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Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

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Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#131
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland traffic tickets sounds like a horrible idea.

Could you expand on why you think so? 1. I'm driving at 110 kph when the limit is 100. I pay $80, but I got paid $16000 after tax this month. 2. I'm driving at 110 kph when the limit is 100. I pay $80, but I got paid $4000 after tax this month. Fair?

Neither is fair.

$4k for 10-over is the kind of fine you'd expect in a draconian dystopia that cuts off people's hands for theft.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#132
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's fair. Please explain why you believe it is not fair. 1. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a poor construction worker which means I am now out of work. 2. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a wealthy programmer and just keep on going to work since my hands and brain still work fine. Fair? Or should the tree break my hands and give m…

This is such a colossally bad take. Tickets have the distinct purpose of disincentivizing dangerous driving. They don't do that if it's a flat fare and the person breaking the speed limit is sufficiently wealthy. Thus, if you want speeding tickets to affect everyone equally, you make them proportional.

>his is such a colossally bad take. Tickets have the distinct purpose of disincentivizing dangerous driving.

Tickets are never treated as a revenue stream by state and local governments. /s

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#133
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on why you think so? 1. I'm driving at 110 kph when the limit is 100. I pay $80, but I got paid $16000 after tax this month. 2. I'm driving at 110 kph when the limit is 100. I pay $80, but I got paid $4000 after tax this month. Fair?

Yes, that's fair. Please explain why you believe it is not fair. 1. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a poor construction worker which means I am now out of work. 2. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a wealthy programmer and just keep on going to work since my hands and brain still work fine. Fair? Or should the tree break my hands and give m…

You are missing the point.

What we want is for no one to drive dangerously. To discourage this, we give tickets for speeding.

For rich people, the fine doesn't mean anything to them because it is not enough money to matter, so they have no incentive to stop speeding. They keep speeding, putting everyone in danger.

The point of a fine (at least for something like speeding) is to discourage the behavior. If you want the DISCOURAGEMENT to be equal (because a rich person speeding is just as dangerous to other drivers as a poor person speeding, so we want to discourage them equally), then the fine needs to vary based on how wealthy the driver is.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#134
post #106
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If I'm a poor speeding Fin, then a non-scaled speeding ticket could cost me a good number of days food. If I'm a rich speeding Fin then a non-scaled ticket is just the cost to travel quickly. When you're wealthy enough fines don't matter there's no point in the police enforcing them aside from as an additional income stream.

Best way to make Rich people move out of Finland, result in loosing tax base, jobs (businesses) etc

Rich people are going to leave Finland because they aren't allowed to drive recklessly with no real consequence? Well, then maybe they should leave.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#135
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland traffic tickets sounds like a horrible idea.

Sounds good to me. The rich is as afraid of getting a fine as the poor one. Otherwise rich people just wouldn't care. It is true that a score based system with no money involved would be equally useful but I guess people fear more about their money.

This is a great idea and also is nearly impossible to implement. There is no way to tell how wealthy someone is and even then how much of that wealth is liquid.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#136
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's fair. Please explain why you believe it is not fair. 1. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a poor construction worker which means I am now out of work. 2. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a wealthy programmer and just keep on going to work since my hands and brain still work fine. Fair? Or should the tree break my hands and give m…

You are missing the point. What we want is for no one to drive dangerously. To discourage this, we give tickets for speeding. For rich people, the fine doesn't mean anything to them because it is not enough money to matter, so they have no incentive to stop speeding. They keep speeding, putting everyone in danger. The point of a fine (at least for something like speeding) is to discourage the behavior. If you want th…

The discouragement is "demerits on your license"[1] which go toward revoking it. Hence why you don't see rich people speeding around all the time even though the they can afford to pay the fines - they don't want to lose their license.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_system_(driving)

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#137
post #69

> ...the company’s upcoming pricing algorithms, which they hinted might be able to more precisely predict what riders might be willing to pay for a ride. I hate the whole idea of this. If they track you around, maybe realize you order from fancy places on uber eats, then they will raise prices on something that costs them the same. There's something that strikes me as especially awful about automating the "how much i…

Knowing the max someone was willing to pay could help an actor set their prices optimally where there is no competition. Where there is competition, setting price to the max someone is willing to pay could drop overall profits since a competitor would happily undercut. So it does not change the rules of the game. Companies already price by predicting what people are willing to pay, by theory and experimentation. I wo…

It's not that hard to (legally) collude on something like this, especially with an effectively-two-participant field, the way Uber and Lyft are in many markets. It's one of the basic solutions to the iterated prisoner's dilemma (though it's by no means guaranteed).

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#138
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's fair. Please explain why you believe it is not fair. 1. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a poor construction worker which means I am now out of work. 2. I'm climbing a tree when I ought not to and fall and break my legs. I'm a wealthy programmer and just keep on going to work since my hands and brain still work fine. Fair? Or should the tree break my hands and give m…

This is such a colossally bad take. Tickets have the distinct purpose of disincentivizing dangerous driving. They don't do that if it's a flat fare and the person breaking the speed limit is sufficiently wealthy. Thus, if you want speeding tickets to affect everyone equally, you make them proportional.

The fee is only one aspect of the ticket. The other aspect is demerits on your license which go toward revoking it. Dangerous driving is discouraged by the threat of getting your license revoked, not by getting a fine. Speeding tickets do affect everyone equally, by applying the same number of demerits toward revocation of the license. Hence why rich people don't drive like maniacs even though they can "afford" to from a purely monetary standpoint.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#139
post #78
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t price discrimination embedded in nearly every transaction we engage in, though? What is the difference between price discrimination between classes of individuals (to your point, business vs leisure travellers), and individuals themselves? Nearly every pricing guide on this site recommends offering an ‘invoiced’ pricing plan for enterprises for substantially more than the same service on credit card billing. Pr…

No, go to amazon.com and look for your favorite product, now tell me if 10 people from different income level see that, will the price be diffferent?

Wasn't that the whole idea of publishers attempting to ban book imports? Amazon or their suppliers do price discrimination regionally on many products I'm sure.

Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over

#140
post #128

The day cheap rides are over is the day that uber and lyft are over.

And walking everywhere will become the norm?

Not necessarily, cheap rides are the only competitive advantage both of them have.

More and more companies without the massive VC support Uber and Lyft have will pop up fragmenting the market.

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