how does price fixing work, can’t anyone charge whatever they want for a product?
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The Diamond market is a PRIME example of price fixing and how it’s worked for 100+ years (so far). The oil industry is another example (OPEC), followed by most gas stations (I suspect even so-called competing stations communicate to some degree on price within a 1 or 2 block radius)
Outside of conglomerates where price fixing is a thing and does work, for the VAST majority of business, big and small, it doesn’t work so well.
For starters, it’s illegal, but for more established industries (oil and diamonds), it’s been made legal “for them” through sponsorships, political handouts and backdoor payments to keep it legal…for them. Secondly, most people won’t come together to fix a price and agree on similar terms. Most entrepreneurs are competitive and want more of the pie for themselves, so naturally they’ll compete to lower their prices and/or improve the quality of their product or service. Our egos won’t allow us to fix price with a competitor for the benefit of both parties, since typically only one party wants to dominate.
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