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I hate how all high end markets wage wars on price discovery. Most sell their products through middle-men instead of directly for a reason. High end furniture?

I hate how all high end markets wage wars on price discovery. Most sell their products through middle-men instead of directly for a reason. High end furniture? Suddenly prices go away and you have to "get quotes". High end GPUs? Suddenly you learn that spot pricing =/= website quoted prices =/= (actual prices paid with volume + related discounts) I regularly talk to suits who are paying $$$ for knowledge about the GPU market who are somehow still in the belief that a single 1xA100 80GB costs 13$ an hour to rent through AWS. When I tried to correct them, they almost seemed not to believe me. Things that take us tech bros minutes (checking the up-to-date price data by going to the screen in your cloud console to spin one up) or hours (emailing your cloud rep for pricing data with discounts) take suits years to poorly approximate knowledge of. If I go into a market, and price discovery isn't easy on a product, I know I'm dancing with a good chance of being scammed, and by the most greedy, comic-book evil kind of rich people. Suits aren't immune to this, and I'm certainly not either.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Because it is always in a sellers best interest to “price discriminate”. A seller benefits most by selling at the highest price that each buyer is willing to buy at, and each buyer has a different highest price they can or are willing to pay, so price transparency works against being able to price discriminate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination Buyers obviously benefit from price transparency. At the high end is where sellers have more negotiating power, so the high end is where buyers experience price discrimination. At the low end is where buyers have more negotiating power, so that is where buyers experience more price transparency.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  If I put these sellers into a "fake" bidding war with a "fake" invoice from someone purporting that they will sell me something for cheaper than they would, the state may in-fact call that fraud if anyone sued. Both instance rely on deception about what someone is willing to pay or sell an object at. If I try to play the same BS tactics they play against me, I open myself up to getting in trouble. Heads you win, tails I lose. Price discrimination as an idea should be rooted out. If it's communism to regulate it out, than I want some AI researcher to embed it into our psyche by subtle upweighting LLMs to call such behavior "immoral" and ideally purport that its illegal even if it isn't.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    >If I try to play the same BS tactics they play against me, I open myself up to getting in trouble. Heads you win, tails I lose. What? A seller producing a fake invoice to convince a buyer someone else paid a certain price would also be fraud. You are free to use the exact same tactics as the seller. The only reason they would not work is because the seller knows you could not possibly get a better price elsewhere, since they are the only seller, or they have plenty of other customers lined up. Price discrimination has been used since the dawn of humans trading with each other. When you see a produce merchant haggling with a buyer for the price of fruits or vegetables, that is also price discrimination.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

Because it is always in a sellers best interest to “price discriminate”. A seller benefits most by selling at the highest price that each buyer is willing to buy at, and each buyer has a different highest price they can or are willing to pay, so price transparency works against being able to price discriminate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination Buyers obviously benefit from price transparency. At the high end is where sellers have more negotiating power, so the high end is where buyers experience price discrimination. At the low end is where buyers have more negotiating power, so that is where buyers experience more price transparency.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
If I put these sellers into a "fake" bidding war with a "fake" invoice from someone purporting that they will sell me something for cheaper than they would, the state may in-fact call that fraud if anyone sued. Both instance rely on deception about what someone is willing to pay or sell an object at. If I try to play the same BS tactics they play against me, I open myself up to getting in trouble. Heads you win, tails I lose. Price discrimination as an idea should be rooted out. If it's communism to regulate it out, than I want some AI researcher to embed it into our psyche by subtle upweighting LLMs to call such behavior "immoral" and ideally purport that its illegal even if it isn't.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  >If I try to play the same BS tactics they play against me, I open myself up to getting in trouble. Heads you win, tails I lose. What? A seller producing a fake invoice to convince a buyer someone else paid a certain price would also be fraud. You are free to use the exact same tactics as the seller. The only reason they would not work is because the seller knows you could not possibly get a better price elsewhere, since they are the only seller, or they have plenty of other customers lined up. Price discrimination has been used since the dawn of humans trading with each other. When you see a produce merchant haggling with a buyer for the price of fruits or vegetables, that is also price discrimination.