Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
However, they’re already making it impossible for shoppers to track prices, and we all know soon (left to their own devices) they’re going to switch to individual pricing.
I’m surprised that the pricing issue is not being discussed in the context of online shopping already, with home deliveries on the rise.
They have the solutions, they just know that the more solutions are in play, the less (in theory) they'll be able to get away with shit like this.
It was probably broken by design, allowing the politicians to brag about how they're doing something, while the lobbyists managed to carve out such large loopholes for themselves that it will in likelihood never be a real deterrent.
For example: surveillance pricing is allowed if users opt-in so consider how many times you've clicked "I agree" on websites recently to get past some legalese wall of text blocking you from the content.
Another thing is you can't sue a grocery store, but you can petition the AG to sue them, which they will do only if they feel like it.
Not to mention that it applies only to grocery stores, not hotels and airlines and other industries which are inclined to do surveillance pricing
[1] https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/30/something-must-be-done/
The bill in question is about per-shopper pricing (e.g, you and I pay different prices in the same store). This is something Lyft and Uber do, but it's not really possible in retail.
It’s unclear to me why transportation demand pricing is allowed but not delivery.
I expect the outcome of this to be prices raised for everyone and then loyalty discounts per group.
I don't think it should be allowed. It's predatory. It allows a company like Uber and Lyft to see things like "Oh, you are going to a hospital, then I'm going to apply a 10% surcharge because you are probably desperate".
It also works against the drivers. Uber/Lyft see things like "This person is logged on for 8 hours, they are desperate, so let's give them lower rates and worse routes."
For Uber/Lyft, booking a ride into the middle of nowhere carries a cost for the driver that isn’t present when booking a ride to the airport.
A flat fee per mile doesn’t make sense. A flat fee per seat doesn’t make sense. Grocery stores already price segment via coupons, sales, and loyalty programs - this is just an extension of that.
Regardless, the bigger point is that businesses already have a ton of levers to move for pricing: sales, loyalty programs, and regular price adjustments. None of those are considered discrimination. Why does the buyer's home address fall into this protected class; particularly for any service that involves transport, delivery, etc to that address? There's a clear relevancy of the address to the cost of a service based around that location.
In your example, why aren’t all prices then fixed between different stores to ensure justice? Whole Foods shouldn’t be allowed to charge more than Discount Food Bin for the same can of beans, and WF in Oakland shouldn’t charge less than WF in Marin.
In the case of Uber/Lyft, the company can say a ride to the middle of nowhere costs more than a hotspot destination because the odds of finding someone hailing another ride from there are low. This would mean the driver would have to spend more on gas picking up their next customer. Although this seems reasonable, it's probabilistic in nature. This may also not be the case, but the company must price this risk to keep their drivers happy. Well what of the case where the destination is a dangerous neighborhood where the driver feels like their life will be in danger? How do we price the risk then? And that says nothing about the possible mismatch of perception between the seller and the customer.
How about if a grocery store sells goods at a higher price to customers in lower income areas because they notice that it lowers the number of high income area customers to the point they make less profit? Is it right for that store to raise the price for identifiably lower income area customer to make up for the lost profit?
> Offering the same service or product (a specific flight if you will, a chunk of butter of the same brand in the same store at the same time) to two independent customers at different prices based on prior knowledge about them unrelated to the specific good or service is fundamentally unjust
Your statement includes things like loyalty programs and memberships. Presenting these credentials at checkout means customers are willingly giving the company "prior knowledge about them" (that they've shopped at the store before and how much they're willing to spend) unrelated to the *specific* food or service they're purchasing. Should these practices be allowed?
The point of this reply isn't to say what should or shouldn't be allowed, it's to show that I believe the issue is more nuanced than you can account for in your statement of what constitutes unjust business practices.
> sales, loyalty programs, and regular price adjustments. None of those are considered discrimination. Why does the buyer's home address fall into
Because everything you listed applies to everyone equally! Assuming a normal loyalty program anyone can join.
> any service that involves transport, delivery, etc to that address
Shopping at a grocery store doesn't involve that. But sure most forms of charging for transport based on destination are fine. That's different from charging two people differently to go the same place at the same time. "Home address" is just an easy piece of personal info to mention.
(An exception to that most would be like the hospital example, charging more for that specific location inside the general area because the buyer seems desperate.)
Obviously acceptable. But I'm talking about two people placing an order for the same ticket, same airline, same rewards program and getting different prices because the airline knows something about their private life. For example, maybe the airline has gotten information that one person is going to a funeral and thus are more willing to pay a higher price.
Everything about this encourages corporate espionage on private citizens which I'm opposed to. I'd rather not have google calendar secretly sharing my entries with delta so they can in turn determine what ticket price I might be willing to pay.
There's also not market fundamentals which can correct this situation. Back to the airline example, for any given route you are limited by the number of carriers to that location. Airports are physical things with limited capacity which naturally leads to monopolies and oligopolies. That means you can't just "pay someone that's not doing that" as you only have 2 or 3 options for most locations and they all want to participate in that scheme.
