4 ms·

If it's illegal to fix prices by collaboration, it should also be illegal to fix prices by implicit collaboration. I'm under the impression this would be clear

If it's illegal to fix prices by collaboration, it should also be illegal to fix prices by implicit collaboration. I'm under the impression this would be clearly illegal if all these rental companies got in a room with some pencils and calculators and binders full of price data to do the same thing. Why is it different if they do that via a middleman?

NickC25 2y ago
>Why is it different if they do that via a middleman? Because injecting a middleman into the situation creates a facade of plausible deniability. Obviously, such deniability is complete nonsense to anyone with eyes and a brain, but here we are.
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  Why is the very existence of such a middleman not illegal? I'm sure their sales pitch is more subtle than "we'll help you get away with price fixing", but it should be obvious that the effect is the same.
  - plorkyeran 2y ago
    Paying someone to perform a market analysis to help you determine how much to charge is an incredibly normal thing to do. It only becomes illegal collusion when enough people are paying that single person that they start being able to control the market.
- Teever 2y ago
  What you may call a facade of plausible deniability others would call racketeering. There are laws against this kind of behavior what is lacking is sufficient enforcement of them.
  - NickC25 2y ago
    I figured doing so would be a tad too on-the-nose in my original post, but yes, it is a clear cut case of racketeering, if not outright fraud. Agree completely regarding lack of sufficient enforcement. Honestly we could use a serious wave of RICO enforcement at the highest level in this country, targeting (but not limited to) pharma giants, major "healthcare" and & insurance companies, big banks, etc.
cfcf14 2y ago
It's not - the FTC released a statement on this very topic a few months ago: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fix...
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  We won't really know the answer until SCOTUS rules on it.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    We already know the answer. The question is, will the supreme Court allow a monopoly price setter anyways?
  - SllX 2y ago
    I don’t see this even making it to SCOTUS unless there’s a circuit split somewhere.
EGreg 2y ago
[flagged]
- dtech 2y ago
  You can exactly ban what emerges naturally. That's the whole point of regulations.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    [dead]
  - EGreg 2y ago
    Okay. Ban farting. Ban acne. Ban sex. Go ahead. Even drugs are tough to ban, and we’re talking about natural emergent human behavior. In polygamous countries, they are able to enforce laws against adultery, for example. But they can’t change the 80/20 pareto distribution of 80 percent of the women being attracted to 20 percent of the men. They can’t change the fact that men can have multiple children at a time and repopulate after a war, while women cannot (I am not talking about triplets here). Any society in history that tried to enforce equality for men and women in, say, the armed forces, would be weeded out through natural selection. Men are just more expendable, and also more polygamous etc. This is all due to evolutionary selection pressures on societies. And polygamous societies have more war because they have a lot more frustrated young men (literal not figurstive incels due to the law polygamy and anti adultery law enforcement, who then join some movement led by old men etc partly to get women). Western liberal societies have decriminalized adultery and premarital sex. They unsqueezed the balloon in one area and so have less violence. But now the same pareto distribution plays out, just in the premarital years. 20% of the men sleep with 80% of the women, unofficially and hush hush. Then most people eventually pair off “having sown their wild oats” and raise children together for a while. You can replace the war with business, brawn with money, but the natural results will still be there. Banks will still lend easiest to those who need it the least. Investors will still invest in startups because others do. Money won’t be allocated to the many startups that need it. Try to ban it. See what happens.
  - EGreg 2y ago
barryrandall 2y ago
Is it any better if the data is scraped from public sources and sold as a real-time analytics tool?
- nico401 2y ago
  I strongly believe so, the same way a business can check competitors' prices. If it's public, it's fair game. Note: I am biased, I'm working on a platform that does exactly that, taking an orthogonal direction to real estate analytics: https://www.hellodata.ai https://www.hellodata.ai. Using 100% public data.
maerF0x0 2y ago
If that's true then NIMBYism is also collaboration to inflate property prices. Perhaps we should also be cracking down on the policies that restrict supply despite such obviously high, and rich, demand.

NickC25 2y ago

>Why is it different if they do that via a middleman? Because injecting a middleman into the situation creates a facade of plausible deniability. Obviously, such deniability is complete nonsense to anyone with eyes and a brain, but here we are.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago
Why is the very existence of such a middleman not illegal? I'm sure their sales pitch is more subtle than "we'll help you get away with price fixing", but it should be obvious that the effect is the same.
- plorkyeran 2y ago
  Paying someone to perform a market analysis to help you determine how much to charge is an incredibly normal thing to do. It only becomes illegal collusion when enough people are paying that single person that they start being able to control the market.
Teever 2y ago
What you may call a facade of plausible deniability others would call racketeering. There are laws against this kind of behavior what is lacking is sufficient enforcement of them.
- NickC25 2y ago
  I figured doing so would be a tad too on-the-nose in my original post, but yes, it is a clear cut case of racketeering, if not outright fraud. Agree completely regarding lack of sufficient enforcement. Honestly we could use a serious wave of RICO enforcement at the highest level in this country, targeting (but not limited to) pharma giants, major "healthcare" and & insurance companies, big banks, etc.

cfcf14 2y ago

It's not - the FTC released a statement on this very topic a few months ago: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fix...

ceejayoz 2y ago
We won't really know the answer until SCOTUS rules on it.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  We already know the answer. The question is, will the supreme Court allow a monopoly price setter anyways?
- SllX 2y ago
  I don’t see this even making it to SCOTUS unless there’s a circuit split somewhere.

EGreg 2y ago

[flagged]

dtech 2y ago
You can exactly ban what emerges naturally. That's the whole point of regulations.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  [dead]
- EGreg 2y ago
  Okay. Ban farting. Ban acne. Ban sex. Go ahead. Even drugs are tough to ban, and we’re talking about natural emergent human behavior. In polygamous countries, they are able to enforce laws against adultery, for example. But they can’t change the 80/20 pareto distribution of 80 percent of the women being attracted to 20 percent of the men. They can’t change the fact that men can have multiple children at a time and repopulate after a war, while women cannot (I am not talking about triplets here). Any society in history that tried to enforce equality for men and women in, say, the armed forces, would be weeded out through natural selection. Men are just more expendable, and also more polygamous etc. This is all due to evolutionary selection pressures on societies. And polygamous societies have more war because they have a lot more frustrated young men (literal not figurstive incels due to the law polygamy and anti adultery law enforcement, who then join some movement led by old men etc partly to get women). Western liberal societies have decriminalized adultery and premarital sex. They unsqueezed the balloon in one area and so have less violence. But now the same pareto distribution plays out, just in the premarital years. 20% of the men sleep with 80% of the women, unofficially and hush hush. Then most people eventually pair off “having sown their wild oats” and raise children together for a while. You can replace the war with business, brawn with money, but the natural results will still be there. Banks will still lend easiest to those who need it the least. Investors will still invest in startups because others do. Money won’t be allocated to the many startups that need it. Try to ban it. See what happens.
- EGreg 2y ago

barryrandall 2y ago

Is it any better if the data is scraped from public sources and sold as a real-time analytics tool?

nico401 2y ago
I strongly believe so, the same way a business can check competitors' prices. If it's public, it's fair game. Note: I am biased, I'm working on a platform that does exactly that, taking an orthogonal direction to real estate analytics: https://www.hellodata.ai https://www.hellodata.ai. Using 100% public data.

maerF0x0 2y ago

If that's true then NIMBYism is also collaboration to inflate property prices. Perhaps we should also be cracking down on the policies that restrict supply despite such obviously high, and rich, demand.