• Daniel Quinn@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    16 days ago

    It’s actually so much worse than that.

    With e-labels you can optimise your prices in real time, A/B testing the public across the country in minutes to optimise for the highest rate a population will tolerate indefinitely.

    Then, you can offload the management of this service to a third party, which sounds daft at first, but this provides deniability when it comes to price fixing. When EvilCorp contracts with all grocers in a given province/state, they can slowly hike the price of bread by 1% every hour until they maximise profits, screwing you. They can even optimise for time of day/region/whatever, all with deniability.

    Surge pricing is a distraction. The real profit is in squeezing the public slowly.

    • luciferofastora@feddit.org
      2·
      16 days ago

      Electronic labels aren’t the issue then, lack of oversight and consumer protection is.

      And, of course, the obscene imperative to make ever more profit, human cost be damned.

  • FunkyCheese@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    16 days ago

    ive worked in a store that had that

    it was so much time saved, compared to running around and replacing paper/stickers

    And sure they COULD change the prices on random “whims” but they’d get a ton of angry customers. imagine grabbing an item for 5 bucks on the shelf, then when you get to the checkout, the price is 10?

    our system only updated the prices at night