From the article: Spoiler: The evidence in the U.S. anti-trust cases leaves no doubt that there was price collusion and market manipulation by major egg producing companies. The U.S. Department of...
From the article:
When you see the cost of an everyday item — the kind you’re going to buy regardless of price — more than double in a year, do you get suspicious?
When it came to eggs, whose average price in a U.S. supermarket went from $1.93 per dozen in January 2022 to $4.82 a year later — and not even for the lovingly cared-for, cage-free variety — Americans had their choice of explanations. Some supply chain experts pointed to continued pandemic-era disruptions. The geopolitically minded cited impacts of war in agriculturally productive Ukraine, shrinking global supply while driving up fuel and feed costs. Republicans blamed the Democratic administration for wild spending that prompted widespread “Bidenflation.” Most Americans appeared content with the prevailing rationale they were given: Bird flu, an epidemic with a near-100% mortality rate, contributed to the death of 43 million egg-laying hens in 2022 alone while consumers continued to crave omelettes.
Peter Carstensen, a law school professor and fellow at the American Antitrust Institute, watched the prices of eggs rise from his Wisconsin home and suspected all those explanations were ignoring the potential for human villainy in a market where demand remains fixed. “Eggs are a classic example of where collusion makes an awful lot of sense,” said Carstensen. “I am going to have my two eggs and bacon every Wednesday, and on Saturday as well, regardless of the price of eggs.”
The suspicion of antitrust hawks like Carstensen — that producers were choosing to raise prices in tandem to increase profits rather than competing in a way that would drive prices down — was dismissed by mainstream economists and commentators as the work of cranks looking past simple economics for a true crime story that could exist only in their minds. Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle waved away “internet memes and a fair amount of conspiracizing,” as she put it, “about monopolistic egg producers colluding to raid the pockets of hard-working, egg-loving Americans.”
Spoiler: The evidence in the U.S. anti-trust cases leaves no doubt that there was price collusion and market manipulation by major egg producing companies. The U.S. Department of Justice has been very quiet about a slap-on-the-wrist proposed settlement. The economic narrative continues to foster the idea that there was only a short-term supply shock due to avian influenza.
Virtually all eggs you buy, especially those in supermarkets, absolutely don’t come from “lovingly cared-for” birds. The conditions range from absolute torture to horrific, even the so called cage...
and not even for the lovingly cared-for, cage-free variety
Virtually all eggs you buy, especially those in supermarkets, absolutely don’t come from “lovingly cared-for” birds. The conditions range from absolute torture to horrific, even the so called cage free variety (which just means they’re crammed in bigger enclosures). There are no ethical eggs that don’t make the birds suffer, and making eggs implies shredding chicks alive because they’re “useless” and that’s the cheapest way of disposing of them.
Edit: I’m talking about supermarket and most food store eggs here.
...i don't use eggs, but i work with folks who raise their own and also engage local cooperatives, so i know respectfully-farmed eggs are out there, although i have no idea about commercial...
...i don't use eggs, but i work with folks who raise their own and also engage local cooperatives, so i know respectfully-farmed eggs are out there, although i have no idea about commercial distribution beyond small-scale natural food stores...
...i do not; the hobby-chicken-farmer i most recently worked with left our firm a couple of months ago... ...when my grandparents kept chickens, they'd raise the roosters for meat and always said...
...i do not; the hobby-chicken-farmer i most recently worked with left our firm a couple of months ago...
...when my grandparents kept chickens, they'd raise the roosters for meat and always said it was a challenge to keep them from killing each other...
I'm extremely fortunate in that one of my co-workers sells the eggs from her literally free-range (left loose in a fenced yard to eat vegetation and bugs in the garden) chickens. She keeps the...
I'm extremely fortunate in that one of my co-workers sells the eggs from her literally free-range (left loose in a fenced yard to eat vegetation and bugs in the garden) chickens. She keeps the retired layers as pets. Bonus - the color and flavor of those eggs are fantastic. I'm more than happy to pay $4/dozen for her organic eggs even if it means returning the cartons.
Also fortunate in the same sense. Have a local lady that has a hobby farm and a love of ducks, so I get free range, wonderfully cared for fresh duck eggs (sooo good) for $5/dozen for most of the...
Also fortunate in the same sense. Have a local lady that has a hobby farm and a love of ducks, so I get free range, wonderfully cared for fresh duck eggs (sooo good) for $5/dozen for most of the year (ducks don't lay eggs in the winter). She has chickens as well, so get those when the ducks are being lazy.
One note about backyard poultry keeping - please vaccinate your birds for Salmonella. It's endemic in North America, present in commercially hatched chicks from conception or spread by wild birds....
