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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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When I got a new desktop PC this year I specifically avoided anything with Intel in it because of how bad they dropped the ball with their GPUs basically disintegrating.
This is just a small glimpse into how Intel is breaking down from the inside. It may take a few years but if the US government doesn't intervene somehow on their behalf I truly think Intel might be done for in the next 5 years.
But if history is any indicator, they will. "Too big to fail!"
What's crazy is, people will say "See how capitalism fails us?" when that is socialized capitalism. The government should not be bailing out any companies. If they can't survive without government money, they don't need to exist.
I think I understand your complaint, but I'd say "free market" rather than "capitalism". But regardless of what we call it, it doesn't actually exist unless you have a more powerful external system regulating it.
Start with a truly free-market capitalist system. One company manages to temporarily pull ahead (through luck and skill). The rational thing for the company to do isn't "make better products" (that's hard) but "destroy competing companies" (much easier). And the end-product would be that the company becomes a government so it can force consumers to pay.
So I'd argue that socialized capitalism (which I'm picturing as a socialist system that permits certain specific free markets and handles the fallout of business failures) is what you actually want.
Not exactly. And larger companies simply CANT destroy competition without assistance from the government.
If you are free to choose what to buy, and who to buy it from, you can choose to buy from the startup. You can choose to buy from the guy running a business out of the back of his pickup. Or out of his garage. Or any number of options.
Problem is, right now we have our government enabling monopolies. Propping up failing, or non-profitable businesses by making it illegal to do business without spending millions or more on regulations that seem good on the surface, but when you start to dig into them, you see the vast majority of them were actually pushed by the big name businesses to stifle competition.
Our wallets should be the only regulation. Would you willingly buy products from a company that doesn't respect the environment? No? Well guess what! That's the power of the free market.
There's, right now, a hybrid truck manufacturer in Canada that is staring down the barrel of excessive regulations that will limit their ability to build hybrid semi trucks.
How many other would-be entrepreneurs simply don't even bother trying because there's no way they can afford it?
How many small 1 to 2 person businesses would be in existence right now to compete with all these large companies?
When I read your message, I get the impression that you think of "The Government" as this independent actor. I see it as a system that is primarily controlled by wealthy people. Either directly or through their funding advertisements (including astroturfing/bot-farms) to promote what they want.
So the larger companies do get government assistance... because they are the government. And this isn't some kind of weird coincidence. It's fundamental to capitalism's operation. You can't have a system that's based on capital and then have it be unbiased towards entities who have vastly more capital!
It's odd that you think it's fundamental to capitalism when it's exactly the opposite. True capitalism is an unfettered marketplace.
What we have now is a system here the profits are private, but the losses are socialized.
You may think that's an effect of capitalism, but it most definitely is not.
You are conflating a system of governance with a system of economics. And I get it, because in a controlled economy, the government is usually the one doing the controlling.
What we have is something in the middle, taking the worst aspects of truly free-market capitalism, and marrying it with the worst aspects of a controlled economy.
Our government the picks winners in this setup we have. Instead of letting the market decide.
Your issue is that you see all the things this half-breed, partially-socialist economy gives us, and you blame it on the market. But the market didn't get us here.
History tells me what will happen if we finally give in, and give total control of the economy over to the politicians. And I do not want that for my children, or their children.
In an unfettered marketplace, what stops a dominant player from introducing fetters?
Competition.
Without force, how can they stop a small player from offering a competitive option?
Whoah, whoah. Why'd you rule that out?
Your business plan: quality goods at reasonable prices. My business plan: hire some goons to kill you and take your stuff.
Historically, this has a lot of precedence.
Because I'm not an anarchist. There is a role for government in maintaining its monopoly on the use of force.
But nothing else.
OK, cool. That definitely helps things.
I think where we're disagreeing is that I think in a capitalist society the promise of money will inevitably corrupt the government (because it's made of people). Maybe it can be avoided if the government performs additional regulatory action to stop anyone from getting too wealthy, but that sounds like beyond the limits that you want to set for government.
There's no need for the government to prevent people from becoming wealthy.
The only ways to become that wealthy all involve monopolies.
But every single monopoly that has ever existed, has only managed to become a monopoly due to help from allies in government. AKA Regulatory Capture.
When governments are large, and filled with bureaucrats that aren't answerable to the public, monopolies are far more likely to emerge, as those same bureaucrats enact more and more regulations that make entering the market more and more difficult for those of modest to little means.
Same. Intel and Nvidia are both on the boycott list.
As great as AMD is right now, I still don’t want them to become a monopoly. The fact that we have a duopoly is already a major problem.
Maybe we can dig up VIA and get a new Cyrix CPU.
It's time for Voodoo to make a triumphant return!
Arent their dGPU supposed to be pretty good?
Imagine if x86-64 got blown open because of it? Might literally be the best thing to happen to computing in like 40 years.
Really fuckin' doubt it'll happen, but a girl can dream XP
Or, what if it just became irrelevant. It's had a great run. But honestly ARM has shown plenty of versatility and power. While being licensable unlike x86. And things like riscv have similar of not better potential.
Its always going to be relevant, even if only emulated, simply because of how many code bases are stuck on x86/x86-64.
Open sourcing it and all of its extensions solves the licensing problems of not only itself, but Arm, while providing a battle tested architecture with decades of maturity.
Also imagine the fun FPGA consoles could have with that?
Oh I have no issues with it being relevant in the same sense the Z80 68k or 6502 still being relevant. Just not part of a controlling duopoly.
The base x86-64 patents expired in 2021. Also, it was held by AMD, not Intel.
However, there are a lot of extensions that are still under patent. You can make an x86-64 processor the way it was when Opteron was released in 2003, but it won't be competitive with current offerings. Those extensions are patented by a mix of both Intel and AMD. Intel failing isn't going to fully open x86-64.
Edit: also, it's not just the patents, it's the people. Via is still technically out there and could theoretically make its own x86-64 to modern standards. However, x86-64 is a very difficult architecture to optimize, and all the people who know how to do it already work for either Intel or AMD. Actually, they might only work for AMD, even before the layoffs.
Thank you. Thank you for giving me hope lol