When inflation surged soon after the COVID crisis, neoliberal economists rushed to absolve corporations of responsibility for higher prices. They blamed demand, legitimate cost increases, and nearly anything except the executives who actually set prices.

The mainstream press largely followed along, even as corporate profits rose and companies adopted personalized pricing tools and handed decisions to consultants using artificial intelligence. Dissenters were treated as outcasts, including Isabella Weber after she cautiously suggested price controls.

Paul Krugman mocked Weber’s proposal as “truly stupid,” while promoting a theory that growing demand for home offices helped drive rents higher. That explanation ignored the use of a common pricing algorithm by rival landlords.

Lindsay Owens entered that debate armed with something more revealing than orthodox economic models: corporate executives’ own words. The Stanford educated sociologist and Capitol Hill veteran listened to earnings calls where executives discussed plans to increase prices as much as possible.

Owens first drew widespread attention with a viral 2022 tweet about price gouging, followed by a New York Times essay. Her work replaced the supposed invisible hand with actual executives explaining their pricing plans to investors.

Three years later, Owens released a white paper examining Instacart’s brief experiment with personalized pricing. The study from Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union found that roughly 75% of items in identical baskets purchased simultaneously varied in price between shoppers.

Her criticism helped spur an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission under Trump. Instacart eventually disavowed the surveillance technology in which it had invested millions.

Owens has now assembled those findings in Gouged, a 176 page book about how corporations distort and manipulate pricing. The book challenges economists who defend personalized pricing by comparing it with discounts for students or seniors.

That comparison confuses third degree price discrimination with first degree price discrimination, where companies seek to identify each customer’s willingness to pay. Owens dispatches the sales pitch bluntly: “If that sounds like bullshit to you, you’re not alone.”

Under personalized pricing, consumer surplus can fall to zero when every customer is charged according to that willingness to pay. Customers willing to pay more lose their surplus, while more price sensitive shoppers receive no necessary improvement over the existing price.

Owens also argues that corporate consolidation makes coordinated price increases easier. “Competition is kryptonite for gougers,” she writes, before explaining that removing competition is the first step.

One chapter examines Simon-Kucher & Partners, a pricing consultant founded by German professor Hermann Simon. With 60 staff members holding Ph.D.s, including physicists, the firm advised companies across major industries and worked with purported rivals such as Coke and Pepsi.

RealPage emerges as another major villain in the book. Its YieldStar algorithm allowed landlords to surrender pricing authority to a shared system that would not recommend rent below its suggested minimum, effectively creating a hard floor.

RealPage pricing advisers also acted as enforcers when landlords rejected proposed rent increases, escalating disputes to regional managers. CEO Stephen Winn encouraged landlords to “monetize lobbies, parking garages, rooftops, and even broom closets,” while imposing maintenance fees when tenants requested repairs.

Owens connects RealPage with an earlier airline pricing scheme involving the Airline Tariff Publishing Company. The Department of Justice estimated that the system cost consumers nearly $2 billion between 1988 and 1992, though the government settled for minor changes that failed to stop the conduct.

Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Airlines executive targeted in that investigation, later became RealPage’s “principal scientist” when it launched. The progression shows how earlier coordination methods evolved into more sophisticated pricing technology.

Uber receives similarly harsh treatment for normalizing dynamic pricing and using customer data to customize fares. Owens also details how the company applied personalized pricing to labor through a 2022 system called “upfront pricing,” which allowed Uber to raise fares while cutting driver compensation.

Research reviewed by Owens found that one driver’s company take rate increased from 32% to 42% by the end of 2024. Oxford economists separately found that Uber’s take rate in the United Kingdom rose from 25% to 29%.

The book also describes insurers using aerial drones to inspect rooftops, carmakers sharing driving data with third parties, and applications tracking consumer habits. McDonald’s can adjust discounts using information about spending patterns, while Starbucks sold a Washington Post reporter’s data to more than 60 third parties.

Owens proposes a modern Shoppers’ Bill of Rights requiring sellers to disclose the full price upfront and making subscriptions easier to cancel. Her agenda also includes repair rights, bans on algorithmic price fixing and surveillance pricing, restrictions on dynamic pricing, protections against algorithmic wage discrimination, and rules ensuring artificial intelligence chatbots serve users rather than retailers.