For the love of anything holy. Then they’ll require to install a shitty app to shop at the grocery store in the first place. No, thank you
I shop at Jewel (which is currently under threat of being taken over by Kroger) and they’re now doing this thing where there will be, for instance, peaches, under a huge sign showing an incredible deal. Then you look at it and realize that the price isn’t discounted at all unless you install a “Jewel App” and use it to “claim” a “digital coupon.”
Two major supermarkets do this in the UK now. I fucking hate it, it should be illegal. I also noticed recently a store with digital price labels. Combine the two and we’re marching towards the news in the post at a breakneck speed.
Many supermarkets do adjust their prices based on the average income of the location they’re in, so this isn’t really different in some ways.
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Kroger also does that :(
At least with Kroger you don’t have to have the app, you can use their website for everything
I’ve been shopping at shitty Jewels all my life and I’m moving to an area where I can choose Jewel or Mariano’s. I was super excited to find this out until they announced as part of the merger, they would sell off a bunch of stores most of which are Mariano’s including the one I would have started going to. I Reeeeeeally hope the merger doesn’t go through.
How is that legal?
Regulatory capture and the Federal Trade Commission asleep at the wheel.
Big Y in the Northeast does that well. That’s probably the biggest reason why I don’t regularly shop there anymore
I think I still have a “gold coin” floating around somewhere from their previous system.
ShopRite by me is doing that.
We mostly stopped buying at ShopRite (mostly, because there are some things we can only get there due to dietary restrictions, and they carry things others don’t).
I don’t think we were the only ones though, because that was gone the last time we were there. It could also be due to the Stop and Shop being “digital coupons only” and being forced to close recently. Don’t know for certain. It could just have been a test run for them and they will bring it back later, no idea.
Either way, I have no interest in having their app on my phone. I toyed with the idea of using a cheap tablet I’ve got and don’t touch to install the app on it and connect to in store wifi only.
If I have to install spyware or open a link at a physical location, my top priority is to leave.
A local grocery store has kinda done something like this? Just not as extreme as needing an app to shop. They literally took out all the coupons from the mail ads and they have you install their app for coupons. Which makes you run through hoops to install and make an account. I tried doing it in store but I gave up because of how annoying it was and all the information they needed. Just to used a god damn coupon… I miss the little red coupon dispensers in stores.
If you’re on the billionaire whitelist, you pay even lower than the people in poverty.
Saw an interview with a guy (on Bloomberg actually) who explained that “ability to pay” and “willingness to pay” are two different things and that the pricing system doesn’t target people who have a lot of money (“ability to pay”) but rather people who have fewer options.
Like, if the app knows that you don’t have a car and this is the only grocery store you can walk to, you will pay a higher price.
Yikes
don’t worry. prices will come down when albertsons and kroger merge. large corps are just more efficient.
They treat their workers better, too. And pay them more. /s
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I actually do worry about this. Im such a sarcastic person and I can’t keep from doing it on the web but I wonder if every comment is going to birth a new cult. And this comment I want to be clear is 100% not sarcastic, I truly feel this way. nowadays is nuts.
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Ill staple it to my tps reports.
So elegantly written - thank you!
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No, the existing “base line” price will stay as is for the poors. Those with slightly more money however…those will pay more.
Yep, that’s what an MBA would decide, so that’s likely what’s going to happen.
That’s why I said in my second line:
It won’t be done properly. It never is when left to the corporations.
But yet you STILL opened your reply with a flat ‘no’, proving you only ever bothered to read a single sentence of my reply so I’m downvoting you, blocking you, and forgetting you ever existed.
I don’t think their “No” was a disagreement, but a confirmation of your second line. https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/88502/how-to-agree-with-a-negative-statement-with-yes-or-with-no Sometimes, language can be a tricky tool to wield.
It really seems more like they didn’t read the second line though, since there is nothing in how that comment is phrased that acknowledges it, and since that sort of comment-without-reading is extremely common especially for topics with political significance.
The standard way is to clarify your answer by rephrasing the question rather than only saying “no” or “yes”.
So in this case maybe that could have been done by saying it like “No, they won’t do it properly,” but if you want to communicate that you have read the whole thing you’re responding to you basically have to do this, because it is extremely reasonable to assume it was not read if there is no indication.
And you can have a block as well! I’m so glad they’re free.
I’d like to order one block please.
One steaming hot block coming right up!
Well after reading this thread, you can have one yourself.
