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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

I am not sure I understand the proposal either, but some general principles follow. Generally speaking, unless they possess too much economic power, buyers' cooperatives are lawful. Note, however, that the buyers otherwise would not have been bidding against each other for a specific item -- they simply would have made individual purchases of the same good bought collectively. On the other hand, buyers cannot price-fix or agree not to bid against each other. Imagine, for example, a group of highway contractors who otherwise would have submitted competing bids for various projects, who instead form a cooperative single entity to bid and then allocate jobs to members. That would be unlawful.