Let's have a look at the new world with a few thoughts on 'Pricing Surveillance.'
What is pricing surveillance?
"It's when something like a supermarket uses personal data, browsing history, and AI algorithms to calculate your maximum 'willingness to pay' and then charges different people different prices for the exact same product or service."
At the root of it is that moment or two when a carefree and happy gardener has to decide how much to charge a customer for something like weeding an ill-considered and tasteless perennial border that's not getting enough sun.
Don't get me wrong unindentured day laborers have been floating this boat of pricing surveillance since the end of Guild System which eventually occurred in the last days of The Enlightenment during the dawn of an Industrial Revolution which presaged an era of denial the leisured have called The Romantic Age.
What do the property owners look like, does the missus seem like a person who makes a good cup of tea, appreciates a chocolate biscuit and is happy with the mister. Does the mister work. Does he mow the lawn or does she. Does anybody in the household know how to weed or trim hedges. If you're invited inside do you feel obliged to take off your boots....
There's a whole list which is built over time through the personal experience, often bitter, of being a jobbing gardener, and it's not just about guessing from the condition of their footwear what a property owner can afford to pay. It has much more to do with what psychologists call 'deservingness' because they can't bring themselves to call it 'tone.'
Once 'tone' is established, you might think the next issue is "How badly do I need this work?" You'd be wrong! The next question is "How much do they want me to do this work and how much do I want this work?"
At the moment, when you give that calculation to an algorithm there are invisibles for which the algorithm has no data.
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