Canada's major grocery chain has migrated entirely to LCD price tagging that can receive OTA updates. There are now no paper price labels in the store.
The same chains have extensive camera coverage on the entrance / exits of the store.
So pricing can be an optimization function as fine grained as persons currently in the store.
Cameras on the aisles as well can enforce that individual tags update while nobody is within 15 feet, etc.
It's hard to even talk or think about without without sounding (and becoming!) conspiratorial. Add a little data from our trusted partners and they can jack specific prices according to urgency - eg, floral bouquets when you're en route to a dance recital.
> Cameras on the aisles as well can enforce that individual tags update while nobody is within 15 feet, etc.
> ... If they have your message history and see your mum is dying, they can spike flight tickets for example. And they will know exactly the highest amount you can afford for it.
In my own head, this was the the most far-fetched piece of my own comment!
It is possible for retail. For example, you can simply not display the price. You can display a price range. You can use EInk displays which auto-update based on who's approaching the item.
And of course it's infinitely possible in an online store.
One example of how this is being employed is McDonalds trying to push everyone to use the app. They'll give lower prices in app while raising prices on the menu giving a "not using app" tax. That enables them to have flexible per user prices within the app. A store could do the same thing.
They haven't had the ability to do the significantly bad kinds of targeting until recently. This is a new problem even if it's similar to old practices at the surface level.
Sure it can, cameras and facial recognition.
Identify a person when they enter the store. Track them with overhead cameras as they move throughout the store. Set the price for the individual when they get to checkout. It barely requires any extra infrastructure in most stores.
You don't need a unique barcode per item, you simply need to be able to identify the person purchasing the item at checkout.
Barcodes today don't contain price information (except for meat AFAIK. But then you'd mostly just need to change it to be weight instead of price).
Refreshing the content on an electronic shelf label (ESL) takes about 30 seconds, and multiple people can view a product simultaneously. Unless the store is giving everyone AR glasses, people will notice the price discrepancy.
This assumes you have sufficient data to actually recognize a shopper such as facial ID or some form of iBeacon for every single product for which you wish to implement price discrimination. Basic ESLs cost $3 to $12, depending on size and use very little energy. Adding a camera means more energy, so a bigger battery and more cost.
Using in-app discounts is the most likely way to implement this, which I am okay with. Shoppers are willingly trading their data privacy for a discount.
I'm not OK with this. Simple reason, it leaves the wide masses with no other option than to sell their data to survive.
Should this be legal is a question you could argue both ways, but in my opinion society will be worse off with per customer pricing.
Your mistake is assuming it's a discount, when it's not. For example, Safeway near me charges exorbitant prices for goods which are anywhere from 30-50% lower in the app. What they're doing is the same as your average dark pattern, you're only getting the real price using the app otherwise they charge a no-app fee. And even then you can't tell what the real price is supposed to be, because the app will tailor discounts to your shopping behavior.
Shoppers can and have noticed the price discrepancy [1] which is why this legislation is happening in the first place. If the price isn't the price then the whole basis of capitalism and consumer choice falls apart because there's no way to make a proper determination if Store A is cheaper than Store B.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-...
Today's, yes, but that's really not a technology limit. EInk displays have much faster refresh rates. The main limitation is the communication, but that's a solvable problem with a smart enough networking mesh.
> multiple people can view a product simultaneously
You track the people's position. If multiple people are crowded around the same product then you can pick a price for both customers. Might not work well for crowded stores, but in that case you probably can just maximize the prices anyways as a lot of people are currently shopping.
> This assumes you have sufficient data to actually recognize a shopper such as facial ID or some form of iBeacon for every single product.
No, you just need 1 customer ID on entrance to the store. Everything else can be done by tracking their position with overhead cameras. You don't need to put a camera on every product.
I'm thinking of scenarios such as 'Oh, we're going to have a heatwave between 14:00 and 19:00, let's make popsicles 9 cent more expensive for everyone' or 'hm, that particular brand of soda sells extremely good today, let's hike the price'/'this noodle soup gets new stock later today, let's lower the price to clear out the shelf'
Because with electronic signage, that is very possible.
This is about profiling people buying through apps.
I guess it’s neat someone is trying to do something about grocery prices, this won’t move the needle. Still nice to have in the books.
Now if only the governer could figure out how to get the Key bridge built instead of firing the company and starting over… that would be cool.
“Yeah it’ll be built by 2028!” At this point I doubt it’ll be finished in my lifetime.
This absolutely would ban changing the price in the middle of the day in response to changes in temperature, as the parent comment suggested.
On the other hand, for something like a Netflix subscription, price discrimination DOES tend to help the poor users out. Netflix is 10x cheaper in third world countries for the exact same product. If they were forced to charge the same price everywhere, they would just charge everyone the US price and foreign users would be left out.
Even if Netflix or others do price-discrimination, the AI-pricing issue would still be used to squeeze as much as possible from the poor. It's not like these blood-sucking capitalists who run these massive corporations are into helping the poor.
