You're putting words into my mouth -- I didn't say anything about what regulation I favor. First and foremost, I was just pointing out that whether there was p

You're putting words into my mouth -- I didn't say anything about what regulation I favor. First and foremost, I was just pointing out that whether there was price fixing is independent of how widespread the price fixing was, or whether there were alternatives, or to what extent it affected prices in the rest of the market. But the now great great grandparent's point about collusion interfering with fair market value was valid and becomes more true the smaller the number of major players there are in a market. The collusion doesn't even have to be explicit. Cutting prices hurts everyone in the market if everyone does it. My reference to Jabba the Hut fiction was hyperbolic, but I do think the smaller players (and thus typically the ones with lower quality) tend to be the ones that don't join in on the collusion. I certainly don't believe in the infallibility of markets. I don't spend too much thinking about economics, but one thought I've had is that we should tax collusion -- make companies pay a tax proportional to, say, the logarithm of their number of employees / worth, and otherwise keep things pretty laissez-faire (with regulation where needed).