Grocery stores have tiny margins and that's great. Let's keep it that way, it benefits all consumers. One way to prevent them from expanding their margins is to ban so-called "dynamic pricing".
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.