| ▲ | pydry an hour ago | |
Price discrimination isn't about wealth. A poor person who books a flight the day before because of an emergency pays more than a rich person who books it 3 months out. Pharmaceuticals lobbying hard to get the UK to stop buying drugs on the national level (where they have enormous pricing power) and make hospitals responsible for buying drugs. This would be terrible for the UK. | ||
| ▲ | cameldrv 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | |
For airline tickets, it's mostly not about wealth yet, at least on U.S. domestic routes. I know that for some international tickets, especially between a rich country and a poor country, the price can be different depending on whether you are buying in the currency of the rich country or the poor country, and I think, if it's a round trip, whether it's originating in the rich country or the poor country. You really see this in spades with Uber/Lyft though. I've often compared Uber prices with friends of mine and there can be a big difference for the same trip at the same time with two different people. This phenomenon unfortunately makes me much less bullish on the AV future, because robotaxi providers will try to do this to extract the maximum cash out of users. Someone who decides to sell their car and just take automated rides is going to get gouged because the algorithm is going to figure out that they have no alternative. One thing I've found with a lot of adversarial algorithms is that you have to demonstrate to the algorithm that you have an alternative. For example, if you consistently check prices on the Uber and Lyft apps and pick the lowest cost one, they will notice when you price out rides and then don't take them, and you will get better prices. Similarly, with feeds, I have been finding that Facebook and YouTube want to push me short video content, even though I don't like it and don't watch it. You can push the button that says "Show Less" or "Not Interested", but they generally don't care. What works is when they show you something you don't like is to close the app and do something else. That is a signal that they respect. | ||