One note about backyard poultry keeping - please vaccinate your birds for Salmonella. It's endemic in North America, present in commercially hatched chicks from conception or spread by wild birds. It can be a risk to your family from contact with the chickens and their excreta, as well as anyone to whom you provide eggs. [I could rant here about the heinous U.S. food system, where we tolerate 1.5 million food-borne Salmonella infections annually, a quarter of which are from poultry and eggs.]
Of course they are, considering they spent the entire run up to the election harping about the price of eggs, only for Trump to get into office and claim prices were fine and not his problem.
The U.S. Department of Justice has been very quiet about a slap-on-the-wrist proposed settlement.
Of course they are, considering they spent the entire run up to the election harping about the price of eggs, only for Trump to get into office and claim prices were fine and not his problem.
Oh man the amount of gaslighting I was getting on reddit when I brought that up. It definitely made me feel like these companies have PR firms canvassing places like that, or maybe people in real...
Oh man the amount of gaslighting I was getting on reddit when I brought that up. It definitely made me feel like these companies have PR firms canvassing places like that, or maybe people in real life just feel the need to bootlick capitalism that bad. Maybe there are just that many economics students willing to go to bat for them
I remember thinking that "we're in for a lot more of this" when oil prices spiked in the early 00s and congress did absolutely nothing about it. Since then we've seen price collusion kinda go...
I remember thinking that "we're in for a lot more of this" when oil prices spiked in the early 00s and congress did absolutely nothing about it. Since then we've seen price collusion kinda go rampant. I wonder if we'll learn, at all, from this? Probably not, given that the administrative state is being dismantled as we speak and poop lettuce is becoming the norm.
The problem with the way a lot of people learn history is via this fantastical lens like a fairytale, with very little introspection as to how those events impacted future events. Everyone acts...
The problem with the way a lot of people learn history is via this fantastical lens like a fairytale, with very little introspection as to how those events impacted future events.
Everyone acts like if we repealed every law implemented since 1900 that we would retain our hard-won progress instead of people (mostly companies) immediately going "oh thank fuck we can just dump our waste in lakes again and stop paying minimum wage."
Chesterton's Fence isn't a bad rule of thumb for deciding whether a regulation or law is still fit for purpose. Leaving aside that Chesterton was defending Catholic traditionalism, it's a truism...
Chesterton's Fence isn't a bad rule of thumb for deciding whether a regulation or law is still fit for purpose. Leaving aside that Chesterton was defending Catholic traditionalism, it's a truism that regulations are written in blood. For everything from kids toys not being covered in leaded paints to avoidance of exploding spacecraft parts dropping on populated areas, there are (or were) laws and regulatory bodies that kept mayhem minimized.
I'd like to believe it won't take an event on the scale of the Bhopal disaster, burning rivers, global economic collapse, or unconstrained pandemics to remind people of how we got all those rules and regulations. Unfortunately, plutocrats are in the driver's seat, they own the mechanisms of popular information, and they think they can buy immunity from consequences.
Speaking as someone whose personal P (doom) is significantly higher because some people have been trained to associate spreading diseases with "freedom", I have to agree.
Speaking as someone whose personal P (doom) is significantly higher because some people have been trained to associate spreading diseases with "freedom", I have to agree.
One of the biggest antitrust cases in Australia related to cardboard. Very unglamorous and hardly likely to be a hotbed of corruption, right? Wrong. Everything uses cardboard. Every. Thing. With...
One of the biggest antitrust cases in Australia related to cardboard. Very unglamorous and hardly likely to be a hotbed of corruption, right? Wrong. Everything uses cardboard. Every. Thing. With only a few manufacturers the market was ripe for collusion and it negatively affected almost every part of the supply chain, from manufacturers to consumers.
Slightly different, but it reminds me of Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential and how distributors would always try to bribe chefs to get the restaurant to purchase from them, against the...
Slightly different, but it reminds me of Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential and how distributors would always try to bribe chefs to get the restaurant to purchase from them, against the interests of the owner. There really is scumbaggery everywhere.
Scumbaggery is in IT services, too - place I used to work had department heads fired for taking box seat sports tickets, etc. from vendors. I turned down and reported apparent bribes a couple of...
Scumbaggery is in IT services, too - place I used to work had department heads fired for taking box seat sports tickets, etc. from vendors. I turned down and reported apparent bribes a couple of times, because patients pay for it one way or another.
From the article:
Spoiler: The evidence in the U.S. anti-trust cases leaves no doubt that there was price collusion and market manipulation by major egg producing companies. The U.S. Department of Justice has been very quiet about a slap-on-the-wrist proposed settlement. The economic narrative continues to foster the idea that there was only a short-term supply shock due to avian influenza.
