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> If only one small station is doing it, they might get repercussions. If many stations (or large chains) do it, it might become normalized.

Of course, it won't be presented this way. It'll be presented as 'discounts' (from an inflated base price) for filling up when you're over 50% full, then a lesser discount when over 20% full, etc. And, well, if you didn't bother to take advantage of the discounts then whose fault is that, eh? But it'll be effectively the same.

From what I understand if you work at a gas station, you get a phone call and they tell you to change the price on the sign, right?

If everyone can see the prices of the closest stations on their dash, those displays might vanish because "no-one uses them anyway".

At the time that I had reason to know such things, there were strict laws around gasoline price signage. Much of it, I imagine, was based around old-school versions of what folks are worried about: price transparency and accuracy. For instance, if you want to raise the price, you must first make absolutely sure that the sign is changed first. Because the state takes a dim view of advertising a price that differs from the pumps.

That was a long time ago, and laws change, but I would guess in this case that the laws haven’t changed much. Point is, the worries might come to fruition, but we’ve been down this road decades before and hopefully we haven’t lost our collective common sense in the meantime.

Source: worked at a couple of gas stations in Indiana in the 80s.

> Like Uber is out of business becauase of surge pricing?

There is a difference between raising the price of a limited resource (Uber vehicles at peak times, or oil prices during a war in the Middle East) and outright gouging.

Most people understand that.