3 ms·

>To be clear, I find this entire concept incredibly abhorrent why?

hasbroslasher 9y ago
Some people have moral frameworks that always make seeking profits immoral. I'm not sure if that's what OP is saying, or merely that showing the driver and the passenger different rates and subtracting the difference (this is an approximation, not exactly what the post said) is shady and bad.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  From previous HN discussions my impression is that the primary issue is with this charge being implicit. Uber already takes its money from drivers, and both drivers and users are participating in the program based on the assumption that what user is charged = what driver gets, minus Uber fee. But then it turns out that what user is charged more than Uber tells the driver (and from what it subtracts its fee), while the company also pockets the difference. This feels wrong.
potatolicious 9y ago
Effective and fair markets rely on transparency, while this is the exact opposite - the deliberate creation of massive information asymmetry. Worse even, the information asymmetry isn't meant to favor one side of the transaction over the other (say, passengers over drivers), but is meant to favor the exchange (Uber) itself. Imagine if you went to your stock broker to buy 10 shares of XYZ. Your broker tells you that the market price is $100 per share, but in reality found a seller at $80/share and is pocketing the difference, without disclosing this to either party in the transaction. Besides the ethical shadiness of this kind of action, functioning markets are predicated on buyers and sellers having sufficient information, and the exchange behaving in consistent and transparent ways. This sort of double-dealing undermines it. Another poster snidely speculates that I may operate on a moral framework that finds profit-seeking intrinsically objectionable. This seems like a straw man that's intended to erase the difference between unfair market practices and fair market practices.
- MockObject 9y ago
  > Imagine if you went to your stock broker to buy 10 shares of XYZ. Your broker tells you that the market price is $100 per share, but in reality found a seller at $80/share and is pocketing the difference, without disclosing this to either party in the transaction. That's a poor analogy, because the stock is an exchange value, but the car ride is a use value. A better analogy would be buying a pear, and getting angry that the fruit stand bought the pear really cheaply, without passing the savings on to you.

Some people have moral frameworks that always make seeking profits immoral. I'm not sure if that's what OP is saying, or merely that showing the driver and the passenger different rates and subtracting the difference (this is an approximation, not exactly what the post said) is shady and bad.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
From previous HN discussions my impression is that the primary issue is with this charge being implicit. Uber already takes its money from drivers, and both drivers and users are participating in the program based on the assumption that what user is charged = what driver gets, minus Uber fee. But then it turns out that what user is charged more than Uber tells the driver (and from what it subtracts its fee), while the company also pockets the difference. This feels wrong.

potatolicious 9y ago

Effective and fair markets rely on transparency, while this is the exact opposite - the deliberate creation of massive information asymmetry. Worse even, the information asymmetry isn't meant to favor one side of the transaction over the other (say, passengers over drivers), but is meant to favor the exchange (Uber) itself. Imagine if you went to your stock broker to buy 10 shares of XYZ. Your broker tells you that the market price is $100 per share, but in reality found a seller at $80/share and is pocketing the difference, without disclosing this to either party in the transaction. Besides the ethical shadiness of this kind of action, functioning markets are predicated on buyers and sellers having sufficient information, and the exchange behaving in consistent and transparent ways. This sort of double-dealing undermines it. Another poster snidely speculates that I may operate on a moral framework that finds profit-seeking intrinsically objectionable. This seems like a straw man that's intended to erase the difference between unfair market practices and fair market practices.

MockObject 9y ago
> Imagine if you went to your stock broker to buy 10 shares of XYZ. Your broker tells you that the market price is $100 per share, but in reality found a seller at $80/share and is pocketing the difference, without disclosing this to either party in the transaction. That's a poor analogy, because the stock is an exchange value, but the car ride is a use value. A better analogy would be buying a pear, and getting angry that the fruit stand bought the pear really cheaply, without passing the savings on to you.