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Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

Collusion is quite hard to prove, though.

A big problem is that it often isn't a free market. Joe The Sandwich Guy can't just randomly decide to open up a store inside the airport. There's a limited amount of space, a lease can easily last a decade, and any that come up are usually granted rather than auctioned.

The airport is actively trying to provide a varied selection of products, which inherently means competition is limited: someone complaining about the price of a turkey sandwich isn't going to get a Big Mac solely because it is a few dollars cheaper.

All of this is often made even worse because they aren't actually different vendors. Multiple stores are often owned by the same vendor, the different stores are just "exploiting various retail strategies".

Nothing is actively illegal. Everyone just independently realized they could make a shitton of money because travelers are forced to either pay their prices or starve.

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The airport is owned by the government. The buck stops there. This is a clear case of corruption.

If you want simple data, lets look at the price of bottled water or soda at an airport (I usually bring an empty with me but not the point). It is priced the freakin same across every eatery. No collusion?

There’s no collusion if they’re all owned by the same vendor, which is common (and pointed out in TFA). The problem then isn’t collusion; it’s that the agencies responsible for ensuring fair airport pricing are captured by the businesses that they’re supposed to regulate.

Sounds typical. Not an airport specific problem

Like entiries with like goals will conduct themselve similarly. The market defines what it will bear. They don't need to collude.

> (I usually bring an empty with me but not the point)

I’ve been in airports where the toilets behind security have ‘courtesy’ warm water at the faucets

Go to any airport an Asia and you will find plenty of drinking water fountains. Sure, sometimes the cold water is broken but at least it's sanitary drinking water.

Meanwhile Frankfurt tells you that the tap water in the restrooms is safe to drink. Absolutely absurd that Airports where you are effectively stuck for possibly hours and are paying for that priviledge can get away with not having to provide basic neccessities.

No it's not.

In this case (and the root of some of the problem) is that it's not even "the government" that owns the airport. The airports are operated by the Port Authority of NY and NJ, which is an extra-governmental slush-fund-distributor that isn't meaningfully accountable to either state government, the NYC government, or any of the relevant NJ municipal governments. There is nothing meaningful that voters can do to affect change in the organization, so nothing is likely to change.

>A big problem is that it often isn't a free market. Joe The Sandwich Guy can't just randomly decide to open up a store inside the airport. There's a limited amount of space, a lease can easily last a decade, and any that come up are usually granted rather than auctioned.

It's basically like a professional license. The system is designed to make you waste so much of your life and money entering the market that undercutting people by any appreciable amount is the last thing you'll do once you're there.

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