A bill to ban dynamic pricing in grocery stores has stalled

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, how's it going? Hope you're having a lovely day. A few months ago, I did a video on a topic that I think most of my audience, if not all of you, are universally aligned on, which is that dynamic pricing in grocery stores is a bad idea. Dynamic pricing is where they replace the physical paper labels that show you the price of a good or service with an LCD screen, and they combine that LCD screen with cameras and other data collection so that the price of a product can change for each individual customer. In China, AI is so good with what they're doing that if you walk into a McDonald's, I saw this in a PBS documentary from 2020, this is 5 years ago, that they would bill you, not with a credit card or you just giving your phone and paying with tap to pay.

[00:00:39]They would just automatically debit the money from your bank account based on the facial recognition. This stuff is good enough if you really wanted to dive into it to be able to charge people different prices for services based on your data profile you have on them, on how willing they would be to pay for something. And I think everybody's nightmare is the idea of going to the grocery store and there being 20 different prices for 20 different people based on your web browsing history, based on your physical appearance, based on whether or not you look stressed, based on whether or not it has heard that you really need something. So there's a bill that came out in Washington that I suggest that a lot of you support which bans surge pricing in stores. And I think that it is a very reasonable bill. I've read a lot of the text of it. It includes things like this. Surge pricing means increasing the price of a good or service based on consumer behavior, consumer characteristics, or algorithmic determination of willingness to pay rather than changes in the actual cost of providing the good or service. That's something that sounds great to me.

[00:01:34]Surveillance-based price discrimination means the practice of setting, altering, or manipulating the price of goods or services offered to a customer based in whole or in part on monitoring, tracking, or automated analysis of the consumer's behavior, location, demographic characteristics, biometric data, or other personally identifiable information rather than on the actual cost of providing the good or service.

[00:01:53]So, what they're doing here is they're banning stores from being able to have these LCD screens for pricing that plug into data systems that allow you to figure out every attribute about you to figure out how to maximize the revenue from you. And as I said in my initial video, if I am put up against a team of 50 million RTX 580s that are trying to figure out the smartest way to rob me blind, the 50 million RTX 580s are probably going to win. They're probably going to figure out the way to rob me blind, and they may just get away with it. I think this is a great bill. I wanted to read you a piece that came out from a lobbyist. It's in the Washington Policy Center by Mark Harmssworth on this bill that might just make you throw up in your mouth. And I'm uh just viewer discretion is advised. You may become angry reading this. And I wanted to thank Ashley for bringing this to my attention. I would not have had this brought to my attention. I don't read sites like this because I value having medium blood pressure. But let's get started. House Bill 2481 will stifle innovation and hurt businesses. House Bill 2481, introduced by Representative Mary Fos, represents a misguided attempt to limit the free market under the guise of consumer protection. Titled prohibiting surveillance based discrimination and surge pricing for retail goods. HP2481 would ban businesses from datadriven algorithms to adjust prices based on demand, consumer behavior, or real-time market conditions. It mandates uniform pricing and imposes a 40-year moratorium on electronic shelf label systems in stores larger than 15,000 ft. Violations would be treated as unfair practices under the Consumer Protection Act, exposing businesses to lawsuits and penalties.

[00:03:19]For businesses that rely on market demand pricing, such as grocerers optimizing inventory during peak times, this legislation would spell disaster.

[00:03:26]When demand spikes, like during holidays or supply disruptions, allowing prices to rise, signals supplies to increase production and delivery. Banning this flexibility could lead to chronic shortages, as seen in regulated markets where fixed prices discourage restocking. Imagine empty shelves for essentials because suppliers can't justify the extra effort without compensating margins. Washington's grocerers already squeezed by thin margins, often 1 to 2%, would face higher operational cost to maintain steady supplies, ultimately passing these burdens on customers to elevated baseline prices. HP2481's broad definitions exacerbate the problem.

[00:03:57]Surveillance pricing is poorly defined, and the moratorium on electronic shelves ignores how these tools reduce labor costs for manual updates, enable quick adjustments to wholesale changes. Larger retailers excluded from small business exemptions will shoulder compliance headaches, including audits and legal risks, diverting resources from growth and hiring. HP2481 is not price protection. It is government overreach that distorts markets and punishes adaptability. And a state grappling with inflation and supply chain woes. HP2481 could worsen access to goods, deter investment, and favor out of state competitors unbound by these rules.

