[htag]

There is no big sector-wide conspiracy. A sector-wide conspiracy would be massively illegal. If, however, several companies individually decided a layoff is in their best interest for legitimate reasons (looming recession instead of suppress wages) then there can be the same practical effect without any criminal act.

Groups of people that are coordinating in ways and times others aren't can have a competitive advantage. The game is how to coordinate, and how to establish yourself as a member of the coordinating group, without actually coordinating because that's illegal.

[vlovich123]

Just saying, it has happened before [1]. Except this time they’d have the perfect cover of “no collusion, the economy is doing bad”. The CEOs of these large companies talk all the time. As do board members. Heck, some even share board members. It’s not that hard at this level to generate collusion that’s hard to prove.

Now I’m not saying this is what’s happened. I’m a big fan of Occam’s razor. But at the same time I wouldn’t dismiss it. Oh and the “massively illegal coordination”? Why don’t you look at what the outcome was of the DOJ prosecution of that case.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

[mejutoco]

> There is no big sector-wide conspiracy. A sector-wide conspiracy would be massively illegal

The logic of this sentence is broken. As a thought exercise:

- There is no stealing, that would be illegal.

- There is no murdering, that would be illegal.

Clearly, something being illegal does not prevent it from existing. Otherwise it would not need to be made illegal in the first place.

Fact is, this has happened before with collusion, so there is no need to hypothesize. It is definitely possible.

[htag]

It is possible to kill without legally murder. It is possible to have your property taken without someone legally stealing. This is the point I was attempting to make with my rhetoric.

Put in game theory language, the optimal solution for the game includes a group of people cooperating when defecting amongst a population of defectors would be the optimal strategy.

From a communications point of view, players have limited communication channels, and must both explain the game and encourage cooperation without directly doing so. The players have similar cultural backgrounds, having read the same books and having overlapping social circles. When a player announces their agreement to cooperate they used clearly false reasons, implying there is much left unsaid. Maybe the stock bump that happens when a player cooperates is a positive reinforcement signal by people concerned about rising labor costs.

[danaris]

Your logic is somewhat fallacious: specifically, you create a false dichotomy between "there is an illegal sector-wide conspiracy" and "these things could happen across the sector if there were fully legitimate reasons for them to".

You are missing the middle, which is that there is no conspiracy, but that many companies in the sector saw, at around the same time (though possibly influenced by some bellwether I'm unaware of), the opportunity to juice their stock prices with layoffs even though they're making record profits and don't actually expect to be hit by a looming recession.

[somsak2]

You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAFd4FdbJxs

[P_I_Staker]

This has been done before