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Yes, this is how supply and demand works in a healthy market. Riders should pay higher prices for tasks that drivers are less willing to do, and concomitantly

Yes, this is how supply and demand works in a healthy market. Riders should pay higher prices for tasks that drivers are less willing to do, and concomitantly drivers should get paid more for those tasks.

geofft 7y ago
That's a "healthy" market in the sense of a liquid market with high levels of information communication. That's not necessarily the same thing as a "healthy" market in the sense of good public policy. For instance, very few people would say that a "healthy" labor market has no minimum wage or discrimination protections, trusting supply and demand to solve those adequately. Similarly, letting the market price trips to "bad" neighborhoods higher is probably undesirable, even if that's what a free market would do. It also may not be the same thing as a market customers understand and feel comfortable participating in. It's true that there's more demand for unblemished produce priced the same as misshapen ones, but I'd be very unlikely to patronize a grocery store that ran an auction for each individual vegetable. So it might be in Uber's interest to not expose a variable-pricing mechanism. (Indeed, customers already seem not thrilled with surge pricing, even though it arguably gets them the service they want more efficiently.)
- Simon_says 7y ago
  > very few people would say that a "healthy" labor market has no minimum wage or discrimination protections ... Unfortunately, you're talking to one of those few people. I'm against government mandating minimum wages or mandatory maternity/paternity leave. If you want those things, you can try to negotiate for it. > customers already seem not thrilled with surge pricing This is a true statement, but I wonder about these people. I don't share their view.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    Government mandate minimum wages and mandatory parental leave are the result of people having negotiated for them.
    - Simon_says 7y ago
      It's a strange negotiation that prevents me from entering into another contract with a third party ...
      - infinite8s 7y ago
        You can - move to a country that doesn't provide those.
        Simon_says 7y ago
        You can move to a country that does.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Negotiating for everything is not the most efficient way of conducting business for society as a whole. Negotiating offers the benefit of price discovery, but it also consumes resources in the form of opportunity cost with other things that could have been done with that time and effort. Yes, we can expose the reality that most people aren't economically worth enough right now to demand parental leave or living conditions, but what is the benefit of exposing that? It's not like figuring out the true price of a product is low because it's low quality, so if people stop buying it then the producer will stop making it. The people that aren't worth enough, whether it be because they are lazy, stupid, came across an illness, born into a poor family and never had the opportunity and mentors to teach them, should we just let them rot away?
    - Simon_says 7y ago
      > Yes, we can expose the reality that most people aren't economically worth enough right now to demand parental leave or living conditions, but what is the benefit of exposing that? The benefit would be discouraging people from having kids they can't afford and not forcing employers to pay employees who aren't working. If you want to get paid for work you're not doing, you should at least have a conversation with your employer about it. You bring up an interesting point about efficiency, and regarding most other things, I would agree with you, but your employment is one of the most important things in your life, so it's worthwhile to do the work to understand your contract.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
        The benefit would be discouraging people from having kids they can't afford Perhaps you haven't noticed, but all the evidence would suggest that that isn't working. You can't just not pay people and they magically stop fucking. Rather, the framework is broken. When we hyper-individualise everything, we end up with a world people can come to frame thoughts like the one you've expressed. A world where everyone must own one of everything, and a spare, in order to survive. Where betterment is defined as having more and better things to throw in the garbage heap. So that future archeologists may dig up our society and find the last of the great cetaceans, beached, with their bellies full of custom gift cards with your face printed on it. And that is a sad state of affairs. The more educated people are the fewer children they have. And we continue to price more and more people out of education because they lost the birth lottery.
URSpider94 7y ago
Here are a couple of replies: 1. As a society, we don’t allow people to discriminate against protected classes in commerce. Most of those “bad” neighborhoods are actually not bad, they are just populated by people of different race or social status. 2. Unregulated auctions work well when there is symmetry of information and negotiating power. That is not the case when I’m standing on a street corner trying to get home.
- rightbyte 7y ago
  It's way too much to ask a driver to risk driving in some gang land area or pick up riders that in way too many cases are violent criminals. If you pick up random strangers in "bad" neighborhoods as a private person you are insane. Somehow taxi drivers are bad persons when they don't. Do these things full time you will sooner or later get in trouble. Going after drivers is going for the symptoms rather than the cause and quite selfish. If I wouldn't do it myself I don't want anyone else being forced because they have lower income than me.
- swordsmith 7y ago
  I think you are a bit sheltered about what "bad" neighborhoods can be like

