Lemme guess, were you working in google leadership when they were conspiring with Apple to unlawfully fix wages? Market forces are not magic pixie dust. The a

Lemme guess, were you working in google leadership when they were conspiring with Apple to unlawfully fix wages? Market forces are not magic pixie dust. The actions of market participants are what create the market in the first place. Colluding to fix prices, assuming the collusion is widespread enough absolutely impacts prices. That the buyers ability/willingless to pay limits the maximum amount of rent extraction (har har) doesn't change this fact: the equilibrium in the presence of competitive pricing is still different than in its absence. Even partial collusion can still have an effect similar to removing the units from the market, and this effect is outsized when the market's supply is already very limited. Say a collusion only controls 400 units in a market of 20,000 (like, say, mountain view)-- you wouldn't argue that demolishing those units would have no substantial impact on prices, so you shouldn't argue that removing price competition among them wouldn't either.