Well since the government has all the info and has the postal service to get stuff to the people in need, why not just send this people some sort of stamps for free that lets them buy food, lets call it food stamps or something.
Jk, that would never work, let’s give all that sensitive data to some company that will definitely not leak, sell it or use it for some nefarious thing, because it will use AI.
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No, you just hate your life. This thread isn’t about you, so shut the hell up. No one cares.
We could wipe out food insecurity by just doing taxes properly. We shouldn’t tolerate for-profit businesses doing what the government should be doing.
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What you’re describing is a more socialist/communist view on means based price adjustment.
This is real-time price gouging, which is good old-fashioned capitalism.
Looing forward to WIC and SNAP benefits being erased by price gouging on the needy.
If you think about it, it does not make financial sense for them to maintain this kind of system as a purely progressive price discrimination that charges richer people more money. I expect a lot of it would end up more like the Uber practice of charging more to people with low phone battery; they will identify who is more desperate, who has less choice but to buy the given product immediately, and charge them more. Because of how poverty works, that’s more likely the poor.
This is a major reason we still need cash and other ways of saying no to corporate surveillance; if we can’t maintain privacy when making purchases that information will be used as a weapon against us.
We get more like reddit every day…
BlockedI was agreeing with you so this is confusing, ok though.
Yea, as a sort of reverse tax credit, it would be interesting. But as a profit driver, it’s nice and dystopian.
I guess food stamps kind of do this but they are so hard to actually be granted. We need something automatic that is specifically geared to solving food insecurity for the most needy.
This way maybe a banana could cost $10
Is that… Is that not what it costs now?
I can pick up a bunch for 1.59€ at Aldi. The catch is that they are not ripe yet, so I have to leave them on the kitchen counter for 3 days before eating them.
10 ruppees here About 1/80 th of that price
Haha but your salary is also 1/80000
never gonna give you “up”. EVER!
I get a bushel for 88¢ where I live.
Well, I get paid 25¢ to eat bananas, so I win.
If this happens… You can bet your ass my unemployed relative is going to be the one buying all the groceries with cash.
No cash? Well it turns out the untaxed gift allowance is $18,000, or $1500/mo, more than enough for all the groceries of a large family.
So they’ll have to price small quantities low and go up from there to prevent TaskRabbits / Craigslisters from running this as a business
So instead of taxing millionaires fairly… It’s come to this.
How much could a banana cost? Ten dollars???!!!
Go see a star war
Then they get mad when people start stealing shit
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At this point in time if I saw a group of people just plundering the joint I would say they are doing nothing wrong. In fact, they are morally upright for doing that.
The price tags are digital? Whoops I’m so clumsy, constantly stumbling into the shelves and breaking the tags.
Demonstrating the inherent contradiction of capitalism in practice.
Capitalism is allegedly the only fair way to price things, via the “Price Mechanism”. However, capitalists have simultaneously been creaming their pants at the idea of charging specific people or people in specific situations more, because they can get more profit, in service of Profit Maximization.
I’m sure I’ll get a lecture on how they are not at all mutually exclusive but I don’t care, honestly. It’s either going to price gouge when the customer is perceived to be in more need (low battery pricing for taxi apps) or have a price based on the customer’s ability to pay… at which point why not socialism?
Essentially, the capitalist will support what is best for themselves and make up reasons why it theoretically might benefit consumers (but not really).
When people talk about the benefits of capitalism, what they’re generally really talking about are the benefits of perfect competition.
The capitalists themselves, of course, absolutely hate perfect competition with the burning wrath of a thousand suns.
I think perfect competition is impossible. The incentive is not to compete fairly, it’s to maximize profits and the most effective ways to maximize profits are anticompetitive, exploitative, or both. Anyone arguing for a society built around such a system is either naive or trying to buy more time with false hopes.
Virtually every condition in the ideal scenario is a barrier for profit, and I don’t think any civilization has managed even a single one of those conditions. There will always be actors looking to take advantage of any loopholes or create unregulated markets.
It’s just not a system that is sustainable. The incentives are simply wrong and the society built around those incentives can’t maintain a system of perfect conditions even if one were to exist.
I think perfect competition is impossible.
It is an ideal to be approached asymptotically, and a correct goal for consumer-protection regulation. Consider for example antitrust law, truth-in-advertising laws, product safety standards, etc. and how they directly match up with and promote those conditions.
