More of what you pay is now set by software built to find out how much you’ll pay. Sometimes it’s one company studying you: what you click, what you post, how badly you need it. Sometimes it’s a whole industry feeding its prices into the same program, and landlords, gas stations and the biggest french fry makers in the country have all been sued for it. With so few companies left in so many industries, there’s often no store across the street to walk to. Next come AI agents that do your shopping for you, so you never see the price at all. The price tag used to protect us from this. It’s going away.