alt Hacker News>A society that permits surveillance pricing will inevitably become more impoverished because the few players doing surveillance pricing will extract more money from the society WITHOUT creating any more value. This impairs everyone else's ability to provide value.
Why can't it be both? SpaceX created starlink, which I don't think anyone doubts is "a product or service that is sufficiently valuable the buyer willingly parts with the money for the price". Yet at the same time it engages in price discrimination. They have different service tiers with various restrictions placed on them. For instance, the cheapest tier costs $55 but must be stationary. The unlimited aviation tier costs $200k[1] but works on a plane. While I'm sure there's some cost differences between serving the first plan vs the second, it's pretty clear there's some discrimination going on. Does that SpaceX is "extracting more money from the society WITHOUT creating any more value"? Would society be better off if starlink was forced to charge one price?
[1] https://www.corporatejetinvestor.com/news/starlink-price-ris...
Good distinction! Varying service tiers are different from surveillance price discrimination.
It is not a difference for each person; it is a difference for a different category or type of person or service.
It is not exploiting spying on a person's private life and seeing when they are desperate or get the DGAF discount.
The SpaceX stationary/mobile distinction actually provides a better service - for more money, you get to move around. I'm not sure if it puts any higher load on the system but my guess would be the excess profit exceeds the extra cost of tracking a mobile terminal.
They aren't great, but are at least fair. Airlines have also been doing it for decades, beyond economy/biz/first but also cheaper if your flight includes a Saturday stayover (extra $$ for typical biz travelers) and far more sophisticated schemes now.
Similar for parking lots charging more per hour during business hours vs nights/weekends.
The key is the category-type prices are not exploiting an unfair advantage by prying into individual customer's private lives.
Is it on a similar (slippery) slope of charging more without providing more value? Sort of. But they really are very different things.