Yet another Hacker News

64 points iamnothere 1 hour ago 42 comments

bix6 1 hour ago | parent

Yes there is and nobody does anything about it thanks republicans. Bring back Khan.

tkel 49 minutes ago | parent

This isn't really something that could be addressed by regulation. It's a natural consequence of capitalism. It's in every industry.

http://concentrationcrisis.openmarketsinstitute.org/

tt24 46 minutes ago | parent

> It's a natural consequence of capitalism. It's in every industry.

The link you posted doesn’t support this claim.

PaulHoule 32 minutes ago | parent

I'd put it this way.

An economist would say profits go to zero if markets are really free. Like if there were no barriers to entry and consumers chose purely on price firms would keep entering and would always be incentivized to lower prices to get the sale.

There are barriers that are natural, like "I already have a relationship with vendor A", or "I really enjoy brand B", "I'll have to invest a lot of money to start this business and I won't do it if it seems unlikely I'll make a profit", etc. Then there are barriers like "we have a patent on this technology", "we own a copyright on this movie", "we control the distribution channels", "we pass laws to get keep out competitors."

Business is all about finding ways to beat the economic constraints and ensure you get a profit!

The best case you can make for our system, in my mind, is that there is competition so that vendors have an incentive to provide good products and services at fair prices. Sure, there has to be enough profit to attract investment, but our system works better for all of us when regulation encourages competition.

boxed 33 minutes ago | parent

Regulation is literally there to compensate for these types of issues with unregulated capitalism. I don't see how you could draw the conclusion that the thing we've tried many times and that works a lot of the time can't work.

shlant 28 minutes ago | parent

if it's not perfect, it's useless or destructive is a pretty common perspective in left-wing groupthink. Some examples are how everyone to the right of a left winger is a republican/fascist/etc or that it's Medicare 4 All or nothing.

nativeit 9 minutes ago | parent

Every socialist I’ve ever met has conceded that capitalism is a great mechanism for wealth generation. Just not for much else humans might value in their societies.

Zigurd 7 minutes ago | parent

I get who you're talking about, and I've encountered those tiresome people. The flavor of the week is that No Kings is a Disneyfied faux protest. This of course ignores the fact that large scale protest in the US attracts police beatings and widespread use of pain compliance techniques if it isn't presented as family friendly.

Avoiding those outcomes while attracting is steadily growing number of protesters, with the most recent attracting 8 to 9 million is in itself a huge accomplishment. Way too big to ignore and within reach of overwhelming numbers.

Which is to say you could've picked a better example than M4A. Holding that up as a minimum expectation is hardly radical.

shlant 32 minutes ago | parent

> It's a natural consequence of capitalism

Adam smith was hostile towards monopolies (which your link refers to - nothing to do with price fixing although the conclusion is the same) and his critiques being very apparent throughout Wealth of Nations. This is a common opinion with proponents of free markets.

So what specifically about capitalism makes this a "natural consequence"?

dboreham 43 minutes ago | parent

You can buy your eggs from Costco which iirc has their own egg operation these days.

OptionOfT 40 minutes ago | parent

Unsure about eggs, but they definitely have their own rotisserie chicken farm and plant.

Story goes that Tyson's chickens were becoming larger and larger and thus Tyson wanted more money.

Costco wants to keep the chicken at $5, so they starter their own plant.

ihumanable 41 minutes ago | parent

I like this part of the article.

> On Wednesday, Hickman saw evidence that Urner Barry was taking in data that would lower prices — “pull the market down,” in the words of one executive — and goaded his erstwhile competitors to respond. “As a group,” the executive followed up, “we need to bid like they vote in Chicago, early and often.”

So while they were actively breaking the law, colluding to screw over the free market, they soothed themselves with jokes about non-existent voter fraud.

some_random 12 minutes ago | parent

Chicago has a long and well documented history of corruption and machine politics.

IcyWindows 35 minutes ago | parent

The article explains that the federal and state governments did do something about it.

collinmcnulty 27 minutes ago | parent

> “The reason, in this case, not to pursue litigation is that the conduct had already been resolved, right?” [U.S. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward Jr.] went on, referencing the decline in egg prices.

They stopped this particular instance of it after the horse already left the barn and did nothing to dissuade future anticompetitive collusion.

njovin 15 minutes ago | parent

By this logic we shouldn't prosecute serial killers, just confront them with evidence to ensure they won't murder agin.

miltonlost 26 minutes ago | parent

Well, the "something" the Trump adminstration landed on (with an investigation started by Biden's team) I think for OP wasn't enough. A small monetary settlement without jail time of the executives involved is hardly the "something" that needs to be done in order to curtail this behavior and stop it in the first place. When the people who committed a crime still gets to keep any amount of their stolen money, that, to me, is less than "something".

richwater 29 minutes ago | parent

> Bring back Khan.

