Why the price of chicken is set by an algorithm.

Chicken is the most ordinary thing in your grocery cart. It's also been at the center of one of the strangest legal stories in modern American business — a decade of litigation, three separate criminal trials, a major producer pleading guilty and paying $107 million, and a Justice Department case that only settled a few months ago. The accusation was never a smoky back room or a handshake deal. It was a data company in Fort Wayne, Indiana that doesn't raise a single chicken — and a report so detailed it let rival processors see each other clearly enough that they never had to conspire. The company pleaded guilty. Every executive walked. In this video I dig into how both of those things can be true, and what it means for how "price fixing" actually works when the collusion happens through software instead of a conversation. What you'll learn: How Agri Stats' data reports worked, and what made them different from normal industry benchmarking Why competition law is built entirely around the word "agreement" — and why that makes this case so hard to prosecute What happened in three criminal trials that produced zero individual convictions Why a company can plead guilty and pay $107M while nobody goes to prison How the same legal question is now playing out in rental housing and airline pricing How much can rivals know about each other before competition stops being competition? Nobody has a number yet — and the answer is being decided one settlement at a time. #PriceFixing #AntitrustLaw #ChickenIndustry #AgriStats