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

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

#111

Post by unethical_ban »

lesuorac wrote: post #81
unethical_ban wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet another issue with the modern US iteration of capitalism. The intentional design of the US stock market for people to depend on it for retirement, instead of getting enough wages to save their money risk-free or with government benefits. Pushing 401k and IRA, making it so that's the only viable way (other than having a high-6-digit wage) to live comfortably in retirement, is a detriment to a healthy society.

What version of capitalism wouldn't have the problem of risky investments paying out more than safe ones? The people with better ROI are just going to outbid the ones with a worse ROI for their retirement spending so if you just invest it into T-Bills you'll do worse than inflation.

I'd say a better version is one where the average citizen does not have to *rely* on a boom-bust, unregulated financial system to secure their ability to survive in retirement. Through tax, fiscal and monetary policy it would be better if people could rely on government services and normal wages to get through their elder years.

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

#113

Post by cholmdomsky »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #72
DaedalusII wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

American Bar: Prosecutors confront ugly repercussions of bias - https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2... - February 3rd, 2023 > The pervasive problems with racism in our criminal justice system has been clear. Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons at nearly five times the rate of white Americans. > The systemic racism in the system starts before the first contact and continues throu…

How do you respond when others use that information to instead assert "well of course they're incarcerated at a higher rate; they commit more, and worse crimes than -we- do!"

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

#114

Post by vondur »

john_strinlai wrote: post #38
declan_roberts wrote: post #21

We really need to bring back corporal punishment, both for petty crimes and white collar crimes. The prison sentences don't make sense for the petty crimes, and the fines don't make sense for the white collar crimes. We need to legalize public caning and the stocks.

> the fines don't make sense for the white collar crimes. why do we need to jump to caning instead of increasing the fines to something more than an operating expense? in this case, if the fine was 1000x the profits instead of the other way around, the problem would be solved, right?

In theory there will be some class action lawsuits that will come about from this now that this report is public. Those can get very expensive.

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

#115

Post by mikestew »

atmavatar wrote: post #110
ksbd-pls-finish wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in general we should be a lot more strict on sexual crimes (sa, trafficking, child abuse but not voluntary prostitution) and white collar/economic ones including wage theft, but less strict on drugs and property. drug possession and non commercial digital piracy should be decriminalized. Why? I mean, do you have a specific scientific research in mind, or is it something you feel is right? I mean, it makes sense to m…

To start with, the war on drugs was initiated by Nixon as a way to target political enemies (hippies and non-whites).

[flagged]

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

#116

Post by atmavatar »

bs7280 wrote: post #48
john_strinlai wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fines don't make sense for the white collar crimes. why do we need to jump to caning instead of increasing the fines to something more than an operating expense? in this case, if the fine was 1000x the profits instead of the other way around, the problem would be solved, right?

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.

In a large enough organization with many layers to it, it very well may be that executives were neither involved nor aware of criminal wrongdoing, and even when they are, you'll never find sufficient evidence to charge them. That's largely the point behind performing criminal acts as a business and why there's so much white-collar crime.

At least if you set fines to a level that such crimes are rarely if ever profitable, you can both remove the incentive for the organization to commit them as well as introduce a passive internal mechanism to prevent them in the first place.

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

#117

Post by MarkusQ »

MarkusQ wrote: post #10

Reminds me of the Egg Greed Graph. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFa2bQlWcAARYNB.jpg Why is it people have such a hard time understanding that this is what we want markets to do? If there is a scarcity of some resource, the prices rise and this motivates producers to produce more and consumers to consume less, until an equilibrium is found. On net, this means that we can have more of what we want for less effort over t…

Having now read the actual complaint / emails, I'd like to revise my position (if anyone cares).

Prices go up in response to shortages in a properly functioning market, but these clowns were clearly over the line and trying to manipulate the prices in addition to that.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1450281/dl

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

#118

Post by jackb4040 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5
pstuart wrote: post #3

That'll show em! (that they should continue with the price fixing). I look forward to the day when we no longer have a pro-corruption government.

If you want more aggressive anti trust enforcement, voters must vote better, for candidates and administrations that will aggressively enforce.

Unfortunately, Ivy-League research suggests the opinions of 90% of Americans have virtually no impact on legislation.. That is basically predetermined by lobbyists, paid for by the same corporations meant to be punished:

https://thinkbynumbers.org/democracy/voter-support-for-a-bil...

I think we either get a collapse into techno-feudalism, an anti-capitalist revolution (doubt), or a breakthrough savior of capitalism like FDR. The idea of "just vote better / harder" does not ring true to me or millions of people who have been hearing the same for decades while all these problems have gotten worse.

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

#119

Post by pstuart »

jackb4040 wrote: post #118
toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want more aggressive anti trust enforcement, voters must vote better, for candidates and administrations that will aggressively enforce.

Unfortunately, Ivy-League research suggests the opinions of 90% of Americans have virtually no impact on legislation.. That is basically predetermined by lobbyists, paid for by the same corporations meant to be punished: https://thinkbynumbers.org/democracy/voter-support-for-a-bil... I think we either get a collapse into techno-feudalism, an anti-capitalist revolution (doubt), or a breakthrough savior of capitalism l…

I'm not going to discount that finding, but I'd posit that some of the hubris of elected officials comes from the assumption that people are voting their party line -- they are effectively a shoo-in for a majority of voters.

Partisan politics is bad for America and we were warned by Washington. These days, many people are more loyal to their party than they are to the country.

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

#120

Post by jackb4040 »

pstuart wrote: post #94
jstanley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 consecutive pro-corruption governments

I give Dems a partial pass -- in that their leadership engages in what I consider to be genteel corruption like being soft on monopolies and other less palatable but "business as usual" type of bullshit. This is versus and administration that is aggressively doing no-bid contract to family and friends, complete disregard for the emoluments clause of the constitution, etc. Note: the nature of a 2-party system, along w…

That aggression is a powerful political force. If democrats had used the same aggression to go after this type of corruption that Trump uses to go after latin americans, they would have ironclad popular support.

The problem is that all their donors would withdraw. That contradiction is destroying them, they don't have an answer for it. It lost them the 2024 election, and will continue to do so until they invent another Obama.

Then the problem with _that_ is, all the Obama types are now calling themselves socialists.

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