Tim Wu

And one thing that both of you focus on is the way in which as these companies become bigger and more dominant, right?

their labor practices can become, I don't know if in shitification is the term you would use there, but shittier or more extractive.

Can you talk a bit about that side of it?

What has happened to the labor practices?

I think this is getting at something we're starting to hear a lot about, which is anger over algorithmic pricing of various kinds.

So when I was walking up to do the podcast today, the chyron on CNN was about an investigation finding that Instacart was charging many different people many different prices.

And so the price you were seeing on Instacart wasn't the price, it's your price.

And I could imagine a neoclassical economist sitting in my seat right now and saying,

pricing becomes more efficient when it discriminates.

The market will be more efficient if it can charge Ezra a higher price for kombucha, if I'm getting that delivered, because of things it knows about me and my kombucha habits, and it charges somebody else a lower price because it knows they value the kombucha less, or a nurse a higher price or a higher wage and a lower wage, depending on their

situation, that in fact, we're just getting better and better and better at finding the market clearing price.

And this is what economics always wanted.

We're finally hitting the utopia of every person having, you know, the market clearing wage and the market clearing price.

Why don't you agree with that?

Yeah, I mean, the fundamental question is, is that really the kind of world you want to live in?

In other words, do you constantly want to live in a place where you are being charged the maximum you would pay for something?

Now, you know, that could rebound to the benefit of people who are very poor, but in economic terms, it's always only about producers taking responsibility.

everything from the market.

And I just think it's a very, you know, just moving away from the efficiency potentially of it.

I think it makes for a very