https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1762473461815857617
Also I really wish the front page designers for the new york post would use their talents for good. (Cw: burger)
Love to show up to order a food and see "$1.75" change to "$2.95" as my finger hovers over the "buy" button.
I think they need to take this to the next level and make every purchase order one of those penny-auctions, where you pay $.25 to bid on something that starts at $0.01 and has an army of bot-straw-purchasers bidding up the price every time you place an order.
We need them to add NFTs with 4 hour expiration dates to whatever you just said
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser etc.
The full thing for anyone who wanted to read it again
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
How long until they start doing individualized prices; some people are less sensitive to price at certain times, and this can be predicted.
Got a crying kid? Probably not gonna walk when you find out a happy meal costs 20 bucks.
It'll do the bullshit travel sites do where it figures out how much you're willing to pay by slightly increasing it every time.
"We're going to charge more at busier times!"
"So you can pay your workers more for their increased stress and productivity, right?"
"Right?"Genuinely if it was like an automatic 10% tip that gets split among the staff during rush hours I’d probably praise it. But that’s not what it is.
dystopian capitalist hellscape food, now at dystopian capitalist hellscape prices!
What’s so stupid about this is there are already well established ways for restaurants to do “surge pricing” that don’t piss anyone off. They’re called happy hour, early bird special, late night special, etc.
Yeah this framing is everything. Customers very distinctly don't like to feel like they're getting fucked
I feel like these business fucks think they are coming up with genius ideas, then they don't account for the fact, that there is no competition in the ride-share market. But there is competition in the GODDAMN FAST FOOD market.
The problem is that the competitors might adopt the same practice because they can
The bourgeoisie have a scarily decent grasp on class solidarity. Instead of competing, you know they'll follow suit.
They’re cartels, but burgers don’t want to apply that term to anyone except Mexicans lol
It gets so frustrating to try to explain to people that if porky can get you to pay a million dollars for a single apple, he would Competition is dead in the 21st century.
Even so, fast food joins are already expensive for the value they are offering. We are like 3 meals away from a riot. They will probably wait and see Wendy's quarterly earnings before following suit.
They're expensive because they know they'll get away with it. And they will. Americans are addicted to junk food and would rather pay more than stop eating crap.
A car ride at the right time to the right place is also just a lot more valuable than a burger at the right time/place. Need to get to work and can't wait for the bus? Have a plane to catch? It's late and there's no transit running? There's really one way to get you where you need to go, especially if you have multiple people or bags.
But fast food slop? Outside of rare situations, you can find comparable slop (even just at a gas station or 7/11) elsewhere, or you dig deep in the cupboard and have a can of soup or something.
competitors will pick this up real quick, and the great thing about this is the customer doesn't even know for sure until they're literally there & hungry. a solid 4$ increase on the thing you like? next time you won't come. but with this, who knows, next time your borger might be cheaper! better give it a shot!
best case scenario, only the weirdest of white people eat dinner at exactly settler-colonial dinner time, and eventually traffic ends up distributing evenly throughout the day, allowing less roads in cities?
Having the burger price story playing as a headline about a deli store worker being shot scrolls underneath sure is...
yeah
This will absolutely tank their sales. Nobody buys anything except the "biggie bag" (which used to be the 4 for $4) anyway and if they start charging more for that at their busiest times that drive-thru line will clear right up. Everyone bitches about McDonald's but the fact remains they got their 2 sammiches for four bucks thing which is still acceptable.
I can't wait to get the red snapper: market price experience when digging the couch for coins to see if I'm getting a 4 for $4 today or not
People don't realize it, but stuff like this is unironically a battle in the Class War. If we can collectively say "no" to "surge pricing" and "micro transactions", it won't be profitable, and they'll have to move into another way of screwing us
If I went to get a burger and it was arbitrarily more expensive than an hour ago I would literally never go back.
Yea you're not going to get more people coming in on off peak hours you're just going to kill your lunch rush everyday.
Most people with a job don't really have the option to go at 330 to buy a burger without a payment plan.
Also we should be taking bets on how batshit insane the surge pricing is.
Over under is $18 for a basic meal.
The cool thing about surge pricing is it will follow the shift in whatever the new established busy time is. If people move it to 3:00, that will just be the new surge time. There might be a bit of hang time if you stay ahead of the curve
Exactly. They might as well just raise the prices cause thats effectively what they're trying to do without making it look like it.
You have more faith in people than I do. I'm betting the vast majority of people who can afford it will just accept it and it will become the norm, which will fuck over the people who can't. That's how these things always are.
They saw McDonald's driving away customers with their new "beg for refills" policy and thought they could one them up.
WTF it used to be common knowledge that the fountain drinks cost less than the cup, how bad are their financials that this will make a difference.
Amazing idea to price gouge and worsen the customer experience on literally the cheapest part of the entire thing.
Just a few years after soda fountains have reached their peak, McD's wants to take them away? Shit sucks yo.
of course they'd figure out a method & excuse for this eventually. the only reason not to was the difficulty in organizing price elasticity at scale, but these days, and with computers to organize it automatically? they wouldnt want to give managers/franchisees this kind of latitude but a computer the C-suite have complete control over checks all the boxes
and during a period of constant inflation going on anyway no-one knows what their bill will be going into a restaurant so the adjustment period shouldn't be a shock.
pretty soon algorithm-derived elastic pricing won't even be blamed on the company, its the Alogorithm, its the other people trying to get lunch, there will be "hacks" and strategies for this to be 'cheaper' than it was before if you calibrate--only an idiot would pay full surge price for a baconator, fuck you for complaining
Looking forward to the day the pricing algorithm fucks up and increases prices by 2000% because it gets an error and thinks that 10000 people are about to all walk into the store at once.
only an idiot would pay full surge price for a baconator, fuck you for complaining
you'll also have people making youtube videos about paying surge prices for baconators because they want to have life experiences or make the most out of life.
If this affects my late night baked potato run, I'm gonna scream
