Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

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> Congratulations. You've identified different business models.

So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how?

> If this is true, what force are you imagining constrains all the fast food chains from not having n times their current prices

It is true. https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation

You’re also responding to a partial statement of a sentence and not a complete argument. The argument being companies don’t necessarily lower prices to compete with one another even if they can.

And finally, why do companies don’t raise their prices infinitely? (A complete tangent to the discussion) Because well, business 101. Prices increases are a slow drip. And there is a limit after which price increases hurt the sales. And you always want an external excuse to point a finger at to make the prices palatable. Some companies can increase prices faster than the others. Apple made hundreds of billions in profits last year and they just increased the prices of MacBooks by hundreds of dollars. They could’ve easily not raised prices but why would you not when you have a loyal customer base that won’t mind paying a few hundred dollars extra?

> So pointing out business models that don’t raise prices while not customer service, to counter the claim of “hiring more people will raise the prices for us”, is a problem how?

It's a problem because the business models are providing alternatives of what their customers value. You're arguing that because Costco, one of, if not the most successful retailers in the world, can do it why can't all stores? I can assure you every business wants to be Costco.

But also, I've been to Costco. And they offer what they want in quantities that they want. And it's often not what I want no matter how well they treat their employees. Also the checkout lines were very long.

Business 101? Take a step back. What you're describing is the feedback mechanism of the competition that drives prices down. Supply, demand, price. Econ 101. The reason prices aren't infinite is not because the evil corporations are conspiring to increase them slowly enough that customers barely notice. It's because, if they increase them too much, they will lose business to their competitors.

Apple has the ability to raise prices because customers value its ecosystem. But, OK. Why didn't they raise the price by thousands? Do you think people didn't notice the few hundred dollar price increase drip? It looks to me like people did notice. It's because at a certain price, it's worthwhile to hold your nose and use a different operating system.

At some point you’re just picking items and responding to them. This is taking the discussion away from your core argument. You talk about Costco but conveniently leave out in-n-out because it doesn’t fit your narrative.

My core argument has been that corporations offload tasks onto customers and then use the money saved to boost their own profits.

Your argument is that the cost saved is passed on to the customers.

I’ve provided examples of why that doesn’t happen, and provided examples of companies that don’t sacrifice customer experience while maintaining lower prices to show that the rest of them are not doing the same.

I am yet to see any substantial evidence from your end to prove that savings are indeed getting passed on to customers. And unless that’s something you want to discuss, we should end it here.

You're the one who started talking about specific examples and I agree that that's irrelevant since different companies decide how to allocate the money they save by reducing labor costs. Which is actually a refutation of your general assertion that labor cost savings don't constrain prices.

Your argument is based on the conspiratorial belief that "corporations" are a monolith conspiring to allocate the savings from self checkout. You have not explained why each of them is not incentivized to use that savings to reduce costs to take more business from their competitors. Is your answer that the businesses are all colluding? You have also not explained why they are constrained at all in the amount they can raise prices. The drip theory makes no sense. This is all basic economics.

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