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Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices

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510 points bookofjoe | 1 comments | 07 Dec 25 14:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.391s | source
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paultopia ◴[07 Dec 25 15:42 UTC] No.46182507[source]▶
At a certain point we have to acknowledge that a huge share of our economy is just raw predation.
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IncreasePosts ◴[07 Dec 25 20:09 UTC] No.46184673[source]▶
Well, why don't the ethical non-predators open up shops in economically disadvantaged areas and offer non-predatory prices? The margins must be huge if they really are predators.
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smallmancontrov ◴[07 Dec 25 20:16 UTC] No.46184741[source]▶
The loot is already spoken for by complements and embedded in real estate prices, stock prices, etc.

Hobbes arguments can rationalize any Nash Equilibrium.

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IncreasePosts ◴[07 Dec 25 20:21 UTC] No.46184776[source]▶
Isn't it just the predators that care about stock price to enrich themselves? Couldn't a co-op exist which offered non-predatory pricing and didn't try to maximize their stock price constantly? And real estate in destitute rural areas is generally dirt cheap.

Of course this could be offered. But, no one wants to do it because it's a thankless job. And if you're going to do a thankless job, you'd probably rather get paid a lot of money to do it than very little

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1. smallmancontrov ◴[07 Dec 25 21:05 UTC] No.46185142[source]▶
You're ducking the argument. The loot from predatory practices is quickly absorbed not just by the single player perpetuating them, but by their complements in the economic network -- complements which a competitor would have to deal with on the loot-enriched terms, which turn launders exploitation into a "necessity" and transforms any charity into a weakness that will ensure your replacement. That's what Nash Equilibrium is, and it's an elementary result of game theory that Nash Equilibrium can lie very far from the global optimum. Even the global minimum can be a Nash Equilibrium. We should aspire to do better.