Online Shopping Makes Suckers of Us All | Hacker News Reader

Online Shopping Makes Suckers of Us All

theatlantic.com

Offline shopping works the same way!

The price you pay at Home Depot is influenced by how far away the nearest Lowes is.

And don't get me started on airline fares!

Ahh, The Atlantic. Where voluntary commerce between buyers and sellers is somehow a neoliberal plot.

Who cares if shoes cost more after 7pm? Don’t buy from a store that gets named and shamed for these shenanigans. It’s vastly superior to government bureaucrats creating endless regulations designed to preserve some fictional memory of shopping in a quaint downtown boutique while on an ecommerce website. In Paris a retail shop has to register with the government when they want to conduct a Sale, and are limited to only a couple weeks per year of sales! Complete insanity.

I think it is really unfortunate that your ideology limits your ability to see that (1) extreme algorithmic price discrimination can and will lead to all manner of social ills; and (2) there are regulatory regimes capable of limiting the most extreme forms of price discrimination that are neither "endless" nor "bureaucratic".

Just take a look at the stock market. Your broker isn't tweaking your view on the order book based on who you are, nor should it.

It’s really sad to me that your ideology is about coercion and government intervention into the most minute details of business. I have a great idea - let the free market sort it out!

Are efficient markets some kind of Nash equilibrium that naturally emerges from bellum omnium contra omnes?

If true, it is strange that we need government coercion to define and enforce property rights. Stranger still that we need government coercion to grant corporate charters to facilitate capital formation. The free market should just handle that.

It’s hilarious that I advocate against the government dictating exactly how a business can set prices and when, and you immediately jump to the foundations of private property. I’m not advocating for dissolution of the state - I’m saying we don’t need government agents meddling in all aspects of private business. But it is very sad that statists continue to advocate for ever harsher and more extreme intervention and ludicrous policies.

> let the free market sort it out!

Price discrimination is an example of market failure. This is first year economics.

You can argue the net pros and cons of intervention, but the market definitely isn’t going to sort it out.

The free market is a great tool but it has plenty of failure modes and this is clearly one of them.

I hate going to physical stores specially the country where I live, the shop agents watch you like a hawk to make sure you aren't shoplifting or using stuff without buying.

Other than this, in local store - shop space is limited so they try to sell you stuff on which they can make maximum profit margin rather than branded quality product.

Many times I head out of the house to buy a big name brands tool or consumable only to be manipulated by the shopkeeper to purchase some local brand crap quality stuff not just that he also went great length to prove how big name brand product is scam when in reality big name company here spends more on advertisement and offers less margin for stocking their products, so local shopkeepers try to not stock them. The product I was buying was epoxy adhesive.

Country is India.

Secondly, the shopowner offered discount to young girl who was before me in a queue but nothing to a young guy or old women either. Who wants this kind of descrimination?

As a result I've stopped going to offline stores and now strictly purchase everything online atleast there is no "obvious and visible" descrimination there.

There are still things in India which can't be bought online for example, I can't buy plwood, MDF nuts and bolts and screws, steel angles, pipes etc... Or any hardware products like expoxy adhesive, plumbing solder, pipe fitting online so I still have to go to some store rather than save money and time and get it delivered to my door.

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