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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

Or read the Cory Doctorow article exposing this months ago, https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/10/demand-and-supply/ . This link actually has text you can read with eyes. As opposed to the wsj link which is just javascript.

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He's a Reddit-type reactionary, and the furthest thing from a trained economist. That analysis takes no consideration of the supply chain at all, and doesn't consider that if the thesis is true, perhaps the store selling the eggs are the ones making the majority of excess profits and not the egg farms.

All throughout this saga of people screeching about eggs, I've never paid more than $4 a dozen for organic eggs. How are Trader Joe's and Market Basket continuing to offer such prices to customers (non-organic eggs continue to be around $3 per dozen), if the egg suppliers are the ones collecting excess profits? Surely the suppliers are not charging less to Market Basket, a small regional grocery chain, than they're charging to Stop & Shop right across the street, an internationally owned food conglomerate? Why is Stop & Shop not selling any eggs for less than $7 per dozen, then?

Ah, I suppose the WSJ is reddit-type reactionary too? Maybe it is useful having them repeat this story so people with (different) ideological biases can perceive it without discomfort on hearing Doctorow's name.

I just left a parent comment poking holes in the WSJ article, too. The author of the WSJ article, Patrick Thomas, is also a journalist, not an economist.

You kinda just said "nuh-uh" at the WSJ article without providing any counter-evidence. I wouldn't call that poking holes, IMO.

Eggs have often been a notable loss leader in supermarkets. The business tolerance of that status is reliant on specific cost expectations, and retailer behavior has varied in response to the price hikes. While egg prices are going to vary regionally, you can get a more authentic picture from restaurant bulk supplier prices.

Aldi used to charge 59 cents a dozen, limit two dozen. Not any more.

Aren't trained economists exactly the kind of people who'd suggest greedflation as a growth strategy?

Doctorow also focuses more on the decision NOT to expand flocks (which comes late in WSJj. Really easy to say “it’s just supply and demand” while obfuscating that you’re limiting supply.

The Trump administration could do one thing that would bring accolades from all political sides, break this monopoly up at least for a while.

They aren't interested in accolades, they're interested in money

You're right but it could help the GOP in midterm elections which would further the agenda, though they would have to start now unless they just strong arm Cal-Maine like a green card holder or asylum seeker, he got all those law firms, universities and tech companies to bend the knee and kiss the ring.

They are interested in both. The Trump admin is full of corrupt greedy narcissist and part of being a narcissist is that you love people telling you have great you are.

wellllll, it might be more acurate to state that they have discovered how to manufacture there own accolades, and then help themselves to all the money they want, and handback the leftovers to whoever it is that validates the accolades and anything else they are doing. move fast and take everything, cept of course that, you know,bit of push back thing happening which in.the current state of affairs, boils down to, that they want all of the money so badly, that other people are just backing off, as it's dangerous to want any yourself, so then counterintuitivly, money looses value past a certain survival level, and here we are..... egg mafia, and smuggling operated by the same people doing the fentanil

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