There are supposed to be two stopgaps here.
First, the fear of going to jail for committing crimes. Secondly, the social reprisal for committing crimes that hurt people.
Like seriously these CEOs shouldn't be welcome at anyone's table or gathering in polite society as a result of their actions, bare minimum. The government should also put them in prison.
Hiding behind a faceless corporation certainly helps with that somewhat, but in this case one of the egg companies involved isn't shy about telling us exactly who they are (https://hickmanseggs.com/about/). When there's no longer a working legal outlet for justice how long before people start leveraging the technology they have to identify the people who are hurting them and make their feelings known. We need a functioning legal system and accountability to keep things from getting out of hand, so it concerns me that corruption has been allowed to flourish and go unpunished.
If power is more diluted among a greater number of participants you are way more likely to see defectors, which would provide accurate pricing data to the market and cause the conspiracy to fail.
What is the point of signing a direct supply contract if you are just gonna be paying spot prices anyways? I suppose guaranteed supply priority?
It’s near universal for variable interest rate loans.
I think that’s partly right but it’s much broader than that. The incentives in capitalism in general very frequently don’t line up with what’s best for consumers or even humanity. There are numerous industries where the financial incentive to drive down cost (poor quality products) and increase price (consumer strain) is sooo strong. Far stronger than weak regulatory incentives.
So while you’re right, that’s kinda the whole point of the article too.
Even without the market structure, the incentives are not aligned to make the cheapest possible yet high quality eggs for consumers. I mean in what universe does that make more profits for companies. But that would be better for humans. You’re right, we should care that the structure of the entire economy is deprioritizing what’s best for humans. It’s supposedly only the best structure we’ve found so far.
I mean sheesh. The fines for bad behavior like this need to be like N + some % of N. Where N is the profit they made (MINIMUM), and you scale the % of profit based on how bad the issue is. Companies aren’t people. They can take bigger fines. Investors just need to account from it before they spend millions upon millions in extravagant excess on criminal CEOs like these.
This is a familiar story and you probably know the ending. There’s a big market (egg producers selling eggs to supermarkets etc.), and there’s a small market (egg producers selling extra eggs to each other on an electronic exchange). The price in the small market determines the price in the big market. Participants in the small market are also participants in the big market. You can spend a little money in the small market to move the price, which can make you a lot of money in the big market.
Not defending the bad actors here, but there's that whole "show me the incentives and I will predict the outcome" thing. If the market structure rewards manipulation, you get manipulation. The market structure doesn't have to be this way.