4 ms·

The system is working as intended if a rich person is discriminated against based on their wealth, but illegal if a poor person is discriminated against based o

The system is working as intended if a rich person is discriminated against based on their wealth, but illegal if a poor person is discriminated against based on their wealth?

igorkraw 5y ago
If you can afford a house you can afford it. You said "they don't fit into that neighborhood", you can't deny a sale at an advertised asking price for "not fitting into the neighborhood", that triggers discrimination laws. In a negotiated setting where you can hide that motivation, everything is open, but we as a society have settled on price discrimination being okay (see, first class tickets), this simply evens the playing field so the rich can't hide their wealth. Also, if it really pains you, as a wealthy person you can easily get the poor person treatment by giving away your wealth, so I find these "both types of discrimination" rhetoris inconsistent anyway.
- peytoncasper 5y ago
  I'm not the person who posted this example, but functionally the person who doesn't want to sell their house to a person with less wealth could simply raise the price just as the salesperson selling a car to a rich person. As the person owns that asset, it would be quite challenging to prove because the justification could be that demand justified raising the price. I'll agree that society has normalized some price discrimination in terms of interest rates being based on credit scores and we can debate the merits in relation to loaning someone money. And there are actually a lot of laws in place around how high an interest rate can be, who can be loaned money, etc. However, first class tickets are not price discrimination because the offered service is in fact different which means it's not comparable to coach or business. In fact, I'm not aware of a service in which they ask you for your income statement when you walk in the door and then change the price accordingly. Lastly, I find your rhetoric that a wealthy person should just become poor if they want equal treatment to be odd. Who classifies as wealthy? Will it be up to a judge every time? How will that change as the standard of lower, middle and upper class changes within a country?
  - igorkraw 5y ago
    I partially agree with the first class ticket being a bad example, but the basic idea stands, normally price discrimination just benefits the rich. As for your last point, I'd be against fixed definitions (as you are I think), but i have seen the argument that discrimination against the rich is just as bad as discrimination against ethnicities, poor people etc., often in the context of progressive taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, discussions about billionaires. And it's at these contexts my (flippant) rhetort flies. If you want the poor person price really badly instead of someone trying to fleece the rich guy (still mainly guys), then become poor. If you don't want to pay a high tax rate above X million income, I'm sure someone else will want to. Etc. The exact threshold is always defined by something else and will vary, and there are of course limits. But in this instance, iff the majority of people benefits from radical transparency (which I'm not 100% on, but sure enough that I'm arguing for it) by being able to negotiate wages and properly asses the financial situation of the country, as well as helping to detect tax evasion via community tipofs(controversial I know, my opinion, not universal etc.), then I'm okay with sacrificing the ability of the wealthy to get good housing deals or hide dynastic wealth. They can always give away that wealth if they want to get better deals, pay less taxes etc. something you can't do with ethnicities, upbringing etc. So discrimination based on wealth is inherently different than those other instances in my eyes and this is what this remark was about

The system is working as intended if a rich person is discriminated against based on their wealth, but illegal if a poor person is discriminated against based on their wealth?

igorkraw 5y ago

If you can afford a house you can afford it. You said "they don't fit into that neighborhood", you can't deny a sale at an advertised asking price for "not fitting into the neighborhood", that triggers discrimination laws. In a negotiated setting where you can hide that motivation, everything is open, but we as a society have settled on price discrimination being okay (see, first class tickets), this simply evens the playing field so the rich can't hide their wealth. Also, if it really pains you, as a wealthy person you can easily get the poor person treatment by giving away your wealth, so I find these "both types of discrimination" rhetoris inconsistent anyway.

peytoncasper 5y ago
I'm not the person who posted this example, but functionally the person who doesn't want to sell their house to a person with less wealth could simply raise the price just as the salesperson selling a car to a rich person. As the person owns that asset, it would be quite challenging to prove because the justification could be that demand justified raising the price. I'll agree that society has normalized some price discrimination in terms of interest rates being based on credit scores and we can debate the merits in relation to loaning someone money. And there are actually a lot of laws in place around how high an interest rate can be, who can be loaned money, etc. However, first class tickets are not price discrimination because the offered service is in fact different which means it's not comparable to coach or business. In fact, I'm not aware of a service in which they ask you for your income statement when you walk in the door and then change the price accordingly. Lastly, I find your rhetoric that a wealthy person should just become poor if they want equal treatment to be odd. Who classifies as wealthy? Will it be up to a judge every time? How will that change as the standard of lower, middle and upper class changes within a country?
- igorkraw 5y ago
  I partially agree with the first class ticket being a bad example, but the basic idea stands, normally price discrimination just benefits the rich. As for your last point, I'd be against fixed definitions (as you are I think), but i have seen the argument that discrimination against the rich is just as bad as discrimination against ethnicities, poor people etc., often in the context of progressive taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, discussions about billionaires. And it's at these contexts my (flippant) rhetort flies. If you want the poor person price really badly instead of someone trying to fleece the rich guy (still mainly guys), then become poor. If you don't want to pay a high tax rate above X million income, I'm sure someone else will want to. Etc. The exact threshold is always defined by something else and will vary, and there are of course limits. But in this instance, iff the majority of people benefits from radical transparency (which I'm not 100% on, but sure enough that I'm arguing for it) by being able to negotiate wages and properly asses the financial situation of the country, as well as helping to detect tax evasion via community tipofs(controversial I know, my opinion, not universal etc.), then I'm okay with sacrificing the ability of the wealthy to get good housing deals or hide dynastic wealth. They can always give away that wealth if they want to get better deals, pay less taxes etc. something you can't do with ethnicities, upbringing etc. So discrimination based on wealth is inherently different than those other instances in my eyes and this is what this remark was about