I have no problem with this for luxuries like Netflix which have sufficient competition (I am not saying Netflix has sufficient competition - I don't watch much TV, but I assume there is at least some: HBO Max, Disney+, others?)
I think I have a problem with this for literal necessities such as food, water, air.
I believe the solution to these problems is competition. If there is only one grocery store available to me, that store can set prices at whatever they want. If there are 20 stores near me - they are going to have to compete on price. I know plenty of very wealthy people near me who still get many of their groceries from Walmart.
If my mother is dying, but there are literally 1000 safe, fast ways for me to get to her in a hurry, the price is going to be reasonable unless there is some legislation which enforces some minimum (which I am also against).
That does not I mean I in any way support data collection without consent.
I do agree with you that with personal data, and without competition, for-profit companies have a strong incentive to, and will, "squeeze" you for every dollar they can get.
I think some industries, such as energy, are naturally resistant to competition; and while I am generally wary of regulations, those are areas where I think regulation in the public interest makes sense. The question of course becomes which products and services are naturally resistant to competition, and necessary enough that regulation should be required. I don't think entertainment falls in this category. I don't know enough about airline travel to give an informed opinion.
Per customer pricing is only possible for online shopping.
Pharmacies in my home country are notorious for making personalised prices. Some big brand grocery stores here have "fiddly" cards and face tracking.
They can easily manipulate prices to make you register yourself and then make discount based on some personalisation metric.
We are all used to it though Amzn and others. We just don't realise that all that is needed for it to get to your basket is that one of them to do it and others to follow.
We have seen many recent examples of companies applying abusive corporate practices and instead of capitalising on it, the competitors just follow with some excuse...
Because they're still mad they think it "takes away jobs" to put in electronic ink price tags.
That's it. They came up with the rest of the FUD and latched onto clueless lawmakers.
That seems bad.
Yes, about 31% of returns in 2022 were for people who didn't pay federal income tax. By a massive, overwhelming majority, they are lower-income levels, who also receive the most direct cash and cash-like benefits from the government.
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-doesnt-pay-incom...
>You believe in the world's most expensive healthcare, the world's most expensive universities(/hedge funds), corrupt spending on corporations, wars on behalf of the empire, and our vassal states, and 'lavish' benefits for only corporations and white people (as has been the case since we invented whiteness)?
Surely you realize healthcare and university expense is, in part, driven by all the free money the government pumps into the system, right? How successful would universities be at charging $80K a semester if not for federally subsidized student loans? I'm arguing against all the things you just listed - you seem to be confused.
>Am I correctly understanding that this status quo is your preference?
The status quo for the last 20 years is a bad thing. Our ballooning debt, as a direct result of profligate spending on all the things I listed, is a problem. Again, you seem to be very confused about my position.
>I'm also curious which benefit is specifically 'lavish'. The only social programs I'd describe as such are the programs that create billionaires.
What social program do you think creates billionaires? Even being charitable to your position, Walmart's revenue is about 4% driven by foodstamps. Even big bad Walmart isn't successful because of social programs.
As for lavish: "The government’s failure to count its largess as recipients’ income allows welfare households to blow past the income level above which a working family no longer qualifies for government help. Take a single parent with two school-age children who earns $11,000 annually from part-time work. The government considers this household in poverty because its income is below $25,273. But this family would qualify for benefits worth $53,128. It would receive Treasury checks of $3,400 in refundable child tax credits and $4,400 in refundable earned-income tax credits. The family would also receive Food Stamp debit cards worth $9,216 a year, $9,476 in housing subsidies, $877 of government payments for utility bills, $16,033 to fund Medicaid, $3,102 in free meals at school and $6,624 in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. All this puts the family’s income at $64,128, or 254% of the poverty level.
A hardworking family earning anything like $64,128 in salary wouldn’t be eligible for any of these welfare benefits in four-fifths of the states. Meanwhile, the welfare family would be eligible for another 90 small federal benefits and sundry state and local welfare programs."
>Or do you just think that politicians shouldn't talk about rent, fuel, and food prices?
Considering politicians from both sides have repeatedly made each of these issues worse through things like rent-control and zoning restrictions or environmental restrictions and the Iran war, yes, I do think politicians should just be quiet and do less: they'd cause less damage.
>Or is your contention that the working poor just stupid for believing anything will ever get better in our two party system?
Basically any average citizen is silly for thinking their vote has an impact. Per "Testing Theories of American Politics", the preferences of the average citizen have a "near-zero, statistically non-significant impact" on public policy when the preferences of economic elites and organized interest groups are taken into account.
You are annoyed they don't pay income taxes, but where are the accolades for their generosity?
> What social program do you think creates billionaires?
