So this is what’s called “personal pricing”, it’s a mythical vision of capitalism where instead of having to price your product against anonymous gross demand, you can price your product according to what you think you can get each specific individual to pay. Proponents (Chicago school MFs) argue that it would be “good for consumers” (massive sarcasm quotes there) because, hypothetically, you could safely offer your goods and services for much cheaper to people who are less able to afford them while making up the difference by charging more for people who can pay more. I very, very, very seriously doubt it will work that way in practice.

My problem with it is that we’re quickly arriving at a market where the amount of information held and utilized by the seller is maximized, and the amount of information held and used by the buyer is minimized. This is already causing and will continue to worsen exploitive disparities in the market. Without the consumer having ready access to accurate information and the ability to actually utilize it practically, consumers can’t make informed choices, and that has been and will continue to be leveraged to coerce economic choices from consumers that they never would have made otherwise. The tl;Dr is that implementing personal pricing in the fraud economy will never ever work for the consumer’s benefit.