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1. Embed this notice
   Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:28:55 JST Cory Doctorow

   Tech's core regulatory proposition is "it's not a crime if we do it with an app." It's not an unlicensed taxi if we do it with an app. It's not an illegal hotel room if we do it with an app. It's not an unregistered security if we do it with an app. It's not wage theft if we do it with an app.

   --

   If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

   https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loading

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   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:29:17 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Inflation is one of the most politically salient factors of this decade, and so much of inflation can be attributed to a crime, done with an app, with impunity for the criminals. The entire food supply has been sewn up by cartels of 2-5 giant companies, and they colluded to raise prices, and bragged about it, and got away with it, because neoclassical economists insist that it's impossible for this kind of price fixing to occur in an "efficient market."

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:29:27 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Some of these cartels are well-known, like the Coke/Pepsi duopoly. Pepsi's bosses boasted to their shareholders about "Pepsi pricing power," and how they were able to raise prices over the inflationary increases caused by covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

     https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/11/price-over-volume/#pepsi-pricing-power

     You might know that pretty much every packaged good in your grocery store is made by one of two companies, Unilever and Procter and Gamble.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:29:36 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Both CEOs boasted to their investors about their above-inflation price increases:

     https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/20/quiet-part-out-loud/#profiteering

     But other cartels are harder to spot. It may seem like your grocer's eggs department is filled with many different companies' products. In reality, a single company, Cal-Maine Foods, owns practically every brand of eggs in the case: Farmhouse Eggs, Sunups, Sunny Meadow, Egg-Land’s Best and Land O’ Lakes.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:29:51 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     They made record profits after the pandemic and through bird flu, a fact that CFO Max Bowman attributed to "significantly higher selling prices" and "our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures":

     https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep-calm-and-crack-on

     But Cal-Maine is comparatively transparent. The other food cartels - especially those that serve the restaurant sector - are harder to spot.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:30:12 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     In *The Lever*, Katya Schwenk describes how four companies - Lamb Weston, JR Simplot, McCain Foods and Cavendish Farms - have captured the frozen potato market and all that comes with it (fries, tater tots, etc):

     https://www.levernews.com/the-rise-of-big-potato/

     These companies have been hiking prices for years, but *really* started to turn the screws during the post-covid inflationary period.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:30:19 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     One of Schwenk's sources is Josh Saltzman, owner of the DC sports bar Ivy and Coney. Ten years ago, Saltzman charged $3 for fries; now it's $6 - and Saltzman's margins have declined. Saltzman has a limited number of suppliers, and they all get their potatoes from Big Potato, and they bundle those potato orders with their other supplies, making it effectively impossible for Saltzman to buy his potatoes from anyone else.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:30:29 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Big Potato controls *97%* of the frozen potato market, and any sector that large and concentrated is going to be pretty cozy. The execs at these companies all meet at industry associations, lobbying bodies, and as they job-hop between companies in the cartel. But they don't have to rely on personal connections to rig the price of potatoes: they do it through a third-party data-broker called Potatotrac.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:30:42 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Each cartel member sends commercially sensitive data - supply costs, pricing, sales figures - to Potatotrac, and then Potatotrac uses that data to give "advice" to the cartel members about "optimal pricing."

     This is just price-fixing, with an app. The fact that they don't sit around a table and openly discuss pricing doesn't make this price-fixing. What's more, they *admit it*. A director at McCain said that "higher ups" forbade anyone in the company from competing on price.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:31:00 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     A Lamb Weston exec described the arrangement as everyone "behaving themselves," chortling that they'd "never seen margins this high in the history of the potato industry." Lamb Weston's CEO attributed a 111% increase in net income to "pricing actions."

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:31:11 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Lamb Weston's execs understand that they're driving small restaurants out of business, and that the real beneficiaries are big chains that can pass the price increases onto their customers, like "Chili’s and the Texas Roadhouses and Cheesecake Factory":

     https://app.tegus.co/guest/document/view/67Hf3DiMGQ944SkfpRhLfNeiqekjA67sm2dxTCYtjoggUaJXk2chDg9wxMnZ

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:31:24 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     This is by no means unique to the potato industry. A data-broker called Agri Stats works with America's largest meat-packers to rig the price of meat - packers send Agri Stats the same kind of data that Big Potato sends to Potatotrac, and Agri Stats sends back the same "recommendations" that allow them to raise meat prices across the board, in lockstep:

     https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:31:36 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Lots of food categories are as inbred as meat and potatoes: "four firms controlled nearly 80 percent of the almond milk market, for instance. Three companies controlled 83 percent of the canned tuna market, and four companies controlled more than 86 percent of the microwave popcorn market."

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:31:47 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     The "price fixing is legal if we do it with an app" gambit is not just about food, either. Apps like Realpage let big corporate landlords - who've bought up a sizable fraction of all the available homes in America - collude to raise rents:

     https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/27/ai-conspiracies/#epistemological-collapse

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:31:59 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     And private equity companies have rolled up all the *fire truck* companies, hiking the price of trucks, creating backlogs and bottlenecks for parts and service, and starving the nation's municipalities (including Los Angeles) of fire-fighting equipment:

     https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private-equity-fire-truck-roll

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:32:09 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     This kind of price-fixing was central to the enforcement actions of the Biden administration's trustbusters at the FTC, and their investigations and actions inspired state AGs and private parties to bring their own antitrust suits. The question is, will Trump's enforcers continue this agenda? And will Trump's judges - steeped in Heritage Foundation economics that insists that monopolies are "efficient" - find in their favor if they do?

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:32:15 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Inflation has lots of causes, it's true. But when an industry is consolidated enough to take advantage of a data brokerage or just engage in tacit collusion, *any* source of inflation - war, disease, weather - allows whole sectors to raise prices together, and keep them high, long after the shock has passed.

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:32:26 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     *Picks and Shovels* is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You have JUST TWO DAYS to pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton:

     http://martinhench.com

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     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 02:32:38 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     Image:
     Cryteria (modified)
     https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

     CC BY 3.0
     https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

     eof/

   • Embed this notice
     mark (atleagle@mastodon.online)'s status on Friday, 31-Jan-2025 22:29:22 JST mark

     in reply to

     @pluralistic sure seems like this would be directly related to the stories of reasonable wages for McDonald's employees in non US locations while keeping the prices of the meals down.

     Some places let people actually get paid, some places siphon everything to the top. Every last drop