[wwtl12]

I wish I still believed that massive companies charged for things because they need to, and not simply because they can.

It reminds me of freezing your credit (you know, the thing that makes it a lot harder to get your life ruined with identity theft (in the US)). This used to cost about $10, each time, and I believe you had to send a letter with a check to each credit bureau.

Now? It's free, and you can do it on-demand online (although they all try to upcharge you into buying their stupid credit score nonsense every single time, which should be illegal). It's curious how this used to cost money, and then a lot of scandals happened, and either laws were passed or threatened to be passed, and now something pro-consumer that should have always been free... is free. And Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are still making craptons of money.

The astute reader might ask why they ever charged for this in the first place. It couldn't be that they needed to, because they aren't now, and the universe hasn't imploded. So the only explanation is that they did it because they could, because it locked up something people needed to do behind a paywall, and was profitable.

[SpicyLemonZest]

The false dichotomy between "need to" and "because they can" is at the root of a lot of sloppy economic thinking. It's true that businesses aren't trying to charge the bare minimum they need to survive, and that this sometimes lets them absorb the cost of providing service X for free with no hit to consumer welfare. (This can happen for both regulatory and non-regulatory reasons - furniture stores, for example, will often give you quite a bit of free employee time in hopes of catching a sale.)

It's not true that business costs are entirely fictional and consumer willingness to get hosed is the only input to their pricing models.