They would care of projects like this generated broad awareness and organized revolt from consumers.

Companies need adults in the room to keep them from behaving badly. This operating under the observation that they behave badly when not being watched, so a thesis to be tested more than an assertion of fact.

At a minimum they arguably behave worse when there are no consequences, hence inflation becoming air cover to raise prices when prices weren’t being raised before as there was no “good reason” for them to go up.

I love this project. “Index data” projects like this seem ripe as a category, especially with AI and Ml systems providing ready observability on changes and trends.

The question is how to get enough conclusions and salient observations that spur people to the social science outrage factor levels so that they take action.

Or perhaps we should just accept that companies will use these technologies to optimize everything against consumers and not deploy them in counterinsurgency resistance-style whitehat fashion.

Is it possible for somebody to open up a shop that buys from German distributors at up to a 40% discount? Then you wouldn’t need a mass outrage movement to solve the problem.

I would suggest that AI tech will open up more arbitrage opportunities for retailers as their price strategies come under pressure from inexpensive monitoring and reporting. Already I’ve worked on prototypes where shopping lists are fed into the system and the retailer that would give you the lowest price nearby is suggested.

Imagine the optimization possibilities where you have shared borders like you’re talking about, or where digital intelligence can be injected to optimize purchase prices among consumers for larger ticket or recurring items.

A lot of room for new and better strategies here.

not austrian but I live in austria. at first I was like, okay, higher inflation post covid like everything else, but now at this point where I see prices still rising, it's starting to just feel like a blatant cash grab

HOWEVER, i will add - what do people expect when you give everyone 500 extra EUR a year via this klima bonus? how is that supposed to reduce inflation? my guess is the grocery chains are leaning into this

That’s what you get when the population loves to be dependent on their government.

What is this klima bonus?

It's a nice little scheme that incentivizes saving CO2.

There's a CO2 tax on gas and other fossil fuels, part of this tax revenue is then, once a year, distributed back to taxpayers. The idea is that people who don't consume a lot of fossil fuel earn money through this scheme, while those who user above average pay more than what they get back.

Of course this is not well communicated from the gov and random cash appearing in everyone's account can accelerate the already high inflation.

That's also going to increase the price of goods due to the CO2 tax on goods production and distribution.

But with the klima distribution it evens out. People who consume more will lose and people who consume less will win.

KlimaBonus is made in such a way that people who consume more get more.

It looks like it's designed so that people who live in the country get more, not necessarily those who consume more. Within a region, everyone gets the same amount. So within a region, those who consume less win, and those who consume more lose.

Bit of a fail to do it once yearly. Quarterly or monthly would make more sense…

> it's soo frustrating to see how we're ripped off for no good reason

It isn’t for no good reason, the prices are higher for the exact same reason they are lower in Germany: the price set allows the company to make the most money.

Whether prices are high or low, the reason is always exactly the same: it makes the most money.

so, just to reiterate: for no good reason

We recently had an Indian LinkedIn nutrition influencer literally reading the listed nutrition information on the back of a Bournvita* (a malt chocolate which you mix into milk) - dude got DMCA-ed and nearly sued. These companies get really worked up when you start affecting their bottomline.

*Might have been some other similar milk ~addictive~ (meant to say “additive” but the original version also works) for kids.

greed and pursuit of increased profits is a good reason

Sure, those are the reasons, but I don't believe in Austrian exceptionalism.

Really curious what's special about the market here that allows companies to exploit the people like this.

They proved Austria has the problem. They didn't prove it's exceptional.

Imagine if we could exploit everyone everywhere like this!

Mostly because you have no choice.