Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
And what of those who can afford it now but won't be able to if they raise the price higher? Isn't that discrimination against them?
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"Discrimination," by itself, is perfectly legal. All it means is favoring one person (or thing) over another. Everyone does this, probably multiple times a day. If you give your brother $20 and don't give a homeless man $20, you are discriminating against him by favoring your family. If you hire someone qualified to work at your business over someone non-qualified, you are discriminating against the nonqualified. If a college gives a scholarship to someone who is really smart and doesn't give one to someone who is not, they are discriminating against the less intelligent. If you date interesting people and do not date uninteresting people, you are discriminating against the uninteresting. If you have affairs with married women but not with unmarried people, you are discriminating against single women. (Or if you date exclusively men but not women, you are discriminating against people with one or the other sexual preference).
All of that is fine, common, and perfectly legal. Discrimination only becomes an issue when a business or the government favors or disfavors people based on a few prohibited criteria. (Note that in most cases you are free to discriminate against people in your private life even for those reasons. Although it's bad and you should stop.) So a business can discriminate against someone who is unqualified, but not against someone who is black. A restaurant can refuse to serve drunks, but can't refuse to serve women. And a retailer can refuse to sell products to people who won't meet its asking price, but can't refuse to sell to people who have a different religion. (Note that you have a similar right to work for the company that offers you $40k/year and not for the company that offers $20k...even if $20k is all that they can afford and they *really need* your skills.)
So, returning to Amazon, it's not inaccurate to say that by charging $120 for AP, they are discriminating against people who can't afford $120. But that is a completely permissible form of discrimination, and no different from their current practice, where they are discriminating against people who can't afford $80 for AP.