By Futurist Thomas Frey
The Question Amazon Forces Us to Ask
You search for a product. Your neighbor searches for the same product. You see $47.99. They see $32.50. Same item, same seller, same moment—radically different prices. This isn’t a glitch. It’s surveillance pricing, and it’s transforming commerce from transparent marketplace into personalized extraction machine.
This forces an uncomfortable question: are we already living in an economy where prices have become weapons? Not someday with advanced AI—now, with existing tracking technology, behavioral profiling systems, and algorithmic optimization. What does fully personalized pricing look like at scale? How long before it dominates all commerce? And most importantly: is this better or worse for humanity?
Let me walk you through what algorithmic price discrimination actually looks like and why we might be deeper into it than anyone’s comfortable admitting.
Continue reading… “Your Price Is Not My Price: The Algorithmic Exploitation Economy Is Already Here”