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Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

telegraph.co.uk

31–40 of 177 posts

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#31
post #8

edit Supporting comment apparently wasn't appreciated. No delete button.

It’s voluntary. If it becomes unprofitable, drivers leave. If they lose money, they won’t do it. They give a share to Uber because Uber is their lead generation. Many businesses give a share of their money to Google because Google brings them business. An Uber driver can market their own business and keep all the money if they want just like a business could go out and market without using AdWords. If you are unhappy…

> But most people aren’t ambitious at all

It also takes sufficient life-situation stability, good health, and so on. Shaming people for lacking "ambition" is neither universally appropriate nor universally effective.

EDIT: I didn't originally upvote the parent comment, but I now have. I think there's a very interesting debate to be had when we consider individuals as economic actors. Disadvantaging individual participants in the "gig economy" too aggressively (e.g. by prosecuting Uber drivers for collusion) forces us towards solutions like unionization by dividing us into privileged capital and downtrodden labor. I'd like to talk more about we might empower individual actors (e.g. by improving the social "safety net" and making the job market more fluid).

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#35
post #2

Good for them. Someone should build an app they can run that automatically logs them in and out to maximize pricing. Though I imagine it wouldn't be hard for Uber to implement some basic security to thwart it.

And if prices are high, customers will seek alternatives. So it could backfire. Also, this practice is illegal as it amounts to price fixing/collision. These are all independent businesses conspiring to raise prices. These aren’t employees of the same company – they are independent contractors which means they are separate businuess entities from each other which means they are committing a crime. Collusion is a crim…

To the down voters.. is this not collusion? We are all welcome to our own opinions, but facts are what they are: businesses conspiring to force prices higher is the very diffenition of collusion. The size of the entity makes no difference under the law.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if prices are high, customers will seek alternatives. So it could backfire. Also, this practice is illegal as it amounts to price fixing/collision. These are all independent businesses conspiring to raise prices. These aren’t employees of the same company – they are independent contractors which means they are separate businuess entities from each other which means they are committing a crime. Collusion is a crim…

To the down voters.. is this not collusion? We are all welcome to our own opinions, but facts are what they are: businesses conspiring to force prices higher is the very diffenition of collusion. The size of the entity makes no difference under the law.

I'm not a downvoter, but I see your analysis as extremely uncharitable to drivers. If bringing down the weight of the justice system on individual drivers is a logical consequence of structuring rideshare as individual businesses, that argues for reclassifying them as employees.

EDIT: Full disclosure -- I drive for Lyft part-time. I have not participated in the gaming described in this article.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#37

The article implies that this is an active, coordinated effort; but I have to wonder if any of this is/could be an emergent phenomenon based on the existence of the surge pricing algorithm.

I think some of the surge times are built in. At WDW it's on the dot when the parks close. There will be tons of drivers on the map too. Uber (and Lyft) know that a all the people they shuttled in for cheap in the morning will need a ride home and didn't plan an alternative.

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#38
post #10
post #5

Obvious in hindsight. This sort of thing is inevitable any time you have dumb software on one side and humans on the other side. I'm mostly a fan of these non-taxi "taxi" services, but it seems like they are slowly and painfully rediscovering why taxis ended up so regulated in the first place.

Yeah, I'm mostly not a fan, now that we're a few years in. Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago. Chicago forced cab drivers to go through a training and certification course that at least forced them to understand the major routes and grid system we're on, and every time I've been in an…

>"Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago."

Has the city published any traffic impact studies? NYC showed concerned for Uber impact on traffic and made an attempt to get data and it turned into a political kerfuffle with accusations of protecting the taxi industry etc. I don't like the title of this blog post but it points to similar of what you are stating about downtown Chicago:

http://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/02/27/its-settled-uber-is-ma...

Re: Uber drivers gang up to cause surge pricing, research says

#40
post #10
post #5

Obvious in hindsight. This sort of thing is inevitable any time you have dumb software on one side and humans on the other side. I'm mostly a fan of these non-taxi "taxi" services, but it seems like they are slowly and painfully rediscovering why taxis ended up so regulated in the first place.

Yeah, I'm mostly not a fan, now that we're a few years in. Waves of people inexperienced, untrained in shuttling people around a major metro have resulted in downtown Chicago being an utter mess compared to only a few years ago. Chicago forced cab drivers to go through a training and certification course that at least forced them to understand the major routes and grid system we're on, and every time I've been in an…

ADA non-compliant vehicles as well. Disabled passengers cannot ride an Uber most of the time. It has been difficult to sue Uber though.
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