NO

This is not "price discovery working efficiently" in arm's length transactions among two equal trading partners.

This is MAXIMUM_VALUE_EXTRACTION working efficiently between one player with all the power and information and another player with none of the power and information.

This is nothing more than a scheme to figure out what is the maximum amount of money they can extract for the transaction, for every single party. And, as pointed out in the article, the poor will get shafted even harder because they have fewer options, whereas the wealthy cardholders (who least need the deals) will get better deals because they have many options.

How is it that you are unable to see this is a scheme to screw everyone, and you in particular (for all possible values of you)?

I find this attitude absolutely appalling.

Yeah, I suppose it's great if you're the business owner.

But now put yourself in the shoes of the customer. It's just extracting more money from the working class to the owning class. It's another way for the rich to get richer at the cost of everyone below.

It works in both directions. Tickets that were priced too high come down in price to find demand. The idea that a business should set inefficient prices for the good of society or something is complete nonsense.

Not if they were previously priced efficiently, as in cost plus a reasonable margin. No one will pay less because that would be at or below cost, but now some will pay more.

NO.

This is a specific example of prices NOT working in both directions — the airline using AI and massive data sets about the individual buyers is EXPLOITING INFORMATION ASYMMETRIES to extract the maximum payment available from each individual buyer — in exactly the situation where the buyers have no such leverage.

It would be working in both directions if all customers had equal opportunities to buy at openly known prices. The above is not an open and free market where buyers are knowingly bidding up or down prices of seats.

Maximizing exploitation of each individual customer is NOT price discovery; it is only discovery of how well they can screw each individual customer by exploiting info asymmetries and presenting skewed options.

You call it "inefficient prices". I call it "not gouging".

Imagine being a guy making just $50K/year, then you get a new job doubling it to $100K, and rather than feeling like he's getting ahead, every merchant doubled what they charged him for products and services.

We used to have a term for someone that maximized profit with zero regard for the impact on society or even their customers: Robber baron. As far as I'm concerned, what you're calling for is outright evil.

It never works in both directions, at least not often enough to matter. The ratchet is always upwards.

I disagree. It's a good thing if you're the company doing the price discrimination because it lets you screw your customers for every possible dime. It's a bad and unfair thing if you're the customer.

suppose the AI knows that my grandmother just died so I'm less price sensitive than usual- does that seem like a benefit to anyone other than, perhaps, the airline's profit margin?

Life isn't a zero-sum game, and individually profit-maximising actions may not be in even the profit maximiser's interest long-term, let alone society's.

In the European Antiquity and Middle-Ages, at least, there were laws against merchants taking too much profit. It didn't matter if a high price optimised the allocation of a resource - the gouging was seen as more deleterious to society than the inefficiency, and malefactors were punished harshly, with heavy fines or even exile or death.

I feel like we're due for a medieval revival.