Who Hates Algorithms now (a tale)

You could say it started in ‘95 with ‘Six Degrees’. Social media has come a long way since then, and selling personal information has made many rich people. Most of us begrudge them but that’s how it played out. That is until 2025. An equally young and ambitious person, JC to his friends, took a different tack. He bought a small amount of this collected information and processed it through a different algorithm with one simple task, to deduce a person’s net worth. It became a party trick. JC would amaze his friends. In public they would laugh but later in private ask, “How did you do that?” It proved amazingly accurate. He began writing more software. It became what we now know as the JC quotient, a number belonging to each social media user. He expanded this into software that takes the product’s bar code and calculates the price. He wrote his infamous book, 'A Basis for Variable Price structuring.'. People laughed, became apoplectic, it’s unnatural, it would bring down society, it’s social prejudice, communist, it’s a joke. After the brouhaha died down he offered the software to a few corner shops and it made the news again. ‘Shops that sell at different prices’. They were glad of the publicity and proudly defended their right to sell to poor people at a discount. Those against it with more money to spend only made matters worse. ‘A price is a price and I’m damn sure I’m not going to pay more just because I’m wealthy! If they’re too stupid they’ll just have to do without.’ And conversely, ‘Why shouldn’t they, they can afford it.’ The argument raged but slowly the less well off, being in the majority, began to win it. The breakthrough came when one major supermarket eager for the trade adopted JC’s system. One by one the dominoes dropped. Fairly soon even Lamborghini dealerships were selling the same car for $5m or $50,000 depending on who you were. Sure on paper they made losses and gains but it all evened out thanks to the JC quotient. When it was universally accepted because, thanks to the JC quotient there was a little more taxable profit in it, there was nowhere to go. If you were a squillionaire sprouts cost $50 a pound take it or leave it. The same with restaurants, and you’ve got to eat. OK JC made millions out of it but he was happy to pay the $50.