this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Giving a discount eats into their profit margins, so they'd rather lose the customer than lose the profit margin, because their resources are all finite.

So why do stores have sales, ever? No, although groceries are low-margin items, they still retain high enough markups that they can still make money even with discounts, particularly when offering loss leaders. And with this technology, they can optimize for both price and customer retention, by keeping a price artificially inflated for those who can afford it and only lowering it when they're at risk of losing a customer.

Which sounds like a good idea, right? But it's not going to be accurate, ever. They're only ever going to miscategorize people and charge single moms double.

And let's be honest, it won't be used to give poor people discounts. It'll be used to raise prices for middle class people.

Also if every election could be approval based voting or ranked choice.

Now you're really singing my song.