Comment by BeetleB
4 days ago
If I'm selling to the wealthiest zip code, where the median house price is over $10M, should I be disallowed to charge higher prices? (Not for selling a house, but selling ordinary stuff to them).
If I'm posting something for sale on Craigslist, and I don't put a price, is it OK if I quote different prices to different people who text me?
I can see arguments both ways.
If you take charging higher grocery prices for richer people to its furthest point, you could end up with a system where every item costs Y% of their assets and the utility of a dollar is reduced the more you have. In effect, this would eliminate the relative value of having more money. For example, eggs could be priced at 0.02% of total assets, which means a poorer person with $2000 pays 40 cents, and a richer person with $1M pays $200.
Now, would this go to its furthest point? Probably not, but it has the same, but smaller, effect of reducing the utility of money for richer people.
In some scenarios, this actually might make sense. For example, in Finland, they use the day fine system where traffic ticket fines are based on the violator's daily disposable income. It's useful because this is a scenario where you want the punishment to feel equivalent to all income levels.
For groceries, I don't think this should apply, because I think we would not want the act of purchasing food to equally punish all levels of wealth.
This really becomes a philosophical discussion of defining price gouging and immoral market techniques. Some are clearly gouging, such as charging 2x plane fares for someone who has to fly to a funeral, or tripling the price of supplies after a natural disaster. Some are less clear.
That system would still have fixed prices that are the same for everyone, just in relative terms instead of absolute. It's the same as a "normal" economy with perfectly equal wealth. It would also break down if people can give each other money but that's a different problem.
The problem is surveillance pricing uses a different percentage for each person to maximally exploit them. When the store thinks a person is hungry it will charge them 1% instead of 0.02 in your scale free economy, or $20 instead of 0.40 in our world. That's not fair no matter how you put it, and it's only possible in a big corp dominated market with no real competition.
> If I'm selling to the wealthiest zip code, where the median house price is over $10M, should I be disallowed to charge higher prices?
I think so, because perhaps your costs to distribute those products is more too. But what I don't think you should be able to do is say, well your house was $50mm and your house was $1mm so you pay much more. Or you're wearing Air Force Ones so maybe your price is just a little more wink wink. It's a bit like hyper-targeted advertising versus general advertising.
> If I'm posting something for sale on Craigslist, and I don't put a price, is it OK if I quote different prices to different people who text me?
I think so as well. I don't see a problem with this - you don't know anything (maybe besides a green/blue text) anything about the buyer, how much they make, &c.
> I think so as well. I don't see a problem with this - you don't know anything (maybe besides a green/blue text) anything about the buyer, how much they make, &c.
Going with the Craigslist scenario, what if I do? What if I quote different prices depending on the area code of their phone number? So I quote higher prices for people with a California number?
I'm not asking about morality or ethics. Does it make sense to make this scenario (Craigslist ad) illegal?
I take issue with this type of argument, because it ignores that scale is the _core_ part of the problem.
Equating "an individual selling on craigslist prices based on area code" with "Albertsons buys petabytes of individual private data and prices groceries based on income" is IMO not valid. Yes the very very core -borderline philosophical- question is the same. But the _scale_ is what makes it the problem.
It's the same argument I heard a few times "Why is flock a problem? My home driveway camera points at the street and sometimes I can read a license plate!"
So much like other laws / ordinances / provisions / etc. if regulation against this type of behaviors get enshrined, they should include thresholds for scale (which I believe the Seattle one does)
1 reply →
Yes.
Substitute your logic: is it OK to change your price because the responder is from an area that is mostly black? No, it's not.
Charge one price and charge it for everyone. Anything else leads to discrimination and other awful behaviors that we've had to pass laws to change.
3 replies →
> I'm not asking about morality or ethics. Does it make sense to make this scenario (Craigslist ad) illegal?
Why shouldn't we consider morality or ethics in what we decide is illegal?
Idk it seems like it's just different to me and we don't need to create a blanket rule that encompasses Craigslist. Why not just start with stores for example?
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Not comparable. The markets can still charge wherever they want, but it needs to be priced per item and not per customer. In your house counterexample, you could set whatever list price you want.
I updated my comment - it wasn't clear. I wasn't referring to the price of houses, but to the price of goods sold to people living in that zip code.
How can price discovery work if everyone’s price is different? What downward pressure would even exist on surveillance-derived prices besides resale black markets? Societally, do we really want to further monetize the expansion of the mass surveillance state?
> If I'm selling to the wealthiest zip code, where the median house price is over $10M, should I be disallowed to charge higher prices?
Yes, you should be disallowed. Otherwise every online store will upcharge you based on IP. There can be exceptions for small businesses or individuals, but that's it.