• hark@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Greed is just one part of the equation of higher prices. You also need opportunity. If prices ramped up so rapidly without a plausible excuse, then it would lead to an investigation. Hell, the egg producers took their excuse of bird flu too far and jacked up prices about 6x, which was so ridiculous that it did lead to the threat of an investigation and that alone magically got the price down to “only” about 2x.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Which part of the equation is it?

      Like how much greed gives you 1% higher prices? How do you measure greed?

      • hark@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        It doesn’t map so simply. Greed will try to push prices up as high as possible, but what’s possible depends on other factors. People can understand how a global pandemic causing supply issues would lead to higher prices, but greed took full advantage of that understanding and pushed it far beyond limits.

        • iopq@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          It didn’t push beyond limits, greed pushes the price exactly up to the limit people will pay.

          • hark@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            That’s like claiming that no one gets scammed because they were willing to participate.

            • iopq@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              Usually a scammer doesn’t uphold his end of the contract. They promised you something, but you didn’t get it.

              That’s not the case here

              • hark@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                There are many scams and a lot of them don’t involve a contract at all. There are also ones that do involve a contract and upholding it is part of the scam. Regardless, you missed the point that just because someone pays the price, doesn’t mean everything is fine and dandy.

                • iopq@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  There’s an implied verbal contract when you say you’re providing a service and you are in fact not.

                  My point is that a lot of people are fine with paying the price they are paying. The people who are not can just stop