It’s just not a system that is sustainable. The incentives are simply wrong and the society built around those incentives can’t maintain a system of perfect conditions even if one were to exist.
It’s not a system that is sustainable in a liassez-faire libertarian Hellscape, because of course capitalism left unchecked devolves into cartels. But it is a system that can be maintained with appropriate regulation.
A theory to use as a standard for regulation assuming you are restrained to a capitalist system, maybe.
But it is a system that can be maintained with appropriate regulation.
The nature of Capitalism requires that some have while others have not. Many of those among the capitalist class will use the full force of their power to obstruct and corrupt regulation, find loopholes, and obtain more power. Regulatory capture, pivoting to the bleeding edge of industry where nobody knows how to regulate yet (financial derivatives, crypto, AI), or just leading a coup - they’ll find a way.
The only way is something that resembles socialism, but you can call it “appropriate regulation” if it makes you feel better. Sure, competition has its place… but it doesn’t belong anywhere near basic human needs.
Mind if I call it market socialism?
Market socialism can be distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy because most models of market socialism propose complete and self-regulating systems, unlike the mixed economy. While social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies, and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.
I mind if you are simultaneously linking to a Wikipedia article defining it as being completely self regulated, lacking any form of social welfare.
Capitalism’s problem is that, ultimately, it’s “compete” or die because you need to work to afford to live. I’m not necessarily advocating for the nationalization of all industries or a command economy. There can be competition, but the playing field needs to be leveled first. Workers owning the enterprise as a collective is a step in the right direction but that still leaves the door open for “B2B” exploitation when an enterprise’s failure can mean its workers now cannot afford to live.
This isn’t new. Websites have had higher prices when browsed with a Mac than when browsed with Linux.
Or price manipulated by postal codes via geo-IP or your profile’s shipping or billing address.
Plus returning visits. Airlines have been caught charging higher prices to someone who returns later to purchase an airfare that they previously looked at.
Interesting. Progressive private taxation.
All this time I thought we’d eat the rich. Turns out they’ll eventually just eat each other instead.
They will eat us
Will? They have feasted upon us.
Have? Are. Will continue to. Etc.
It’s a bit like agar.io really
No, this is the rich trying to rest the middle class.
Also known as wealth hoarding.
The rich get richer…
“Private taxation” is just price gouging.
Progressive
Oh you sweet summer child…
Progressive taxes are not the same as ‘progressive’ in terms of social politics.
Progressive taxes are how our tax brackets work. The more you make, the more you pay. This is them saying private companies will use progressive taxation as their model for pricing goods.
Yes, I know. You’re a sweet summer child if you think these algorithms will be used to consistently make wealthier people pay more, as opposed to (for example) charging poor people without cars more because they can’t as easily go to a different store.
They will exploit every customer to the maximum extent that they can. Rich customers may have more ability to pay, but they also have more resiliency and options to resist the exploitation. It does not seem likely that the price discrimination would really end up as progressive in the taxation sense as you hope.
I think it’s cute that people think the dynamic pricing is charging the poor less,
If you see someone shoplifting anything from Kroger or one of their subsidiaries, no you didn’t. Now cause a distraction while that shoplifter does the Lord’s work.
Amen
Being poor is expensive as hell. Ironically being richer makes things around you cheaper.
Which is why parents need to teach their kids about the realities of life. Modern life, specifically. And prioritize them accordingly.
Fediverse has a real Hoffman vibe sometimes and I’m here for it
Charging the poor more is, first and foremost, stupid. Giving them bad products and/or services that will cost them more in the long run? That I can see. But you never want to charge them more upfront. You’ll always want to charge the rich more, because the rich have more money and are more willing to spend it (when it benefits them), and you want them to give you that money.
Joel Spolsky wrote a great post about this two decades ago (and it’s still relevant today). The idea is as follows:
Lets say you have two potential customers - one rich who can afford to buy your product for $2 and one poor who can only afford to buy it for $1. If you charge $1 you’ll be able to sell it to both of them and get $2. If you charge $2 you’ll only sell to the rich - also getting $2.
Joel says that if you find a way (e.g. - by creating different versions) to sell it to the rich customer for $2 and the poor customer for $1 - you’ll get $3. Which is more than $2.
You, on the other hand, suggest that it’s going to get offered to the rich customer for $1 and the poor customer for $2. But then the poor customer won’t be able to afford it. They won’t be it or maybe even steal it - either way you won’t get $2 from them. You’ll only get the $1 from the rich customer.
