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

pluralistic.net

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

#471

Post by naijaboiler »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #460
gruez wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but "companies raise prices more than inflation based cost increases in production would allow for" non-sequitur. There's plenty of ways that prices can raise faster than input costs, that doesn't imply price fixing.

> that doesn't imply price fixing But Potatorac and Agri Stats do. They are price-fixing right out in the open.

same thing realpage was doing for renting.

It is 21st century version of a cartel.

Cartel via an app. It should be illegal. I was hoping feds going after RealPage would be a deterrent to that trend. But with the new admin, yeah thats over.

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

#472

Post by JumpCrisscross »

miltonlost wrote: post #427
greyface- wrote: post #125

> Inflation is one of the most politically salient factors of this decade > Inflation has lots of causes, it's true. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL Algorithmic price fixing is certainly a not-insignificant part of the issue. But it's strange to see zero acknowledgement of the massive increase in money supply over the same time period. When doing causal analysis, we need to examine both the private sector and…

ok, but does the increase in money supply explain the price collusion that businesses admit to doing? You're bringing up an issue that's not pertinent to companies criming.

> does the increase in money supply explain the price collusion that businesses admit to doing

Why would one cause of a phenomenon explain another cause?

The hypothesis "both wood and plastic burn" doesn't require wood to explain to existence of plastic.

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

#473

Post by HarryHirsch »

aianus wrote: post #446
HarryHirsch wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating prices is a recipe for disaster though That's an assertion, not a statement of fact. Pricing in natural monopolies is a mature subject, and public utilities have been a thing for over 100 years. Also, pricing for medical procedures is regulated in Europe, and it works extremely well.

The wait time for medical procedures is extremely long in places with price caps. It does not work “extremely well” at all, it results in shortages and wait times exactly as you would expect from economics 101. I’m speaking from personal experience having been through it myself but feel free to look up how many Canadians go to the US every year and pay out of pocket for more evidence.

The wait time when you can't afford the physician is infinite. That's the market at work.

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

#474

Post by ogleopoly »

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 (…

[flagged]

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

#475

Post by ogleopoly »

Arainach wrote: post #134
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 (…

Did we read the same article? There are repeated examples of cartels colluding to fix prices which aren't being prosecuted because they're using a third party (app) to coordinate the collusion rather than doing it in a board room.

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

#476

Post by ogleopoly »

bschne wrote: post #144
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.

[flagged]

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

#477

Post by naijaboiler »

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…

if top 4 independently controlled 97%, that wouldnt be bad. But rather, if they are colluding via an app, it is a caretl. pure and simple.

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

#478

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #397
scarface_74 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the law would be as such and be upheld, everyone would start making damm sure the companies they invest in are trying their hardest to adhere to the law So everyone in the US is going to do due diligence on all 500 companies in the S&P 500? Also you act as if the majority of Americans care about the law or ethics? You do remember the election we just had don’t you? The support that the majority has for 1500 crim…

No, just Fidelity and Vanguard (and S&P themselves) have to do due diligence for this sort of thing. In reality though, if $100 billion fines were on the table for companies like uber, that diligence would be priced into the stock and it would be far more effective.

> just Fidelity and Vanguard (and S&P themselves) have to do due diligence

You're proposing bankrupting millions of Americans' retirements because Uber didn't follow local taxi rules?

> if $100 billion fines were on the table for companies like uber, that diligence would be priced into the stock and it would be far more effective

Yes. Again, we're re-inventing massive fines.

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

#479

Post by JumpCrisscross »

maeil wrote: post #373
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should at least be debatable, not taboo, to consider It's not taboo, it's stupid and unworkable. You're proposing sending half of America to jail if any Fortune 500 commits a crime. That's a get-out-of-jail-free card, not meaningful deterrence. Massive. Fines. Everyone keeps trying to be creative about penalising corporations without levying massive fines. Just levy the fines. You don't need to lay anyone off, y…

Agreed that massive fines (or, in my view preferably, massive stock dilutions) are better. However > You're proposing sending half of America to jail if any Fortune 500 commits a crime. That's a get-out-of-jail-free card, not meaningful deterrence. This is a poor argument. If the law would be as such and be upheld, everyone would start making damm sure the companies they invest in are trying their hardest to adhere t…

> If the law would be as such and be upheld

It wouldn't be upheld. It couldn't be upheld. The first time somebody were stupid enough to try to uphold it, it would prompt a popular firestorm that would undo its effects. (I'm not even approaching the numerical impposibility of attempting to enforce something like that.)

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

#480

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #465
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Uber has let so many drivers on the app such that they cannot earn a minimum wage, they should stop aggressively enrolling new drivers. The number of drivers needed at any given time is completely variable. It's obviously a larger number during peak travel periods. Suppose number of drivers needed off-peak is 100 and the number needed at the peak is 500 and they have 300 drivers. They need to sign up another 200…

I mean this is just a private corporation that replaced an older private corporation (a taxi company) who in turn was trying to solve the core issue with car dependent infrastructure, which is: what does one do if one doesn't have a car? Because if you're just at home, car centered infrastructure while expensive, inefficient, and dangerous, does function. But then, if you leave home on a business trip or a vacation..…

The transit problem is largely a housing problem because mass transit needs a threshold amount of population density to function and that level is below what you get when the majority of the land area is zoned exclusively for single-family homes. But that's not something you can solve overnight -- it takes time to build stuff like that -- so people are still going to have to decide what to do today.

Moreover, even if you build more multi-family housing and mass transit, you're still not changing the nature of the issue, only the scale. There will never be 100% mass transit use because there will always be higher and lower population density areas and some proportion of people living in the latter. Then the people who live outside the reach of mass transit may want to come inside it from time to time, and you'll still have car service for that, and still have peak and off peak, and still have to answer the same questions even if there are only a third as many people doing it.

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