They don't want to support charities. They want to get people that want that to spend more money with them. They did the math, and the number of people that will say "no" to that permission is significantly smaller than the amount of money they make from forcing that permission in order to get them to give their scraps to charities.

Even better, they want cheap advertising from charities. Plenty of charities broadcast to their network that you should go set up Amazon Smile to support that charity. And thus you get charities advertising for Amazon.

Associating a charitable donation with a transaction is all about exploiting opportunities for price discrimination.

The fundamental problem of selling things was always that you had to set one price, unless it was a big-ticket thing that people haggle over. With one price, it's too high for some people, so you lose the potential profit from selling to them at a lower price, and some people buy, but would pay more, so you lose the extra profit from charging them the maximum it is worth to them.

Being willing to donate during a transaction is a valuable hint that you would pay more if you had to.

I've been avoiding Amazon for a while, but I wanted a product recently that was only on Amazon, and as I clicked through the shipping options, and refused Amazon Prime for the nth time, they jacked up the price by like $5. So I abandoned the order. But I guess their techniques work at scale.

My hope is that somehow, their algorithms to discriminate in pricing cause them to self-destruct eventually. In the meantime, I think this is a major part of the dynamic making people feel, and be, poorer - during the past decade there has just been a revolution in eliminating consumer surplus and converting it into producer surplus, and that's where all the corporate growth/wealth is coming from.

>Being willing to donate during a transaction is a valuable hint that you would pay more if you had to.

I don't get this. How does using amazon smile signal that I'm willing to pay more? The prices are the same as the regular site and the donation money is coming out of amazon's pocket.

I was thinking more in general, because many businesses are asking for donations to charity when you buy something.

But as far as Amazon goes, how do you determine the prices are the same? It seems to me they change from second to second, and presumably from person to person. Do you ever buy the same product at the same time using both methods?