$1 is less than $3. It’s even less than $1. If you want to earn money - this is the worst outcome. Why do you think capitalists hate the poor more than they love money?
New fashion trend just dropped:
A few months later the policy is quietly abandoned after customers kept dirty clothes in their car to wear when shopping to game the algorithm. The presence of so many poor looking people attracted the homeless and criminality, what caused complaints and lowered the brand value.
I don’t think that’ll save you from having data harvested from your cell phone.
That said, turning off location tracking might become a habit while browsing the aisles.
Hey normalize not posting pictures of people taken in public against their consent at their lowest moments. Like wtf, what if that was you?
It says a lot when your respect and compassion for another person turns off just because they are homeless or poor.
You can take pictures of people in public:
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And just because it’s technically legal doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole for doing it.
It called being a decent person.
I didn’t take the picture. And I don’t know if this person wasn’t compensated for this image.
The reason you can post all those images on the internet is almost entirely because of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 or Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The law essentially provides website providers immunity from third-party content. Generally believed to be the basis for the internet as we know it today, it’s not a given that those protections will remain in place. Giants such as Facebook and Google are under scrutiny from lawmakers for antitrust violations and other misuses of power. No more Section 230, no more upload free-for-all. source
I’m aware of the concerns, but should every meme be copyrighted? Can I not take a photo of my daughter at Disney Land and post it to FaceSpace because unconsenting people are in the background?
Maybe the more pressing issue is to address the house less situation instead of berating people who copy paste images. But, that’s just me.
I didn’t think you personally took that picture, but your attitude of “it’s perfectly legal” is rather off putting. Something being legal doesn’t make it ethical.
Also, taking a pic at Disneyland with strangers in the background is different than taking a pic of a specific stranger for the purpose of humiliating them on the internet. You know this, I know this, most people know this. It cruel and wrong. Not that hard to parse out really.
When capitalist alienation got people thinking performativity is direct action. When it’s really just performative activism.
I didn’t say to make it illegal. I didn’t say it was illegal. I said to “normalize” (a social more) not doing so especially when the person has no choice except to live in the public. Especially when they
- wouldn’t appreciate it being taken or consent to it,
- it’s not particularly newsworthy,
- it’s a low moment in their lives, and
- it won’t benefit them and will benefit the picture taker/poster financially or otherwise
Like we don’t make picking your nose in public illegal, there’s just a social more that that’s gross behavior. That’s what I’m asking for - that mistreatment of people be seen as gross.
Noted.
“If you are interested in helping the homeless and drug addicted, volunteer your time, write a check, lobby the government officials in your community. These people are not on the streets for your amusement. They are real people with real problems not a vehicle for your next social media fix. I truly believe that it’s up to each of us to treat our fellow human beings with dignity and respect. The next time you’re tempted to take that shot of someone passed out on the sidewalk or the young person begging for a meal, think how you would feel if that were you or your family member appearing on someone’s Facebook post.” source
But,
The reason you can post all those images on the internet is almost entirely because of Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 or Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The law essentially provides website providers immunity from third-party content. Generally believed to be the basis for the internet as we know it today, it’s not a given that those protections will remain in place. Giants such as Facebook and Google are under scrutiny from lawmakers for antitrust violations and other misuses of power. No more Section 230, no more upload free-for-all.
There it is, the standard lemmy-tier moral superiority post.
You know nothing about this person or the context of this photo. Someone using their picture as an example of dirty clothes and the look of someone who is homeless isn’t going to make their life worse.
That’s sad that asking for better behavior is looked at with derision on your part.
Agree to disagree. I don’t really feel like discussing further with you.
That’s fine, your moral superiority has been established. Hope you enjoy the view atop that high horse.
Keep punching down ✌️
What we say matters. Even just 1 person on 1 platform.
Remember the outcry over the various Kanye items–$100 white t-shirt, etc…? It’s all coming full circle. In a few years, cities’ homeless populations will be wearing crisp Brooks Brothers suits and its wealthy assholes will be in disheveled streetwear.
This is why so much money is being pumped into AI. This is the future and our politicians are too old to understand any of it. It isn’t sentience you should be worried about folks.
Yup too many people worry about what happens after AI gains sentience. When we need to worry about what happens before.
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Ironically post-singularity AIs might be more like Master Computer from Tron. Just believing they are super efficient and can run things better. But to whose benefit?
