The bill in question is about per-shopper pricing (e.g, you and I pay different prices in the same store). This is something Lyft and Uber do, but it's not really possible in retail.
It is possible for retail. For example, you can simply not display the price. You can display a price range. You can use EInk displays which auto-update based on who's approaching the item.
And of course it's infinitely possible in an online store.
One example of how this is being employed is McDonalds trying to push everyone to use the app. They'll give lower prices in app while raising prices on the menu giving a "not using app" tax. That enables them to have flexible per user prices within the app. A store could do the same thing.
They haven't had the ability to do the significantly bad kinds of targeting until recently. This is a new problem even if it's similar to old practices at the surface level.
Refreshing the content on an electronic shelf label (ESL) takes about 30 seconds, and multiple people can view a product simultaneously. Unless the store is giving everyone AR glasses, people will notice the price discrepancy.
This assumes you have sufficient data to actually recognize a shopper such as facial ID or some form of iBeacon for every single product for which you wish to implement price discrimination. Basic ESLs cost $3 to $12, depending on size and use very little energy. Adding a camera means more energy, so a bigger battery and more cost.
Using in-app discounts is the most likely way to implement this, which I am okay with. Shoppers are willingly trading their data privacy for a discount.
Should this be legal is a question you could argue both ways, but in my opinion society will be worse off with per customer pricing.
I'm not OK with this. Simple reason, it leaves the wide masses with no other option than to sell their data to survive.
Your mistake is assuming it's a discount, when it's not. For example, Safeway near me charges exorbitant prices for goods which are anywhere from 30-50% lower in the app. What they're doing is the same as your average dark pattern, you're only getting the real price using the app otherwise they charge a no-app fee. And even then you can't tell what the real price is supposed to be, because the app will tailor discounts to your shopping behavior.
Shoppers can and have noticed the price discrepancy [1] which is why this legislation is happening in the first place. If the price isn't the price then the whole basis of capitalism and consumer choice falls apart because there's no way to make a proper determination if Store A is cheaper than Store B.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-...
It’s unclear to me why transportation demand pricing is allowed but not delivery.
I expect the outcome of this to be prices raised for everyone and then loyalty discounts per group.
I don't think it should be allowed. It's predatory. It allows a company like Uber and Lyft to see things like "Oh, you are going to a hospital, then I'm going to apply a 10% surcharge because you are probably desperate".
It also works against the drivers. Uber/Lyft see things like "This person is logged on for 8 hours, they are desperate, so let's give them lower rates and worse routes."
For Uber/Lyft, booking a ride into the middle of nowhere carries a cost for the driver that isn’t present when booking a ride to the airport.
A flat fee per mile doesn’t make sense. A flat fee per seat doesn’t make sense. Grocery stores already price segment via coupons, sales, and loyalty programs - this is just an extension of that.
Regardless, the bigger point is that businesses already have a ton of levers to move for pricing: sales, loyalty programs, and regular price adjustments. None of those are considered discrimination. Why does the buyer's home address fall into this protected class; particularly for any service that involves transport, delivery, etc to that address? There's a clear relevancy of the address to the cost of a service based around that location.
In the case of Uber/Lyft, the company can say a ride to the middle of nowhere costs more than a hotspot destination because the odds of finding someone hailing another ride from there are low. This would mean the driver would have to spend more on gas picking up their next customer. Although this seems reasonable, it's probabilistic in nature. This may also not be the case, but the company must price this risk to keep their drivers happy. Well what of the case where the destination is a dangerous neighborhood where the driver feels like their life will be in danger? How do we price the risk then? And that says nothing about the possible mismatch of perception between the seller and the customer.
How about if a grocery store sells goods at a higher price to customers in lower income areas because they notice that it lowers the number of high income area customers to the point they make less profit? Is it right for that store to raise the price for identifiably lower income area customer to make up for the lost profit?
> Offering the same service or product (a specific flight if you will, a chunk of butter of the same brand in the same store at the same time) to two independent customers at different prices based on prior knowledge about them unrelated to the specific good or service is fundamentally unjust
Your statement includes things like loyalty programs and memberships. Presenting these credentials at checkout means customers are willingly giving the company "prior knowledge about them" (that they've shopped at the store before and how much they're willing to spend) unrelated to the *specific* food or service they're purchasing. Should these practices be allowed?
