[extropy-chat] Re: Ethics and evolution

[Technotranscendence]

On Monday, September 05, 2005 10:29 PM spike spike66 at comcast.net wrote:
>> Gas prices have soared.
>>
>> The government response was (in part) to decry "price-gouging," and
>> encourage people to report "artificially inflated" gas prices at
>> http://gaswatch.energy.gov/ . -- David Lubkin.
>
> Artificially inflated?  What is that, where prices are
> raised by an AI?  I would argue:  these prices are
> not artificially inflated.  The human who runs the
> gas station did it.

I think it's better not to call prices "inflated."  Prices rise or fall
and usually not together.  In this case, though, the important thing to
ask is why did the human raise the price?  It's not usually based on
caprice -- and were it based on that, we'd expect to see people raising
prices all the time for the heck of it.

Regards,

Dan