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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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I think corporations learned some very dangerous lessons from the pandemic.
The demand for essential goods is inelastic. They can charge whatever and people still have to but things, especially food, household products, and a place to live.
They can understaff and underpay employees, and people will choose to fault people for laziness rather than the deliberate corporate choices that lead to the situation.
Corporations have built such a large market share so as to have created giant barriers to entry that there is zero competition from new businesses.
Even larger competitor corporations are happy to wink and nod as you both raise prices, cut staff, and give paltry raises because it just means you both make more money, and so long as you don’t say it out loud, it isn’t collusion.
They already knew these things, they just needed an excuse to not cause too much of an uproar. Egg prices went up by way too much too quickly that even the government, who rarely actually does anything about this sort of thing, started an investigation. Magically the prices dropped by a lot, but unfortunately still higher than it used to be.
Chickens got hit with a bird flu during the start of the pandemic, which made egg prices even higher. A big reason for the drop in price was because the farmers were able to stabilize. It's probably 50/50 between the fowl epidemic and inflation.
Except egg production didn't drop all that much: https://www.statista.com/statistics/196096/total-egg-production-in-the-us-since-2000/
It hit one producer and the others decided to jack up their prices as well to take advantage. There's a reason why they were being investigated.
Hey, I didn't finish reading #2, but why isn't my mocha latte ready yet?
It became DIY while you weren't looking. You have to make it yourself but they provide the supplies. Saves on cost cause now they only need 1-2 people at a time running the store.