>> Why in god's name would they just lower their prices? To be nicer to people? Um, yes? Most businesses actually work that way in an attempt to maintain custo

>> Why in god's name would they just lower their prices? To be nicer to people? Um, yes? Most businesses actually work that way in an attempt to maintain customer loyalty. I'm not saying every business works that way, but that doesn't mean there are none at all. >> Do you understand how capitalism works? Yes. >> They already dominate their market at the current prices. That does not mean they wouldn't want to offer the best value to their customers. Just because a business dominates a market doesn't mean a competitor couldn't move in to undercut their artificially high prices to gain market share. Unless they have a monopoly provided to them by law, a business is at its best offering the best value to their customer while maintaining a decent profit. As free market capitalism suggests. >> Keeping them artificially high is part of how you have sales anyway, which drive consumer interest. I think you misunderstand the point of sales for many stores. Some unethical places may keep their prices artificially high so they can have "sales" to bring in customers. These types of businesses are run by stupid people. The traditional and proper use of sales is to have loss leader items that bring people into the store in hopes they will purchase something else at regular prices while they happen to be in the store to get the sales items they came for. Loss leader items in terms of items sold at near cost or even maybe below costs. Wal-Mart and many other grocery stores do this very well, as an example. Black Friday in the US as another. >> were you looking for that as a kind of admission of compassion? I honestly don't understand the point of this comment. >> But the ability to lower prices does not at all imply that they would. This is totally true, I never claimed anything different. They are free to set their prices at anything they want and their customers are free to react to it in any way they want. That is the whole point behind the usage of the word "could" that was used by both of us.