4 ms·

Marketing has jumped the shark. This is very stupid -sure college kids eat cereal for their three meals because they’re in a bind (time, money, etc) but they h

by mc32 3y ago

Marketing has jumped the shark. This is very stupid -sure college kids eat cereal for their three meals because they’re in a bind (time, money, etc) but they have their health, for the most part. So this is silly. But so is the president when he complains about shrinkfkation using his exaggerated Jim Carey face from the grinch. The complicated policy led to this. Companies either raise prices or sell you less for the same price. This is transparent posturing.

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
> Companies either raise prices or sell you less for the same price. Or they sell you the same amount for the same price. Much of these increases are not 'required' they cash grabs. F these guys.
- parpfish 3y ago
  But isn’t the purpose of a business to be a cash grab? If consumers are willing to pay more, charge more. I don’t care if Kelloggs raises prices. It will make them more money up until the point people switch over to Post or the store brand (that’s 99% identical), and then they adjust prices. The problem is if there’s collusion and all manufacturers raise prices so they can’t compete on price.
  - dclowd9901 3y ago
    The problem is collusion. Not “the heads of the two companies call each other and cackle while they bathe in pools of money” collusion, but soft collusion where their pricing models aim for profit over sales numbers.
    - parpfish 3y ago
      So you’re saying that it’s a problem when multiple companies are trying to make a profit? I know that profit is a foreign concept to most VC backed tech companies, but it’s pretty fundamental to everybody else
    - cjbgkagh 3y ago
      That’s not collusion that’s just optimizing price for profit. You can have ‘collusion in effect’ with price matching on a market leader where multiple companies can price as if they were a single company monopoly without explicit coordination. There are many situations that are not considered true monopolies that I think should be, such a geographical monopolies that occur when there is a tacit agreement for companies not to enter each other’s areas of operations.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      That is just the "free market" we operate in... There is little to do about that unless we want government to cap prices on everything, including wages. In the end solution is to break up these large conglomerates and stop them ever going over certain size by acquisitions. And exactly same should be done in tech. Big companies should not be allowed to buy start-ups for example.
- lowkey 3y ago
  I agree that greedflation is very much a thing. When many competitors do this, it makes it easier for others to do the same. However, I find it frustrating that so many articles, economists and the government consistently fail to mention the primary proximate cause for inflation. Namely, the simple fact that 80% of all the dollars ever created were created in the most recent 4 years. In my opinion inflation is a misnomer. It would be more accurate to call it dilution of the purchasing power of the dollar aka grand theft by central bankers.
- mc32 3y ago
  We’ve had higher inflation over the last few years that’s affected prices and salaries. That’s not in question at all. That money printer has hardly cooled down. Do you want to provide the same labor at the same price so your company doesn’t have to raise prices?
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
    > Do you want to provide the same labor at the same price so your company doesn’t have to raise prices? In many cases, the company keeps salaries the same AND raises prices. Then they complain that 'no one wants to work any more'.
dclowd9901 3y ago
This used to be true, but a lot of pricing is automated now, based on location, pricing of similar products, etc etc. it’s also still somewhat in its infancy. Remember way back when high frequency trading was first a thing, you’d hear stories about some HFT houses cranking up the prices of some little penny stock on the basis their algorithms saw the price go up and then jumped in, causing some kind of feedback loop? I think that’s exactly what’s going on now, only at a pace more in line with merchandise pricing (over weeks rather than milliseconds).

by mc32 3y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago

> Companies either raise prices or sell you less for the same price. Or they sell you the same amount for the same price. Much of these increases are not 'required' they cash grabs. F these guys.

parpfish 3y ago
But isn’t the purpose of a business to be a cash grab? If consumers are willing to pay more, charge more. I don’t care if Kelloggs raises prices. It will make them more money up until the point people switch over to Post or the store brand (that’s 99% identical), and then they adjust prices. The problem is if there’s collusion and all manufacturers raise prices so they can’t compete on price.
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  The problem is collusion. Not “the heads of the two companies call each other and cackle while they bathe in pools of money” collusion, but soft collusion where their pricing models aim for profit over sales numbers.
  - parpfish 3y ago
    So you’re saying that it’s a problem when multiple companies are trying to make a profit? I know that profit is a foreign concept to most VC backed tech companies, but it’s pretty fundamental to everybody else
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    That’s not collusion that’s just optimizing price for profit. You can have ‘collusion in effect’ with price matching on a market leader where multiple companies can price as if they were a single company monopoly without explicit coordination. There are many situations that are not considered true monopolies that I think should be, such a geographical monopolies that occur when there is a tacit agreement for companies not to enter each other’s areas of operations.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    That is just the "free market" we operate in... There is little to do about that unless we want government to cap prices on everything, including wages. In the end solution is to break up these large conglomerates and stop them ever going over certain size by acquisitions. And exactly same should be done in tech. Big companies should not be allowed to buy start-ups for example.
lowkey 3y ago
I agree that greedflation is very much a thing. When many competitors do this, it makes it easier for others to do the same. However, I find it frustrating that so many articles, economists and the government consistently fail to mention the primary proximate cause for inflation. Namely, the simple fact that 80% of all the dollars ever created were created in the most recent 4 years. In my opinion inflation is a misnomer. It would be more accurate to call it dilution of the purchasing power of the dollar aka grand theft by central bankers.
mc32 3y ago
We’ve had higher inflation over the last few years that’s affected prices and salaries. That’s not in question at all. That money printer has hardly cooled down. Do you want to provide the same labor at the same price so your company doesn’t have to raise prices?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  > Do you want to provide the same labor at the same price so your company doesn’t have to raise prices? In many cases, the company keeps salaries the same AND raises prices. Then they complain that 'no one wants to work any more'.

dclowd9901 3y ago

This used to be true, but a lot of pricing is automated now, based on location, pricing of similar products, etc etc. it’s also still somewhat in its infancy. Remember way back when high frequency trading was first a thing, you’d hear stories about some HFT houses cranking up the prices of some little penny stock on the basis their algorithms saw the price go up and then jumped in, causing some kind of feedback loop? I think that’s exactly what’s going on now, only at a pace more in line with merchandise pricing (over weeks rather than milliseconds).