Lindsay Owens

Let's just get to her.

Ladies and gentlemen, Lindsay Owens, President and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative and author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet.

[upbeat music] Uh, we are joined on this momentous day in economic history by our good friend Lindsay Owens, President and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative, uh, author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet.

And Lindsay, so nice to see you.

She is joining us on the day that she found out that the printer that the publisher has ran out of toner.

From your mouth to...

That, that, that's an exciting prospect you've just laid out there.

You know, your book, and we're talking about Gouged: The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet, and it's written by Lindsay Owens, who is our favorite, if I may say.

Well, there's a real example that's happening now, and I want to give an example of what could happen given the technology and some of the suggestions about their pricing consultants about where they're going.

So we know that in the case of Target, I think Lindsay Owens recognizes this

in

both her book, but also in her Senate testimony last week, they're conditioning their pricing based on how close you are to a physical Target location.

And it raises an important point.

I'm glad you did this because the CCIA guy and the Penn guy who testified in front of Congress last year, they love to say that competition, markets are competitive and competition is going to save us.

But I mean, anyone who's been paying attention and Lindsay Owens, by the way, begins her book this way, pointing out how uncompetitive our industries have become.

I think 75% of our industries have become more concentrated over the last few decades.

Yeah, impossible to find the little cancel button, but they also use this trick through dark proud and something called con for shaming where, you know, it says something like, are you sure you want to, should you continue with your gym membership or should you cancel your gym membership and undermine your health or something like, you know, like something to make you sort of think twice about whether or not you want to go, you know, go in that direction.

Well, I'm here with Lindsay Owens, the author of Gouge, The End of a Fair Price and What That Means for Your Wallet.

She's the president of the Groundwork Collective.

When we come back, we'll talk more about how not only are these companies watching you, but they're watching each other to try to set a price to sort of, in some sense, collude.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

You can check out Lindsay's book, Gouge, the end of a fair price and what that means for your wallet available wherever books are sold.

Lindsay Owens is the president of the Groundwork Collective.

Lindsay, thanks again.