Yes, true, but irrelevant in this case.

You better come around quick then, before tarrifs make all of our chips 100% more expensive.

Yeah, during the GPU shortage of '20/'21, I ended up buying a prebuilt so I could at least get the GPU at RETAIL price. It was at a time when flipping GPUs on ebay was all the rage and you’d be paying 25%-100% more than it was worth to a scalper.

The system integrators get a better price on parts than we do, and now many of them are selling them for less or precisely the retail price of all the components. You really have to shop around though, some “premium boutiques” like Maingear can be 50-100% more expensive than the competition… They’re selling the same product so I don’t really see the value they bring at that price, but I’m sure as hell not paying $2,000 for their tech support.

The problem is unfettered capitalism. Our leaders are far more concerned about enriching themselves than acting on behalf of their constituents, so we’ve got this really jaded electorate.

And then as a dominant super power in the world, we’ve been targeted with enormous misinformation campaigns, both from our own “news sources” (Fox News is NOT real news, it’s lies and half truths and proliferation of hatred!) and fake internet trolls. All of that on top of decades of political corruption, decades of businesses lobbying in their own best interest and spreading lies to support their position (“tobacco is safe and very cool!” “guns don’t kill people”, “weed is the root of all evil!”, “pEoPlE ARe tERMinatInG 9 mOnTh oLd feTUseS anD bORn bABiEs!”).

Conservatives have always been the temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and once they get theirs, fuck everyone else. Generations bought homes at affordable prices, then pulled the ladder up behind them and fuck all future generations. “Pull yourself up by your boot straps!” is sort of bullshit you get from them, but they didn’t do that at all and they’ve broken the whole system in their favor.

Now conservatives are trying to break our educational system by banning books, banning subject discussion like evolution or slavery, foregoing sex education in favor of the provably bad “abstinence education”. A country founded on “separation of church and state” is pushing harder and harder to make a “Christian nation” that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. They want a stupid electorate making tons of babies who also grow up stupid and vote for them. The majority of Americans are liberal and have genuine sympathy and compassion for others, so before they wake up and actually get involved, the conservatives have to breed up a bunch of idiots they can convince real easily to vote their way.

All that to say… I don’t think it’s going to get any better anytime soon. Get me the fuck out of this place.