alt Hacker NewsI'm actually a proponent of changing prices based on wealth.
It allows us to move toward pricing as a coeffecient of wealth which puts purchasing on the same playing field as our namesake economic system: capitalism. Capitalism fundamentally creates wealth through multiplication - share price * shares, asset price * assets, etc. It only makes sense that the wealth created that way is also able to be drained that way.
That's why I'm for allowing banks and investment firms to be able to sell identifiable customer data - so that merchants can effectively price ability-to-purchase into individualized pricing. Markets function better when information is diffuse.
Why shouldn't Bill Gates pay $150,000 for a banana? Proportionally it costs him the same as it would for me.
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"It only makes sense that the wealth created that way is also able to be drained that way" is a HUGE statement that is highly unsupported by your argument.
We pay a price for a banana because of the intrinsic value of the banana AND the price the market will bear for a banana. Bill Gates will never pay $150,000 for a banana because a banana is not worth that much. You can try to charge him for that and instead you will just not sell him any bananas. The capitalist here loses because they want to make money and would sell a banana at a market clearing rate.
Because if Bill Gates is paying $150k for bananas, my expected value as a shopkeeper is maximized by not selling you my limited stock of bananas at $0.50/each and instead waiting for the remote possibility that Bill Gates walks into the store instead. It's not socially optimal for bananas to rot on store shelves when there are willing customers at a lower price point, but this happens all the time in dynamically priced markets.
This comes up frequently in housing, for example.