Virtually all eggs you buy, especially those in supermarkets, absolutely don’t come from “lovingly cared-for” birds. The conditions range from absolute torture to horrific, even the so called cage free variety (which just means they’re crammed in bigger enclosures). There are no ethical eggs that don’t make the birds suffer, and making eggs implies shredding chicks alive because they’re “useless” and that’s the cheapest way of disposing of them.
Edit: I’m talking about supermarket and most food store eggs here.
...i don't use eggs, but i work with folks who raise their own and also engage local cooperatives, so i know respectfully-farmed eggs are out there, although i have no idea about commercial distribution beyond small-scale natural food stores...
What do they usually do with male chicks, would you know?
...i do not; the hobby-chicken-farmer i most recently worked with left our firm a couple of months ago...
...when my grandparents kept chickens, they'd raise the roosters for meat and always said it was a challenge to keep them from killing each other...
I'm extremely fortunate in that one of my co-workers sells the eggs from her literally free-range (left loose in a fenced yard to eat vegetation and bugs in the garden) chickens. She keeps the retired layers as pets. Bonus - the color and flavor of those eggs are fantastic. I'm more than happy to pay $4/dozen for her organic eggs even if it means returning the cartons.
Also fortunate in the same sense. Have a local lady that has a hobby farm and a love of ducks, so I get free range, wonderfully cared for fresh duck eggs (sooo good) for $5/dozen for most of the year (ducks don't lay eggs in the winter). She has chickens as well, so get those when the ducks are being lazy.
One note about backyard poultry keeping - please vaccinate your birds for Salmonella. It's endemic in North America, present in commercially hatched chicks from conception or spread by wild birds. It can be a risk to your family from contact with the chickens and their excreta, as well as anyone to whom you provide eggs. [I could rant here about the heinous U.S. food system, where we tolerate 1.5 million food-borne Salmonella infections annually, a quarter of which are from poultry and eggs.]
Of course they are, considering they spent the entire run up to the election harping about the price of eggs, only for Trump to get into office and claim prices were fine and not his problem.
Oh man the amount of gaslighting I was getting on reddit when I brought that up. It definitely made me feel like these companies have PR firms canvassing places like that, or maybe people in real life just feel the need to bootlick capitalism that bad. Maybe there are just that many economics students willing to go to bat for them
I remember thinking that "we're in for a lot more of this" when oil prices spiked in the early 00s and congress did absolutely nothing about it. Since then we've seen price collusion kinda go rampant. I wonder if we'll learn, at all, from this? Probably not, given that the administrative state is being dismantled as we speak and poop lettuce is becoming the norm.
The problem with the way a lot of people learn history is via this fantastical lens like a fairytale, with very little introspection as to how those events impacted future events.
Everyone acts like if we repealed every law implemented since 1900 that we would retain our hard-won progress instead of people (mostly companies) immediately going "oh thank fuck we can just dump our waste in lakes again and stop paying minimum wage."
Chesterton's Fence isn't a bad rule of thumb for deciding whether a regulation or law is still fit for purpose. Leaving aside that Chesterton was defending Catholic traditionalism, it's a truism that regulations are written in blood. For everything from kids toys not being covered in leaded paints to avoidance of exploding spacecraft parts dropping on populated areas, there are (or were) laws and regulatory bodies that kept mayhem minimized.
I'd like to believe it won't take an event on the scale of the Bhopal disaster, burning rivers, global economic collapse, or unconstrained pandemics to remind people of how we got all those rules and regulations. Unfortunately, plutocrats are in the driver's seat, they own the mechanisms of popular information, and they think they can buy immunity from consequences.
Well, apparently we need a measles outbreak for awhile to remind people why we need vaccines, so I think disaster it is.
Speaking as someone whose personal P (doom) is significantly higher because some people have been trained to associate spreading diseases with "freedom", I have to agree.
One of the biggest antitrust cases in Australia related to cardboard. Very unglamorous and hardly likely to be a hotbed of corruption, right? Wrong. Everything uses cardboard. Every. Thing. With only a few manufacturers the market was ripe for collusion and it negatively affected almost every part of the supply chain, from manufacturers to consumers.
Slightly different, but it reminds me of Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential and how distributors would always try to bribe chefs to get the restaurant to purchase from them, against the interests of the owner. There really is scumbaggery everywhere.
Scumbaggery is in IT services, too - place I used to work had department heads fired for taking box seat sports tickets, etc. from vendors. I turned down and reported apparent bribes a couple of times, because patients pay for it one way or another.
Corruption and greed are perennial.
As an egg lover, I am so grateful that Aldi has decided to use them as a loss leader and still has them under $2 to this day