It’s called capitalism. Specifically, it’s how market price is set.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-price.asp

Consumer surplus is the difference between the highest price consumers are willing to pay for a product and the actual price they pay, or the market price.

Economic surplus is comprised of two related quantities: consumer surplus and producer surplus. Producer surplus is profit: It is the amount over cost that a producer obtains by selling at the market price, provided that the market price is higher than the minimum that they would be willing to sell for.

People care way too little now about who sets prices.

Those black bean burgers are sold under a strategy of “luxury pricing” or “premium pricing” or “value based pricing”. Which is basically: “how much are you willing to pay?” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/valuebasedpricing.asp

Value-based pricing is a strategy of setting prices primarily based on a consumer’s perceived value of a product or service. Value-based pricing is customer-focused, meaning companies base their pricing on how much the customer believes a product is worth.

Value-based pricing is different from cost-plus pricing, which factors the costs of production into the pricing calculation. Companies that offer unique or highly valuable features or services are better positioned to take advantage of the value-based pricing model than companies that chiefly sell commoditized items.

A lot of people live with the deeply wrong belief that prices are set based on the cost of production plus some % added on top to make a profit.

Meta accuses EU of discriminating against business model

…

That looks like an admission of guilt to me.

“We have always enforced and will continue to enforce our laws fairly and without discrimination towards all companies operating in the EU, in full compliance with global rules,” the Commission spokesperson said.

It would be so funny if Meta left EU and blocked the users.

It doesn’t make a classless society, but it is necessary at least for a short while to establish the class rule and an actual path towards socialism and withering away of the state.

The state, likes its private corporate children, functions as undead zombies. It doesn’t wither away peacefully, it grows and attacks.

Classes like the Party members, the Bureaucracy members, the Military members does not make for a classless society, and neither does the work hierarchy and the use of Taylorism and Fordism.

More importantly to the current times, “surplus” based on cheapened nature such as undervalued waste sinks may not actually be a surplus, but a loss.

the change to capitalism didn‘t improve that.

The change from State Capitalism to Private Capitalism, indeed, did not improve that.