Elon Musk would not be a hundred billionaire without government contracts and vast government subsidies. Likewise for Ellison and Palantir and whoever else gets to hoover up our defense spending. So too for any entity that receives the myriad benefits of 'public private partnership' in domains that used to be exclusively government run. Deloitte makes bank on 'administering' public programs. The Multi-billion dollar retail Tax prep exists entirely because the government is bribed not to compete. Private prisons/concentration camps are 'social programs' that produces billions in private wealth. etc. etc.. etc...
> Take a single parent with two school-age children who earns $11,000 annually from part-time work. The government considers this household in poverty because its income is below $25,273. But this family would qualify for benefits worth $53,128.
> It would receive Treasury checks of $3,400 in refundable child tax credits and $4,400 in refundable earned-income tax credits.
... A person who make this little would not pay income taxes, so these credits cannot be realized.
> Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF is temporary
All of these programs are difficult to retain access to. I've never met anybody among the working poor able to realize even half of these meagre benefits.
A random family in NYC would pay, on average, $20,439 annually, just on child care, per child, thus, this hypothetical single parent is contributing at least $40k in labor to produce future workers. It's not unreasonable to give them compensation for this thankless task.
As another point of comparison, Norway spends 18k per year for every kindergartener in their nation regardless of the parent's income. This is what is known as, under capitalism, an investment with a 50 year compounding return.
Starving, homeless children produce negative externalities if they are not cared for, so the return on the investment is even more potent in this case.
All this said, you've asserted that 53k, by itself, is 'lavish'. But you are speaking to someone who regularly makes that much money in between blinks on a half-decent day in the market, so I'm not really convinced that it is.
> Basically any average citizen is silly for thinking their vote has an impact. Per "Testing Theories of American Politics", the preferences of the average citizen have a "near-zero, statistically non-significant impact" on public policy when the preferences of economic elites and organized interest groups are taken into account.
This is why organized, sustained political action is required above and beyond elections. So that, in aggregate, these near-zeros can create change. It's not an invitation to check out and advocate for centrist reactionary nihilistic libertarianism, which is what I have to assume your true position is.
70% of the people in the lowest quintile have 0 adults working fulltime, and therefore produce effectively 0 labor value. They don't contribute, they take. Would you be OK with requiring a work, education, volunteer, or caretaking requirement for any welfare programs; to ensure that these people are actually working for society?
>Elon Musk would not be a hundred billionaire without government contracts and vast government subsidies. Likewise for Ellison and Palantir and whoever else gets to hoover up our defense spending. So too for any entity that receives the myriad benefits of 'public private partnership' in domains that used to be exclusively government run. Deloitte makes bank on 'administering' public programs. The Multi-billion dollar retail Tax prep exists entirely because the government is bribed not to compete. Private prisons/concentration camps are 'social programs' that produces billions in private wealth. etc. etc.. etc...
None of those are social programs: they required the person or company to "work" by providing a service or good that benefits people, rather than get a handout. There's a debate over the government mismanaging and misallocating the budget, but Lockheed selling a F-35 or Ellison providing compute to the government is not welfare.
> Government welfare: [The low income, underemployed family] would receive Treasury checks of $3,400 in refundable child tax credits and $4,400 in refundable earned-income tax credits.
>>... A person who make this little would not pay income taxes, so these credits cannot be realized.
You do know what a refundable tax credit means, right? "A refundable tax credit is a credit you can get as a refund even if you don't owe any tax. - IRS"
>All of these programs are difficult to retain access to. I've never met anybody among the working poor able to realize even half of these meagre benefits.
All these programs exist and receive billions of dollars at both the state and federal level. If people aren't receiving those dollars, all the more reason to abolish the program and stop the hemorrhage of cash.
>A random family in NYC would pay, on average, $20,439 annually, just on child care, per child, thus, this hypothetical single parent is contributing at least $40k in labor to produce future workers. It's not unreasonable to give them compensation for this thankless task.
NYC is 200% more expensive higher than the national average for COL and 400% higher when counting housing. It's a terrible place to try and raise a family on a low income. NYC's budget deficit varies, but is in the billions. Subsidizing a future barista or UberEats driver to the tune of $100K or more in childcare across 5 years is ludicrous, especially when you consider that again, about 40% of people pay 0 federal taxes. Stats aren't readily available for NYC taxpayers by income, but I can guarantee that NYC would literally lose money on this "investment" at a population level.
> As another point of comparison, Norway spends 18k per year for every kindergartener in their nation regardless of the parent's income. This is what is known as, under capitalism, an investment with a 50 year compounding return.
And the US spends $18,614 per public school pupil. Again, we're already spending the money but not getting the return (see: PISA scores, graduation rates, educational outcomes).
I completely agree that ROI should be considered when making government decisions. With that in mind, let's focus on reducing low ROI migration and illegal immigration. "Immigrants without a college education and all those who immigrate to the U.S. after age 55 are universally a net fiscal burden by up to $400,000... The average newly arrived immigrant who entered the country illegally is expected to have a net fiscal burden of about $130,000 in adjusted terms, so preventing future unlawful immigration is important...Using these figures, every refugee in FY 2022 is expected to increase the federal budget deficit of the U.S. by nearly $152,000 over his lifetime".
