[svachalek]

Historically, all prices are negotiated. We ended up with a culture of flat pricing for efficiency, with only a few high value items like cars being negotiated. You walk into a car dealer and spend hours to determine exactly how much they can get you to pay for the car you want. But now with advanced automation, it's worth the complexity to extract the maximum value out of each customer again, even on small purchases of a dollar or two.

[planetpluta]

This is an interesting way to think about it. I would argue that flat pricing wasn’t for efficiency but “fairness”.

And also point out that AI driven price discrimination isn’t anywhere close to negotiated. You’re stuck with the price the machine gives you, with little to no recourse, short of rewriting your entire digital life!