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Apple is already leasing phones/computers..........
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My take: this was done to pull consumers back into the cycle of upgrading to every new release. iPhones already do so much more than most people need. With the RAM price hikes, even though there was an influx of sales (according to a store rep) initially, I think Apple was expected a significant decline; people just choosing to stick with their current device to avoid paying the premium.

Leasing not only allows Apple to keep "selling" people new devices, it will also mostly like accelerate the second-hand sales and resource recycling arms of the business. Consumers will be more willing to upgrade sooner and stay in perpetual payments vs having to buy out the device at lease end - and Apple gets back newer devices where the recycled tech is arguably more valuable.

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Yeah the era of the personal computer is over.

Companies will prioritize components for cloud computing and lease us thin clients...

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What do you think chromebooks are?
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I’m sure some kind capitalist will be happy to rent them a thin client linked to a computer in the cloud.

Maybe we'll see a return to the late 1990's, when companies would give you a free computer as long as you allowed it to constantly display an ad banner on the top of the screen.

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I think this was only promised once or twice and any company relying on it quickly went bust.
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There were at least seven companies offering this. I personally knew two people who had them from two different companies, and I think they were also available at Best Buy and Circuit City.

But yes, they all went out of business during when the dot-com bubble burst.

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Capitalism will lead to:

- Lots of options competing on quality, price, user experience, user needs

- Every marketplace innovation that we talk about on this platform

So somebody might offer exactly that and if it's a good option, people will use it. If it's not, they'll use an alternative.

Government regulation will lead to:

- Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections

- Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.

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So, government regulation will lead to all bad things we see today in capitalism? But capitalism won't. This is not very sound logic.
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Hey now, let’s not burst his utopic bubble.
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Theory holds so far.

Everything government involvement touches gets more expensive. See healthcare, college tuition, student loan debt as some easy examples.

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Two of those are the same thing and both are much cheaper in countries other than the US where the government is much more involved
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That’s odd because spend on all of those things per capita is consistently lower with better outcomes where they’re socialized.
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> See healthcare

Medicare is cheaper that US private insurance:

* https://www.kff.org/medicare/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-...

Also:

> A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.

* https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/universal-health-coverage...

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*gestures at prices*
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In Soviet Russia, prices so low no inventory left!
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In Soviet Russia, supply demands YOU!
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Quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus entered the chat a while ago.
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gestures at supply and demand
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Yeah. It's not working to lower prices.
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Right now, demand exceeds supply. As new fabs come online, supply will rise. Eventually, either through greater efficiency of the models and inference systems or through the collapse of AI companies, the demand will drop.
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Pure hn libertarian moment
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Truth doesn't change with the day.
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for all values of spherical cows in a vacuum
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Capitalism under the control of a few billionaires who can influence the entire market with FUD leads to: current market conditions.
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> Government regulation will lead to: > > - Giant entrenched companies that are difficult to disrupt thanks to insider connections

Oh, you mean like Apple, Google, and Microsoft?

> - Lack of competition, price increases, terrible customer service and pretty much everything that "anti-capitalists" today complain about in regards to capitalism.

Have you looked around? This is already happening.

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Yes, absolutely.

And it leads to comments like the parent blaming "capitalism"

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Capitalism doesn't exist without government regulation. Who's going to enforce the contracts? Who's going to break up the giant entrenched companies rent-squeezing every cent out of their natural monopolies, and then using their illicit gains to crush any would-be competitors as they ooze into other markets?

Literally everything listed for 'government regulation will lead to' can and has happened in unchecked capitalism. Insider connections rule everything right now in this current regime of chest-beating 'capitalists.'

Capitalism and socialism aren't real things outside of freshman year econ textbooks.

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Current government already doesn't enforce contracts. Ex, prime video ads. Further there's no point in having contract terms if they can be changed unilaterally at any time.
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Contracts are worth exactly as much as you're lawyered up and willing to get them enforced. There is absolutely still a functioning courts system to enforce contracts.

The one notable exception is if you're a group of workers and you negotiate a contract with your employer: the state can and will interfere to void it if it prevents the workers from being properly exploited.

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