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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926683 > Specifically, every morning, RealPage provides participating Less
by vabavhasb 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34926683
> Specifically, every morning, RealPage provides participating Lessors with recommended price levels. ... If Lessors wish to diverge from the “approved pricing” they must submit reasoning for doing so and await approval. ... But RealPage emphasizes the need for discipline among participating Lessors and urges them that for its coordinated algorithmic pricing to be the most successful in increasing rents, participating Lessors must adopt RealPage’s pricing at least 80% of the time.
- WalterBright 4y agoNobody is required to follow RealPage.
- vabavhasb 4y agoWho implied they were required to? > In one neighborhood in Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of apartments were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage.
- WalterBright 4y agoUsing software for information and advice doesn't mean they use it to set prices.
- vabavhasb 4y agoI would politely recommend reading the article, if you would like to comment on it. > As former FTC chairwoman Maureen K. Ohlhausen put it, as quoted in ProPublica: "Is it OK for a guy named Bob to collect confidential price strategy information from all the participants in a market and then tell everybody how they should price?' [Ohlhausen] said. 'If it isn’t OK for a guy named Bob to do it, then it probably isn’t OK for an algorithm to do it either."
- WalterBright 4y agoAdvising people to do something is not collusion unless they take that advice.
- hinkley 4y agoAs best I understand, for some charges you only have to think out loud about something hard enough to get charged for a lesser charge of Conspiracy. If you do a thing and I planned it, we could get charged with a whole host of things. If I send you to buy a gun to commit the crime and oops that was an undercover cop, then a few warrants later we could be in a lot of trouble just for intent and opportunity.
- WalterBright 4y agoCollusion isn't a criminal offense.
- vabavhasb 4y agoA quick sanity check of that statement using Google pulls this from the FTC's website: > Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors to raise, lower, maintain, or stabilize prices or price levels. Collusion doesn't stop being collusion just because one introduces a middleman.
- WalterBright 4y agoSounds way overbroad to me.
- lozenge 4y agoYou're thinking of a cartel. Just sharing information can be collusion even if the parties haven't agreed to form a cartel.
- WalterBright 4y agoIf I'm going to sell my car, I'll research what similar cars are selling at. Is that collusion?