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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

#121

Post by sejje »

cholmdomsky wrote: post #113
toomuchtodo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!"

I reassess and begin living in reality.

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

#122

Post by indoordin0saur »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #83
Taronar wrote: post #8

Things like this mainly occur in markets with little competition, killing of small business causes issues like this. Much of our grievances are caused by our high level of market concentration.

I'm not typically a fan of government intervention in markets but Canada's marketing boards do stop this sort of concentration, so while we have higher average prices we do not get massive swings in prices, nor the physical conditions that come directly out of production consolidation that lead to events (or justifications) like avian flu at the same scale.

It's exactly the opposite as you say though, no? Canada has much more market concentration than the US, probably a major cause of the higher prices: https://alphabridge.co/economy/canadas-oligopoly-one-big-cou...

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

#123

Post by mvdtnz »

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…

And do you think the situation in California is a good situation?

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

#124

Post by a123b456c »

joe_the_user wrote: post #89
Taronar wrote: post #8

Things like this mainly occur in markets with little competition, killing of small business causes issues like this. Much of our grievances are caused by our high level of market concentration.

Most true small businesses can't exist in markets with a lot of competition. Highly competitive markets have a lot of fluctuation and businesses with little capital fold when there's a downturn. In fact, most markets naturally go from high competition to monopoly or oligopoly. You can see this in chips, cars, airplanes, steel, ecommerce(Amazon) and beyond. Indeed, many oligopoly situations only fail to be monopolies…

False. There is no Economic Law of Consolidation such as you posit here. Haircuts are a mature market, yet plenty of small providers thrive. Counterexamples to your extraordinary claim abound.

The actual economics in highly competitive markets depend on what is known as the Minimum Efficient Scale, which in turn depends on the shape of the cost function.

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

#125

Post by yieldcrv »

> Trump let big egg producers off the hook for what looks like a brazen multi-year conspiracy. Still, egg prices did drop as a result of the investigation.

I honestly hate how Presidents are attributed to market functions

I hate how partisans do that pretty religiously

while the state functions pretty autonomously in parallel, the investigation and multi agency actions helped crater the price of eggs very quickly

But even that summary is trying so hard to appease rabid partisan’s feelings so they'll stick around for the parts that don't add power to their cause

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

#126

Post by ceejayoz »

DaedalusII wrote: post #47
tancop wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we dont need new punishments, the system is just backwards. for things like shoplifting and vandalism it should be double or triple damages with no prison. corporate fraud, cartels, pollution, big time tax evasion has to come with 20+ year sentences and fines based on your income like a traffic violation in norway. flat fines just dont work when the criminal is rich. in general we should be a lot more strict on sexua…

[flagged]

> they dont get to pick!

They absolutely get to pick!

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-1-part-i-chapter-...

"“Prosecutorial discretion” is the authority of an agency charged with enforcing a law to decide whether to enforce, or not to enforce, the law against someone. USCIS, like other law enforcement agencies, has prosecutorial discretion and exercises it every day. In the immigration context, the term applies not only to the decision to issue a Notice to Appear (NTA), but also to a broad range of other discretionary immigration enforcement decisions."

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

#127

Post by jackb4040 »

pstuart wrote: post #119
jackb4040 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess my point is, FPTP / lesser-evilism / party lines are all tools corporate power uses to explain why outcomes keep diverging from desires within our nominal democracy. It's all well and good to lament partisanship, but Washington's warning doesn't really help us find a solution. It was already falling apart as he made it.

I do think Bernie Sanders was an attempt by our collective society to produce a new FDR. The fact that he was stopped so easily points to collapse as the next most likely outcome.

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

#128

Post by nitwit005 »

devilbunny wrote: post #31
Henchman21 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with this we need the revocation of corporate charters and the liquidation of all assets belonging to the owners of any corp that is dissolved in this manner. The penalty for fucking over the public in general should be a lifetime of poverty.

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

Good. It's purely positive if they take losses from investing in companies engaging in fraud, as it'll encourage them not to do that.

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

#129

Post by gustavus »

unethical_ban wrote: post #111
lesuorac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have Social Security though and that doesn't seem to be working much better.

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

#130

Post by cjbgkagh »

kevmo wrote: post #102
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #91

I did not realize the egg crisis was found to be price fixing operation. As I recall during the whole thing the news was non-stop about how it was related to broad-based inflation, chicken culling for avian flu, etc. Seems like all that was a lie, or at least merely a half-truth.

[flagged]

I call it 3 scams in a trench coat pretending to be a real economy. Though obviously there are more than 3 going. You kinda have to be in one of the grifts in order to pay the costs of the others, like work in military contracting in order to pay for healthcare. That’s why crackdowns on fraud, collusion, and other such grifts, rackets, and anticompetitive actions in the US is doomed to fail, those who benefit from it tend to be the most reliable political donors. It’s hard to go after one and not go after the others and that would upset a lot of politically powerful people, this results in an armistice and not going after any.
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