>Starving, homeless children produce negative externalities if they are not cared for, so the return on the investment is even more potent in this case.
The US already has SNAP, WIC, TANF, Section 8, and more. Again, these children aren't starving/homeless because we aren't paying for them, but because their parents are misallocating the money we give them.
>All this said, you've asserted that 53k, by itself, is 'lavish'. But you are speaking to someone who regularly makes that much money in between blinks on a half-decent day in the market, so I'm not really convinced that it is.
Now multiply that $53K across the population, and you'll see a major contributor to the $1.9 trillion deficit.
> This is why organized, sustained political action is required above and beyond elections. So that, in aggregate, these near-zeros can create change. It's not an invitation to check out and advocate for centrist reactionary nihilistic libertarianism, which is what I have to assume your true position is.
What action do you want to advocate for? More taxes, more wasteful spending, more people not contributing to society but just taking? Before you advocate for policy, learning some tax basics like what a refundable tax credit is would go a long way.
To a lesser extent it is the same with loyalty programs - my grocery stores often discount items to 50% and on my receipt it there is usually something like - you saved 20 Euro - which could be 20 to 30% of the bill. A lesser mind than the average consumer's may suspect that they keep all the prices permanently inflated by 20 to 30% and if some schmuck dare to buy their favorite cheese when not discounted - it is on them.
If any store used dynamic pricing to expand their margins, the others would just do the same and compete away those margins once again, with the marginal gain being handed back to consumers.
Dynamic pricing on personal data is bad I think, but temporal dynamic pricing is actually very good for everyone and I hope it doesn't get thrown out by some reckless legislation-writing.
There's also price-fixing, which famously occurred in Canada recently.
Not to mention cornering a market like Walmart would and removing consumer choice entirely.
The algorithmically-driven store will start by randomly showing them some random prices and seeing how they respond. If they are willing to accept high prices, the store will keep charging them more. If they leave the store and go somewhere else, the store will revert to lower prices. The store will discriminate against people who won't comparison shop for whatever reason (busy, limited access to transport, rich enough that they don't care, etc.)
However, the store's extra margins won't lead to lower prices for other consumers, even in a fully competitive market. Raising prices for consumers who won't comparison shop will do nothing to change the marginal cost of serving a consumer who does, so this won't change the competitive dynamics for those consumers and they won't see lower prices.
> Raising prices for consumers who won't comparison shop will do nothing to change the marginal cost of serving a consumer who does
Of course it would. In a competitive environment (which grocery stores are), this excess capital gets reinvested into beating the competition.
That's not true though. Excess capital does not necessarily get reinvested in an efficient market. If that were the case, companies in relatively efficient markets would spend a very small portion of their free cash flow on dividends and share buybacks, which is not the case.
Let's look at Kroger specifically: https://ir.kroger.com/news/news-details/2026/Kroger-Reports-...
Of $7.2B free cash flow in 2025 they spent $3.9B on capital expenditures and about $3.6B on dividends and buybacks (those numbers don't add up because of things like loans, sale of assets, and stock issuance).
Additionally, even if companies in competitive markets did reinvest all their excess profits from personalized pricing, the benefits would only accrue to consumers that the algorithm thinks are price-sensitive.
The grocery market is. Margins sit at 1-2%, there is absolutely no reason to believe dynamic pricing would change that. Grocery stores are one place where free markets have created incredible consumer surplus because competition is high.
How would you do it if pricing is dynamic and changes every day?
By the time competitor finds out about the price, you might have already reduced it, making it look like theirs is more expensive even after they applied discount.
The point of pricing water to that level is that it would induce other people who have access to bottled water to bring it to that market, as is desirable
Or is your point that all people in a market with leaded water should be paying $100 for pure water because it is inherently worth that much per the market.
I didn't say everybody. I said anybody who can.
What you describe is exactly why it's important to have an incentive for the people who do have those resources to employ them towards getting bottled water to this lead-poisoned region...
No, the point is to selfishly profit-maximise. I'm not trying to be difficult in saying that. The thing you describe is not the intent, it's the hypothetical effect. It may or may not do that (I don't think it typically does, take toilet paper during COVID for example).
Yes, the point for the individual setting that price is to selfishly profit-maximize. The point for us accepting a system that does this is because it signals to other water-bottle-holders that there is a dire need nearby and pays them to meet that need.
I don't think the example of a meme-driven pseudo-shortage of a paper good during a once in a lifetime global pandemic (causing both supply and demand shocks and significant information problems) is a very good point.
Now technically it would be illegal for the grocery stores to collude in price fixing like that, but they'll hide behind the fact that all of them will buy their surveillance pricing data from Google [1].
Google will tell all of the competitors exactly how much they can charge you for your eggs, and you'll get the same price everywhere.
[1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/will-google-organize-the-...
This is an assumption that doesn't necessarily have to happen. Some markets remain uncompetitive, otherwise you would see every market collapse to 0 margins if this were always true.
