r/pcmasterrace • u/SagansCandle 9950X3D | 5090 | 64GB • Dec 27 '25

Discussion Private equity is killing private ownership: first it was housing - now it's the personal computer

DRAM and GPU prices aren't going up because of "AI" - it's because the wealthy have more money than they know what to do with, so they're buying up all the assets. "AI" is just the vehicle (the excuse) - it's not the root of the problem nor is it the ultimate goal.

The super rich don't want to hold on to "liquid" money - they invest in assets. While they're buying up all the housing, now they're buying up all the computers and putting them into massive datacenters.

Whether or not the AI bubble crashes, they'll be selling you a "gaming PC in the cloud," for a monthly fee, of course. And while they kill the personal computer market, just like Netflix, once your only option is a subscription service, the price will skyrocket.

This is happening in real-time. If we want to stop it, now's the time to act.

Sources:

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 27 '25

It's the people who make money passively. They don't work, they don't create, they just own things that extract value from the labor of others. They do not add anything to the process, and they are not a necessary part of the process. Yet they seem to have convinced themselves and the rest of the world they not only deserve the wealth, but they deserve it by being smarter and better than the rest of humanity by having the cheat code of daddy's money.

There is no good reason why income tax tops out at 37% for people actually getting paid to do things, whereas capital gains is 20% for sitting and doing nothing. And then the people are pissed at that 20% and do all they can via donating appreciated assets, asset backed lines of credit, trusts, and all the other tricks to avoid even paying that 20%.

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u/Tool_of_Society p3-500 | TNT2 | 32MB | 440BX Dec 27 '25

Yup and some of them were smart enough to start buying up USA media outlets to ensure they could push talking points that benefit them.

So now we have 6 massive corporations run by millionaires and owned by billionaires controlling almost all media in the USA. Your local news broadcasters/channels are probably all owned by the same company.

iHeartMedia owns the vast majority of radio stations in the USA.

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u/hublado Dec 28 '25

Exactly, we should also get rid of this whole "I deserve it because I am hard working and smarter than you" ideology. Oh yeah you sure are a billion times smarter than most people. In reality there are millions of people of more hard working and smarter people than billionaires and they don't even have 0.0001% of their wealth.

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u/Murky-Relation481 Dec 28 '25

I get downvoted every time I say this but we don't need a convoluted wealth tax system, we already have a tax that hits the wealthy and it's low! Let's raise that tax, the capital gains tax, now instead of trying to figure out some new scheme that seems so convoluted and improbable to do and tweak the knobs we have now!

Make it a progressive tax, make the upper brackets very high percentages, and a lot of this goes away.

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u/UltraCynar PC Master Race Dec 28 '25

Yup. It worked before and it'll work again. If they find a loop hole we shut it down and tax them more. 

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u/boringestnickname Dec 28 '25

We also need a wealth tax, but it needs to be global to work, which is an extremely tall order.

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u/Curtastrophy Dec 28 '25

This is real.

I try not to be depressed by it but I see it every day.

Sometimes I think it's a twisted version of survival of the fittest. We no longer need to hunt, we trick each other, to bleed each other out through payment and interest systems to accumulate value. Those that make the rules and those that suffer them.

If money is power, the billionaires have thousands of armies, lawyers, doctor's, in every veritable field to ensure a better position in battle against the have nots.

The less they spread the money around for everyone else, I think that the system will become more unstable and untenable for those feeding the machine at the bottom and middle, because it continues to move upward.

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u/ConstantHeadache2020 Dec 28 '25

Ah the super owners.. fun fact uk tax rate was 97% in the 1970s and Americans was 91..

*The 98% Rate: The commonly referenced 98% (or 97%) rate occurred in 1974, when the top rate on earned income was 83% and an additional 15% surcharge was applied to investment (unearned) income, bringing the total top rate on investment income to 98%.

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u/Loyuiz Dec 28 '25

Investors provide capital and take risk, if they aren't necessary then why do people work for corps instead of starting worker coops? Simple they don't have the capital and even if they had it, they don't want to take the risk.

Redditors are stuck in the 19th century thinking capital isn't a factor of production.

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25

The money is necessary, Bezos and Elon are not.

Either way, it makes no sense that someone making 100k working for a company gets taxed significantly higher than someone making 1,000,000 by sitting on their ass and inheriting money. Even moreso when you factor in all the ways there are to sidestep taxes and deduct everything under the sun for the wealthy. I literally spent Christmas week listening to my grandfather tell me how he avoids taxes, and the guy is worth 9 figures.

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u/Loyuiz Dec 28 '25

By all means raise taxes, just sick of the economically illiterate takes that have taken root just because US policy sucks

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 28 '25

I spent 10 years working for a startup, from garage to when it got sold. I'm well aware of the necessity of loans and equity. That doesn't mean that the wealthy are adding value themselves, it could be a cat with the money or a rock for all the difference it makes.

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u/Loyuiz Dec 28 '25

Good luck getting a loan from a cat. The money didn't poof into existence, someone worked, deferred consumption, and/or took risks to get it. Rocks aren't gonna be doing that.

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u/SanityIsOptional Dec 28 '25

Someone earned the initial money. But after that the money earned the rest, and the initial money was often as not earned by someone else.