this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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I've seen that stuff but it's too much to assume that this kind of coordination is the controlling factor in housing prices, or most other prices. You do need a monopoly because there's too much incentive for defecting from the conspiracy if the fixed price is too far away from what the market price would be. I think housing is expensive mainly because of supply being suppressed and wealth inequality, and UBI would begin to address the latter.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial/thanks-to-big-data-landlords-know-how-to-squeeze-the-most-out-of-renters-eb7e5f02
https://www.housingwire.com/articles/yardis-rent-setting-software-illegally-drove-rent-prices-up-for-millions-of-renters-lawsuit/
Like I mentioned in another comment, I can see how this kind of thing could make some difference in pricing by avoiding giving renters deals that wouldn't have actually been necessary to secure a lease. That's very far from being evidence that supply and demand doesn't even apply and the market price is dictated by fiat, which is an absurd conspiracy theory that doesn't follow at all from any of the articles being linked.
How do you explain cereal being $8 a box, when it was $5 pre-COVID or the million other products that now cost more? There are recordings of board meetings that were leaked of board members admitting that they inflated prices or unnecessarily kept prices inflated because they knew people would pay it.
Why could that not have an explanation that is primarily about economic forces? They printed a ton of money around when Covid happened, and the distribution of wealth shifted significantly. I can buy that businesses could be eking out a little more efficiency by coordinating, but not that we are in a secret command economy and economics is basically all fake.
the "printing of money" has fuck all to do with inflation, and mainly comes from pop-economics that is stuck somewhere around mercantilism.
Corporation simply realized that they are playing the prisoner's dilemma with prices, and are now going for the "optimal solution"
How do you figure you can increase the number of dollars in circulation, while shrinking the economy, and not have each dollar be worth less wealth as a result?
because the value of money isn't tied to the amount in existence, never has, even the rare metal backed gang is just extrapolating the value axiom by one
Two things:
We shut down the economy, and supply got disrupted because the economy isn’t a thing you can just turn off for a period of time and have it come back on again
We shut down the economy in non-equal fashion leading to some stores being forced to close while others were allowed to remain open. This led to reduced competition among those supplying the cereal. Competition works to reduce prices, and we killed the competition. The covid lockdowns were a government-enforced consolidation of the market. There are fewer players, each of which owns a larger share now.
I've got one for you chicken:
https://www.reed.senate.gov/news/releases/reed-industrial-egg-producers-price-hikes-are-suspiciously-high-and-federal-government-should-help-rein-in-unfair-market-practices
Yeah there are like a handful of companies that control egg distribution. That’s the kind of scenario where a price fixing cartel can work.