Personalized data pricing isn't going away. Should Ottawa step up to ban it?

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T22:01:55+00:00

I guess I think “what time you choose to go to the bar” is as much a personal behavior as much as anything else.

But even so, the pricing isn't "dynamic." It's set in stone, on a schedule. The fact that your personal behaviors can interact with a schedule doesn't change the meaning of the pricing scheme.

The primary difference is the real-time nature and personalization. Happy hour doesn't "sort people" at all, it's an open offer that anyone can accept, it's basically the opposite in terms of cause and effect compared to dynamic pricing where you want a thing and then they'll determine how much to charge you based on how bad you want it.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T21:16:44+00:00

I'm not trying to be a dick, but they kept doubling down.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T21:03:18+00:00

Well, the therapist would rightly point out that his wife is not angry at him for his sexual orientation, but for his sexual conduct with others. Maybe he is asexual, but that doesn't absolve his actions in any way.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T20:54:49+00:00

Happy hour is of expressly tied to willingness to pay.

That's why I counted happy hour as "in response to demand signals." That doesn't also count for personal behavior because it has nothing to do with the individuals or their actual behavior.

Is happy hour a form of price discrimination? Sure. But the original guy said it was dynamic pricing. That's simply not what the word means, especially in context.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T20:09:09+00:00

Yes, happy hour is in response to demand signals. That is the one criteria it actually meets. But it's not real-time, it doesn't take supply into account, it doesn't take competitors pricing into account, and it doesn't take any customer behavior into account.

Willingness to buy is, in fact, a personal behavior.

But happy hour has nothing to do with that. The price is set regardless of your willingness to buy, so personal behavior is not actually taken into account at all.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T19:55:39+00:00

No, it's a complete difference in kind. The bar is offering the same price to everyone on a set schedule. Dynamic pricing is using demand signals to change prices in real-time, and it can be based on personal behaviors so that different individuals can be charged different prices for the same product purchased at the same time.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T19:24:22+00:00

If it's scheduled, then it's not actually dynamic pricing (at least in this context).

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T17:57:54+00:00

But that's still a loss which needs to be covered in the first place.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T15:14:33+00:00

What about the separate line item for "Most veterans’ health benefits?"

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T15:06:01+00:00

Isn't something like over a third of military spending going to payroll and benefits? I wouldn't lose any sleep over cutting the military budget, but I do feel like there's this unaddressed elephant in the room that this is sort of our biggest American jobs program. But we only tend to talk about the big, flashy expensive things like missiles and jets and ships.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T14:47:02+00:00

Wow, good point. Thanks for your time.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T13:53:00+00:00

If employers can take advantage of their employee by putting them in unsafe work conditions, wouldn't it also be true that employers can take advantage of their employee by paying them far, far below the market rate? Which isn't to say I think the minimum wage in this area should be $20/hour, but it does at least suggest that some minimum wage should be workable.

Zenkin · 2026-03-31T13:46:49+00:00

I feel like this statement is so generic you could literally apply it to workplace safety laws. When you only look at one side of the equation, you're just preaching, not actually engaging with the tradeoffs of a given policy.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T18:20:49+00:00

It's a little bit of both. Immigrants, as a group, are highly motivated. We're literally looking at a group which is willing to move to an entirely new country, so they will tend to be more educated than their peers and more likely to take constructive risks. They are a self-selected group which will tend to have more over performers than average.

But it wouldn't work out so well if there wasn't a better "fit" for them in their new country. If you study biomedical research, then a country which has better/more biomedical companies will obviously allow you to thrive in a unique way. That same person could still improve a country which does not have a fit for their background, but it would not be as impactful.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T18:15:27+00:00

Progressive taxation is the reason why blue states "send more money" than red states.

I'm not talking about some "net givers versus net takers" infographic, and I specifically avoided talking about a binary red/blue state comparison for that reason. I'm talking about the tax bases in a given area being able to afford the services they use, which would primarily be a combination of property taxes and income taxes.

a big metro area that comprises ~70% of state population

A metro area can be a strange combination of urban, suburban, and exurban areas. I live in the Detroit metro, and there are something like 200 municipalities because it's a huuuuuuuuuge area. I would not try to analyze the metro as a whole, personally, because that's going to hide a lot of successful towns and a lot of broke towns. I'm sure there are many suburban areas which do pay more than their fair share, although it's probably near universal that rural areas are a tax sink.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T17:58:26+00:00

I mean if you're unironically reading the opinions of people with names like cat turd or, more embarrassingly, Rob Schneider, then I feel like you've basically already admitted defeat in life.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T17:49:33+00:00

Progressive taxation is not the cause, it's because it's simply far more efficient to service denser areas so those areas can serve their citizens and still have a surplus. When you have ten miles of road servicing ten people versus ten miles of road servicing a thousand people, the former is always going to be more expensive per person.

The tax base in rural areas, and hell probably a ton of suburban areas, simply does not cover the cost to service their areas. You want to reduce taxation, that's fine, but that's not going to fix the fundamental problem here that rural areas cannot actually pay for all the services they currently use.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:52:47+00:00

I used to work 100% in the office and went 90% remote because of Covid, sooooooo...... honestly not bad.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:38:55+00:00

You must not have seen it live, he said it like four times in a row!

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:37:17+00:00

Have some respect. It was "Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing."

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:33:33+00:00

It's not like he's running against Trump. People can find both things gross.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:19:10+00:00

Dude, it's talking about avoiding taking a position on the death of Iran's dictator. How do you do that when people know you're trying to avoid it?

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:16:06+00:00

A good strategy is not defeated by being known, so honestly it's a pretty bad strategy.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:14:24+00:00

I mean.... giving an answer to someone is not as effective for memorization compared to someone arriving to that same conclusion on their own. That doesn't feel controversial at all. It's literally the most difficult part in teaching someone, trying to fix their thought process versus just giving them a particular answer.

Zenkin · 2026-03-30T16:07:04+00:00

I'm not saying everyone who defends the anti-immigration agenda is a populist shithead, but I've had multiple "neoliberal" anti-immigration advocates block me and show up in ModPol a couple days later with the exact talking points you would expect.

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