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Comment by nzach | Hacker News Reader

> While the law bans setting higher prices through surveillance pricing, it doesn’t address reducing prices. If a company raises its prices for everyone, and then offers individualized discounts, “suddenly you’ve arrived at the same outcome,” McBrien says.

While I agree with the intent of this law, I don't think it will be effective. If you have a system capable of jacking prices up you can just multiply this calculated delta by -1 transform that into a discount.

To effectively prevent this practice you probably need to ban any kind of personal discount. I don't think we will ever see such law, nor do I think this would be a good idea.

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Yeah, sounds like a law that's passed because it sounds/polls good (ie. "affordability"), even though it's addressing a non-existent problem and is trivial to work around.

Uber pays drivers differential rates depending on how desperate they believe the driver to be. I can believe that UberEats demands a higher premium depending on the item and what they infer about you.

Right, but the law mentioned in TFA is specifically for grocery stores

From TFA

  Maryland’s law bans grocers and third-party delivery services from using a person’s personal data to set higher prices.

That says nothing about the driver?

>I don't think we will ever see such law, nor do I think this would be a good idea.

Why isn't this a good idea?

Buyers and sellers should be able to negotiate prices however they want. It is how markets have worked since the dawn of human trading.

It would also be costly to police.

If the problem is that a grocery store has a monopoly in an area, then that is a different problem fixed by adding grocery store(s).

This is a law about grocery stores. How much haggling do you think is happening at grocery stores?

I routinely ask the cashier for half off on anything that is perfectly fine but has less-than-pristine packaging. I usually get it.

(But I understand this isn't really relevant to the article or discussion here.)

Most pricing laws are built on the idea that this isn't OK. For example, I can't negotiate pricing directly with an automobile manufacturer. I have to go through a dealer so I am "protected".

That is a pretty good example of why these laws are not OK.

There are special laws made to protect the dealer's position. This is an exception not the rule.

You should justify why it is improving price (or something) for consumers if you want to hold it up as an example.

Most markets have also had a wide variety of regulations. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that large retail operations would be prohibited from attempting a predatory scheme depending on individualized pricing. There's a tangible difference between one off purchase contracts and selling into the consumer market at large.

Sure, haggling was historically the standard but that just isn't the way these modern operations work. If an outdated practice gets caught in the crossfire when protecting consumers from imminent harm I'm okay with that.

If you dig around in your hotel room the next time you're there, you'll likely find a statutory "list of prices" - often showing $1,000 or more per night for a room you paid $150 for.

In my experience, it's usually posted on the back of the door.

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