"Assuming that "less than listed retail" is a bargain is false. "

By "less than listed retail" I mean a price less than whatever they would have otherwise paid at checkout (after coupons, package deals, whatever). I was thinking of "the price listed at the store counter", but "listed retail" is not the best phrase for that. My apologies for the confusion.

I'm well aware that the "listed price" isn't always the typical price paid. That's how I came up with this idea, by observing how much effort sellers put into trying to capitalize on the full range of potential buyers. There's still a lot of untapped potential there, like in purchasing music.

"The fact that someone has high income does not imply that they're willing to spend a lot of money for any specific product/service."

Yes, you are entirely correct. I screwed that up, I did not mean to imply that richer people are inherently willing to pay more. I was only focused on the concern over fraud (of someone getting a cheap buyer to buy something for them- a cheap buyer is not necessarily a poorer person).

What I was trying to get at is that if someone is spending more (especially a lot more), but not earning more, that is possible evidence of fraud. And the "heightened income" was meant to refer to the fact that they might be getting paid to buy stuff for others. Or, it could mean they really did have a lot more money, and weren't behaving in a frugal manner, which is probably tied with a lack of caring about price.

"Spending money on back debt or saving something" would not be a purchase, so it would probably not be relevant to what I'm talking about.

"Rich people aren't going to pay more. If you're building a system that requires that they do, it's dead." It doesn't "require" rich people to do anything. They don't have to sign up for the service. And they would not necessarily pay more for things, if they did- if the AI determined they probably aren't willing to spend much on something, even if they are a multimillionaire it would give them a discount.

"FWIW - I've never seen a decent plan from someone who disliked the domain in which he was working. Such people always think that their policy preferences trump facts."

First off, this is not a government policy I'm proposing, as you seem to imply. Nowhere do I mention the government being involved- this is a private solution, between credit card companies, retailers, and customers. I suspect your other errors may be related to this error.

You may have been confused when I refer at the end to "There is a governmental solution, also, which I will go into later."- the post you replied to is the potential private solution, the other post is the potential governmental solution. I originally wrote all my posts as one single post, and when I had to break it up to fit Y Combinator's text limit, that part got left in an odd place. I can see how it would be confusing, if you did not read carefully enough to see the complete absence of a reference to the government in the rest of the post. I'll take responsibility for that.

By the way, I don't "dislike the domain in which I'm working". Nor have I ever disliked any work I've done in a related field.

But, thanks for everything else. I appreciate you alerting me to those things I did not communicate very clearly. Other than my notes, I've never written these ideas up for a lay audience, and some things haven't translated well from my head to the page.