I was pretty surprised to see an article on mises.org complain about dynamic pricing. But I guess when it's dynamically set by a monopolist, then that's the bad part? Or maybe it's the intrusion of technology into our private lives? That being said, what expectation of privacy should there be when you want to participate in a market? We reveal personal consumption details to vendors all the time in order to transact goods and services.
But I'm sympathetic to the author. I've personally been the victim of what I consider an unjust application of automated ticket-issuing red light cameras. They're too rigid and not cognizant of road conditions. For example, if you're going fast because you expect the yellow to last longer, then it suddenly turns red, isn't it safer to just keep going rather than come to a sudden stop--which may endanger the person driving behind you?
In any case, technological integration in city life & urban planning is here to stay. We just need to make sure it's implemented in a sensible and least intrusive manner.
I was similarly surprised. It seemed like the through line was how these different schemes made economic sense superficially, but the implementations had very perverse outcomes.
Big picture, I feel like the point is that central planning still doesn't work, even if it's dressed up like market mechanisms.
reply
You should have seen how intrusive it was in Taiwan. Cameras everywhere!
reply
Are you from Taiwan? I don't remember too many red light cameras during in my time there, but maybe I wasn't paying attention.
I visited China two years ago and driving around, it felt like a camera flash was going off every 2 city blocks!
reply
I just left Taiwan. They have a lot of cameras everywhere. They were talking about using cameras to target jwalkers.
reply