I just assume any time I'm dealing with a corporation, I'm getting fucked over. That's why I feel no remorse for fucking them over any chance I get.
This is a really interesting point. Even though we should test our assumptions about the reasons for the price increase here against Hanlon's razor [1], it's very easy to _feel_ that we're being taken advantage of, and emotions matter a lot in purchasing decisions.
A savvy competitor might be able to take advantage of this kind of pricing clumsiness. (For example, I recently bought a new car from a "no haggle" dealer for pretty similar reasons... Working with traditional dealers in the U.S. is a very painful experience for many.)
I don't think corporations are stupid at all, they're the collected intelligence of thousands of people being used with the moral and ethical consequences abstracted away to where they can act in horrifying ways and not feel any remorse. This is why probably the hundred or so people involved in denying a cancer patient's claim for insurance payment don't feel bad; none of them made the decision, it's just a process.
So, with that in mind, I don't think Hanlon applies here, if you want a razor, use Occam's. And the theory here that requires the least assumptions is that corporations would sell their own mother if it made them one red cent, so when I hear "priceline changed it from $129 to $149" my prevailing assumption is the low price was to get you in the door, and they've found that a price increase of $20 at the point of sale isn't enough to deter customers. They're probably A/B testing a number of increases to see just how much they can squeeze from people.
So I think that it's obvious that the sort of behavior people are wont to declare is the norm these days has a large cyclical element, and perhaps a secular one as well, but it's not as simple as a universal race to the bottom or we never would have developed the society we have in the first place.
There is a long and disgraceful history of corporations opposing damn near everything and anything that would even remotely upset the status quo that they're used to. Everything from women's rights to equal wages among races to ending child labor to the right to unionize, all the way to health and safety laws, the 40 hour work week, and even basic labor rights like whistle-blowing all receive the same frantic and "THIS IS THE END TIMES IF THIS HAPPENS!" treatment from the corporations and their lobbies.
And it's been wrong every. Single. Time. Somehow, some way, the businesses adapted to giving their workers basic human decency, fair wages, etc. and it was never once at the behest of benevolent corporate overlords but in fact was always at the direct demand of regulatory oversight.
If anything, society has developed by fighting, tooth and nail, at every turn, the wailing and howling corporate opposition to anything even remotely not immediately profitable.
So, I think you have a rather facile understanding of what you are talking about.
I like how you couldn't even attempt to define what I was talking about so you could condescend to me about not understanding it without basically restating the exact way I was using the word. Well done.
When people think "corporation" they think exactly that, large for profit stock corporations. Yes, credit unions are technically corporations. Hell, even LLC is a kind of corporation. You're arguing dictionary versus contextual usage, for reasons I can't quite put together.
And "typically demonized?" How much of modern colonialism and the exploitation of the developing world can be laid directly, unambiguously, at the feet of corporations?
And if something is linked to power and wealth, it's linked to everything bad that people can do with power and wealth, which is everything.
You casually use the term "developing world", but I think that term implies those countries have the goal of becoming more like the US and Europe, and that that's a good thing. Do they need more wealthy and powerful corporations of their own, or is there another path?
Since a person has a body and an intelligence it's also a non-natural aka "artificial" intelligence.
This is not true.
And FYI big corporations are also stupid in many ways.
I'd argue they've operationalized some core things, everything else is wishy washy at best.
The most glaring example is their complicity in hiding "resort fees" for some properties by moving notice from the room selection page (which is misleading to start with) to the summary page under an opaque "mandatory fees" line item.
Regarding car dealers, consider "doc fees" and "destination charges". It's not about feeling we're being taken advantage of - it's about an obvious attempt to mislead.
I don't think that's different from saying "most Elbonians are crooks, therefore I feel no remorse for fucking over Elbonians". Collective punishment isn't a good thing.
"Collective punishment" applied to a corporation is called a boycott and I see zero problem with consumers expressing their preference in this way. Zero.
I think that's not the usual meaning of 'collective punishment'. I believe that term is usually applied when many people are subjected to punishment in retaliation for the deeds of one person (or of only a few), not when one person (or corporation) is subjected to punishment by many people.