6 ms·

So anti-competitive practices are the norm in Austria but no one would dare try it in Germany? Truly bizarre theory.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
I never said nobody tried price fixing in Germany, but when it comes to consumer pricing in retail, my take is that Germany has a bigger market with more competition meaning the retailers can stomach increased competition and lower margins making it up in sheer volume. Smaller countries like Austria have much less competition, less volume sales, meaning more space for monopolies to form to charge higher prices.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  what happened to the Common Market
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Common market means that Apple can't charge for iCloud to Sweden more expensively (before tax) than what they charge to Spain, it doesn't mean that goods made in one country of the union can't have way different pricing in another based on shipping, VAT, taxes, labor, supply/demand, or straight up price gouging.
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      I'm talking about laws and enforcement of laws against anti-competitive practices like price fixing. Either enforcement is wildly different and there's a shitload of money to be made by undercutting the Austrian grocery cartel or the price fixing theory is just a socialist talking point.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        but in order to do that for groceries you have to open shops in austria which makes it much more difficult compared to products that can be sold online.
        iraqmtpizza 3y ago
        How hard is it to sell food out of a flower shop? Out of a candy store? A toy store? A gift shop? A coffee shop? A hardware store? There are retailers all over the country that could start selling food in no time flat. Starbucks is part of the Austrian grocery cartel too? And there's still no evidence that authorities are turning a blind eye to price fixing other than 'price go up.' Ask an Austrian hardware store owner why he doesn't sell food when he can supposedly undercut grocery stores and still make 5% profit on every item sold. I bet you anything he'll say that's bs.
        em-bee 3y ago
        i am not sure i understand what your argument is, or what you think mine is. your last sentence suggests that you don't believe that anyone can just undercut the big supermarket chains in austria. which is what i also don't believe. but your first sentence is saying something different, so that has me confused.
        iraqmtpizza 3y ago
        What will happen if a hardware store starts selling bread? Austrian grocery cartel thugs will show up and break his legs? Please explain in detail why you believe that coffee shops cannot sell bread without a multi-year planning and approval process. It's bs that anyone not in the supposed cartel can suddenly make huge profits on food by undercutting. Gross margins on food are almost certainly very low. THERE IS NO CARTEL. There is no room to undercut. There is no evidence of illegal price fixing other than price go up. The only cartel is the Austrian government which is the cause of the price increases--not via lack of enforcement of laws but from carrying out their policies as written. This is inconvenient to the socialist talking point about corporations fixing the price of bread with impunity.
  - tetris11 3y ago
    In Germany? It gets superceded by more ethnic retailers importing cheap produce from their relatively poorer origin countries, and offering actual competitive prices against the likes of Aldi and Lidl. I've noticed a surge in Germans going to Turkish/Arabic food stores in the last few years.
    - ccozan 3y ago
      It is true: the chicken in turkish store is quite cheaper than ANY discounter at ANY time. And quality is above average.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    This is indeed my question as well. I am Czech. We are right next to Germany. Theoretically, this is one huge Common Market. In practice, many mass-produced things are much more expensive in Czechia than in Germany, including food. I suspect that the language barrier is still real. But then again, German-speaking Austria experiences the same thing. I wish we had a common European delivery service, like the US has US Post or DHL, with the same cost structure across the entire continent. We don't, a package from Spain to Czechia is much more expensive than within either Spain or Czechia. A common European delivery service would give foreign e-shops a massive competitive edge. Suddenly, it would be more efficient to buy cheaper things in Slovenia or Bulgaria.
    - beebeepka 3y ago
      You think villains such as Macron would allow actual competition? They fucked half the continent trucking companies to enrich their own. So much for unity
manmal 3y ago
Matter of fact is that crossing the border to Germany will make your shopping 30+% cheaper. Make of that what you will, but it’s the same companies (Rewe, Aldi, Lidl).
- evbogue 3y ago
  I do this in Chicago ... Every time I could shop at Jewel or Mariano's I instead cross the border into Aldi and get similar stuff with less choices for 30% off!
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  Literally no possible way Austrian grocery stores are pulling in 43% margins. That's more than Apple makes. I can't tell if this price fixing talk is the product of overactive imaginations or a gigantic lack of imagination. If grocery stores were suddenly capable of 43 percent margins there would be absolute pandemonium in the markets and stocks would skyrocket. Retailers in every industry would be switching to food sales en masse. People would be flying food in by aircraft. You see just the opposite. Food retailers' stocks are down a lot year-to-date.
  - manmal 3y ago
    There is a lot of cross border shopping, both online and offline, so, yeah. You seem to severely underestimate shipping costs though. For perishable goods, of which you buy max €30 every few days, you’d pay at least €10 express shipping fees. And then you have no control over which pieces you‘ll get (hard avocados & soft apples). Also, shipping heavy stuff like sparkling water crates is obviously prohibitively expensive.
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      Shipping costs are price fixing now? We're talking about the brain dead price fixing theory. Stay on topic. I'm not the one underestimating shipping costs. The theorists are.
      - 3y ago
lxgr 3y ago
I wouldn't say "the norm", but Austria is lagging behind Germany in the CPI for a reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index Government project tenders are often notoriously intransparent, as ironically evidenced by the fact that the government hasn't been able to stand up a price comparison database for months, as also mentioned in TFA.

