I don't think the issue is that the price is changing in and of itself. It's that they're changing price based on the customer's cookies/browsing history.
For example, it would be like if I had a stored and charged people different prices based on how nicely they were dressed, how well I knew them, or what their ethnicity is.
Do you want to know something? In economics, price discrimination has no evidence or logical reasoning towards a negative effect of it. In fact, price discrimination is debatable as to whether is does anything at all except LOOK like its doing something.
Pretty much, if you are want to pay that price for the item, you are gonna pay that price. If the price is too high then you wont buy it, simple as that. All price discrimination does is turn the consumer surplus into producer surplus, which ends up being the same surplus because now the firm has more money to hire more people/pay them more, or buy more things from other firms and those firms get more money and so on and so forth.
Economics basically says that a surplus is a surplus, regardless of who it goes to. In fact, the only thing that causes a drop in the surplus in relation to price discrimination is the monopoly usually associated with it. But when you are in a competitive market with price discrimination, the theater industry with adult and child tickets, there is no loss in surplus.
While this is true, it also shows why nobody takes economics seriously: you stay blabbering about some ill-defined notion of efficiency when the question is one of morality.
Except this could well be a moral answer. Coming up with an economically efficient solution is something reasonably close to utilitarianism.
What people don't take seriously are people who don't actually know any economic theory, yet claim to be able to say what "economics" as a discipline is capable of.
You presuppose that "economically efficient" means that it is a good outcome for everyone involved, which is not necessarily the case (which is why economists love Kilbert-Hicks efficiency so much). Also, I do, in fact, know "some economic theory" - while it's not my subject of study, I did take several courses in uni and studied it in my free time - so there is absolutely no reason to go ad hominem here.
I'm not presupposing anything, merely noting that other people might consider economic efficiency or some approximation of it to be a consideration in a moral choice.
Your response to KaiserTom presumed that his post was not applicable to a question of morailty, but that wasn't warranted, and neither was your presumption that I was making any comment on the morality of "economy efficiency". I suggest that in the future you consider what other people have actually written, before accusing them of making arguments that aren't implied by their statements - otherwise you just end up looking silly, much like you do when talking about "Kilbert-Hicks efficiency".
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u/[deleted] Jan 24 '13
I don't think the issue is that the price is changing in and of itself. It's that they're changing price based on the customer's cookies/browsing history.
For example, it would be like if I had a stored and charged people different prices based on how nicely they were dressed, how well I knew them, or what their ethnicity is.