[wharvle]

> With our wallet, we can only choose between those alternatives which are offered. In many cases, we can only choose between bad options.

One weird thing markets do is make unusual alternatives far more expensive than the difference in cost of manufacture between them and more-common options. The market “chooses” the $80 option because the one that costs $5 more to make but is way better retails for $200.

You also see whole markets (effectively) collude to make cheap upgrades expensive to buy. There are several very-cheap upgrades that make a refrigerator much nicer, but are only available on expensive refrigerators. Think, things like making the drawers open and close much more smoothly. There is no low-end-except-for-$30-in-upgrades option. The car market does some similar things.

[youainti]

This is called menu pricing and is a way to segment your market [0]. It is used to separate high and low demand consumers. If you are on the low end of demand it will tend to extract most of what you are willing to pay.

[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/industrial-organiza...