM mfgs. have to spend an enormous amount up front and make it back within the few years that the fab is leading edge.
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Maxed out? (Score:2)
Since when is 8gb of DDR2 maxed out these days? Sorry mate, but maxed out at the moment is something like 32gb of ddr3. And that would cost you more then a thousand still.
And if you can't compete on price, then compete on quality or go bust.
THAT is the free market. Companies SURE love the free market, except when it bites them in the ass. Understandable perhaps, but it is also understandable that since I am poor and you are rich and I cut your throat and take your cash. There is always an excuse to break
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price fixing is not free market, nub.
Say what ? Price fixing is *absolutely* "free market". Huge cartels (if not just one big monopoly) is exactly where the "free market" would end up without this sort of regulation.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Adam Smith quotes (Scottish philosopher and economist, 1723-1790)
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Patent restrictions are an artificial construct that is inherently incompatible with a free market. They are a form of government regulation which takes away freedom from the market.
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Electricity generation is not a natural monopoly. Electricity distribution is the monopoly because each consumer only wants one set of wires to attach to their house. In Massachusetts the two are separate and I can choose who to but my electricity from.
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Perhaps because you are looking at it the wrong way. The government isn't fishing for money, the EU is punishing a company for anti-competitive actions. The EU has two acceptable choices to punish a company, 1. put some directors in jail, this is a long drawn out process that will take time whilst the r
Re:Disturbing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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With all the patents on DRAM and other memory technologies out there, what makes Rambus more proprietary than the stuff you buy today?
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Not even close to reality are you. (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct, because DDR uses the same patented techniques that RDRAM did, it was just as fast.
What? Are you insane? Same techniques? Just as fast?!
The only thing DDR and RDRAM have is that they transfer data on both edges of the clock signal like a thousand other technologies that already existed at the time, on chips and on PCBs. Rambus did not invent double pumping data busses; it was already a standard technique for reducing signal integrity issues on the clock signal. See a variety of FSBs tha
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The thing that was disturbing to me is that the consumer lost out here and the government is pulling in $400 million. When will the actual victim (people who made DRAM purchases) receive restitution? Never.
This slap on the wrist is supposed to discourage them from doing it again.
Keep in mind if this was a class action lawsuit, you'd have a chance at winning... $0.10? :P
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Mod parent -1 SPAM (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm.... You do know that consumers around the world have already paid for it don't you. Now it's the colluding companies turn.
/. (which I'll put good money on the fact you're not paying Geeknet.inc for).
Unless you are proposing we let them get away with Collusion, because that will lower prices for sure. You're clearly OK with spamming your crappy business on
Prices will actually lower out of t