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The “economist” (pretend fucking discipline) they talked to is a dumbass. Phones have a fucking clock they don’t need a proxy to measure the time.
these things are often not driven by hand made or even understandable algorithms but by linear algebra and it is possible for a model to make that kind of connection even if there is a better indicator. idk what ubers pricing algorithm looks like but if it is a neural network which is used to determine what people are willing to pay for a ride then it could have a preference for higher prices at night and also its more likely for people to have low battery at night so it also has a weaker connection between low battery and high prices.
I don’t think that’s what the economist is saying. If you don’t know that they were at the same time, then it could just be that low phone batteries and high Uber prices both correlate with it being later in the night. They’re not saying that Uber is guessing the time you call for a cab based on your battery percentage. Obviously Uber knows when you’re trying to get a ride because you contacted Uber to get one at a specific time anyway.
So this is what’s called “personal pricing”, it’s a mythical vision of capitalism where instead of having to price your product against anonymous gross demand, you can price your product according to what you think you can get each specific individual to pay. Proponents (Chicago school MFs) argue that it would be “good for consumers” (massive sarcasm quotes there) because, hypothetically, you could safely offer your goods and services for much cheaper to people who are less able to afford them while making up the difference by charging more for people who can pay more. I very, very, very seriously doubt it will work that way in practice.
My problem with it is that we’re quickly arriving at a market where the amount of information held and utilized by the seller is maximized, and the amount of information held and used by the buyer is minimized. This is already causing and will continue to worsen exploitive disparities in the market. Without the consumer having ready access to accurate information and the ability to actually utilize it practically, consumers can’t make informed choices, and that has been and will continue to be leveraged to coerce economic choices from consumers that they never would have made otherwise. The tl;Dr is that implementing personal pricing in the fraud economy will never ever work for the consumer’s benefit.
Chicago School of Economics
Lol. Lmao, even.
All my homies hate Milton Friedman
Please link to a non paywalled version
Thanks!
Paywall
The thing that gets me is how often this sort of thing is happening all around us without us noticing. Every online purchase is bound to be doing this in some form or another. Every plane ticket, every uber ride. All designed to figure out the exact cost we’re willing to pay for the service.
I’m so tired of capitalism…
Don’t use those companies. Walk to a fucking store. Pay cash. Nothing is keeping us from showing capitalists what we want and what we will spend our money on.
Cancel your Prime, your Walmart sub, your Target rewards account. Find a non-chain store for things.
Show others around you how it’s not that hard to cut unnecessary shit out of your life.
Start today, keep it small.
We love to complain as a species, don’t we? Take that energy and change your habits and let others know. That’s how you end up reading stories like “Companies respond to changing consumer preferences for more durable goods and more privacy.”
I don’t mean to target you, I am just as guilty of these things. Instead, this is a call to myself and others to complain less and change more.
its hard for individual action to fix a societal problem though.
if by do more u mean organize a revolution then yeah do more, but if u mean vote with ur wallet just a friendly reminder that the corps have an unimaginably bigger wallet than anyone else and ur individualistic attempt to change the world thru this means will be completely drowned out in literal billions of dollars of propaganda.
If you feel that way, I guess their propaganda dollars are working against you, at the least.
Stop thinking you’re so outgunned.
if u think u can beat them in their system that they made and control by playing by their rules u are delusional. u can not fight capitalism by consuming.
I’m not trying to beat capitalism. I like regulated, competitive capitalism.
Why support an unsustainable system?
Because I think with proper regulation capitalism has ushered in the greatest improvements in quality of life compared to the other economic systems we have tried.
When you don’t assume infinite growth and you instead optimize for maintaining a distribution of capital, I think it can be a good motivating system. We just need our baseline focused by human rights, not the money.
Money is what we decide it is, not the other way around. The people who are in charge right now want you to think money is in control.
I realized the other day about how much I’ve internalized the violence of capitalism. I was driving down the road and there was a man with a sign that said he was hungry and needed help and my first reflexive feeling was annoyance.
That’s insane, that’s monstrous, that made me stop.
Here is a human being, standing there just holding a sign and I’m annoyed, even angry at them. The system is set up so that there will be people that can’t be exploited by capital and that’s their lot, to stand on the side of the road begging for scraps.
You see it so frequently in capitalism that your choices are to be sad for them, be angry at them, or ignore them entirely.
Maybe I wasn’t annoyed or angry at that man, but at myself for hardening my heart to his plight, and at the system we are stuck in that put him there.
Same thoughts over here, friend. The thing keeping me sane is that I started volunteering. Look for the helpers, an all that (Mr Rogers). Shit is fucked and food scarcity is a thing for a lot of people in our immediate vicinity. I found a weekly breakfast through a local political org, but find something that speaks to you. Mutual aid groups, or do a shoe drive with your parish, or hell - one lady just collects bags of clothes donations from offerup and shows up when we’re serving bfast with a folding table and people can grab what they need.
I carry a lot of rage at “the system” and helping my neighbors goes a very long way in keeping it focused where it might make some change for the better.
you and me both