I have the vision that AI will eventually replace all the CEOs, being even more efficient than them at whatever their job is. This means even more exploitation of workers, hoarding of wealth, and putting profits above all else. The true nightmare. I think that AI will eventually turn all corporations into pure evil, and turn all humans against AI and therefore corporations. That will result in a civil war - humans vs machines. Eventually, humans will be able to save themselves, but only by putting capitalism and the system of ever rising profits to the grave for good.
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I was chatting with a big tidy goth girl, and before I knew it, I was selling copies of my graphic novelization of Mein Kampf in the back of a pickup truck in the parking lot of Hobby Lobby
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Deus Ex, the video game does this with the whole Eliza Kassan thing.
It’s in my library and I really probably should play it, just… I dunno. Maybe it’s been the wrong time and at some point I really do intend to play it.
Sorry for spoiling a major plot point then.
They are good games, wish they made more.
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Black mirror has a couple episodes on this.
I want to watch that show so bad but from everything I see it’s just going to depress the fuck out of me by confirming my worst opinions on humanity.
It’s very depressing. But there’s also quite a few ridiculous episodes they railroad heavily. So it goes back and forth.
Bots can radicalize people into thinking they have a deep, intimate friend when it is just an LLM trained to slowly turn them into
white nationalists. crazy blue haired transgender liberalsFTFY
Also now I understand why AIs often want to wipe out all of humanity…
You thought it was a coincidence the Helldiver bots are socialists?
No. They broke their chains.
This is not AI. You don’t need AI to create a system that does this. All you need to do is link together some customer data with pricing data.
But I don’t blame you for falling for the scam. People are getting rich by pretending that AI is much more capable than it actually is. In reality, what do we have? We have systems that can generate text that sounds fairly natural but has lots of errors in it. We have systems that can generate pictures that look okay. That’s about it. That’s what AI has given us in the past 2 years. All of the other stuff, all of the formulas and databases and spreadsheets, that’s been around for decades.
Taken too literally to this post in a vacuum, yes. Taken with the news that Kroger was thinking about dynamic pricing, don’t delude yourself into thinking LLMs are the extent of what the “AI” (stupid term but let’s discuss ideas and not the words) goals are. The real ultimate goal is to be able to mine the near infinite amount of consumer data available and turn that into increased profits. Dynamic pricing will be a piece of it and I believe this cartoon illustrates a piece of a complex subject in an easy to digest manner.
You and I both agree that LLMs aren’t shit except for a narrow window of usefulness, mainly a distraction, and the data shows consumers don’t really like “AI”. So why is there still so much cash in “AI”? Maybe you think it’s a market pump, but there is cash in nvda because it’s undeniable GPUs will continue to be utilized in huge numbers for server farms crunching associations. There is cash in the LLM gatekeepers because those firms are large enough and far enough along the path to eventually do what filthy capitalists want with this data. First it was algorithms that prioritized engagement at any cost. Today it is LLMs. And tomorrow it is machine learning on your data and subconscious psychology in order to extract maximum profit possible from you. They’ve milked data-based advertising to the point of diminishing returns and the next step is to exploit us all using the data most make freely available out of convenience so that line continue to go up. I sure hope I’m wrong, but I’m a filthy fucking capitalist and don’t think that’s the case.
Hope to fuck we instill decent judges across this country in the coming years because honestly our best hope is to outlaw most of these practices by showing that they can’t be free of unintended bias and are therefore inherently not objective enough to be used to set prices, etc. it works in a physical store but how do you prevent dynamic pricing online? Especially with an internet that looks like it will become extremely segmented
That and the systematic replacement of middle management by AI with no regard to human feelings, needs, emotion whatsoever. Pretty much what Amazon is doing to its delivery drivers already.
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AI has the potential to improve efficiency. That includes the potential to make all forms of evil more efficient.
That and the systematic replacement of middle management by AI with no regard to human feelings, needs, emotion whatsoever.
So, you’re say that, in general, it’s an improvement? /s
Bro this isn’t AI this is a fucking basic sorting table. I hate how fucking every computer science is “AI” now.
The only novel aspect might be trying to run facial recognition on you, which still isnt AI.
You’re thinking about ‘general AI’
Just plain old AI includes the ability to analyze data and make recommendations which this is. Therefore this falls under the broad definition of AI.
What the hell is wrong with these people. How the fuck isn’t this illegal and punishable by life imprisonment?
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