Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#251

Post by estearum » Mon, May 04, 2026, 1:03 PM UTC

elil17 wrote: post #247

estearum wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilariously first-order-effects thinking... If any store used dynamic pricing to expand their margins, the others would just do the same and compete away those margins once again, with the marginal gain being handed back to consumers. Dynamic pricing on personal data is bad I think, but temporal dynamic pricing is actually very good for everyone and I hope it doesn't get thrown out by some reckless legislatio…

The point of personalized pricing, which is what this bill addresses, is to identify consumers who won't shop around and give them higher prices. You can't compete that away because the consumers being hurt aren't sensitive to competition (for example, they don't have a car and therefor can't get to a different grocery store). It's an inherently anti-competitive practice. I agree that temporal dynamic pricing might b…

Anti-competitive doesn't mean "benefits from lack of competition."

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#252

Post by antiframe » Mon, May 04, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #59

antiframe wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the flea market you can haggle. Are you saying we should all have to haggle with the harried checkout person over the price of milk ever time we shop? Or everything is self checkout and you don't haggle but then choose whether you accept the price or not? As with many things in technology, it's not about the raw concept, it's about the automation of it and inability to appeal to a human. Haggling face to face is h…

I've never encountered or heard of a grocery store that didn't mark the prices on the shelves. > asymmetric with the benefit going to the corpo You have the power to say "no". The only transactions you are forced into are the ones dealing with the government or the mob. > inability to appeal to a human I was stonewalled by a gigantic corporation the other day over a substantial sum of money. I googled the name and ad…

These are all hassles. Hassles add up to corpo power. These frictions benefit them. That was the crux of my point.

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#253

Post by motbus3 » Mon, May 04, 2026, 6:15 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #94

motbus3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They charge more for everyone there. Now they are able to charge more for you

Which supermarkets have you seen doing this? This conspiracy theory about epaper tags changing their price on you falls flat when you think about it for even a moment. The tags do not update fast enough to do that, couldn’t handle multiple people in the same area, and would be impractical to link back to the purchase time, resulting in people noticing the price scanned didn’t match what they saw on the ticket. Per cu…

Maybe because it is not my first language, but I don't mean they are doing, I am saying they can do it and it is not that difficult.

Pharmacies in my home country are notorious for making personalised prices. Some big brand grocery stores here have "fiddly" cards and face tracking.

They can easily manipulate prices to make you register yourself and then make discount based on some personalisation metric.

We are all used to it though Amzn and others. We just don't realise that all that is needed for it to get to your basket is that one of them to do it and others to follow.

We have seen many recent examples of companies applying abusive corporate practices and instead of capitalising on it, the competitors just follow with some excuse...

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#254

Post by elil17 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 7:54 AM UTC

estearum wrote: post #250

elil17 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that consumers who can pick better stores will get better prices, while those that can't will get gouged. Imagine someone who works multiple jobs and only has time to shop at the grocery store closest to them. The algorithmically-driven store will start by randomly showing them some random prices and seeing how they respond. If they are willing to accept high prices, the store will keep charging them mor…

There's nothing unique about dynamic pricing in this situation except more efficient price discovery which I'm not sure is a bad thing for anyone. > Raising prices for consumers who won't comparison shop will do nothing to change the marginal cost of serving a consumer who does Of course it would. In a competitive environment (which grocery stores are), this excess capital gets reinvested into beating the competition…

> In a competitive environment (which grocery stores are), this excess capital gets reinvested into beating the competition.

That's not true though. Excess capital does not necessarily get reinvested in an efficient market. If that were the case, companies in relatively efficient markets would spend a very small portion of their free cash flow on dividends and share buybacks, which is not the case.

Let's look at Kroger specifically: https://ir.kroger.com/news/news-details/2026/Kroger-Reports-...

Of $7.2B free cash flow in 2025 they spent $3.9B on capital expenditures and about $3.6B on dividends and buybacks (those numbers don't add up because of things like loans, sale of assets, and stock issuance).

Additionally, even if companies in competitive markets did reinvest all their excess profits from personalized pricing, the benefits would only accrue to consumers that the algorithm thinks are price-sensitive.

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#255

Post by elil17 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 7:57 AM UTC

estearum wrote: post #251

elil17 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of personalized pricing, which is what this bill addresses, is to identify consumers who won't shop around and give them higher prices. You can't compete that away because the consumers being hurt aren't sensitive to competition (for example, they don't have a car and therefor can't get to a different grocery store). It's an inherently anti-competitive practice. I agree that temporal dynamic pricing might b…

Anti-competitive doesn't mean "benefits from lack of competition."

Right, anti-competitive practices are where a business tries to limit competition. And dynamic pricing is anti-competitive because businesses are essentially algorithmically identifying customers whose business they don't need to compete for, and then charging them non-competitive prices.

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#256

Post by estearum » Tue, May 05, 2026, 11:17 AM UTC

elil17 wrote: post #255

estearum wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-competitive doesn't mean "benefits from lack of competition."

Right, anti-competitive practices are where a business tries to limit competition. And dynamic pricing is anti-competitive because businesses are essentially algorithmically identifying customers whose business they don't need to compete for, and then charging them non-competitive prices.

Isn't that how all prices work?

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#257

Post by elil17 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 11:37 AM UTC

estearum wrote: post #256

elil17 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, anti-competitive practices are where a business tries to limit competition. And dynamic pricing is anti-competitive because businesses are essentially algorithmically identifying customers whose business they don't need to compete for, and then charging them non-competitive prices.

Isn't that how all prices work?

How so?

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#258

Post by Throaway199999 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:12 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #216

Throaway199999 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they (everybody) can't. Bringing bottled water to market requires a clean source, rights to acquire it, and a manufacture & distribution network. Plus retailers. As well, these things are often blocked to newcomers because of existing deals with big players.

> But they (everybody) can't. Bringing bottled water to market requires a clean source, rights to acquire it, and a manufacture & distribution network. Plus retailers. I didn't say everybody . I said anybody who can . What you describe is exactly why it's important to have an incentive for the people who do have those resources to employ them towards getting bottled water to this lead-poisoned region...

Who in the lead-poisoned region can buy water for $100 a bottle lol

Re: Maryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores

#259

Post by Throaway199999 » Tue, May 05, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #215

Throaway199999 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were not asking about dynamic pricing. You were asking why you weren't able to see the reason that consumers don't always find & choose the cheapest option. The person you were responding to was explaining the unethical realities of food retailers. There's no reason why these would disappear with dynamic pricing.

No, the entire conversation is about a change toward dynamic pricing. My comment about pricing is that dynamic pricing doesn't change the competitive dynamic between retailers. You are chiming in and saying "well there are other competitive/noncompetitive dynamics at play," which I agree with and never disputed and am not talking about.

What GP is saying is that dynamic pricing will not lead to lower prices because retailers will not lower their prices, they will collude.