While I agree that the rich are not always evil, and the not-rich are not always good, this does seem to be a free market resistance to a financially formidable force. The individual seller has very little power.
Yeah I don't want to discount that entirely, though I'll quibble a bit.
For labor negotiations you often have a wide pool of potential buyers for your labor, so it strikes me as less of a thing personally. So long as they aren't acting as a cartel, if you don't like the offer at one you can work at one that offers more/better, thus sending a market signal. (For protected monopolies, like eg the NFL, I'm definitely more sympathetic, as there is no true free market for your labor. So on for other artificially narrow markets.)
As it concerns real estate, antitrust law has largely turned a blind eye. Though that's changing a bit now. I'm not personally confident that this collusion was illegal. I'm just not surprised that the natural result was them getting sued, esp. given how naked some of those texts were. And, like, it was fine for them to individually hold out for higher prices! All they had to do was say "nope, not interested", which like 200+ potential sellers apparently did without issue. This would have been a classic gamble. If too many did it, the city never gets built and those well-above market offers for property few else wanted will have looked really good! If you guess right then you can probably extract a better offer later. And that's all fine. But when you enter into a negotiation to sell, say offer #3 is fine, then come back with a wild counter-offer *because of your collusion*, that's entering a different category imo. Not legal advice, but I wouldn't try it!
While I agree that the rich are not always evil, and the not-rich are not always good, this does seem to be a free market resistance to a financially formidable force. The individual seller has very little power.
Not unlike labor negotiations.
Yeah I don't want to discount that entirely, though I'll quibble a bit.
For labor negotiations you often have a wide pool of potential buyers for your labor, so it strikes me as less of a thing personally. So long as they aren't acting as a cartel, if you don't like the offer at one you can work at one that offers more/better, thus sending a market signal. (For protected monopolies, like eg the NFL, I'm definitely more sympathetic, as there is no true free market for your labor. So on for other artificially narrow markets.)
As it concerns real estate, antitrust law has largely turned a blind eye. Though that's changing a bit now. I'm not personally confident that this collusion was illegal. I'm just not surprised that the natural result was them getting sued, esp. given how naked some of those texts were. And, like, it was fine for them to individually hold out for higher prices! All they had to do was say "nope, not interested", which like 200+ potential sellers apparently did without issue. This would have been a classic gamble. If too many did it, the city never gets built and those well-above market offers for property few else wanted will have looked really good! If you guess right then you can probably extract a better offer later. And that's all fine. But when you enter into a negotiation to sell, say offer #3 is fine, then come back with a wild counter-offer *because of your collusion*, that's entering a different category imo. Not legal advice, but I wouldn't try it!