[00:04:27]Policy makers should reject this bill and embrace policies that empower businesses to respond to market signals, ensuring abundance and affordability for all Washingtonians. Now, usually I don't read off of a piece of paper when I'm making my points. The reason that I wrote down my notes ahead of time here is because I realized that in reading this, my blood pressure might get so high that I may not actually be able to make my points properly. So, you'll excuse me if I sound like I'm reading off a piece of paper because I'll be honest up front. I am reading off a piece of paper because it is necessary to maintain my composure for this video.

[00:04:54]So, let's go over this piece by piece.

[00:04:56]He says, "When demand spikes like during holidays or supply disruptions, allowing prices to rise signal suppliers to increase production delivery and point taken. Uh the free market signaling is a bait and switch here in my opinion. The text of this explicitly allows price increases if the actual cost to provide in the goods goes up. So it allows you to say it's going to cost me more to provide this. I'm raising the price.

[00:05:16]You're allowed to raise the price or lower the price as much as you want.

[00:05:19]You're just not able to use an algorithm that characterizes somebody based on their smell. And we're going to get to that point in a moment. The bill literally has a list of things that you're not allowed to use for profiling somebody for the purpose of changing prices. It says that you cannot use biometric information, browsing history, search history, information regarding a customer's interaction with an internet website application, geoloccation data, audio, electronic, visual, thermal, or alactory information, professional or employment related information, education information to determine what the price should be for a consumer. So, what they're saying here is you can't say this person smells good, so we're going to charge them more money for this good of service. This person smells bad, maybe they should have to pay more money for the odorant. It's not saying that you can't change the price of anything.

[00:06:01]and it explicitly states in the text of the bill that if the price changes for you that you're more than welcome to change the price that you charge for a customer. This is not poorly defined that it's very well defined. The real problem here is not that it's not well defined is that you don't like the definition of it. And that's a you problem, not an US problem. And I hope that the people of Washington are not going to allow it to become an US problem by pushing their government representatives to move this along and get voted on so it actually gets turned into a law. It is very reasonable. It says that this only applies to stores over 15,000 square feet. This will never bother a small business. It says that this only applies for four years. This is not something where if it's not working or something is wrong that you don't have the ability to go back in there and tweak it later. The law has an expiration date on it. The text of HP2481 explicitly allows price increases if the actual cost of providing the good goes up. What the bill bans is using algorithms to guess a specific customer's willingness to pay based on surveillance. Changing the price of milk because wholesale costs rises standard business. Changing the price because an AI camera decides a customer looks desperate at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night is automated gouging and banned by this bill. Next quote, banning this flexibility could lead to chronic shortages as seen in regulated markets where fixed prices discourages restocking. Imagine empty shelves for essentials. This is complete [ __ ] fear-mongering. Supermarkets have stock shelves for over a century before I was [ __ ] born using static pricing without devolving into a Soviet breadline. The bill doesn't stop a store from setting profitable baseline prices.

[00:07:26]It prevents them from charging five different people five different prices based on facial recognition or their purchase history or their browsing history or what they smell like. This is absolute garbage. The classic if we can't individually rip off a tourist that shelves will go bare economic theory. We've had capitalist systems for having pricing in supermarkets for over a hundred years without having dynamic pricing that is set by AI and a [ __ ] changing price tag on the good. No.

[00:07:54]The moratorium on electronic shelves ignores how these tools reduce labor costs for manual updates and enable quick adjustments to wholesale changes.

[00:08:01]And again, this is halftruth. The tags are required physical delivery mechanism for real-time dynamic pricing if the goal was to simply save an employee from swapping paper tags. The systems would need to be hooked into a back-end surveillance data capable of changing the price of a sandwich the exact second a less savvy customer walked into the store.

[00:08:19]It says surveillance pricing is poorly defined. And this is complete [ __ ] The bill is six pages long and very literal. It clearly defines and bans the use of audio, electronic, visual, thermal, oral factory data to alter pricing. Yes, it literally you literally are not allowed to alter the pricing based on what a customer smells like.

[00:08:35]The bill is not poorly defined. It is very [ __ ] specific. It is about six pages long and it is written in plain English.

[00:08:43]They're acting like stopping a supermarket from using AI to smell your armpits before pricing your deodorant is some sort of crazy regulatory maze and hurdle, which it is not. It is not.

