A Boring Dystopia

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Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.

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Consumer, we have detected that you are above the poverty line. The 99¢ price printed on this Arizona tea can only applies to those below the poverty line. Your total comes to $3.67. (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 61 points 3 months ago (6 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We could wipe out food insecurity by just doing taxes properly. We shouldn't tolerate for-profit businesses doing what the government should be doing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

And politicians who work to privatise public services should be sent straight to the gallows for the traitors they are.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

What you're describing is a more socialist/communist view on means based price adjustment.

This is real-time price gouging, which is good old-fashioned capitalism.

Looing forward to WIC and SNAP benefits being erased by price gouging on the needy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you think about it, it does not make financial sense for them to maintain this kind of system as a purely progressive price discrimination that charges richer people more money. I expect a lot of it would end up more like the Uber practice of charging more to people with low phone battery; they will identify who is more desperate, who has less choice but to buy the given product immediately, and charge them more. Because of how poverty works, that's more likely the poor.

This is a major reason we still need cash and other ways of saying no to corporate surveillance; if we can't maintain privacy when making purchases that information will be used as a weapon against us.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well since the government has all the info and has the postal service to get stuff to the people in need, why not just send this people some sort of stamps for free that lets them buy food, lets call it food stamps or something.

Jk, that would never work, let's give all that sensitive data to some company that will definitely not leak, sell it or use it for some nefarious thing, because it will use AI.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yea, as a sort of reverse tax credit, it would be interesting. But as a profit driver, it's nice and dystopian.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago

I guess food stamps kind of do this but they are so hard to actually be granted. We need something automatic that is specifically geared to solving food insecurity for the most needy.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No, the existing "base line" price will stay as is for the poors. Those with slightly more money however....those will pay more.

[+] [email protected] -23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yep, that's what an MBA would decide, so that's likely what's going to happen.

That's why I said in my second line:

It won’t be done properly. It never is when left to the corporations.

But yet you STILL opened your reply with a flat 'no', proving you only ever bothered to read a single sentence of my reply so I'm downvoting you, blocking you, and forgetting you ever existed.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I don't think their "No" was a disagreement, but a confirmation of your second line. https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/88502/how-to-agree-with-a-negative-statement-with-yes-or-with-no Sometimes, language can be a tricky tool to wield.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It really seems more like they didn't read the second line though, since there is nothing in how that comment is phrased that acknowledges it, and since that sort of comment-without-reading is extremely common especially for topics with political significance.

The standard way is to clarify your answer by rephrasing the question rather than only saying "no" or "yes".

So in this case maybe that could have been done by saying it like "No, they won't do it properly," but if you want to communicate that you have read the whole thing you're responding to you basically have to do this, because it is extremely reasonable to assume it was not read if there is no indication.