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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3546 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 9, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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A company that only did this to extract more money from each sale...

That is literally every company that uses price discrimination. They don't get punished either because of market inefficiencies or because they sell goods that aren't interchangeable with competitors' goods.

Or because they are being rewarded by the customers who get the low prices. Remember what happened when JC Penney abolished sales and tried to market themselves as offering "everyday low prices".

People who complain about price discrimination are doing it from the frame of "if we ended price discrimination, everyone would get the low prices". But in the real world people love price discrimination when it gets framed as "you get a discount, you get a discount, you don't this time but try harder next time". There are a whole load of businesses where the main purpose of the sticker price is to frame the (often discriminatory) real price as a discount. This doesn't work for airline full fares or hotel rack rates any more because people got wise, but it still works for clothes (see JC Penney above) and it appears to be the norm in a wide range of sectors including new cars, college tuition, and consumer SaaS.

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