The point of this reply isn't to say what should or shouldn't be allowed, it's to show that I believe the issue is more nuanced than you can account for in your statement of what constitutes unjust business practices.
In your example, why aren’t all prices then fixed between different stores to ensure justice? Whole Foods shouldn’t be allowed to charge more than Discount Food Bin for the same can of beans, and WF in Oakland shouldn’t charge less than WF in Marin.
> sales, loyalty programs, and regular price adjustments. None of those are considered discrimination. Why does the buyer's home address fall into
Because everything you listed applies to everyone equally! Assuming a normal loyalty program anyone can join.
> any service that involves transport, delivery, etc to that address
Shopping at a grocery store doesn't involve that. But sure most forms of charging for transport based on destination are fine. That's different from charging two people differently to go the same place at the same time. "Home address" is just an easy piece of personal info to mention.
(An exception to that most would be like the hospital example, charging more for that specific location inside the general area because the buyer seems desperate.)
I'm thinking of scenarios such as 'Oh, we're going to have a heatwave between 14:00 and 19:00, let's make popsicles 9 cent more expensive for everyone' or 'hm, that particular brand of soda sells extremely good today, let's hike the price'/'this noodle soup gets new stock later today, let's lower the price to clear out the shelf'
Because with electronic signage, that is very possible.
This is about profiling people buying through apps.
I guess it’s neat someone is trying to do something about grocery prices, this won’t move the needle. Still nice to have in the books.
Now if only the governer could figure out how to get the Key bridge built instead of firing the company and starting over… that would be cool.
“Yeah it’ll be built by 2028!” At this point I doubt it’ll be finished in my lifetime.
Canada's major grocery chain has migrated entirely to LCD price tagging that can receive OTA updates. There are now no paper price labels in the store.
The same chains have extensive camera coverage on the entrance / exits of the store.
So pricing can be an optimization function as fine grained as persons currently in the store.
Cameras on the aisles as well can enforce that individual tags update while nobody is within 15 feet, etc.
It's hard to even talk or think about without without sounding (and becoming!) conspiratorial. Add a little data from our trusted partners and they can jack specific prices according to urgency - eg, floral bouquets when you're en route to a dance recital.
On the other hand, for something like a Netflix subscription, price discrimination DOES tend to help the poor users out. Netflix is 10x cheaper in third world countries for the exact same product. If they were forced to charge the same price everywhere, they would just charge everyone the US price and foreign users would be left out.
Even if Netflix or others do price-discrimination, the AI-pricing issue would still be used to squeeze as much as possible from the poor. It's not like these blood-sucking capitalists who run these massive corporations are into helping the poor.
Per customer pricing is only possible for online shopping.
Because they're still mad they think it "takes away jobs" to put in electronic ink price tags.
That's it. They came up with the rest of the FUD and latched onto clueless lawmakers.
These problems arise when dealing with a monopoly, that undermines the free market and that's a far worse systemic problem and the root cause of these issues. AI has nothing to do with it.
Even in areas with multiple competitors, they can (and do) effectively collude by getting their information through data brokers and third parties.
I don't have a solution, but we are currently very far away from a free market in general.
I get about a dozen fliers in the mail every week advertising deals that are surely loss leaders for the grocer. Then there's extreme couponing forums.
Have you worked in a large organization? I can't imagine it's easy to coordinate much less have someone make actual decisions.
“It was supposed that the pearl buyers were individuals acting alone, bidding against one another for the pearls the fishermen brought in. And once it had been so. But this was a wasteful method, for often, in the excitement of bidding for a fine pearl, too great a price had been paid to the fisherman. This was extravagant and not to be countenanced. Now there was only one pearl buyer with many hands"
Ok.
Can we get to what this kind of law is actually doing? The simplest version would be roughly "stores need to display prices and only change them once per day". No specific prices are being imposed.
The government IS preventing coordinated price setting by closing the loophole of third party data brokers.
There are things you can do to lower prices like prosecuting theft. In this case technology is part of the solution. Adding red tape and restricting technology will do the opposite.
Sure, but if you felt you didn't get a good deal you're not going to go back.
