jamesqf -
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
What's "price fixing", though? Say you run the gas station on the southeast corner of an intersection. You see the station on the northwest corner is selling for 5 cents/gal more than you, so wouldn't you be stupid not to raise your price by 4 cents? Now you call your friend who runs a station on the other end of town, and ask what his price is: is that fixing? Or if you drive by and look, instead of calling?
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I think the distinction is evidence of collusion, aka a(n e-)paper trail. You and the other party have explicitly agreed to jack the price. To get around this you could do the "wink and the nod" or simply talk to each other over coffee.
If all the gas stations in your region were owned by one entity, would you be comfortable with that scenario? If not, then I think that price fixing is a way to achieve the same result.
CarloSW2