1. To be frank, I'm not dying on a hill for a penny. A fool and his money...
2. Even if you point it out... What changes. Has anyone ever seriously reconsidered buying a product when you tell them it's $500 instead of $499? What's the harm being done here?
3. What call to action are you suggesting? I'd rather work for laws to include sales tax in US goods' prices than fix this "mind trick".
I can't tell you how to live your life. But those are the reasons I don't really care.
Regarding point 2, it seems strange to ask 'what changes?' when the point of the article you're commenting on is showing how and why you spend more when presented with 9-ending items. If it was found to make consumers spend 8% more, quite a lot changes - and in a time of unprecedented household debt in the US, it seems like tactics contrived to get people to spend more are very much worthy of discussion.
Either way, it's a bit disingenuous to frame it as 'just a penny' (the actual quantity of money being spent isn't the point, it's the effect on people's spending habits) and bringing up some other problem to nullify concerns around this one is just bald-faced whataboutism. You can say you don't really care, and that may be true about addressing the problem, but making arguments for why this isn't actually a problem suggests you care about the topic in a way that compels you to dismiss it, at the very least.
My argument is different. The article is studying the macro situation, my comment focuses on the micro. You can argue an exploitative strategy on the macro, but the individual themselves is still getting a product they are assumedly fine paying for (and there's a big assumption that "people wouldn't buy it otherwise" if priced a cent above) .
The harm on the micro level is negligible, and you can even argue the macro level doesn't fundentally harm society like so many other modern tactics. Environments aren't impacted, liberties are not breached. Children are not exploited. There's no slippery slope towards some gambling addiction. It's not opening a door for hate.
>You can say you don't really care, and that may be true about addressing the problem, but making arguments for why this isn't actually a problem suggests you care about the topic in a way that compels you to dismiss it, at the very least.
It's a discussion, I care about seeing others viewpoints. But I don't feel very challenged here. The questions above are all the things I'd hope to have more viewpoints revealed on when I made my comment up chain. So far it's simply been 2 instances of "why are you defending this?" a question on me instead of a glimpse into you and the GGP.
It's a conversation, not a debate (invoking privation fallacy doesn't exactly change my mindset here. Even if I'd "lose" a formal debate). So I answered that question. I'm "defending this" because it feels trivial but so many are riled up about this. Claiming they won't even participate in purchasing such products. Which is baffling to me.
I More than free to clarify if that's unclear, but I hope I can hear others' viewpoints as well. Because I don't get the big deal outside of in a moral vaccuum. In reality, it's comparatively trivial even if we only focus on how pricing works (e.g. The US sales tax problem).
Nobody trying to sell anything "cares for affordability" any more than if it's not affordable to the customer, he won't buy it.