Re:Renting Horsepower
by alexb_ on Thursday May 04, 2023 @03:38PM
(#35821000)
Frictionless competition in an economic vacuum does not exist. Price discrimination makes this "affordable", until the base price is just raised back to where it was originally except now you have a gazillion fees you have to pay so that companies can extract more money from people less sensitive to price changes.
A company's dream is to enact price discrimination on every single transaction so that there is no such thing as a consumer surplus. The absolute dream of a company is to make it so everybody pays exactly the largest amount they can bear for everything.
This is why we have tipping everywhere. This is why we have features locked behind paywalls for no reason. This is why we have colleges that are uber-expensive, unless you are poor, in which case they aren't expensive because you actually care about the price.
Price Discrimination and Big Data, when combined, allow for companies to give prices in such a way that no consumer on earth gets a surplus. Legislation to ensure markets with consumer surplus continue to exist is badly needed.
A company's dream is to enact price discrimination on every single transaction so that there is no such thing as a consumer surplus. The absolute dream of a company is to make it so everybody pays exactly the largest amount they can bear for everything.
This is why we have tipping everywhere. This is why we have features locked behind paywalls for no reason. This is why we have colleges that are uber-expensive, unless you are poor, in which case they aren't expensive because you actually care about the price.
Price Discrimination and Big Data, when combined, allow for companies to give prices in such a way that no consumer on earth gets a surplus. Legislation to ensure markets with consumer surplus continue to exist is badly needed.