One thing about "surveillance pricing" I've not seen addressed is that it destroys the usual model of demand curve. A given buyer may be judged to have the resources to pay a particular (high) price for a good, but other factors may be relevant: that buyer might need to save on good A in order to buy more of good B. The "surveillance pricer" would demand a higher price for good A because it has no information about need for good B by the buyer.

That's a simplistic example, but we've been lectured about consumer choices, invisible hands of marketplaces, demand curves and marginal value for so long I'm genuinely shocked that ill-defined "predatory pricing" is the issue we see in the news.

You might think that grocery stores in poor neighborhoods have lower prices than wealthier neighborhoods (because poorer customers are more likely to shop around for bargains). The opposite is true. Wealthy customers have the time, energy and money to be able to shop around. Poor people are stuck in "food deserts".

Some thought experiments for you:

1. This store is located between your employer and your home. The time is "right after typical working hours". The presumption that the algorithm can predict is that you're picking something up from the store to make for dinner, therefore you have no time to price shop and therefore we can charge you more because you have to have it now.

2. American shoppers tend to have very high brand loyalty. If you always buy product_A and never product_B, then the algorithm can charge you more for product_A because your demand is quite inflexible.

This post of mine from a few days ago has links you might be interested in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47848128

> I'm genuinely shocked that ill-defined "predatory pricing" is the issue we see in the news.

There are lots of evil people out there working very hard at extracting more than their fair share of wealth from others. Far too many people believe in the "Just World Hypothesis" - that "what goes around comes around". There are lots of random bad things and bad people that hurt innocent people. There might actually be some positive benefit that could come from surveillance pricing. However, once you've known or worked with some of the more predatory people then you'll see just how hard this technology can be used to screw others.