Like I personally don't know every single price at every single shop before I go, but I do know for example that Henry's Mercato or the Big Watermelon will have some kind of cheap bulk fruit, Aldi has cheaper staples, Springvale has the best fish etc. etc.
There are plenty of other places I checked out once or twice and then wrote off as a bad deal.
If you feel that way about all of them, you're not just going to starve to death, though. If you've got two options and they're both bad, you probably just go to one of them anyway.
Great example: 15 years ago, assuming you were out of contract, cancelling a postpaid cell phone line worked very differently. Important to know: it was and still is “billed in advance,” meaning you pay around say, January 4, for your service from Jan 4 through Feb 3rd. So if you cancelled your service around Jan 19th, you’d be owed a refund of a half month’s service. 15 years ago, you’d receive a check or a credit to your method of payment - since you didn’t get the service you paid for, that seemed very obviously correct. Sometime at least 10 years ago, one of the cell phone carriers decided to try just saying that you never got a refund, and that if you didn’t want to be ripped off, then you should just cancel on the one day of the month where you had finished using the service you paid for (and hope you didn’t do it too late and get billed for another month). Initially it was just that one carrier who did this, but quickly this became the norm across the whole industry, and now all three postpaid carriers work exactly that way.
This is of course the same story with more well-publicized enshittification, like Basic Economy plane tickets, data caps on your broadband service, etc. etc.
Being more financially stable means you pay higher prices, in this scenario
Total spend is higher. And if your $20 tricket breaks you're less likely to bother to return it if $20 doesn't mean that much to you. Plus other reasons I'm sure.
you may have to text back Yes your credit card company when you get a fraud alert text - that’s about the only inconvenience. just bought US-EU return ticket for June - 22% lower than lowest price I’ve seen “from US” in the last month
They profile you and offer discounts based on your past purchases
What? To the best of my knowledge, not a single grocery store chain in my area is owned by someone local to the community. The two biggest chains (that aren't Walmart) are owned by Kroger and by an international retail conglomerate. Both are publicly traded, so there's no single owner to give a shit about the local community.
It's a fundamental shift from:
"I sell this product for the cheapest price possible and I make everything possible in my business to be cost effective and buy from more cost effective businesses."
TO
"I don't care about cost-effectiveness. I just try to find out how to get the most money out of my customers."
I'd re-write that as "the more you consume the more you pay". Seems normal.
Companies like Google or Amazon pay for a server computer only a small fraction of the price I would have to pay to buy it.
Similarly for any electronics or computing device or component. The same is true for any food ingredient. I can buy some spice by the kilogram at a price an order of magnitude lower than when I buy 10 grams of it.
If the same were applied in healthcare, someone with a chronic disease should pay much less for the same drug, in comparison with someone with an acute disease.
What is the root cause w.r.t. the current situation? Are there any obvious ways out? Do any US politicians have any plans for a change? Are there any discussed proposals how to reform?
With paracetamol :)
(Dutch people know what I am talking about)
The current US is built to accomodate the top 0.1%. Their profiteering is more important than the good health of the population.
> Are there any obvious ways out?
Not really. Get money out of politics? Aggressively tax the wealthy and nationalize the entire health apparatus? Easier said than done.
> Do any US politicians have any plans for a change?
The only ones serious about it are on the progressive left, fought harshly by both Republicans and Establishment Democrats, under the guise of their respective patrons.
it is worth considering whether could a rational person could possibly disagree with the idea that the government is best placed to decide whether extending your life is a good investment (there are European systems that are not well run which resolve this unusual ways i.e. being unable to provide basic healthcare whilst giving hundreds of millions to PR agencies, sometimes run by people who happened to work for the government...total coincidence, to run media campaigns to "prevent" ill health).
it is not simple. there are largely private systems that run very well, funnily enough most of these are in Europe. there are public systems that run very badly, again many of these are in Europe. the discussion of public vs private is largely not relevant or particularly interesting (do people think that doctors just work for free in Europe? they do not, the incentives when you try to create a cheaper healthcare system by underpaying doctors, which exists in parts of Europe, creates some very bad situations i.e. an overreliance on doctors from Africa who have unknown training, Americans tend not to have imagined the scenario where healthcare is "free"/paid with taxes but they are being operated on by someone who can't speak English).
