[rukuu001]

> politicians, corporations, etc have real conflicts over zero sum games. Of course, there are situations where there's are incentives to cooperate.

I have a great example, called the ‘mating call of the banks’ (in Australia, don’t know if there’s something similar elsewhere).

We only have four major banks here, and sometimes one or more of them wants to raise interest rates out of cycle (ie without the Australian Reserve bank changing official rates).

Of course, if only one of them raises rates, they’ll lose business.

And ultimately, they all want higher rates.

So one of them will book some media spots (easy if you’re a big advertiser) and start talking about the state of the economy and how it’s out of step with fiscal policy, etc etc.

That’s a mating call.

If some other bank’s talking head turns up saying the same thing, then that’s another one. That’s a signal that at least two banks will raise rates together.

Once they’ve done that, the other two will surely follow.

Publicly executed conspiracy to fix prices.

[forgingahead]

This is an interesting concept -- I would assume "mating call of the airlines" is a similar phenomenon that exists in the US airline industry (pre-corona of course) -- all want to raise fees / stuff planes, so there's this pantomime of whatever ails the industry covered in the media, before one (and then all) change policies that are pro-airline-profit but net-negative-passenger.

All this is possible of course due to the consolidation allowed over the past 15 years, but separate topic for a separate thread.