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It's Thursday, March 19, 2026. From peach fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Press release from the New York office of the Attorney General. Attorney General James calls for passage of legislation to protect New Yorkers from predatory pricing schemes. Well, that's good. Who wants to be predated upon? Here's another headline from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Today you could be paying more for groceries than your neighbor. Here's what New Jersey lawmakers are going to do about it. Governor Mikey Sherrill and New Jersey legislators are trying to ban surveillance pricing from grocery stores. But some South Jersey lawmakers want to go further. Yes, executions of grocers drawn and quartered. How do you think they get the rotisserie chicken in that shape? Actually, going further means not just grocery stores or supermarkets, but all stores. No predatory pricing, sometimes called surveillance pricing. What is it? Well, it's apparently charging your neighbors more than you pay, which sounds like, well, slight injustice if they're the ones who take it on the chin. But charging you more than your neighbors pay? Well, let's get the government involved. So from predatory pricing to surveillance pricing, we now go to Supermarket News. Supermarket News. Exchanging glances, which cites data from the retail analytics firm Dakota Dakota. Already fanning the flames a little bit. Dakota Fanning retailers using what they call dynamic pricing, analyze more than a million Data points across 120 major E commerce Commerce retailers. The data showed more price declines than increases. Amazon, by the way, led by a wide margin. 116000 price adjustments and an average price drop of 35%. And by the way, Wednesday being the best day for discounts. Sorry. You knew that, right? Because if you went and took advantage, you'd be involved in surveillance or predatory pricing. This is all covered, by the way, on the Gist list. Go to Mike pesca.substack.com I found this one article from Philadelphia. I said surveillance pricing. Isn't that also called? And then I found the more pejorative term, predatory. And then I found the more neutral and probably more accurate term dynamic. As if everyone who is affected by dynamic pricing only ever gets screwed. No one is ever dynamically priced to the positive. Every time I read anything about this subject, it's always framed as if you are getting charged more. But for everyone who's charged more, there is always someone who is charged less than that person. I mean, every time I take a coupon to the store and my neighbor who's behind me did not, it's some sort of differential or dynamic pricing scheme. And it's not a great injustice, is there? I mean, this is the thing with all, all of these pricing schemes. Depending on what you call them, they seem worse or they seem ok. But it's also true that two neighbors paying different prices is not inherently an injustice. It could be a good thing for the one paying lower prices. It makes it seem like there is a base level price that anyone could always pay, always. And then there is jacking it up from that price. But that is not the case. The grocers know that different customers are willing to pay different prices. And the more they know about their customers customers, the more they know what they're willing to pay. So in fact, the listed price on a site like Amazon, think of it like the buy now price on ebay. It's what they'll let anyone pay. But if you're reluctant and the retailers know what their profit margin is, if you're reluctant, if you're not the kind of person who would normally be induced at a price point, they'll lower it for you. This is what pricing is. This is the theory of prices. It is the strike price by which the person who owns the good is willing to surrender it to the person who has the money, who is willing to surrender that amount of money. Different people are much more varied in the price they're willing to surrender their money. But a retailer, especially a giant retailer, knows at what price he can make a profit. So in general, dynamic pricing is a neutral thing. In fact, it might be a good thing if it helps retailers bottom lines. I know no one ever cares, Amazon's bottom lines. But grocery stores and supermarkets run on a 1 or 2% profit margin. And they're really helpful to the community. And most people more or less like their grocers. I mean, I was watching Pluribus and the one thing that she wanted was her beloved local supermarket to get restocked. And I think a lot of people have that relationship with their supermarket. I know, I go up and down the aisles of my supermarket, it's in New York City. So, you know, I squeeze by people on their way up and down the Gristeedis aisles, aisles that John Cassima Titus, who owns Gristeedis, can't even Travers. So there's not that much good feeling. And I know I look at the prices and I say the prices are high. But I don't say something like, I hate Grassidis. And whenever I go to a well lit supermarket in a normal place in America, I kind of love it. And I say something like, if only I lived here, I could traverse the aisles really well. I wouldn't have to worry about John Katz Matitis, and I wouldn't have to worry about dynamic pricing because I'm not worried about dynamic pricing. When you really think about it, it's just much ado about phrasing. And I will tell you this. Dollars to doughnut, 75 cents to scones. The politicians who found out about dynamic pricing did not say, oh no, how dare they. They said, this is great for me, I can intervene. And said to be the hero who does something. And the only ones taking it on the chin are the bad, bad grocers. And also maybe your neighbor whose gallon of milk just rose by 30 cents. But to set things straight, you know, you don't, you don't necessarily have to lower your milk by 30 cents. You could just raise his milk by 30 cents as well and thus driving a stake in the heart of dynamic surveillance predatory pricing. By the way, heart stakes now 30% off on Wednesdays on the show. Today, I shall spiel about a couple of tidbits from congressional hearings. But first, Sadie Dingfelder is back with an Is that bullshit? Segment. And the question is, does the body keep the score? And if so, is it in the hips? So this could be a mixed result, right? It could be, yes, body keeps the scores, but no, it's in elbows, maybe the shoulders or could be the score is kept, but not by the body, by some unbiased outside entity possibly affiliated with the Olympic Committee. So what I'm saying is Sadie Dingfeld are up next. 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