A lot of other industries have regulation in place to stop price gouging during emergencies, such as this one. I'm all for Uber raising prices at 1am on a Sunda

A lot of other industries have regulation in place to stop price gouging during emergencies, such as this one. I'm all for Uber raising prices at 1am on a Sunday morning, due to supply/demand -- that's fine! But during an emergency, people find it icky that a business would take "advantage" of it like that. I initally thought it was just an algorithm, which doesn't excuse it entirely but is more understandable, but from Uber's tweets it seems they were aware and OK with jacking prices up that high despite the fact they knew it was an emergency. tl;dr -- Taxis aren't going to jack prices up 4x in an emergency, because it's illegal, and that's a good thing. Uber made a misstep here, and I've in favour of Uber normally (and finding the media backlash against them lately fascinating). It's a good thing they've gone back and reversed their position, this is an emergency and peoples safety is more importantly than a multinational company's profits, according to society.