You can't compete that away because the consumers being hurt aren't sensitive to competition (for example, they don't have a car and therefor can't get to a different grocery store). It's an inherently anti-competitive practice.
I agree that temporal dynamic pricing might be good in some circumstances, but this bill doesn't ban it.
I was taught that the power of consumer choice could reign in markets, but when I look around I see more and more companies working harder and harder to make themselves completely insulated from consumer choice.
Now our darlings are companies that are like massive prisons that promise that everyone will be interned in in the future.
The highest ROI for any business is to buy their own politician. That allows you to block competition and other inconveniences at a legislative level.
https://qz.com/supermarket-prices-grocery-food-inflation-pan...
These problems arise when dealing with a monopoly, that undermines the free market and that's a far worse systemic problem and the root cause of these issues. AI has nothing to do with it.
Even in areas with multiple competitors, they can (and do) effectively collude by getting their information through data brokers and third parties.
I don't have a solution, but we are currently very far away from a free market in general.
The government IS preventing coordinated price setting by closing the loophole of third party data brokers.
Ok.
Can we get to what this kind of law is actually doing? The simplest version would be roughly "stores need to display prices and only change them once per day". No specific prices are being imposed.
“It was supposed that the pearl buyers were individuals acting alone, bidding against one another for the pearls the fishermen brought in. And once it had been so. But this was a wasteful method, for often, in the excitement of bidding for a fine pearl, too great a price had been paid to the fisherman. This was extravagant and not to be countenanced. Now there was only one pearl buyer with many hands"
I get about a dozen fliers in the mail every week advertising deals that are surely loss leaders for the grocer. Then there's extreme couponing forums.
Have you worked in a large organization? I can't imagine it's easy to coordinate much less have someone make actual decisions.
There are things you can do to lower prices like prosecuting theft. In this case technology is part of the solution. Adding red tape and restricting technology will do the opposite.
Great example: 15 years ago, assuming you were out of contract, cancelling a postpaid cell phone line worked very differently. Important to know: it was and still is “billed in advance,” meaning you pay around say, January 4, for your service from Jan 4 through Feb 3rd. So if you cancelled your service around Jan 19th, you’d be owed a refund of a half month’s service. 15 years ago, you’d receive a check or a credit to your method of payment - since you didn’t get the service you paid for, that seemed very obviously correct. Sometime at least 10 years ago, one of the cell phone carriers decided to try just saying that you never got a refund, and that if you didn’t want to be ripped off, then you should just cancel on the one day of the month where you had finished using the service you paid for (and hope you didn’t do it too late and get billed for another month). Initially it was just that one carrier who did this, but quickly this became the norm across the whole industry, and now all three postpaid carriers work exactly that way.
This is of course the same story with more well-publicized enshittification, like Basic Economy plane tickets, data caps on your broadband service, etc. etc.
Sure, but if you felt you didn't get a good deal you're not going to go back.
Like I personally don't know every single price at every single shop before I go, but I do know for example that Henry's Mercato or the Big Watermelon will have some kind of cheap bulk fruit, Aldi has cheaper staples, Springvale has the best fish etc. etc.
There are plenty of other places I checked out once or twice and then wrote off as a bad deal.
If you feel that way about all of them, you're not just going to starve to death, though. If you've got two options and they're both bad, you probably just go to one of them anyway.
Being more financially stable means you pay higher prices, in this scenario
Total spend is higher. And if your $20 tricket breaks you're less likely to bother to return it if $20 doesn't mean that much to you. Plus other reasons I'm sure.
To avoid this reliably, shop in person at a supermarket that doesn't have a loyalty program.
Another limp-wristed penalty. Why not something like "$1,000 per dollar that you received as payment for prices in violation"? Customer buys a $5 can of beans that was AI-priced, you owe $5,000. They buy another can, you owe another $5,000. You have it set for the whole store, wham, you now owe 1,000 times your gross revenue for that day. Better damn well not do it.
you may have to text back Yes your credit card company when you get a fraud alert text - that’s about the only inconvenience. just bought US-EU return ticket for June - 22% lower than lowest price I’ve seen “from US” in the last month
Is an if-statement considered AI?
So membership discounts should be banned?
For what it's worth,
> The bill clarifies that certain practices, such as promotional pricing, loyalty programs, or price differences based on objective costs like shipping, are not considered prohibited dynamic pricing.
The behavior targeted here seems to be more like "Our data indicates this person is poor and desperate, let's charge them more for rice and beans than we charge other people, since that's most of what they'll buy. We've calculated that we can charge up to $X to exhaust their budget/foodstamps and they'll still buy."
No, not at all, not even close to what is being discussed here. You should probably do a LOT more research to understand what kind of pricing they are talking about here, and what AI is. None of these things are apparently things you are remotely aware of at all in any way for you to suggest it's merely "if-statement."
You can do it! I believe in you!
It's a fundamental shift from:
"I sell this product for the cheapest price possible and I make everything possible in my business to be cost effective and buy from more cost effective businesses."
