The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart Reinventing the Rip-Off with Lindsay Owens
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Sep 17, 2026 
Lindsay Owens, an economist, policy advocate, and Groundwork Collaborative president, joins a lively discussion of corporate price gouging. Topics include algorithmic price fixing, personalized checkout prices, surveillance pricing, planned obsolescence, rent-setting software, and market concentration. They also tackle political theater, Supreme Court power, and the hotly debated question of when Halloween decorating should begin.
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Instacart Charged Different Shoppers Different Prices
- A Groundwork Collaborative experiment found Instacart offering different prices for identical groceries at the same stores and time.
- Prices differed by up to 23%, averaging 7%, potentially costing a family of four $1,200 annually.
Personal Data Is Becoming A Price Tag
- Companies increasingly use browsing behavior, location, finances, urgency, and personal disclosures to estimate willingness to pay.
- Delta’s pricing partner explicitly described moving from market exploration into an “exploitation phase.”
Public Outrage Can Stop Pricing Experiments
- Consumer backlash forced Instacart to stop certain pricing experiments and Delta to retreat from personalized airline pricing.
- Coke similarly abandoned temperature-based vending prices after public criticism in the 1990s.