I never said nobody tried price fixing in Germany, but when it comes to consumer pricing in retail, my take is that Germany has a bigger market with more competition meaning the retailers can stomach increased competition and lower margins making it up in sheer volume. Smaller countries like Austria have much less competition, less volume sales, meaning more space for monopolies to form to charge higher prices.

iraqmtpizza 3y ago
what happened to the Common Market
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Common market means that Apple can't charge for iCloud to Sweden more expensively (before tax) than what they charge to Spain, it doesn't mean that goods made in one country of the union can't have way different pricing in another based on shipping, VAT, taxes, labor, supply/demand, or straight up price gouging.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    I'm talking about laws and enforcement of laws against anti-competitive practices like price fixing. Either enforcement is wildly different and there's a shitload of money to be made by undercutting the Austrian grocery cartel or the price fixing theory is just a socialist talking point.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      but in order to do that for groceries you have to open shops in austria which makes it much more difficult compared to products that can be sold online.
      - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
        How hard is it to sell food out of a flower shop? Out of a candy store? A toy store? A gift shop? A coffee shop? A hardware store? There are retailers all over the country that could start selling food in no time flat. Starbucks is part of the Austrian grocery cartel too? And there's still no evidence that authorities are turning a blind eye to price fixing other than 'price go up.' Ask an Austrian hardware store owner why he doesn't sell food when he can supposedly undercut grocery stores and still make 5% profit on every item sold. I bet you anything he'll say that's bs.
        em-bee 3y ago
        i am not sure i understand what your argument is, or what you think mine is. your last sentence suggests that you don't believe that anyone can just undercut the big supermarket chains in austria. which is what i also don't believe. but your first sentence is saying something different, so that has me confused.
        iraqmtpizza 3y ago
        What will happen if a hardware store starts selling bread? Austrian grocery cartel thugs will show up and break his legs? Please explain in detail why you believe that coffee shops cannot sell bread without a multi-year planning and approval process. It's bs that anyone not in the supposed cartel can suddenly make huge profits on food by undercutting. Gross margins on food are almost certainly very low. THERE IS NO CARTEL. There is no room to undercut. There is no evidence of illegal price fixing other than price go up. The only cartel is the Austrian government which is the cause of the price increases--not via lack of enforcement of laws but from carrying out their policies as written. This is inconvenient to the socialist talking point about corporations fixing the price of bread with impunity.
- tetris11 3y ago
  In Germany? It gets superceded by more ethnic retailers importing cheap produce from their relatively poorer origin countries, and offering actual competitive prices against the likes of Aldi and Lidl. I've noticed a surge in Germans going to Turkish/Arabic food stores in the last few years.
  - ccozan 3y ago
    It is true: the chicken in turkish store is quite cheaper than ANY discounter at ANY time. And quality is above average.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  This is indeed my question as well. I am Czech. We are right next to Germany. Theoretically, this is one huge Common Market. In practice, many mass-produced things are much more expensive in Czechia than in Germany, including food. I suspect that the language barrier is still real. But then again, German-speaking Austria experiences the same thing. I wish we had a common European delivery service, like the US has US Post or DHL, with the same cost structure across the entire continent. We don't, a package from Spain to Czechia is much more expensive than within either Spain or Czechia. A common European delivery service would give foreign e-shops a massive competitive edge. Suddenly, it would be more efficient to buy cheaper things in Slovenia or Bulgaria.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    You think villains such as Macron would allow actual competition? They fucked half the continent trucking companies to enrich their own. So much for unity

manmal 3y ago

Matter of fact is that crossing the border to Germany will make your shopping 30+% cheaper. Make of that what you will, but it’s the same companies (Rewe, Aldi, Lidl).

evbogue 3y ago
I do this in Chicago ... Every time I could shop at Jewel or Mariano's I instead cross the border into Aldi and get similar stuff with less choices for 30% off!
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
Literally no possible way Austrian grocery stores are pulling in 43% margins. That's more than Apple makes. I can't tell if this price fixing talk is the product of overactive imaginations or a gigantic lack of imagination. If grocery stores were suddenly capable of 43 percent margins there would be absolute pandemonium in the markets and stocks would skyrocket. Retailers in every industry would be switching to food sales en masse. People would be flying food in by aircraft. You see just the opposite. Food retailers' stocks are down a lot year-to-date.
- manmal 3y ago
  There is a lot of cross border shopping, both online and offline, so, yeah. You seem to severely underestimate shipping costs though. For perishable goods, of which you buy max €30 every few days, you’d pay at least €10 express shipping fees. And then you have no control over which pieces you‘ll get (hard avocados & soft apples). Also, shipping heavy stuff like sparkling water crates is obviously prohibitively expensive.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    Shipping costs are price fixing now? We're talking about the brain dead price fixing theory. Stay on topic. I'm not the one underestimating shipping costs. The theorists are.
    - 3y ago

lxgr 3y ago

I wouldn't say "the norm", but Austria is lagging behind Germany in the CPI for a reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index Government project tenders are often notoriously intransparent, as ironically evidenced by the fact that the government hasn't been able to stand up a price comparison database for months, as also mentioned in TFA.