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A comment on Amazon Used Secret ‘Project Nessie’ Algorithm to Raise Prices. Parent comment

Re:Amazon Used Secret ‘Project Nessie’ Algorithm to Raise Pr... by SideQuark on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @06:29PM (#37758500)
Every producer lowers prices trying to kill competition. It's a major reason to lower prices, and lowering prices to kill competition is how goods over time become cheaper.

I think you misunderstand the reasons prices actually become lower for many goods over time. Or why some producers get replaced over time by more efficient producers. Without this process there's be no lower prices or more efficient production over time.

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Re:Amazon Used Secret ‘Project Nessie’ Algorithm to Raise Pr... by azemetre on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @06:57PM (#37758716)
I think the difference is that those other companies don't have an "AWS card" to play to subsidize their excursions.
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Re:Amazon Used Secret ‘Project Nessie’ Algorithm to Raise Pr... by vb-8448 on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @02:50AM (#37761703)
During the diapers war, Amazon was "on track to lose $100 million over three months in the diapers category alone"[0].

Do you call this "efficiency"? How many companies in the world can afford it?

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/emails-detail-am...

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Re:Amazon Used Secret ‘Project Nessie’ Algorithm to Raise Pr... by SideQuark on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @07:31AM (#37763646)
Yes, making the fallacy of picking extreme cases and applying it to every case will get you the result you want.

The proper way to asses things is not to post select evidence, but to pick every example of price lowering at a given time, and see how many become the situation you now describe. So, care to tell us what percent of price lowering incidents end up as extreme? I'd guess well under 1 in a million, but I may be off an order of magnitude in either direction.

By your reasoning, every time a person enters my house I should inform them they may kill me, since once in a while a person does enter a house, then kill the occupant.

However, I'd be a nut to act this way. Because the vast majority of cases does not end up in murder.

So, just like that, bringing up extreme cases for normal actions is also fear mongering nonsense. Yes, this could end up tis way. They could use this as a leverage point to take over the entire planet, enslave all humans, and turn us into Matrix-human-batteries. But continuing to harp on this as if any of it is likely is statistically unwarranted.

So, please answer - what fraction of price lowering events do you think ends up in the situation you keep implying this might be an example of?

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