Friday Thoughts
Algorithmic Pricing and Quick Conference Reflections
Happy Friday! I have been rather remiss over the past couple of weeks with writing the newsletter. I have been swamped with deadlines and with a conference this week.
It has nonetheless been an interesting time and there has been a lot going on.
We’ve seen the first insights into the federal AI strategy, though with much more detail expected very soon.
We’ve also seen both the federal and Ontario NDP make a push to outlaw algorithmic and surveillance pricing. This is such an important issue. It is an incredibly harmful practice. When firms are able to leverage their mass of personal data and advanced insights into consumers to charge them different prices then that is corrosive to the public good.
It is a practice that breaks the social contract on which companies operate. As Lenore Palladino has argued, companies receive permission from the public to “take advantage of the privileges of limited liability and perpetual existence.” However, “in a democratic society, the public permission to operate should come with an expectation and a guarantee of public accountability to operate in the public benefit.” That is clearly not the case here with a complete absence of accountability and transparency.
Algorithmic pricing is not some far off prospect. To give a quick personal example, last weekend my wife and I were booking an Uber downtown after our daughter’s dance class to take her to her first Jr Jays game. When I looked on my app, the cost was around $40 dollars. For my wife, it was $22. Based on some data (or lack of it) in my user profile, Uber decided that I was a prime candidate to charge almost double.
This kind of behavior by companies is pure manipulative profit seeking and should be outlawed.
There is so much more I can write on that topic, along with many others (and I will hopefully have time to soon) but I want to quickly write about the conference I just attended.
I had the great pleasure of being invited to speak at “From Shock to Change: Rethinking Canada’s Foreign Economic Policy,” a conference hosted by the Graduate School of International Studies at Université Laval.
It was an incredibly intellectually stimulating event. I’m writing this in the airport waiting to return to Toronto and my mind is buzzing with the huge number of fascinating presentations and discussions.
I will write some more substantial reflections next week on the event and on my remarks but the event left me with an even greater sense that profound time of change we are in. There is so much interesting and detailed work happening on how various aspects of our current moment are impacting Canada and Quebec. It is reassuring to know that work is going on.
However, the event also left me with a sense that many do not fully recognize the full extent of that change. While so much of the discussion was of course focused on the US and Trump, only one speaker that I heard spoke explicitly to the fact that Trump and his administration is a fascist one. What it means to have the most powerful nation and the largest economy led by a corrupt authoritarian changes the rules of the game in so many ways that there is no return to any kind of pre-Trump “normal.” That fact has to be part of our analysis.
I feel there is still a resistance to truly thinking through the implications of it, unfortunately. There is still too much talk of the importance and size of the US market and the need to reach practical accommodations with the administration. Not enough conversation connects those concessions to the impacts on our fundamental values and our long term interests as opposed to the short term imperatives of profit. We have to grapple with these questions, publicly and privately.
Anyway, I have a flight to catch so should wrap this up. Until next time!