> Given the short notice this does nothing to increase total taxi supply, but merely redistributes drivers to higher fare areas. Firstly, I'm skeptical that su

> Given the short notice this does nothing to increase total taxi supply, but merely redistributes drivers to higher fare areas. Firstly, I'm skeptical that surge pricing cannot be predicted in advance to some degree. The weather bureau is predicting rain at 10pm on a Saturday night - doesn't that say something about the chance of surge pricing in a nightlife area? And look at the second chart on this page [1] - the surge multiplier between 7:30am and 9:30am is fairly predictable. Secondly, this argument ignores the long-term changes to supply. Surge pricing increases the pay of drivers, so over the long term there will be more drivers signing up (even if it didn't bring out more drivers at surge times) Lastly, even if supply was completely fixed and surge pricing simply redistributed drivers to higher fare areas, doesn't that lead to efficiencies which are shared between driver, rider and Uber? If I'm late for a job interview, I want to be able to outbid an old lady who is going to the supermarket to do her weekly grocery shopping. My gain will be larger than her loss. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/17/how-uber-surge-pricing-really-works/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/17/how-u...