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If your grocer can screw you out of an extra $50/month on your household food bill, that's $50/month you can't spend on a babysitter, a movie, or a couple of nice books for your kid. The American economy runs on consumption, and the American consumer has less discretionary income than they've had in generations. Anything that reduces consumption is a drag on the whole economy.
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Another must-read
@pluralistic I remember 25 years ago when government actually pretended to care about monopolies.
While there have been some instances in which this *was* true, it is *far* more often the case that there are blindingly obvious answers to tech problems, which our lawmakers and regulators *ignore*, amidst a rising chorus of warnings about the dire consequences of failing to act.
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Take the new Maryland bill that (supposedly) outlaws surveillance pricing: this bill is, frankly, a terribly drafted piece of shit. Worse: it's a terribly drafted piece of shit bill that fails to resolve a serious and urgent problem. *Even worse*: the lawmakers who drafted this piece of shit bill and Maryland Governor Wes Moore were all loudly and repeatedly warned about the problems of this bill, and they did *nothing* and now the people of Maryland are *fucked*.
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So what *is* surveillance pricing, why is it so dangerous, and what's wrong with Maryland's Protection Against Predatory Pricing Act?
Surveillance pricing is when a company spies on you ("surveillance") and uses the resulting dossier to raise its prices to the maximum it calculates you will be willing to pay ("pricing"). With surveillance pricing, a retailer reaches into your bank account and devalues your dollars.
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If you pay $2 for an apple at the grocery store and the same store only charges me $1 for that apple, then that grocer is telling you that your dollars are worth half as much as mine:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/
There's a kind of economics brainworm that makes some economists *looooove* surveillance pricing.
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