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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

This obviously cannot be true, otherwise Costco would have been sued to oblivion for “dumping” their rotisserie chickens.

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Forget about Costco, if some people here are so convinced this behavior is illegal they should be going after every fast food company that offers anything like "get a free/cheap xyz with any drink purchase!" Where the subsidy is obvious.

Costco gets to sidestep a lot of regulations because they technically are a private club with paid membership. The US anti-monopoly laws are also unusually weak.

In other countries, selling a $7 chicken if it's subsidized by the sale of other goods can indeed be illegal.

Do you have some countries in mind where that's illegal?

That would most likely be illegal in Finland. You're not allowed predatory pricing. And the same is true for the EU as a whole, although you may have to be operating in an international market, not just a local one. See Abuse of dominance in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_102_of_the_Treaty_on_t...

The US, the Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits predatory pricing.

So if I could charge less for chicken because I use that as a doorbuster to get you inside the store, but I charge more for other items, that is predatory pricing and against US law?

In Germany, selling goods for less then the one bought them for can be illegal if its used to push competition out on a large scale.

If you now acknowledge there is a carve out… couldn’t there be two carve outs? Or more?

It seems like you havent thought this through at all.

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