I've seen businesses in the US use the exact same "logic". It's disingenuous because there's zero logical difference between charging party A more than party B and charging party B less than party A.
> “We need (this pricing system) for cost reasons,” Yonemitsu said.
I understand the practice and genuinely think it's perfectly acceptable. But to explain it in that way is deceptive.
Staff discount. Is it really staff discount or charging regular customer more?
The iconic example from Ninotschka is man walks into a coffee shop and asks for coffee without milk, server says we’re all out of milk but have cream. Black coffee is black coffee, but what matters is the act of saying no to something.
Sublation is not equal to something not existing or being.
In either case, Joe is not attending the party, but in one scenario Joe might feel left out, insulted, etc.
So there is this universal capitalistic incentive to over price the Gweilo. Of course a way to soften this is to invoke capitalism again and allow competition to drop prices. But then this dives into things like price elasticity for tourists versus natives, and how clientele feel about tourists. If the local clientele are xenophobic the bar may even expel those they don't like much less charge a higher price, and from a capitalistic perspective this may be a tactic to retain ongoing regular customers.
I would argue this type of reasoning is seen throughout many fields. For example, anything involving money and the field of medicine has wildly all over the place made up pricing.
I would argue in all cases, this is in fact scummy, and the solution would be to mandate a clear pricing schedule (specifically with criteria on if and when different people are charged different prices) and thus open information availability to inform the customer. Tourists can then voluntarily say "I really want the food here, I'll pay the premium" or voluntarily say "on principle this is unfair, I'll vote with my feet and go to the even-priced competitor"
There are various discounts for things like senior citizens and military and such throughout, so none of this is a new idea.
Only in America. In countries with better healthcare systems, prices are fixed or very regular.
>I would argue in all cases, this is in fact scummy, and the solution would be to mandate a clear pricing schedule (specifically with criteria on if and when different people are charged different prices) and thus open information availability to inform the customer.
In the few places in Japan currently doing this, AFAICT, they do print it clearly. So far, it just seems to be a few places that then get lots of media attention.