[kqr]

> But we don’t really do sliding scale payments for food

But we do! When I was a poor student, I usually bought the bottom-shelf store-brand cheap pasta. Today, I look at a higher shelf and often get the organic high-protein stuff with fancier shapes.

It costs about the same per unit weight to make, but the latter costs much more to purchase. This is exactly a sliding scale that allows people who are more price sensitive to buy practically the same stuff except at a much lower price.

(Why do companies do this? It lets them expand their target market without getting total profits too close to the floor.)

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This is also why we have region locks on electronics and export controls on medicine: companies are selling literally the exact same stuff with different profit margins in different regions, based on their collective disposable income.

[leobg]

That’s an interesting take. And probably true. The pasta that cost three times as much probably isn’t three times better. But if you really want that 5% improvement in quality, you can get it by paying three times the price.