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William Watson: Why price discrimination shouldn't bother you

Different prices for the same goods or services lead to more transactions and if that doesn't make people better off, they don't do it

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To try to keep up with what’s going on I subscribe to several newspapers, including four well-known international titles. One I found I wasn’t reading as much as the others and when they sent me a renewal email saying that unfortunately they were obliged to raise their price to — I can’t remember the exact number, let’s say US$250/year — I decided it really wasn’t worth it. So I went to their customer service page and clicked “Cancel.” The page may have asked me why and when I clicked on “Price too high” it came back and asked whether I’d prefer US$25/year, i.e., a tenth the original ask. Why yes, I rather think I would, I said to myself, and clicked on “Renew.”

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