[00:08:55]Larger retailers excluding from small business exemptions will shoulder compliance headaches, including audits and legal risks, diverting resources from growth and hiring.

[00:09:04]Complying with this bill requires doing what companies have been doing for hundreds of years, what every shop owner has been doing from the beginning of time. You have prices on your goods and services. This has been since the dawn of the barcode. You charge a fixed number that is advertised on the shelf and you change it based on somebody going up to that barcode to change it rather than changing it based on what an AI camera or an AI smell sensor determines based on data that has been collected by my [ __ ] car, my phone, Facebook to figure out what to charge me. The only resources that are being diverted are the massive corporate investments into data centers and surveillance tech that is systematically designed to extract more money from customers and rob you blind. HP2481 could worsen access to goods, deter investment, and favor out of state competitors unbound by this rule. And again, it ignores the text of the bill entirely. This legislation explicitly states that anyone physically located in Washington must follow these rules and that they are presumed to be a resident.

[00:09:59]So, an outofstate corporation is going to have to play by the exact same rule as a company that is located or headquartered in Washington. If you are Walmart and you're headquartered in Arkansas or you're a store that's headquartered in Washington, neither of you are allowed to spy on people. It doesn't mean that an outofstate company is going to be allowed to spy on people within the state of Washington and use that spying to set the prices in the store. Everybody plays by the same rules. No local business is disadvantaged in any way. The only thing at disadvantage here is a multi-billion dollar tech company that wants to figure out how to change the price on you based on its perception of your willingness to pay. And again, you may think the system may not be able to get you. 50 million RTX 580s, me, the 50 million RTX 580s are going to win. Here's what I suggest of all of you. You may wonder, what is the actionable thing to do here? This bill has stalled. It has not moved forward. It's not going anywhere in the House right now. and I would like to see it go somewhere in the Washington state house. What you should do is email your House representative and email them something that sounds like this. I have not voted in 40 years. I have not voted in any election. I am a single issue voter. I will vote based on your actions here. Whether I vote for somebody else in the primary, call for somebody else to run in a primary, or vote for your direct opposition will be based on your work trying to move this bill forward.

[00:11:21]If I do not see this bill move forward, I will not vote for you. and I will vote for your direct competition.

[00:11:28]Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. Please do let me know how you plan on voting and please do let me know what you're doing right now to get this bill move forward in the House.

[00:11:37]You be polite, you be kind, and you be courteous, but you be truthful.

[00:11:43]You'll vote for somebody else. That's what these people are afraid of. I think many politicians think, well, I'm locked in here because of my position on gun rights. I'm locked in because of my position on immigration. I'm locked in because of my position on abortion or any other number of issues where somebody is not going to change their mind based on something else. And you have to short circuit that. You can't let them know that you may be somebody who is really locked into voting for this person, even if you'll swallow the tough pill of how they vote on surveillance pricing. It's really the only way to move the ball forward at this point because I think that politicians have gotten a little used to the idea that we are disengaged from politics and for all the crap that we say on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else. The more we ra when it actually comes time to vote, we'll put up with a lot of [ __ ] Don't let them think that that's the case here. We cannot live in a world where chat GPT on a camera is going to smell me and figure out what it thinks I am willing to pay for a product or service at a grocery store. That is absolutely unacceptable.

[00:12:44]Let me know what you think in the comments down below. And most importantly, let me know what you are going to do about it if you live in the state of Washington to get House Bill 2481 move forward. And personally, I'm surprised that the person who wrote this actually attached their name to it. I'll be real with you. I'm very very surprised at that. This was not written by an anonymous person. This was written by Mark Harnsworth. If I was writing an article in favor of the idea that you can use people's browsing data and personal information to be able to figure out what the price should be for them at a grocery store.

[00:13:17]I would not attach my name to that.

[00:13:20]I would be very afraid of the public shaming that would occur. There are certain things you just don't do. I'm surprised where we've gotten as a society where people feel like there's absolutely nothing wrong with promoting something like this where the amount of money that they may make on the other end is worth it because there's not going to be any sort of societal push back against them or their reputation and it's sad. Let me know what you think in the comments down below. That's it for today and as always I hope you learned something. Thank you to Ashley for putting this on my radar and I'll see you in the next video. Bye now.