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They should create commissaries for the general public. No surveillance pricing there because they would be non profit.
A rare Dem W, but I don’t see them actually doing this.
They can't overturn a veto so good luck
Try temu or aliexpress. That's a wild wild west of surveillance pricing.
It is interesting seeing people check prices over a foreign VPN
I can already see the headlines...
"Democrats want to prevent FREEDOM discounts" or something equally inane...
"The National Council of Consumer Choice" says that consumers favor dynamic pricing.
/s
100% They'll push this as an affront to local businesses. They'll have Arms of an Angel playing with Walmart employees walking around, repricing items, while lumberjacks cut down trees to make the label paper.
Not bad. Too bad they dont want to save democracy.
There's no money in it. Telling walmart not to raise prices at 6pm unless they get paid off is lucrative
In Canada, they're getting around this by giving different people different amounts of loyalty points for the same purchase, which essentially just translates to a different discount depending on what you're willing to pay. Everyone still technically pays the same price.
Holy shit, I'm a (recent) Canadian and I didn't know this. Can you share more info?
I made a post about it recently
https://lemmy.ca/post/58667188
I've only personally gotten these from Scene+, but I imagine all the other loyalty point systems would be doing the same if they had my contact info.
Don’t stop at just grocery stores! Make it universal. Get the online vendors
But then how are the Dems' big tech donors going to run grocery stores out of even more business?
Cost accounting or nothing. Limited resources require planning, distribution and control. Enough of this greedy bullshit falling under the trope of "Whatever the rube will pay". Sometimes you have to burn the whole goddam crop to get rid of the blight.
Ban ticket resales too. Fuck scalpers.
“This legislation is actually pretty simple: If two people are in the same store buying the same item, they should pay the same price,” Washington State Representative Mary Fosse said in an emailed statement.
Great, but there's one small mistake in here. Why only physical retail? The problem is even worse online
Calling it now.
They will pivot to track all of the peoples currently in the store and use an algorithm to determine the price.
With the price literally changing from the time you pick and it's your turn to shop. With the person in front of you "leaving" there by affecting the price algorithm.
“Dems” want to do a lot of things.
They say they want to, but when the time comes, the legislation they pass (if any) will either be so hopelessly complex or so devoid of enforcement that they might as well have done nothing
killing and standing up to fascist orange fucks isn't on of those
If only they wanted this as much as they want to send more bombs to Israel.
You really should read this.
Suadi Arabia receives more than double the amount of arms than Israel, wtf
This is a cartoon country
That can't be accurate, Israel has the most advanced military gear in the world. Saudi Arabia does not. We don't traditionally give them the newest stuff either but older generation gear, although the president I think agreed to sell them f-35s, if they ever finish the program.
We give them like 2.4 billion a year in military assistance, then after the ghetto uprising we sent them 14 billion to fund their ghetto reprisals. We since sent them more, shipments of assault rifles periodically to hand out to settlers at a minimum. We sell them gear at sweetheart prices, we've exported a bunch of our tech to allow them to make their own gear, both in countries across the west and inside their own country as well.
So however they are counting this amount of arms is wrong, Israel receives more. Although the Saudis of course are milked for cash I've no doubt they paid more money than Israel did, that does not more than double what they get for it.
If I pick up a can of beans for 1.50 and its 5.00 at the counter I'll just fucking walk out. Have fun reshelving your precious can of bullshit, I'll go to the other store that charges 2.50 and doesn't try to be fucking clever
In some states that would already be illegal with serious penalties. Like massachusset's grocers laws.
Iirc the law states customers are entitled to the lowest advertised price (including in store) and a discount or advertised price must be valid and available for 7days (maybe its more, i forget) and if its in print, have a clear start and end time, or its 7 days after last publication/ viewing- so if I see the tag in the store and they switch it out after I pick the item, it would have to be valid- price raises and end of sale tags are a thing eith the end date in bold on them. (Also meaning even if they run out early they have to give you a 'rain check' and honor it later when the item comes back in stock)
Penalties are triple the item price up to $20 off the bill at the counter, and thousands in fines and up to 30 days in jail for cashiers/ managers refusing to honor a price.
