Of course not. Wendy’s, the hamburger chain, recently caught flak when they announced plans to introduce “dynamic pricing.” This simply means that you’d pay more for a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, for instance, at 12:30 PM than you would at 3:30 PM. More people are eager for lunch at 12:30 and more people don’t want to spoil their dinner at 3:30. Price here changes based on changing demand. Why the flack? Because people don’t understand basic economics.
Prices, most people think, are determined this way- you add up all your costs to bring product x to the market, add a “reasonable” profit, and that sets your price. This is why people insist that when gas prices go up it’s because of greedy oil companies, but when they go down, well, no one gives credit to the giving oil companies. The truth is that prices are determined by supply and demand. If the supply of product x goes up and the demand stays the same, the price goes down. If the supply of product x goes down and demand stays the same, the price goes up. When the price goes down, demand goes up. When the price goes up, demand goes down.
The truth is, we all want it to work that way. When Uber or Lyft institutes “surge” pricing, raising rates when the ballgame lets out or all the bars close, they allow those who have the highest desire for a rideshare to get one, while those on the bubble take a pass. When you go to Old Navy during their 50% off sale you’re doing so because you want what they have on sale that you didn’t want when it was at full price.
Remember that every trade, entered into freely, is of necessity fair, and ensures both sides profit. If Wendy’s charges more for a burger than I am willing to pay, I don’t buy one. If I buy one, such is proof that I valued the burger more than the money spent. Wendy’s would rather have my $2 than their hamburger. I’d rather have their hamburger than my $2. Once the trade has taken place, we each have given up what we value less for what we value more, thus we both profit.
Fluctuating prices don’t change a thing. Prices for hotel rooms in the city hosting the Super Bowl skyrocket the Sunday of the game. Two weeks later they will plummet. That’s because there’s many more people more eager to be there Super Bowl Sunday than there are people eager to be there Super Bowl Week +2 Sunday. Go visit the Outer Banks any September. You’ll find there large numbers of large families. Why? Because homeschooling families (which tend to be large) are a smaller market than public schooled families. The former can set their own schedules, and thus can flock to the coast at a lower cost while the latter are all in school.
Remember also that we do the same thing when we are selling. Programmers who could code in obsolete computer languages in 1999 were raking in the big bucks dealing with the y2k bug. No one doing that work would insist, “Don’t pay me more than you will after the new year.” We want to sell our homes when demand is high, to buy when demand is low. Buy low, sell high isn’t a bad thing, even when we’re selling or selling the same thing at different times in the day.
None of this is wrong. What is wrong is impugning the motives of others, accusing them of wrongdoing for simply responding to market realities. Freedom is a good thing. Let’s not grumble when someone else’s freedom means shifting prices.