Shopping bill is a good pre-emptive strike

On the face of it, it looks like a solution desperately hunting for a problem.

But that’s sometimes the way proactive legislation looks.

As first salvos go, Manitoba’s Bill 49 should probably be viewed not an effort not to deal with an imaginary problem, but one being put in place to ensure that the problem doesn’t arrive.

What the bill does is to add individual pricing to the province’s collection of improper business practices.

To be more precise, and to quote the bill directly, it seeks to address “pricing that is based on the use of an algorithm or automated processing to set, recommend or vary a price offered to a specific consumer as a result of data about the consumer collected, analyzed or processed with or without the consumer’s consent, knowledge or involvement…”

Most people are already familiar with the idea of dynamic pricing.

Want an Uber when lots of other people are looking for a ride? Get ready to pay more. Want to get an airplane flight tomorrow? Don’t expect discount travel. Want to buy steak when beef is in short supply? Once again, everybody get out your wallet.

Charging the largest amount customers are willing to pay is, well, called being a profitable business. It’s charging what the market will bear — and if the market won’t bear it, your products won’t sell. The key is that the prices apply to everyone looking to buy.

But when pricing is tied to technology that’s designed to deliberately clip the individual customer, the power imbalance is clear. It’s you against the power and speed of technology.

It’s not looking for what the market will bear — it’s analyzing exactly what a particular customer can pay, and using the weight of any and all available information about that person against that customer’s own interests.

What if your handy customer loyalty card lets a major retailer know the average take-home income for your neighbourhood, your past willingness to pay full price or particular brands, your reticence to replace favourites with other brands, and the prices that you have paid for every purchase of every item in your shopping cart in the past — and then divines the largest pressure-point price that you’re willing to pay and charges you that amount?

The person in front of you at the checkout pays three dollars, but you pay $4.50 for the same thing.

It sounds like the stuff of a dystopian shopping nightmare.

Opponents of the bill argue that it addresses a type of pricing that isn’t even taking place in the province at this point.

Fair enough. But right now, it’s not prohibited by Manitoba law. And closing the barn door after the horse has already successfully run off is rarely an effective horse management tool, if you will.

The bill would halt the use of “the consumer’s personal information, attributes and behaviours, (including) the consumer’s browsing or purchasing history, consumer habits or spending patterns, the consumer’s electronic devices used in browsing or purchasing and their profiles on such devices, the consumer’s inferred willingness to enter into the consumer transaction, the consumer’s demographics or socio-economic status, including their income level, the consumer’s employment pay period or financial assistance payment schedule, the consumer’s credit history, the consumer’s location, including their address for the delivery of the good, the consumer’s medical history or health status,” to start.

It’s a good message: the Manitoba government recognizes that, with the expansion of AI and the burgeoning use and collection of rafts of personal information, individual shoppers may end up even more at the mercy of large corporations.

And without guardrails, big business has a record of showing a distinct lack of mercy when profits are involved.