> Okay, so when the bird flu hit and suddenly there were way less eggs to go around, what if companies had kept egg prices exactly the same? The result of that

> Okay, so when the bird flu hit and suddenly there were way less eggs to go around, what if companies had kept egg prices exactly the same? The result of that would be that all the eggs would sell out and we'd have empty shelves, since there literally weren't enough eggs to go around. > But that didn't happen. Eggs became more scarce, and therefore more valuable, and thus prices universally went up. People who still wanted eggs badly enough and could afford the high prices paid a premium for them. Other people bought and ate something else instead. So the egg supply went down. Yes, you'd expect to see empty shelves, because there were fewer eggs to buy, and they're useful. Instead what we saw were shelves as full as before, because of prices went up. What that means is, people were already buying fewer eggs, because the supply was so much lower, but because of prices going up, people bought even fewer than that. There were a shortage of eggs, and yet because of prices being raised, they couldn't even sell through on the eggs they had. How much of the reduction in egg consumption was due to reduced supply, and how much was due to raised prices? No idea. What would I expect to see? If the egg supply dropped precipitously, I'd expect a company which makes their money selling eggs to make less money. Or raise prices so that they make the same amount of money. Instead, they raised prices so they made way, way more money.