3 ms·

With price fixing, would-be competitors cooperate and function as a monopoly. That’s not a functioning market. These services act as a centralization point to a

• jml7c5 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line? Say there was some open-source pricing tool that runs completely locally, operating only on public data and not sharing information with others. Would you consider it price fixing if it became standard practice to use it?
  • simoncion 3y ago
    > Would you consider it price fixing if it became standard practice to use it? If competing businesses agreed to use the tool and not deviate (or not deviate more than a set amount) from its suggested price, then yes, that's totally price fixing. I believe that it's price fixing even if they merely agree to use it to inform their starting offering price. In some other comment thread, folks mentioned that if a landlord outsources rent price investigation to a third party, that third party has to be __very__ careful about working with other landlords, so as to not even accidentally engage in price fixing by recommending prices to multiple competing landlords.