So she can lose more lawsuits related to her anti-silicon valley obsession? I'd rather get someone who is actually objective and takes a holisitic look at every industry.

Her blinders kept her from focusing on truly monopolies and anti-trust behavior like cable and broadbrand providers, regional hospital systems, etc.

bix6 18 minutes ago | parent

Because winning against the wealthiest people in the world is easy right?

I think you have blinders on because she challenged both those groups.

g8oz 11 minutes ago | parent

She was quite active, which is more than we can be said about some of her predecessors. Also she was hated by the right people, that's always a good sign.

Zigurd 6 minutes ago | parent

The perfect is the enemy of the better. What we have now is sure not the better.

enatiello 57 minutes ago | parent

That article was one hell of an eggsplanation.

jareklupinski 56 minutes ago | parent

*one shell

jareklupinski 56 minutes ago | parent

lightbulbs, eggs... is there something about the shape that inspires people to protect it to no end? or the fragility?

Zigurd 4 minutes ago | parent

There's a 10% chance that eggs will end humanity, so let's just take a breath and slow down all of this talk about eggs.

miltonlost 35 minutes ago | parent

> The fear that Huffman and other anti-monopolists share is that companies will read the Justice Department’s pursuit of the defendants not as a cautionary tale but as a how-to manual.

Settlements instead of jail time will only cause this behavior to continue. Economic white collar crimes need far higher punishments it seems when the only downside is you return only some of the higher profits you made.

FLeXMurphy 35 minutes ago | parent

Politico likes to skip between narrative, anecdote, and data.

The title uses the word Maybe. What does this mean in legal terms exactly?

miltonlost 33 minutes ago | parent

"Maybe" here is a rhetorical device. We were told by libertarian experts, "there is NO WAY there is collusion. It's bird flu. Duh".

Now, turns out, there was actual price manipulation occurring (Read the article. It's clear what was going on. There were text messages of their criminal conspiracy!) Now the headline is sassily saying "hey, maybe there was price collusion!" This use of "maybe" is a common expression of sarcasm.

FLeXMurphy 31 minutes ago | parent

I did read the article but as mentioned it is a word salad that weaves these three concepts together, ending up in nothing. What I'm asking is, what is the point of the article?

some_random 11 minutes ago | parent

Strictly speaking, the point of the article is to drive clicks for ad revenue and the title was optimized to do just that.

recursivedoubts 31 minutes ago | parent

There are two types of advocates for efficient markets: the true believers & the people who manipulate markets. The latter create and fund institutes & academic departments stocked with the former to convince and/or intimidate moderately educated people into disbelieving their lyin' eyes.

jimbokun 5 minutes ago | parent

Price collusion does not support efficient markets.

BashiBazouk 30 minutes ago | parent

"and not even for the lovingly cared-for, cage-free variety"

Which oddly did not increase in price much. I was in a discussion once on a forum and brought up that eggs around me (PNW) were still in the $6 for 18 when everyone else was complaining about $10 for a dozen. Next time I bought eggs, the ones I buy were the same price as always but the normal white eggs were in fact $10 a dozen...

bee_rider 19 minutes ago | parent

Which wouldn’t be that odd if the conspiracy theory was true (since your local farms presumably wouldn’t be invited to the price-fixing meetings).

cameldrv 20 minutes ago | parent

IMO price fixing is a lot more common than most people assume. The normal textbook economics say that in a pure commodity market like eggs, the average producer should make near zero profit. There are a few ways to make a profit in these industries, such as economies of scale or innovative use of byproducts, but it is very tough.

On the other hand, price fixing is relatively easy, and as long as the players don’t get too greedy and don’t leave a paper trail, they’re unlikely to be caught. The only way it usually happens is if there is a whistleblower.

The ADM lysine case years ago also threw a lot of cold water on whistleblowers when the whistleblower ended up getting more jail time than any of the other conspirators.

Anyhow, the fact you even see any successful prosecutions given how hard it is prove, and the paradoxical fact that in some commodity industries, you actually do see decent profit margins tells me that this sort of thing is actually probably very common.

Filligree 16 minutes ago | parent

Google tells me the whistleblower in that case was jailed for massive embezzlement, not for whistleblowing. Do you have reason to think this is false?

michaelchisari 10 minutes ago | parent

Are we talking about Mark Whitacre? He was a piece of work. His whistleblowing was legitimate but the massive embezzlement was also legitimate.

The Soderbergh film The Informant! starring Matt Damen is about that story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-in7L8AmU4

anonymous908213 14 minutes ago | parent

> The ADM lysine case years ago also threw a lot of cold water on whistleblowers when the whistleblower ended up getting more jail time than any of the other conspirators.

"Whitacre was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for embezzling $9.5 million from ADM at the same time he was assisting the federal price-fixing investigation."

Not that I trust Wikipedia, but I tnink if the common narrative is wrong it'd probably behoove you to pre-empt it because anyone who looks it up is going to come away feeling deceived by your statement as written.