It seems totally plausible to me that the pandemic let them try out some pricing strategies that they previously thought would harm them, and all kinda at the s

It seems totally plausible to me that the pandemic let them try out some pricing strategies that they previously thought would harm them, and all kinda at the same time, shifting the competition landscape toward “we’re all increasing our profit margins at once” such that they could get away with it. They maybe could have done the same thing at any time, but didn’t. People running companies don’t know everything about what will happen when they change something, and don’t have the resources to try out every idea. They definitely don’t perfectly optimize profit.