While Wendy’s plans to price gouge you with Uber-style surge pricing, it’s simultaneously enriching wealthy shareholders with a $500 million stock buyback program.
That’s the thing about corporate greed: It’s shameless.
They’ll just keep pushing to see how far they can go.
@rbreich I feel like somewhere Dave Thomas is rolling in his grave.
Or who knows.
Surge Gouging turns your attempt to get a burger/ride into a shell game where the seller tries to set price at the maximum YOU will pay in that one transaction rather than conform to any expectation of price stability.
Oddly, I haven't heard them announce plans to let customers haggle over burger prices like they were at a flea market (if the restaurant only has a handful of customers then demand must be down at the moment so the price should drop, right?)
@rbreich *Please* stop calling it "corporate greed." This is human greed, full stop. There are men in suits, in paneled offices and board rooms, making these decisions. Like all human institutions, "corporation" (like "government" or "organized religion") has become a fig leaf to legitimate bad behavior. But WHY are we still surprised by this?
Humans have spent 5,000+ years of recorded history perfecting an economic system that SELECTS FOR sociopathic behavior, so we cannot be shocked when sociopaths rule the world. Our collective failure to move beyond economics as THE organizing principle for all human civilization screams at us from every headline, every article and essay, but it's like the air we breathe: assumed, invisible, can't see it, won't see it.
Homo economicus is an evolutionary dead end. The only relevant question today is whether we'll have the collective imagination *and will* to evolve, consciously -- to make economics a tool, not our master.
@mattblaze @rbreich @pluralistic
Uber didn't always pass through any of the surge surcharge to the drivers. Plenty of anecdotes about the passenger and the driver being shown very different pricing.
But Wendy's, in their infinite wisdom, are today walking back their surge pricing plan. "Instead", they will do dynamic discounts and "value packages". So I presume this means they double the prices across the board, then offer discounts during slow periods. But it's totally not surge pricing. https://apnews.com/article/wendys-burger-pricing-ef75fa9214beddbd0d9d459f37722638
Wendy’s says that it has no plans to increase prices during the busiest times at its restaurants. The burger chain clarified its stance on how it will approach pricing after various media reports said that the company was looking to test having the prices of its menu items fluctuate throughout the day based on demand. Wendy’s said that its digital menu boards “could allow us to change the menu offerings at different times of day and offer discounts and value offers to our customers more easily, particularly in the slower times of day.”
@mattblaze @rbreich @pluralistic Theoretically, the workers would be working less hard during the rush.
Surge pricing is all about raising the price when demand is high. Higher prices means fewer customers (but more profit per customer). Fewer customers means a less busy restaurant, so less work.
OTOH, surge pricing can also mean lowering the price when demand is low, in order to stimulate demand. So, the late night shifts where there was a lot of down time might get a bit busier.
@mattblaze @rbreich @pluralistic Exactly, so the price would go up, driving demand down.
At worst, during a surge the workers would be just as busy as they are now. But, they wouldn't ever be more busy if surge pricing increased prices. Having said that, they might have to deal with more unhappy customers.
@rbreich It's so crazy! It's like the opposite of happy hour.
Some places will discount their goods to draw people in during slow periods. For me, all I can see this doing is driving people away during their busy 'money making' periods.
I live with purpose and I absolutely know what I will & will not tolerate. It sounds like they have backpedaled but if this ever gets implemented I will never go there again.
I've already given up McDonald's & Starbucks. I have no problems giving up another.
@rbreich Is the problem really Wendy’s doing this? Isn’t it the structures that makes them get away with it?
If a shop that only caters to rich people increases their prices, then there is no real problem, right? But if a business that is the only real option for some people does that, we have a problem. That business definitely is partly to blame in that case, but the most blame should go to the system. “The system” can be monopolies, oligopolies, city planning, or capitalism in general.
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