According to a friend who was the produce department manager at the local grocer, that wasnt the worst of it though- a report of failure to comply (ie a custome not getting the 3 the item discount at time of sale) could trigger a state's weighs and means audit, the first step of which is them forcing closure of the grocery store immediately for 30 days, which according to him litterally meant them showing up or having the local PD locking out employees to prevent a cover up- so no putting meat in a freezer, veggies back into the fridge, throwing out dieing product so It didnt contaminate the good stuff- basically guaranteeing a loss of everything in the deli and produce sections, easily a $50k+ hit even at our smallish grocery.
Hmmm. That's pretty wild.
I was a manager at a big box store for a while, and the general rule of thumb was to verify an error in pricing and then just mark it down at checkout for the client.
Usually, it was an old tag that was left up.
Or
It was an ad that the customer misread.
I don't recall there being a one-time price discrepancy law forcing me at penalty of jail to take 50 cents off a pack of pencils, we just did it because it's better in the long run to keep the customer happy than it is to get in a fight over pricing. If there was someone who was serially abusing this hospitality, then we might have a talk with them, or ban them from shopping in the store, like when someone was stealing our discounted labels and then putting them back up when they were in the store weeks later.
I also wasn't in Massachusetts...
Connecticut has a law where if you bring your item to the check out, and it rings higher than the the price on the shelf, you get it for free (up to $20). I got a whole roast one time this way. It seems similar to what Mass has got going on.
This is social democracy btw
If I go shopping and I encounter this then I would just start photographing all prices as I place the item in the cart. If any change before I have completed my checkout the items will immediately be on their floor. Don't bait and switch me.
Ah, that’s not gonna be necessary. Someone will vibe code an app to do it… and wait till you hear about their premium plan!
So something weird happened to me twice recently at a grocery store.
Firstly. It's a local mid level grocery store in a medium sized city (we have 3 Walmarts, for scale).
I don't go there often because it's more expensive than other grocery stores. But it's also the closest one to me. And huge. So they do have everything. But it's not like a fancy gourmet grocery store that offers wine samples or anything.
Anywho.
I went there and bought like 4 things.
It was easy to remember how much each item was since I only bought 4 things.
When I went to do self checkout , 3 of those items ran up 50 cents to 1 dollar cheaper than the price tag.
I don't use a saver card or anything.
The 4th item happened to be a deli item. It was the price it had on it. Cause those literally have a sticker on them.
I thought. Weird how 3 items ran up the wrong price.
I go back 2 weeks later. Same exact thing happens. Different items. Everything except the two deli items I bought were pricing at 50 cents or 1$ cheaper than listed. I paid extra attention this time because of the last experience.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm paranoid. Seeing manipulation where there is none.
But this can't just be a coincidence.
I don't go there often.
I use the self checkout.
Is it using facial recognition to see I'm a "new" customer. And charging me less so I feel like my bill is lower than expected so I will return ,?
Am I taking crazy pills ?
Someone tell me I'm wrong and that theory is absurd.
maybe take a pic of the price tag and question them next time
I plan to
You may not have a loyalty card, but did you pay using a payment card of any kind? They track you through that.
My debit card. But see, the price rang up wrong before I paid.
That's why I suspected face recognition. I noted the price was wrong as the items were initially rang up and that there was no indication on the receipt of a discount, coupon, or sale.
Oh, that's a fair point then. I'd personally still err on some sort of basic pricing mishap, but perhaps you're right. There definitely is intent to set prices for individuals live but it seems a little odd to be so clandestine about it.
They may be scamming everyone with the same increases hoping customers won't complain or notice that.
In theory, this can also happen if prices are changed during the day - perhaps according to the time of the day, and that change just happens between you putting the article into your chart. Unless every customer has a device that tracks the price of each item until he/she pays, such mismatches (or "race conditions", that's the technical name in software development) will be difficult to avoid.
