Some of you think like communists. Economics of envy. View quoted note →

That is how most business-to-business commerce is conducted in Australia. Partially replace "wealthy" with "apparently well-connected" in whatever industry. A price is quite readily derived in such a market, regardless, but its a function with one subjective input rather than a single number.

It’s called price differentiation. You don’t have to know directly how wealthy someone is, a lot of people will signal this themselves, if you offer the right product variants. e.g. Premium version that only offers marginal advantages over the Standard version. As long as it stays at that level, it’s actually beneficial to the economy as it drives higher profitability and hence a more optimal distribution of goods and services. It becomes a problem, of course, if the wealthy are no longer even given the option to opt for the standard product, e.g. imagine forcing the wealthy to take business class (which offers much more value than economy class but arguably not nearly as much as the relative price difference)