[sneak]

Why should it be illegal?

Seems to me that the illegal part would be the cartel of the 3 apps that cornered the whole market.

An app that doesn’t do this could eat their lunch.

Nurses work at hospitals, the supply of which is constrained artificially by the state, so once you sell all of the ones in a region on your app, you have a monopoly. It is a type of regulatory capture.

[whinvik]

To clarify, what I think should be made illegal is to take advantage of people by using information about how much debt that they have to lowball them.

[sneak]

Yes, why? This is the market working as it should. Market participants should be free to use all available information.

The lowballing should be counteracted by competition. There isn’t any competition because the number of hospitals is artificially constrained by the state and a cartel can go to all of them in a region (usually a single digit number) and capture all of them, cornering the market for purchasing labor in that field.

The problem is not that the bidders have the information. The problem is that there is effectively only one bidder: the cartel.

An app that doesn’t do this (and thus pays more) would quickly have access to the entire labor pool by offering higher wages. It doesn’t exist because of illegal activity. That’s not caused by the cartel having access to, or using, information.

You are addressing the symptoms of the cartel, not the root cause.

[biorach]

Exploitation of the indebted is a symptom that should be addressed regardless.

Plus I think your diagnosis is simplistic.

[whinvik]

IMO cartels are inevitable. Almost all sectors end up with 1 or 2 players.

However, I am curious to know how you think we can avoid the problem of cartels.