The Wild World of Surveillance Pricing with Lee Hepner
Welcome to the podcast Organized Money. You can listen to today’s episode on Apple on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ever wonder why the price of your rent or even a bag of frozen potatoes seems to jump for no clear reason? It could be the result of “surveillance pricing”—where companies use your personal data and powerful algorithms to set prices just for you, often squeezing consumers and renters alike. Matt chats with antitrust lawyer Lee Hepner about the rise of these new forms of price fixing. They dig into the RealPage scandal, where software allegedly helped landlords coordinate rent hikes across millions of apartments, even during a housing crisis, and explain how similar tactics are cropping up everywhere from meatpacking to everyday retail. Lee describes how state and federal lawmakers are scrambling to catch up, but warns that this is part of a dangerous trend towards an economy that is structured by large corporations.
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