From the bread pricing scandal, the amount of coordination that was going on between supposed competitors is crazy. The fact that it took "a decade and a half" to prosecute the case means that much more subtle collusion is probably very common.
> “Retail customers would call threatening to reject a price increase if another retailer was offside in terms of pricing alignment.”
> The coordination was particularly tough between discounters including Walmart, Giant Tiger, Loblaw’s No Frills, Sobeys’ FreshCo and Metro’s Food Basics, the document says.
> “None of them wanted to be the first to implement the price increase …There was always a negotiation process going back and forth between the four retailers where the supplier was trying to coordinate it, because somebody had to be the first to move.”
> According to redacted witnesses cited in the documents, the individual retailers involved were all in favour of taking price increases, and full-price grocers such as Loblaw tended to hike prices first, followed by discounters such as Walmart.
I think it's a bit worse than that.
Take a look at sports where plenty of teams will very willingly over-pay for players in terms of salary or even trade say 4 draft picks for a player when you'd expect at least 1 of those picks to draft somebody of a similar caliber.
In situations where the individual can personally gain (say from winning playoffs or a big bonus from extra sales) and the team (corporation) would be liable for the downside there's incentive to make a technically losing move. If the team doesn't do well you're fired anyways so it doesn't matter how much of a long-term bind you cause. Just like if the corporation takes a fine 5~10 years later like you've definitely gotten some fat bonuses in the interim that won't be clawed back.