But to me, also something weird happened. I was watching a corner with small kitchen stuff (things like knives, cooking cutlery), and there was a TV screen with advertising in it. I took one of these items (out of perhaps 100 items) into my hand and it started to play advertising about that item. Freaked me out.
Only so many coincidences before it's obvious its orchestrated in some form.
With the lax laws on privacy and data collection, they could be doing almost anything.
I considered that prices had been changed and the price tags not updated yet. But all 3 items the first time. And then all the other different items the second time?
So the price was wrong on literally everything I bought except the deli items.
And it was consistently off. Everything was 50 cents or 1 dollar cheaper.
Technically 49 cents and 99 cents.
For instance I grabbed some cheap pot pies. 1.49. They rang up 1.00.
I bought a pack of popcorn 4.99. It rang up 4.00.
I think to fully test this I could buy the exact same items. Go through self checkout.
Do it again and go through the cashier and pay in cash.
Shoulda screamed, dropped / thrown the item and run out of the store.
Teach them being creepy gets them nothing
They just say "Dems" like it's a position shared by the whole party.
Is it even a majority?
A whole party is supposed to hold the same position yes
That has basically never been true for US parties, because they're not really parties.
Dems bad!
At this point everyone is bad. People need to come to grips with the fact that republicans actively want to harm you. Democrats have no spine and only do things that won't threaten their position in the status quo.
People need to realize in a two party system there's a very large chance that neither party has your best interest at heart.
We need a whole new system. Which is exactly why both parties are protecting the status quo. They know if a guy like Mamdani were to actually be able to run for president, both parties would look like shit by comparison. Both parties would lose their place, and that void would allow for a new 4th, and 5th party to emerge. And neither side wants that, but the citizens would benefit greatly.
It's hard to actually be good at your job, when your job is representing the people.
We need slates of popular reform candidates for every position, including the president. Somehow there are no white populist reformers. The republican party is full of ambitious fake reformers, offering fake solutions to real problems, like blaming immigrants for the rich taking from our shares.
The democrats kill any popular reform in the cradle. That is their reason for being, to play good cop to republican bad cop, still apparently believing that republican attacks on elections is just performative and they won't follow through. That when the republicans seize ultimate power they will let those democrats retire in comfort with their millions.
But while we need a party all it's own, of populist reform fit to each district that agrees on the general principle that the rich shouldn't be allowed to cheat and gouge working people, that party should well take democratic nominations. The only way out is to replace the democratic establishment. Get rid of super delegates, cancel all contracts with consultants, all contracts with everyone, and start over from scratch, with new people in every position from top to bottom.
Leaving the establishment in those positions will just lead to sabotage and infighting. Like Corbynn in the UK where the left got drummed out of the party to pave the way for the Starmer faction to cancel the right to trial by jury, to put palantir and their ilk in charge of making secret social scores after they id every ip and account with id's and faces under the guise of age checks to protect the children, the same children they are covering for the rapists of with Epstein I would add. They cancelled the right to protest, then the defenses in court that got non guilty verdicts, on top of and before the bad faith terror proscriptions against dissenters of foreign policy, which is what the purge was all about, Israel, and the all importance of Israel makes sense only when you realize Israel has them dead to rights on raping children and other misdeeds. Lawmakers themselves, but also the rich that the remaining non purged lawmakers all work for. Academics, swells of all sorts, and we only know about the tip of the iceberg just in that epstein honeypot, who knows what else they had going on.
Point being, leaving the establishment in there dooms us to fascism. There is no future with them in charge. With their people still in their positions, they care about purging the left, not beating democrats, just like in the UK, where Corbynn didn't take control of the party and enforcement mechanisms and the left were all purged under false pretenses often in demonstratably false allegations. As shown in the Labor Files, leaked party emails to Al Jazeera, that I found illuminating to explain the establishment parties across the west, how they are throwing us into the arms of the far right. And betraying us themselves to a larger degree every year.
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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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