That is already happening in almost every western democracy as fertility rates have dropped precipitously. That is not because we have any food shortages: it’s because people are choosing not to have kids because life is so expensive.

I am not saying everyone will play ball, but managers whose pay is a function of sales likely will. Have you ever negotiated buying a car before? Indicating you will let corporate know they lost a sale by not budging on price will almost always win the negotiation with managers who think they can just be lazy without consequence.

In the standard retail environment, I have definitely had businesses price match products with the same specs but very slight SKU differences, you just have to be open about a willingness to forego the instant gratification because that is the only service in person retail provides today. That might mean actually completing the sale online and then asking again. They know when there is actually a material difference to the products.

Businesses that are legit monopolies will not budge.

Libgen is a solution to that.

I agree there is value to learning with experts but not at the cost we are expected to pay these days. The labs and equipment are a tiny fraction of the tuition a student pays and many disciplines do not require anymore more than pen and paper and the aforementioned resources. Why should a math and economics major pay the same as a biochem student? Because the majority of the cost is the bureaucracy and the fancy real estate investments.

I set a lot of prices during the pandemic. Any average business found that they were granted some degree of monopoly power and could generate higher net margins with less competitive prices. Many of us found the simplest solution was to just pass on all costs to the consumer because they had no choice but to take our price or not get their good.

Times are different and there is competition but many businesses have still forgotten how to increase gross margin by having a sale.

Not to get into politics but tariffs are the same way. The elasticity of demand for a good determines the monopoly power of the supplier/retailer and how much of the tariff gets passed on to the consumer. Highly interchangeable products will not see the full tariff passed on to the consumer because that would mean forgoing all sales. The importer will determine how much gross margin they can give up without loosing money…but the producer in the foreign country also does the same math. Do they completely give up the American market to save inventory for other markets or do they eat some top line profit and still make some sales.

Many goods will indeed be pulled from the market, but if the producer fails to find replacement customers in other markets they will look back at 300M Americans and reconsider whether they can give their importer a better price while still making something. If the good expires, like say a case of white wine, or becomes obsolete in the case of say a lightning charging cable there is additional pressure to make the decision before the surplus simply becomes unseeable.

If a good has no viable alternatives and is relatively shelf stable expect all tariffs to be passed along because the products price is already disconnected from its cost and the business producing it is closer to a monopoly than not.

Best Buy making a gross $250 on a $1000 priced TV or $50 when discounted to $800 still isn’t loosing any money unless they are at their credit ceiling and cannot replace the good sold. They make zero if A customer standing in their store deciding not to even give them $50 and giving it a to a competitor on their cellphone. Tho is absolutely profit opportunity lost, even if it is small.

I frankly enjoy fighting stores on pricing and get dopamine from a good deal and it pains me to pay more than necessary even if I can afford it just fine. I understand not everyone is like this.

There was a period a year or two ago where if you leaked cookies and ad tracking to Amazon and deliberately clicked through to competing sites their algorithm would aggressively slash pricing far below MSRP. I admit I would use this technique in microcenter to get Amazon to give me ludicrously cheap pricing then turn around and make them price match for instant gratification.

Retail/amazon operate at a much higher margin than most people realize.