• stella@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This is why ‘competition lowers prices’ is a load of bullshit.

    Ya’ll ever seen Walgreens and CVS? Same prices, right next to each other.

    What about 2 gas station on opposite sides of the street, charging the exact same price for their fuel?

    It’s a gentleman’s agreement at best, and a cartel at worst. Either way, no business is going to start an ‘undercut war’ because they don’t want their opponents to do the same thing.

    Here’s another fine example: Nvidia and AMD. AMD releases worse GPUs, then just piggybacks off of Nvidia’s ridiculous prices.

    It’s all a game to funnel as much money as possible to as few people as possible.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      competition only lowers prices if supply isn’t limited sadly. And due to how the housing system works, that would virtually never happen.

      • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        It could. If something causes housing to be less in demand. Like negative population growth.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      A duopoly is not a competitive market. It’s only when you have lots of suppliers and lots of purchasers that a market is actually competitive.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      “It’s a gentleman’s agreement at best, and a cartel at worst. Either way, no business is going to start an ‘undercut war’ because they don’t want their opponents to do the same thing.”

      Play any MMO and you’ll see the fallout from that. When it doesn’t actually matter in the real world and people go do that everything plummets in value to near 0 and makes it not even worth your time to attempt even in a damn video game. They’ll never drop prices to compete in reality because of that reality.

      • stella@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Lol. Here we go with the analogies again.

        Do you think your MMO analogy is a 1:1 representation of the real world?

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          Of course not 100%, but it’s supporting what you said because it’s a facet of human nature and how people act. Not sure what your issue is with me agreeing with you?