[darth_avocado]

> Won’t it just cause neighboring stores to close?

Hopefully they kept all those profits around from the time they price gouging consumers in the name of “supply chain issues”, “transitory inflation”, “bird flu” etc. I still remember all the headlines about bird flu and how egg prices were doubling because of it. Turns out the egg production barely dropped and it was all a ruse to make more money.

[SpicyLemonZest]

You can't conclude it was a ruse without knowing the elasticity of egg demand!

This is ultimately the kind of thing that worries me about a municipal grocery store. Will voters allow it to respond in rational ways to market conditions, or will they expect the city to go out and extort some egg suppliers when market prices rise above what they consider reasonable?

[ceejayoz]

The DOJ thinks it was a ruse.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-egg-producers-fa...

As did a jury:

https://apnews.com/article/egg-producers-price-gouging-lawsu...

[SpicyLemonZest]

It could potentially be a ruse by egg producers. Certainly there's reason for suspicion. But darth_avocado's claim was that grocery stores were in on the ruse and must have extracted huge profits from price gouging consumers. I think that's obviously false. You'll note that in the jury case the plaintiffs were themselves megacorporations, and substantially larger ones than the producers they were suing at that.

I don't blame consumers for deciding they don't care about the underlying market structure and just want cheap eggs. But you can't run a store on that basis, and if the city feels like it has to there'll be problems.