TO
"I don't care about cost-effectiveness. I just try to find out how to get the most money out of my customers."
I'd re-write that as "the more you consume the more you pay". Seems normal.
Companies like Google or Amazon pay for a server computer only a small fraction of the price I would have to pay to buy it.
Similarly for any electronics or computing device or component. The same is true for any food ingredient. I can buy some spice by the kilogram at a price an order of magnitude lower than when I buy 10 grams of it.
If the same were applied in healthcare, someone with a chronic disease should pay much less for the same drug, in comparison with someone with an acute disease.
What is the root cause w.r.t. the current situation? Are there any obvious ways out? Do any US politicians have any plans for a change? Are there any discussed proposals how to reform?
it is worth considering whether could a rational person could possibly disagree with the idea that the government is best placed to decide whether extending your life is a good investment (there are European systems that are not well run which resolve this unusual ways i.e. being unable to provide basic healthcare whilst giving hundreds of millions to PR agencies, sometimes run by people who happened to work for the government...total coincidence, to run media campaigns to "prevent" ill health).
it is not simple. there are largely private systems that run very well, funnily enough most of these are in Europe. there are public systems that run very badly, again many of these are in Europe. the discussion of public vs private is largely not relevant or particularly interesting (do people think that doctors just work for free in Europe? they do not, the incentives when you try to create a cheaper healthcare system by underpaying doctors, which exists in parts of Europe, creates some very bad situations i.e. an overreliance on doctors from Africa who have unknown training, Americans tend not to have imagined the scenario where healthcare is "free"/paid with taxes but they are being operated on by someone who can't speak English).
In which metric(s)? Afaik, life expectancy is lower in the US than in most of western Europe. And Americans are known to pay much more than Europeans on healthcare, on average.
Could be more tied to poor diet and lifestyle, and not the healthcare system itself.
Like if you sit on the chair all day on your remote job, then move to the couch for after-work Netflix and PS5, while you drink soda and eat processed food, then the only time you leave your house is you drive your Tesla/F-150 to Walmart and McDonald's, there's no magic healthcare system in the world that can undo decades of self inflicted damage.
Meanwhile people in some impoverished balkan town could end up living longer because they spend their entire lives moving outdoor all day in fresh air and only eat organic what they grow on their plot of land, even if their hospitals and healthcare systems are significantly worse than what americans have.
There's way more variables to life expectancy than just the healthcare system.
I find this explanation very unsatisfying. You have to look at systems to understand what is actually happening.
I never said anything like that but you could be right on that. A lot of those lifestyle issues are creeping in other highly urbanized rich western countries. Especially mental illnesses due to loneliness, lack of family unit, poor economic outlook, etc
>I find this explanation very unsatisfying.
Then come up with a better one and share it.
If you want to compare the success of health systems you need to compare just the health systems between them alone, not the life expectancy with is a cumulus of several other factors beyond the public + privately managed health systems, such as lifestyles, agriculture, diet, weather, genetics, income, exercise, pollution, etc.
For example, compare waiting times for MRIs, treatments, operations, procedures, post-op infection rates, etc then compare the life expectancy of those who undergo those procedures/treatments, etc.
>You have to look at systems to understand what is actually happening.
I just did.
Healthcare is an inelastic market, people are willing to pay anything to get it. Private insurance companies have grown into a kind of cartel and are able to jack up prices at will, going as high as customers are able to pay. They are disincentivized to pay for expensive treatments, to increase their margins. These companies are so powerful, and officials are so easily corrupted, that they are able to get their way with legislation every time.
All of this combines into a huge vicious cycle that is able to extract more and more wealth for worse and worse results.
Americans used to live longer than Europeans, you know? Now it's the opposite. Certainly, food in America is worse and people drive more instead of walking. But then again, the State isn't incentivized to keep its citizenry healthy, since it doesn't pay for healthcare. To me, this is part of a package deal, there's no sense in trying to decorrelate public health from healthcare systems.
When, in WW2?
>They are disincentivized to pay for expensive treatments, to increase their margins.
I've experience both systems. It's worse (for me) with European state-run healthcare I am right now, where they are even more disincentivized to pay for expensive treatments, except not to increase margins but because the system is constantly broke, so the treatments are always long-wait and last-gen compared to the cutting edge fast-track you get in the US, if you're insured, or you pay through the nose for it, or your insurance does if you work for a decent company.
So that doesn't explain why Americans live less despite being able to get cutting edge care faster. You know, maybe a diet of processed food and sedentary lifestyle can't be undone by a faster MRI/surgery appointment with cutting edge equipment.
Yes it does. Average lifespan in an average. Americans have worse access to healthcare on average than Europeans, hence why they die sooner on average. European systems may be worse for you specifically, because you are wealthy enough to get "fast-tracked" in the US. But America's just a worse system overall.
And you're wrong about incentives for state-provided healthcare. A competent government would recognize that healthy citizens are more productive and bring in more tax revenue. Too bad we're currently run by reactionary morons, but that can always change in the future.
