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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2566 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 22, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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That wasn’t in the reply I replied to. You are asking me why my explanation for X does not reply to the non-existent question Y. In fact, you asked Y three posts up, and to that I replied

You never properly answered it so I asked again.

Now clearly this answers your question as to why all fast food locations can’t arbitrarily raise their prices to infinity. They compete with grocery stores, which have more competition over prices due to the variety of bulk retail outlets, online grocery orders, and so on, and which the consumer plans trips to in advance. This is different from having a limited number of expedient food options near your work.

This is a proper answer. However, it contradicts with what you said earlier,

It’s an entrenched mythology of capitalism that companies lower prices based on competition.

I don't see why McDonald's needs to lower prices to compete with grocery stores and bulk retail outlets, but not to compete with Wendy's.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-mcdonalds-prices-are-wildly-different-from-one-location-to-another_l_65665af4e4b03ac1cd17b7d9

I'll grant you that apparently I'm wrong and haven't travelled enough, or at least haven't documented enough McDonald's prices. But there's still nothing showing McDonald's locations lower their prices to shut down competitors then raise them again.

We have to ask, (1) should the developer of Ozempic make as much money as possible, or (2) should the developer of Ozempic make approximately the amount of money that a reasonable developer would consider justifies his research. My position is the second one. (If this is too many words of commas let me know and I can rephrase). Imagine how evil it would be if the scientist who discovered penicillin tried to maximize profit.

I think cases where IP is involved is complex. I agree that stumbling onto the right formula shouldn't be a license to print massive amounts of money for all eternity. I think people should get a few years to be very wealthy, then it should be simple for anyone else to use the same formula to join the open market. Probably shorter than what we currently have and definitely it should be simpler to get permission from the FDA to compete. But in the meantime before IP expires, the developers should get to make as much money as they want. That's how you properly incentivize people to search for amazing drugs instead of just good drugs, since if either way they'd just get enough money to incentivize looking, no one would look for harder but better drugs.

I'd like you to address nvidia too, since while they have a lot of IP I'm sure, a big part of why they make so much money is that no other company can make chips as good as them, even if they didn't have IP. If you limit their profit, they'd have no incentive to open another factory or research team, since they'd already have maxed out on money they can make.

Replying to a comment you make further down:

look no further than Stanley Cups, why should one company make so much profit on cups just because they have the funds to psychologically manipulate the public’s desires

They aren't simply "psychologically manipulating" the public. The public can think for themselves. The public likes being expensive things to show off how hip(and wealthy) they are, they do it all the time. Diamond rings, luxury cars and watches and clothes, meals at pricey restaurants, art, wine. All those things might be better in some small ways than their budget competitors, but the vast majority of the price differential comes from people wanting to show off their wealth and taste. And if they want to show off their wealth and taste, someone will inevitably sell them the opportunity to do so.

I answered it but I understand you need clarification and don’t mind.

why does mdonald’s not need to lower for Wendy’s, but does for wholesale

Grocery stores will always need to have lower prices than an expedient restaurant like McDonald’s, otherwise few would eat at home. Consumers are more likely venture far away for groceries, because it can be cost-saving to do so. This is different from having only a few fast food places to go to on your lunch break. There may be dozens of grocers, some of which will not know their competitors’ pricings. And because the food is already purchased in bulk and perishable, grocers need to sell some food at a discount otherwise they lose more money in the whole. This is all very different than a fast food place with very efficient supply chains.

But if you’re wondering, “according to your argument, we should still see grocery stores pricefix with other grocers!” Indeed, we do:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada

retailers and supermarket chains reached a secret agreement among themselves to artificially inflate the price of bread at the wholesale and retail levels from late 2001 to 2015[1] (some sources stated that the price fixing continued into 2017[2]). The Competition Bureau of Canada alleged, in court documents released 31 January 2018, that seven Canadian bread companies committed indictable offences[3] in what journalist Michael Enright later termed "the great Canadian bread price-fixing scandal" of 2018

the scheme inflated the price of bread by at least $1.50

The retailers who participated in the scheme, including Loblaws, Walmart Canada, Giant Tiger, Sobeys and Metro, allegedly "demanded" that the bread suppliers manage actively their retail competition by co-ordinating bread prices between the retailers.

