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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

#181

Post by stronglikedan »

autoexec wrote: post #175

I've known about Cal-Maine's scammy practices for years. It's difficult to know which brands are associated with a group like Cal-Maine, but I did my best at one point to get a list which I still check before buying eggs. The brands I've been avoiding are: 4Grain Cage Free Egglands Best Farmhouse Eggs Land O'Lakes Fassio Egg Farms Southwest Specialty Eggs LLC Rocky Mountain Eggs Meadowcreek Foods Specialty Eggs LLC R…

Pete & Gerry's seem to be legit from the research I've done. At least, I hope so!

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

#182

Post by CrimsonCape »

tancop wrote: post #39
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.

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…

Imagine if small movie theaters could just show films at their own whim.

You could have small theaters springing up everywhere. I'm sure there's a boot ready and waiting to smash down this from happening.

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

#183

Post by autoexec »

duped wrote: post #156
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…

> "show me the incentives and I will predict the outcome" thing There are supposed to be two stopgaps here. First, the fear of going to jail for committing crimes . Secondly, the social reprisal for committing crimes that hurt people . Like seriously these CEOs shouldn't be welcome at anyone's table or gathering in polite society as a result of their actions, bare minimum. The government should also put them in priso…

Companies bribe government and install their employees in regulatory agencies to avoid the prison sentences and other legal trouble, but I seriously wonder how any of these people are able to show their face in public without having an angry mob form.

Hiding behind a faceless corporation certainly helps with that somewhat, but in this case one of the egg companies involved isn't shy about telling us exactly who they are (https://hickmanseggs.com/about/). When there's no longer a working legal outlet for justice how long before people start leveraging the technology they have to identify the people who are hurting them and make their feelings known. We need a functioning legal system and accountability to keep things from getting out of hand, so it concerns me that corruption has been allowed to flourish and go unpunished.

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

#185

Post by decimalenough »

autoexec wrote: post #180
Aurornis wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The avian flu pandemic started in early 2022. I looked up old news articles and a lot of them are dated February 2022. It really did increase egg prices. The collusion quotes in this article start in October 2022, though it doesn't say exactly when the collusion started. As far as I can tell, avian flu did create a supply shock, which did raise prices. When the avian flu problem started going away, the egg companies…

According to one lawsuit, Cal-Maine wasn't impacted at all by the avian flu, they just jacked prices up 270% anyway while using the avian flu as an excuse. > Meanwhile, in context and during the class period, egg producers like Cal-Maine increased egg prices by as much as 270% in 2023 despite having zero Avian Flu outbreaks in their egg laying hen layers on Cal-Maine affiliated farms ( https://www.classaction.org/new…

On its face, this is a normal market response: if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up.

The criminal conspiracy part here was manipulating the index prices in tandem so that everybody raised prices in lockstep.

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

#186

Post by weaksauce »

john_strinlai wrote: post #90
weaksauce wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any other crime you get caught doing you do not get the benefits of the ill gotten gains. why should this be any different?

i am saying the fine should exceed the ill gotten gains. so, they would not get the benefits

yeah, I'm in agreement with you. other crimes the ill gotten gains are taken back and additional penalties are levied against the perpetrator. just saying why should these crimes be treated any different?

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

#187

Post by autoexec »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #169
uejfiweun wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were stuck in the Gilded Age for decades before Roosevelt came along and started big trust-busting efforts. I expect a similar situation to play out here. We're probably in the middle of it in retrospect.

Al Franken has related the difficulty he had convincing Democrats and Bernie Sanders to sign on to fighting the Comcast Time-Warner merger until they determined it was beneficial to themselves to oppose it.

Do you have a source for that? I'm curious to learn more about how hard it was to convince Sanders that the merger was a bad idea.

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

#188

Post by decimalenough »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #172
a123b456c wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haircutting doesn't scale. It is labor intensive and there is no way to increase productivity.

QB House and its many imitators would like a word. It's a genuine mystery to me why these "fast haircut" chains are ubiquitous in Asia but unknown in the West.

https://medium.com/@justin.tan/qb-house-back-to-basics-busin...

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

#190

Post by autoexec »

decimalenough wrote: post #185
autoexec wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to one lawsuit, Cal-Maine wasn't impacted at all by the avian flu, they just jacked prices up 270% anyway while using the avian flu as an excuse. > Meanwhile, in context and during the class period, egg producers like Cal-Maine increased egg prices by as much as 270% in 2023 despite having zero Avian Flu outbreaks in their egg laying hen layers on Cal-Maine affiliated farms ( https://www.classaction.org/new…

On its face, this is a normal market response: if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up. The criminal conspiracy part here was manipulating the index prices in tandem so that everybody raised prices in lockstep.

> if demand is unchanged and overall supply goes down, prices go up.

How much did supply go down considering that Cal-Maine Foods, Inc is (or at least was) the single largest supplier of eggs in the country? Ultimately their profits increased 718% (https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/business/egg-profits-cal-main...) which seems unlikely to be explained away by reduced supply. They were price gouging and fixing prices with the other large suppliers to prevent consumers from just switching to those brands while small egg producers may have had issues with avian flu keeping their fairly priced products off the shelves.

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