The Egg Bandits Made a Thousand Times the Fine They Just Paid for Price Fixing

Post by gruez » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

scottlamb wrote: post #77

gruez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for things like shoplifting and vandalism it should be double or triple damages with no prison What do you think the chances of being caught shoplifting is? If it's less than 50-33%, then you have the same problem as the OP where it makes sense to shoplift.

> What do you think the chances of being caught shoplifting is? If it's less than 50-33%, then you have the same problem as the OP where it makes sense to shoplift. Don't we already? Police and DAs at least here in California are not serious about punishing shoplifters AFAICT. I hear people say this is specifically because of the 2014 Proposition 47 (raising the threshold for felony theft from $400 to $950). Not sure…

Post by jackb4040 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #100

lelandfe wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does permit something individuals don’t have: the internal investigation. The internal investigation has determined that our CEO had no knowledge of this, and that the bloody pig mask was all the idea of the people who make less money, and also we fired the CEO for unrelated reasons.

>The internal investigation has determined that our CEO had no knowledge of this, and that the bloody pig mask was all the idea of the people who make less money, and also we fired the CEO for unrelated reasons. That's exactly how the criminal justice system should work? If you can't prove a particular person is responsible, you don't have a case. That's exactly why they prosecuted the company as a whole instead, bec…

Post by jackb4040 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

john_strinlai wrote: post #49

bs7280 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Executives will be more afraid of being sent to prison for criminal charges, than having someone else's money get spent on fines. We can do both - increase the fines and set a precedent of arresting executives when their company does criminal things.

sure, prison time for some criminal stuff is cool too. i am more pushing back against the call for corporal punishment like caning

Post by jackb4040 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:08 PM UTC

zie wrote: post #71

devilbunny wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The owners of corporations are mostly pension funds and the like.

Sort of True-ish. There are lots of different kinds of ownership. Ownership with little to no say in how things are run to ownership with basically all the control. If you are an owner with all the control, i.e. you are on the board or in corporate leadership(CEO/CFO/etc), then hey guess what,there is a really great cell here at the local prison just waiting for you, depending on how involved you were. If you are an…

Post by edoceo » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 6:12 PM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #60

stickfigure wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was addressed by Matt Levine in today's Money Stuff. The problem was not the presence or lack of competition, it was a technical failure of the market structure. Matt: This is a familiar story and you probably know the ending. There’s a big market (egg producers selling eggs to supermarkets etc.), and there’s a small market (egg producers selling extra eggs to each other on an electronic exchange). The price in…

While Matt is technically correct, it's much easier to maintain a conspiracy like this when you have a small number of participants with a high concentration of share. If power is more diluted among a greater number of participants you are way more likely to see defectors, which would provide accurate pricing data to the market and cause the conspiracy to fail.