geofft 7y ago

That's a "healthy" market in the sense of a liquid market with high levels of information communication. That's not necessarily the same thing as a "healthy" market in the sense of good public policy. For instance, very few people would say that a "healthy" labor market has no minimum wage or discrimination protections, trusting supply and demand to solve those adequately. Similarly, letting the market price trips to "bad" neighborhoods higher is probably undesirable, even if that's what a free market would do. It also may not be the same thing as a market customers understand and feel comfortable participating in. It's true that there's more demand for unblemished produce priced the same as misshapen ones, but I'd be very unlikely to patronize a grocery store that ran an auction for each individual vegetable. So it might be in Uber's interest to not expose a variable-pricing mechanism. (Indeed, customers already seem not thrilled with surge pricing, even though it arguably gets them the service they want more efficiently.)

Simon_says 7y ago
> very few people would say that a "healthy" labor market has no minimum wage or discrimination protections ... Unfortunately, you're talking to one of those few people. I'm against government mandating minimum wages or mandatory maternity/paternity leave. If you want those things, you can try to negotiate for it. > customers already seem not thrilled with surge pricing This is a true statement, but I wonder about these people. I don't share their view.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Government mandate minimum wages and mandatory parental leave are the result of people having negotiated for them.
  - Simon_says 7y ago
    It's a strange negotiation that prevents me from entering into another contract with a third party ...
    - infinite8s 7y ago
      You can - move to a country that doesn't provide those.
      - Simon_says 7y ago
        You can move to a country that does.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Negotiating for everything is not the most efficient way of conducting business for society as a whole. Negotiating offers the benefit of price discovery, but it also consumes resources in the form of opportunity cost with other things that could have been done with that time and effort. Yes, we can expose the reality that most people aren't economically worth enough right now to demand parental leave or living conditions, but what is the benefit of exposing that? It's not like figuring out the true price of a product is low because it's low quality, so if people stop buying it then the producer will stop making it. The people that aren't worth enough, whether it be because they are lazy, stupid, came across an illness, born into a poor family and never had the opportunity and mentors to teach them, should we just let them rot away?
  - Simon_says 7y ago
    > Yes, we can expose the reality that most people aren't economically worth enough right now to demand parental leave or living conditions, but what is the benefit of exposing that? The benefit would be discouraging people from having kids they can't afford and not forcing employers to pay employees who aren't working. If you want to get paid for work you're not doing, you should at least have a conversation with your employer about it. You bring up an interesting point about efficiency, and regarding most other things, I would agree with you, but your employment is one of the most important things in your life, so it's worthwhile to do the work to understand your contract.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      The benefit would be discouraging people from having kids they can't afford Perhaps you haven't noticed, but all the evidence would suggest that that isn't working. You can't just not pay people and they magically stop fucking. Rather, the framework is broken. When we hyper-individualise everything, we end up with a world people can come to frame thoughts like the one you've expressed. A world where everyone must own one of everything, and a spare, in order to survive. Where betterment is defined as having more and better things to throw in the garbage heap. So that future archeologists may dig up our society and find the last of the great cetaceans, beached, with their bellies full of custom gift cards with your face printed on it. And that is a sad state of affairs. The more educated people are the fewer children they have. And we continue to price more and more people out of education because they lost the birth lottery.

URSpider94 7y ago

Here are a couple of replies: 1. As a society, we don’t allow people to discriminate against protected classes in commerce. Most of those “bad” neighborhoods are actually not bad, they are just populated by people of different race or social status. 2. Unregulated auctions work well when there is symmetry of information and negotiating power. That is not the case when I’m standing on a street corner trying to get home.

rightbyte 7y ago
It's way too much to ask a driver to risk driving in some gang land area or pick up riders that in way too many cases are violent criminals. If you pick up random strangers in "bad" neighborhoods as a private person you are insane. Somehow taxi drivers are bad persons when they don't. Do these things full time you will sooner or later get in trouble. Going after drivers is going for the symptoms rather than the cause and quite selfish. If I wouldn't do it myself I don't want anyone else being forced because they have lower income than me.
swordsmith 7y ago
I think you are a bit sheltered about what "bad" neighborhoods can be like