Retail customers would call threatening to reject a price increase if another retailer was offside in terms of pricing alignment. None of them wanted to be the first to implement the price increase. There was always a negotiation process going back and forth between the four retailers where the supplier was trying to coordinate it, because somebody had to be the first to move.

I promise you, if grocers can negotiate price increases amongst themselves over a period of 15 years in secrecy, they can surely decide not to lower prices unless their competitor does so (guaranteeing rarely-lowering prices). So you need a place like CostCo whose entire shtick is an ugly experience for lower prices. Even then, CostCo makes 30 billion in profit.

https://archive.is/eZbUv

A new analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers suggests that elevated profit margins among large grocery retailers could be contributing to the stubbornly high price of food on store shelves. The analysis, which relies on Quarterly Financial Reports data from the Census Bureau, found that food and beverage stores had increased their margins by about two percentage points since the eve of the pandemic, reaching their highest level in two decades.

I’ll edit and reply to other points in a bit

Yes, cartels happen, are bad (because they effectively turn something from competition into a monopoly), and so are usually illegal. They still aren't going to be worse than monopoly pricing, and will usually be a little better, because you might have people defect from the cartel. But yeah, a known problem.

Anyway, in general, fast food pricing is not usually by a cartel. There are usually multiple fast food restaurants in an area.

Grocery stores will always need to have lower prices than an expedient restaurant like McDonald’s, otherwise few would eat at home. Consumers are more likely venture far away for groceries, because it can be cost-saving to do so. This is different from having only a few fast food places to go to on your lunch break. There may be dozens of grocers, some of which will not know their competitors’ pricings.

Going to any mall food court, I have a dozen different fast food restaurants to choose from. Even more if I'm willing to walk 15 minutes to places outside the mall. Your argument here seems to boil down to, "Once there is sufficient competition and lack of knowledge of pricing between businesses, then competition will bring prices down". But I don't see any plausible explanation why that emerges for grocery stores and not a mall food court. Especially since not all fast food items are equivalent. A Wendy's hamburger might be basically the same as a McDonald's Hamburger, but how does a local business sushi place and a McDonald's arrive on equivalent pricing?

And because the food is already purchased in bulk and perishable, grocers need to sell some food at a discount otherwise they lose more money in the whole. This is all very different than a fast food place with very efficient supply chains.

Sure, that explains some food discounts. It doesn't explain why they don't come up with an agreement in your model where all the grocers sell 1 litre pepsi drinks for $5 and the fast food restaurants sell them for $15, instead of what we have currently where grocers sell them for $1 and fast food places sell them for $3.

the scheme inflated the price of bread by at least $1.50

I am trying to look for a smart libertarian economist's opinion on the incident, and I can't yet find one. If I can find anything convincing, I'll let you know. But my default opinion, and I think the standard economist's response, would be that collusion can happen. Monopoly can let a single seller unfairly raise prices, and collusion can let competitors act like a monopoly. This was in an area with only seven big retail sellers, and two big bread wholesalers, that were all selling basically equivalent bread, so it was a relatively easy area for collusion. And even so, they didn't always act in sync, there was an incident in 2012 where they didn't increase prices and argued between themselves about it. And it was caught eventually, and they're getting punished for it. That sort of collusion is not common.

I promise you, if grocers can negotiate price increases amongst themselves over a period of 15 years in secrecy, they can surely decide not to lower prices unless their competitor does so (guaranteeing rarely-lowering prices). So you need a place like CostCo whose entire shtick is an ugly experience for lower prices. Even then, CostCo makes 30 billion in profit.

I agree that it's easier to coordinate not to lower prices. It's fortunate in that way we experience inflation and that it's quite rare that a fast food place manages any sort of improvement so dramatic that lowering their prices, even if their competitors didn't, would be a good idea for them.

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