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It's not a crime if we do it with an app

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Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#141

Post by shkkmo »

istultus wrote: post #40

It really does suck that US companies have belatedly figured out that demand is elastic and jacked up the prices. Where I live that happened long ago. The thing is that he doesn't present any alternative. I know he's some variant of a communist, so does he suggest government control for everything? As if that solved anything? I guess what you find on empty market shelves is cheaper. Truly a question - what's your sol…

I think the classic suggestion is to breakup monopolies and block large mergers. We don't need to have people stop buying Pepsi or Coke, we need the company that sells Coke to not own a giant swath of the entire drink market.

Although specifically here, I think we need new regulations broadly banning the type of data broker price fixing that is discussed in this article.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#142

Post by paulddraper »

ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

Please cite example of farting in the wrong courtroom.

Either that, or your post is hyperbolic.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#143

Post by adminu »

Eextra953 wrote: post #23

Does anybody know whats stopping ethical and slightly less greedy companies from outcompeting these conglomerates? Its a question I keep coming back to because if the market were efficient then competitors should be able to use that same data to undercut big potato (or big whatever). This never seems to happen.

An oligopol often has some kind of moat due to anti competitive behaviour. E.g. the potatoe argument from the article, where McCain makes it hard to buy potatoes from anybody but them as they are part of a packaged deal.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#144

Post by bschne »

constantcrying wrote: post #103

What a terrible article. The title and the first paragraph talk about how new business models are circumventing existing laws, which seems fair enough and actually quite an interesting subject. Then, there is a switch to the most traditional of businesses with the most traditional business models. Who, the author argues, are engaging in price gauging. In the second paragraph he claims that apps cause this inflation (…

This is what has repeatedly bothered me about Doctorow, he writes quite compellingly on the surface, but the arguments are often sketchy at best, and the pandering to/expression of outrage often dominates any attempts at clear analysis.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#145

Post by ordinaryradical »

stickfigure wrote: post #97
fny wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current administration, however, plans to let M&A run wild. Oligopolies don’t need an app for uncoordinated price fixing. The fact that there’s a cartel that controls 97% of the frozen potato market is wild . This will only get worse without breakups.

> cartel that controls 97% of the frozen potato market This is a weird and emotionally loaded statement. Properly stated, the top four frozen potato producers have 97% of the market share . That doesn't sound odd? In a mature market with very little technology innovation (potatoes) and very little geographic specificity (frozen), how many companies would you expect? How many laundry detergent companies are there? How…

It’s different because they are using data at scale to collectively decide on pricing via Potatotrac, ya know, the title of the article…?

The issue of having four players is that it makes the coordination problem of colluding relatively easier, but they are price fixing via giant data warehouse which is algorithmically suggesting how to price.

It’s like Real Pages for potatoes, or at least this is what the article claims and what is interesting.

In an era where you can have a computer churn through a trillion datapoints to arrive at an optimal price, is it even possible to have competitive pricing as was once conceived of? The elements of uncertainty and risk have been so thoroughly eliminated that inflation seems almost unstoppable as you have such a strong signal for what the market will bear.

It’s an interesting question for the nature of free markets but few seem to have caught on to this dynamic…

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#146

Post by zemo »

vtashkov wrote: post #95
gmueckl wrote: post #76

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently.…

[flagged]

The argument that you are making is that a single entity controlling the pricing of a good is bad. That's not a counter-argument, it's the same argument. It's bad when a government does it, it's bad when an oligopoly does it. More than one thing can be bad.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#147

Post by paulddraper »

hermannj314 wrote: post #32

This is the way our world works. If you steal a potato, you will be arrested immediately and the case will be resolved in a few weeks or months. If you illegally fix the price of potatoes and steal billions from the market, you will be allowed to operate for years in the open while a lengthy civil procedure eventually may ask you to give 1 or 2% of what you stole back in fines. Don't blame the potato theives or potat…

I virtually guarantee you will not be arrested immediately.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#148

Post by wat10000 »

vtashkov wrote: post #95
gmueckl wrote: post #76

This is all a result of a lack of active market regulation. The government needs to step in actively to keep a free market from collapsing into one of the natural end states. But the US has consistently been far too passive and accepts greedy companies far too readily. If a single company can sell almost 100% of an essential good, they need to atomatically lose the power to set their prices and margins independently.…

[flagged]

My local power company is a monopoly with rates heavily regulated by the state. My electricity is cheap and reliable.

Newsflash: anything can be done badly. Cherry-picking the worst examples proves nothing.

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#149

Post by KennyBlanken »

Ekaros wrote: post #47
hermannj314 wrote: post #32

This is the way our world works. If you steal a potato, you will be arrested immediately and the case will be resolved in a few weeks or months. If you illegally fix the price of potatoes and steal billions from the market, you will be allowed to operate for years in the open while a lengthy civil procedure eventually may ask you to give 1 or 2% of what you stole back in fines. Don't blame the potato theives or potat…

Let's be honest hear. If you go to store and steal sack of potato. I doubt either the store or police will even attempt to track you anymore... Retail theft is just left to happen.

Nope. Theft and shrink (from employees) accounts for 5% of losses and it has not gone up - at all - from historical trends.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth...

https://www.vera.org/news/the-truth-about-retail-theft

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/retail-theft-in-us-cities...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/shoplifting-retail-c...

Re: It's not a crime if we do it with an app

#150

Post by swatcoder »

amazingamazing wrote: post #80
ryandrake wrote: post #17

More like "It's not a crime if a corporation does it." The US treats corporations with kid gloves. They get away with so much, and in those rare cases where a regulatory body does anything , it's often just a strongly worded letter, a warning, a threat to one day send a strongly worded letter, or, in really rare, extreme cases, a company official gets called in to say a few words in front of Congress. Nobody goes to…

i find this comment strange. limited liability is by design

The "design" is sensitive to which liabilities are limited for whom.

Shielding marginal or non-voting investors from disproportionate responsibility for things essentially out of their control transfers risk from them, and makes it easier to move money to useful places. That's great!

Shielding key decision-makers and large-stake owners from responsibility for actions performed at their behest is not so much. And in fact, the pure "design" of limited liability has means for "piercing the veil" and keeping these individuals responsible and for wholly disolving corporate charters.

It just turns out that once commercial enterprise grows big enough, or is steered by influential enough leadership, capturing regulation and enforcement to serve their own interests, they can undermine those safeguards and assert a kind of wholesale corporate immortality and immunity that completely undermines the "design" -- a bug in the implementation of that design, if you would.

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