The most consumer-friendly outcome would be if all market participants used transparent pricing at each tier of product/service. This maximizes what the consum

The most consumer-friendly outcome would be if all market participants used transparent pricing at each tier of product/service. This maximizes what the consumer receives per dollar spent, because they can easily compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges across many competitors. How about this for an A/B test (rhetorical): show consumers one universe where perfect competition is enforced like I describe above, and one universe where most market participants bait and switch customers, forcing them to shop for hours and then ending up paying more for less. Or compare shopping at the grocery store vs shopping even the most fungible medical procedures between 2 hospitals :) (if you can even manage to shop the latter) If you think consumers like to be tricked, you either need to zoom out of the narrow context where that seems to be true, or you’re financially incentivized to swindle the plebs.