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Car makers like Jaguar Land Rover and Peugeot have been accused of using special software to raise spare parts prices.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/04/car-makers-used-software-to-raise-spare-parts-prices/
Ever had the nagging suspicion that your car's manufacturer was charging outrageous prices for parts simply because it could? Software might be to blame. Reuters has obtained documents from a lawsuit indicating that Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot, Renault and other automakers have been using Accenture software (Partneo) that recommended price increases for spare parts based on "perceived value." If a brand badge or other component looked expensive, Partneo would suggest raising the price up to a level that drivers would still be willing to pay. It would even distinguish parts based on whether or not there was "pricing supervision" over certain parts (say, from insurance companies or focused publications) to avoid sparking an outcry.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:43PM (8 children)
Barter existed before capitalism. Under capitalism, the market produces alternatives and this exerts downwards pressure on prices for this class of goods. Under socialism, everyone starves to death. HTH.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Tuesday June 05 2018, @05:50PM (4 children)
That's not true. I was in the soviet union. Everybody was just hungry all of the time. And the food they got looked like it all came from the produce section of the dollar store.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 05 2018, @07:16PM (3 children)
I rode a bike from Hamburg to Berlin in the summer of 1990, the (visible in the stores) food selection in former East Germany at the time was still very "soviet flavored" - 98% empty stores, cheap bread - all one kind, really fatty sausage with almost as much bone as lean meat in it, and the occasional bottle of lemonade. The people I stayed with along the way had much better food, similar-ish to west Germany but without the commercial packaging. I did stumble into one "well stocked" store that was absolutely jammed with people for a selection that looked like a 1940s dollar store, if such a thing existed in the 1940s.
As for why things were that way at that time: I blame the people in power being overly greedy and squeezing everyone else as hard as possible, and those people being literally trapped in the situation, unable to choose better circumstances elsewhere. You see similar trends in the US in regions where the people are heavily exploited, but it doesn't get as dire because there is the option to go elsewhere for better opportunities. It's not about socialism vs. capitalism, it is about freedom and equality of opportunity.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:16AM (2 children)
I've done half a dozen road trips across the US and have never seen anything remotely approaching conditions that I saw in St Petersberg, one of the 'wealthier' locations.
I remember meals being catsup on spaghetti with margarine and bread. Yum. Even the poorest locations in the US, the Indian reservations, people have access to all kinds of food. Life expectancy was 55 years and drug abuse (alcoholism) was present everywhere.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @02:31AM
True, and I said "trending in that direction" nowhere in the US was as poor as Germany east of the ex-wall appeared to be in 1990. Even in the poorest corners of Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, most roads are paved and 2 lanes: B5 - Federal Highway 5 from Hamburg to Berlin was one lane of cobblestones most of the way (they do have an "interstate-like" road too, but in the US the interstates are far from the only paved roads.) The whole week of riding through countryside, I saw one sad looking pony - no horses or other livestock except maybe the extremely rare chicken. Obviously it's better in the US, nobody is literally barred from leaving the state to find someplace with more opportunity, no matter how poor.
However, if you get to know the poorer side of the poorer counties in the poorer states in the US, you will find families eating catsup on spaghetti with margarine and bread that's not nearly as good as the East German standard brown loaf was.... these families get SNAP (food stamps) from the government, but they have little access to transportation to get to the wonderful WalMart super-stores that everyone associates with the poor side of the US, and once they get there their SNAP doesn't give them access to all the food that's on the shelves. Far more common in the US are those in deep poverty who have nothing to do in life but eat cheap food and get fat. And drugs and alcohol are very present in the poor side of the US, especially when you hit the Indian reservations.
It was definitely worse behind the former Iron curtain, worse by a lot, but those conditions are not absent in the US, just less pervasive.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday June 08 2018, @01:51PM
Which St. Petersberg?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @06:44PM (2 children)
Under socialism everyone eats nutraloaf [wikipedia.org]. Under capitalism everyone shops at a grocery store with a limited supply of a wide variety of products ranging in quality from "fresh organic" to "bulging can with foreign lettering" where only one person is allowed in at a time and the entrance line is ordered by wealth in descending order.
Under socialism, everyone is guaranteed a meal that never changes which they may not desire to eat. Under capitalism, the 0.01% get the best of the best, the 0.99% get the rest, and the 99% either risk getting sick from eating garbage or starve to death.
Shove your capitalism up your ass. If nothing else it will give your head some company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 05 2018, @08:31PM
Everything I've read on the matter leads me to believe it smells of socialism up there, right down to the brownshirts. Capitalism gives you the freedom to starve but there's food on the shelves. I've never seen many socialists trying to emigrate to socialist countries, victims of socialism trying to escape socialist states is another story. Crony capitalism and corruption should be the target of our ire, charging people what they are willing to pay in a system of voluntary exchange should not.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday June 06 2018, @01:33AM
How does the food the 0.0001% eat differ from that of the rest?
It sounds like you've never been to a grocery store in the US. I don't know how you are coming up with "a limited supply", other than physical constraints of an infinite supply. Not only that, but there's amazon where you can buy just about anything in the whole world or get a ton of wheat delivered to your garage if you want @1.15$/kg. My friend told me that everyone there ate a loaf of bread a day/person (about 1/2 kilo each).
http://www.montanaflour.com/bulk-orders/ [montanaflour.com]