Thread · HN Continuity

My issue with dynamic pricing boils down to price discovery and information asymmetry.

When I buy something, I really don't know what it's supposed to cost. Barring atypical levels of research, I know how much it's worth to me, and how much it usually costs, and that's it.

But my supermarket knows almost exactly how much eggs are worth to me. If it can show me, and everyone else, a different price at different times of day, I'm no longer confident in my ability to "bargain" effectively with the supermarket. So while I can see some strong economic arguments for dynamic pricing, especially in cases like power or water usage where there's a very inflexible supply, I basically just don't trust that we won't get screwed.

Fixes could be possible. Maybe with a third party system for monitoring prices, quality, etc. But it's hard, and pretty obviously not solved in the current market, much less one with even more price complexity.