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BobbyJoyesterday at 8:22 PM1 replyview on HN

Its pretty obvious that a society intent on making capitalism work would enforce price transparency. If you want a productive society, you need efficient markets, and if you want efficient markets, you need to reduce information asymmetry, not maximize it. Hopefully the people in power recognize the positive impact they can make by preventing this awful future.


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zbentleyyesterday at 11:34 PM

I think the devil's advocate/libertarian reply would be roughly: its efficient to let consumers prefer venues with different pricing schemes. If dynamic pricing is bad, then competitors will differentiate by not doing it, and price out the ones doing dynamic pricing.

To be clear, I don't believe that (or even the premise that "making capitalism work" is a good social goal--some elements of capitalist economies are socially beneficial, but adopting it as an ideology rather than piecemeal is not). I think your point is generally correct: if your goal is an efficient free market, then price transparency is important. But that's just my hunch as to what the counterargument would be.

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