> maybe a diet of processed food and sedentary lifestyle can't be undone by a faster MRI/surgery appointment with cutting edge equipment.
I seriously doubt that people are that much healthier in the EU, enough to explain away all the difference in life expectancy, when Americans have provably worse access to healthcare. Around 7.3% of American adults couldn't get access to necessary healthcare for cost reasons in 2024 [0].
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/access-to-health-care.htm
I am not sure what your point is about covering fewer people either. The point of public healthcare systems is that there are redistributive, correct? The reason the US public healthcare system does not cover everyone is because there are people who can pay for their own healthcare...which is the same in Europe. I live in Europe, in a system with "free healthcare", I pay $100/month for private healthcare because queues for most things are multiple years long AND I pay $1-1.5k/month for other people to use the public healthcare system I can't use.
The irony is in the US rather than paying a low amount on private healthcare so that you could potentially beat the queue on relatively low cost state healthcare, you would be paying a much higher rate for private healthcare with more copays and coverage exemptions and also contributing a higher portion of your taxes to a publicly funded insurance program you wouldn't be able to access at all when you lost your job or your insurer denied treatment.
Are you one of those people that believes most American schools are shooting ranges too?
All of the problems in the US are concentrated in subsections of the population (just as in Europe). America is a wealthy country that has a mix of south American and African problems attached to it. There is no healthcare system that is going to be able to fix this. Europe has the same problem, the difference is that share of the population was typically much smaller than the US.
I didn't say anything about the cost of healthcare on average. The US already has a public healthcare system, it doesn't work well expecting that to magically improve is not smart (again, particularly when you have evidence from other countries, even in magic Europe-land, that private healthcare can work effectively).
Always the same weird "You don't understand, America is really big" argument. GDP per capita is higher there than in anywhere in western Europe. Why is your healthcare system delivering worse results for much higher price? It's a simple question, and the answer is equally simple: private insurance acts as an useless and bloated middleman whose incentives are opposite to providing quality healthcare to its customers. They want to be paid the most in exchange for the least service. Couple that to a bought political class and you've got the least efficient healthcare system in the developed world.
> Are you one of those people that believes most American schools are shooting ranges too?
Strawman. I don't.
> America is a wealthy country that has a mix of south American and African problems attached to it.
???
If you mean to say that America is providing for the world, that's an insane position to hold. The USA are extracting much more wealth from these places than they are injecting.
Medicare works pretty well and the VA works pretty well despite all the negative propaganda. Both are different systems but both have government regulations on pricing.
People are pretending that in the private US health care system everybody gets stellar treatment without waiting times. That is simply not true. When I compare the waiting times my family in Germany has vs how much friends in the US are waiting, I don't see much difference. US quality doesn't seem better either. The main difference seems to be that in the US people are constantly strategizing whether they want to risk paying a month's salary for taking an ambulance or going bankrupt when they have a serious illness. Whereas in Germany they go to the doctor when they need to.
Yes, you can have super shiny new treatments in the US if you can pay but I prefer a system that first covers the most common problems in an affordable way.
The US pays more because it provides significantly greater coverage outside of aggregate statistics. All of the innovation in rare diseases is because of the US, in public healthcare systems some diseases are simply not treated because it isn't regarded as economic to do so. How do you even quantify that difference? It is like making a GDP comparison between 1800 and today, what price would someone in 1800 not to die of TB? Life expectancy of 20 years old in many countries? Anyone who compares the two things in terms of cost is a lunatic.
In short though, it is not obvious that a high-cost healthcare system is worse. The US system is inefficient, almost all of this relates to their decision not to use universal healthcare which leads to problems pricing insurance. However, this is not related to the system, there are many countries in Europe and worldwide which have effective private healthcare systems.
As to drug discovery etc.: I think, not easy to say how the world would look like if the US weren't offering the opportunities. What would be new equilibrium RoIs needed if the world were quite different (and, yes, I am aware of studies there).
Probably because Europeans commenting don't know how big Medicare and Medicaid are.
The current US is built to accomodate the top 0.1%. Their profiteering is more important than the good health of the population.
> Are there any obvious ways out?
Not really. Get money out of politics? Aggressively tax the wealthy and nationalize the entire health apparatus? Easier said than done.
> Do any US politicians have any plans for a change?
The only ones serious about it are on the progressive left, fought harshly by both Republicans and Establishment Democrats, under the guise of their respective patrons.
With paracetamol :)
(Dutch people know what I am talking about)
We must fight it
There is a market solution to this - don't shop at places which do it. If I go to the supermarket and they jack up the price of bread because I'm in a rush and 40 something wearing a suit I'm likely to spew venom, pay that one time, and never, ever come back.
What? To the best of my knowledge, not a single grocery store chain in my area is owned by someone local to the community. The two biggest chains (that aren't Walmart) are owned by Kroger and by an international retail conglomerate. Both are publicly traded, so there's no single owner to give a shit about the local community.
They profile you and offer discounts based on your past purchases