In which metric(s)? Afaik, life expectancy is lower in the US than in most of western Europe. And Americans are known to pay much more than Europeans on healthcare, on average.
Could be more tied to poor diet and lifestyle, and not the healthcare system itself.
Like if you sit on the chair all day on your remote job, then move to the couch for after-work Netflix and PS5, while you drink soda and eat processed food, then the only time you leave your house is you drive your Tesla/F-150 to Walmart and McDonald's, there's no magic healthcare system in the world that can undo decades of self inflicted damage.
Meanwhile people in some impoverished balkan town could end up living longer because they spend their entire lives moving outdoor all day in fresh air and only eat organic what they grow on their plot of land, even if their hospitals and healthcare systems are significantly worse than what americans have.
There's way more variables to life expectancy than just the healthcare system.
Probably because Europeans commenting don't know how big Medicare and Medicaid are.
Another limp-wristed penalty. Why not something like "$1,000 per dollar that you received as payment for prices in violation"? Customer buys a $5 can of beans that was AI-priced, you owe $5,000. They buy another can, you owe another $5,000. You have it set for the whole store, wham, you now owe 1,000 times your gross revenue for that day. Better damn well not do it.
The practice — supported by artificial intelligence and known as dynamic pricing or surveillance pricing — can lead to two consumers paying different amounts for the same item from the same retailer, at roughly the same time. If a store knows, for example, that one of those customers lives in a wealthier neighborhood, it can charge that person a higher price.
We live in a market economy. If you don't like the price, us apes have learned to say "no".
BTW, if prices are set by the wealth of the customer, then the poor ought to be getting a better deal. Isn't that a good thing?
As with many things in technology, it's not about the raw concept, it's about the automation of it and inability to appeal to a human. Haggling face to face is human. Having a bot decide what you are paying (take it or leave it) is asymmetric with the benefit going to the corpo.
> asymmetric with the benefit going to the corpo
You have the power to say "no". The only transactions you are forced into are the ones dealing with the government or the mob.
> inability to appeal to a human
I was stonewalled by a gigantic corporation the other day over a substantial sum of money. I googled the name and address of the CEO, and sent him a hand written polite letter. My issue was promptly resolved.
I know the CEO didn't read the letter. But he has staff that does, and hand writing a letter will get their attention, as well as reminding them that I was a loyal customer.
1. shortages
2. gluts
3. black markets
It doesn't matter what your or my opinion on it is, any more than having an opinion on F=ma. The Law of Supply and Demand is always in play.
There are thousands of years of history on this.
I.e. the government is regulating prices, yet another attempt going on for 4,000 years of trying and failing to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand.
> The grocery stores aren't going to raise the overall price to compensate for losing the ability to price discriminate: that would result in less profit for them.
Allow me to explain how prices are set:
Consider an appliance store. They want to sell refrigerators. What do they do? They have 3 refrigerator lines - the stripper, the midline, and the lux. The purpose of the stripper is that is what they advertise, to bring customers into the store. The purpose of the midrange is to upsell those who come for the stripper, as they think the extra features are worth it. The lux is sold to the wealthy customers who just want to buy the best. (Not having a lux is means the retailer is throwing easy money away.)
The moneymaker is the midrange.
You'll see the same thing in the grocery store. The store advertises the price of milk, which is likely at below cost (called a "loss leader"). People come to buy the milk, which is always on the back wall of the store. The customer has to pass by all kinds of things to get to the milk, and they'll buy it. The most overpriced stuff will be next to the checkout line.
Cheeses come in cheap, midrange, and lux, too.
There's been an extensive amount of research on exactly how to set up the store to maximize profits, which is necessary as grocery stores have razor thin margins.
BTW, the article is paywalled. I have no idea how a grocery store is going to adjust prices at checkout, as the prices are marked.
Many stores are rolling out electronic price tags on the shelves, which can be rapidly updated wirelessly [1]. They could probably do the price adjustment there. I'd assume they wouldn't want to make it too blatant, which would be a challenge.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-digital-price-tag-sh...
I'm not going to order food at a restaurant if the menu has no prices on it, even if I'm a zillionaire.