Things like this mainly occur in markets with little competition, killing of small business causes issues like this. Much of our grievances are caused by our high level of market concentration.
And notably, we used to have a somewhat progressive corporate income tax which, at least on paper, provided a quantitative disincentive against too much consolidation. Sometimes the merger of A and B would pay a higher rate than A and B separately. And we gave that mechanism up.
An assumption required to make capitalism work efficiently is that customers have meaningful choices. Trustbusting is one of the important roles of the government, if it were functional.
We really need to bring back corporal punishment, both for petty crimes and white collar crimes. The prison sentences don't make sense for the petty crimes, and the fines don't make sense for the white collar crimes.<p>We need legalize public caning and the stocks.
The United Monopolies of America
Business as usual.<p>BP, Shell etc. make more profit from ignoring safety and environmental standards than they have to pay in fines for oil spills.<p>Same is true for FB & Co.<p>How about the possibility of a death penalty for companies like for people because companies are people, aren’t they?
Same thing keeps happening with DRAM, bread, electricity...
Related:<p><i>Egg Libor Was Also Manipulated</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756256">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756256</a> - July 2026<p><i>Justice Department Requires Egg Producers to End Coordinated Benchmark Manipulation that Artificially Inflated Prices Across the Country</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734081">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48734081</a> - July 2026
Crime is legal now if you can get rich fast enough.
So isn't this how all major US capitalist companies function now? They look at unethical behavior and fines as a cost-benefits equation. Hardly new that when people make lots of money from something, they pay off your leaders to let them off with a small fine.
> Basically, consolidation had created concentrated power, and the shock of <whatever> let them exploit it.<p>Once you see this pattern, you see it everywhere.<p>>While most normal people at the time thought someone was likely scamming them, that is not the message you heard from the industry, elite media, or economists. Throughout the alleged conspiracy, industry executives and analysts were saying that there was nothing to see except a supply shock of a disease killing lots of hens<p>The idea that something more nefarious than the bird flue was going on was very unpopular on HN at the time
That'll show em! (that they should continue with the price fixing).<p>I look forward to the day when we no longer have a pro-corruption government.
Do you have any evidence the settlement terms are corrupt? There were 17 states involved. Many of those states have governors that are not in the same party as the president. <a href="https://apnews.com/article/egg-prices-collusion-settlement-d32b05892541613df3f4e4932109ee0c" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/egg-prices-collusion-settlement-d...</a>
win/wind: get caught, pay minor tax; dont get caught, get to keep minor tax
If you want more aggressive anti trust enforcement, voters must vote better, for candidates and administrations that will aggressively enforce.
"naked conspiracy to manipulate the price of eggs from 2022-2025. "<p>Who was in charge during this time period?
2 consecutive pro-corruption governments
not the one in charge of punishing this behaviour
Surely the relevant question is who was in charge when the punishment was decided, not who was in charge when the misbehavior occurred.
People always overlook how crappy our courts are.<p>They have been absurdly pro corporate for decades. They will bend over backwards to accept an absurd legal arguments from corporate attorneys, yet they never seem to have that level of credulity for people like you and me.<p>That famous McDonalds hot coffee case, McDonalds had caused serious injuries to hundreds of people previously and demonstrated serious negligence and a willing disregard for the safety of their customers and the courts, and yet when the jury came back with a couple million dollars in punitive damages, the judge still massively reduced that penalty!<p>We have to push for courts that don't treat corporations with white gloves.
> That famous McDonalds hot coffee case, McDonalds had caused serious injuries to hundreds of people previously and demonstrated serious negligence and a willing disregard for the safety of their customers and the courts, and yet when the jury came back with a couple million dollars in punitive damages, the judge still massively reduced that penalty!<p>And then in the aftermath of that, the media turned the most well-known victim into a punchline and a oft-cited example of absurd litigation by people who don't know any better.
Reminds me of the Egg Greed Graph.<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFa2bQlWcAARYNB.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFa2bQlWcAARYNB.jpg</a><p>Why is it people have such a hard time understanding that this is what we want markets to do? If there is a scarcity of some resource, the prices rise and this motivates producers to produce more and consumers to consume less, until an equilibrium is found. On net, this means that we can have more of what we want for less effort over time. Yes, the people doing this profit from it. That's why they do it.
Collusion is not a market force and is actually highly illegal and corrupting of markets, so this doesn't seem relevant at all.
Greed isn’t “forgotten” its reined in by regulation.
Consumers don't want to understand it because they don't want to consume less.
I mean no. The LIBOR analogy is appropriate. Large, long-term egg supply contracts are fixed to an index and that index was manipulated. That's criminal conspiracy and price fixing, not just a liquid market.<p>That's notably different from say the current scrum for HBM where the demand truly came as a surprise and scarce supply gets bid up.<p>Micron's windfall is justified and natural as these things go. The egg windfall was manufactured and criminal.
As the article says, people have a hard time understanding it because it turned out not to be what's happening. I was on the other side of the debate, I thought it was absurd, but it turns out egg company executives really were sending each other messages saying "let's manipulate the price upwards so that we can make more money".