This just feeds the blackmarkets for any industry. When people get wise they turn to the black market.
Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
141–150 of 321 posts
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#142> ...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…
That is how the market works even today without Uber and Lyft too. Everyone is trying to figure out the max you are willing to pay for something. It is just that finding that out is expensive and sometimes exceeds the benefits of bigger margins. Some business like Costco on other than totally opt out of the whole guessing game and would rather offer few choices at fixed price. Willingness to pay more also tells you a…
> Willingness to pay more also tells you a lot about the person's need and if the person is willing to pay more it is a signal that the person needs to more. Servicing those needs first is often beneficial for the whole society.
However, in this case, Uber and Lyft are not actually using willingness to pay. They are using ability to pay. To make the system more efficient, as you suggested, they would do best to implement a bidding system so that customers could directly opt to pay more (directly indicating their level of need).
The algorithms in the article would unfairly prioritize wealthier drivers over poorer ones, if used to maximize margins, regardless of the level of need of either party. Wealth (ability to pay) is not an indicator of how badly you need to be somewhere else. Willingness to pay is. Their system is flawed.
The differential pricing you've described might be beneficial to society, but the differential pricing discussed in the article is most certainly not.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#143I'm from Romania and a taxi/Uber ride is somewhere between $2 and $5, which is pretty cheap compared with other countries.
I used to ride with Uber and Bolt a lot, however they've been raising pricing during rush hour and I'm not stupid enough to not notice the bill at the end of the ride and these costs add up.
So several months back I stopped taking car rides altogether. I walk a lot, I don't mind walking 3 Km on foot. I ride my bike to and from work, which is actually more efficient than driving a car in this city. And now in winter due to weather I also use public transportation. I also have a driver's license and own my own car.
I'm not worrying about prices set dynamically. People can notice the bill and Uber is not competing just with Lift or taxis, it's competing with walking on foot, with public transport, with owning your own car and if their prices aren't reasonable, they won't survive.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see how the Uber model can ever approach the price of a taxi. Traditional taxis had purpose-built vehicles, shared garages, parts bought at wholesale, and cars on duty all day every day. Uber drivers have disposable Toyotas, pay individually retail prices for insurance, maintenance, and parts, and their vehicles are usually parked. The traditional model has the advantage on cost.
The special vehicles thing is very rare. London is the only place I have ever seen it (though admittedly I have yet not been everywhere). Everywhere else, taxis are just regular cars with a meter and a taxi sticker on them.
Checker cabs were common in the US into the 1980s.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#145> ...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…
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…
> If the price of the Uber ride is higher than you value that ride... just don’t buy it. Otherwise enjoy the value you have extracted from Uber
The surplus from a trade is divided between the buyer and the seller, and each party's surplus ranges from epsilon to 1-epsilon. Your claim that a move towards universally giving one party ~0% surplus and the other ~100% doesn't matter is self-consistent, but it shouldn't be surprising that society would concern itself with how surplus is divided (eg antitrust laws or any other competition-regulating policy)
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#146Here’s how I wish Uber pricing worked:
When I hail a ride, I say: I’m going from A to B and am willing to pay C (which Uber can recommend to me) for it.
Now if nobody responds, I increase C until they do. This way the drivers know where they are going, how much I’m paying, etc. When a driver “accepts” a ride, I see their vehicle and rating, and get to choose from the people who have accepted.
And on the other end, they bid on my ride. If I offer $20, they might ask $25 instead, and it is up to me to either accept or reject that.
I really want a system where the drivers are happy, the riders are happy, and everything is transparent and open for negotiation.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#147Earlier 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…
Falling out of trees isn't governed by the laws of men, but by laws of physics. The laws of man can recognize that capitalism can be very cruel to the poor. The rich are just going to laugh off the cost of the speeding ticket and save up to buy a faster car or bigger house. If you're poor and get a speeding ticket you can't afford, the choice is between going hungry or going cold for the rest of the month. That's a cruel and inhumane and for places that recognize that, the fine for the impoverished so they don't starve. In a practical manner. Sending them off to soup kitchens when they are able to feed themselves outside of the fine that's being imposed on them, is a misuse of everybody's resources.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's not based on wealth but rather income, and the state obviously has this data readily at hand due to taxation. I don't see any reason why that couldn't and shouldn't be adopted all over the world.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#149> ...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…
You're presenting a future where there is (in the limit) no point in earning money. Lately there was a discussion about how in the future it makes no sense to buy insurance if someone is willing to sell it to you, you are always better off saving and you won't get insured if you actually need it[0]. I understand all these specific scenarios may be kinda-dismissed with some commonsensical argumentation, but has someon…
> there was a discussion about how in the future it makes no sense to buy insurance if someone is willing to sell it to you, you are always better off saving and you won't get insured if you actually need it[0].
This is a misunderstanding of how insurance works. It makes sense to self-insured in expected $ value, but not necessarily in expected utility.
There's nonzero value to lowering volatility[1], and the insurance company creates surplus by coordinating the pooling of risk across many people.
For an easy example of the difference, for an easy example of the difference, I wouldn't take a 50/50 coin flip that would either cost me $1 million dollars or gain me $1.1 million; even though the expected value is $50k, because I couldn't afford such a high chance of financial ruin. I would however, sell the chance at this bet to an insurance company for $40k, and if they were large enough to absorb the loss (or bought many such policies), they would take it and gain $10k minus the (lower) value they place on the risk. (All numbers are made up, obviously).
[1] this is a simple enough concept that you can derive it graphically from a utility/$ graph, and requires only the assumption of diminishing marginal utility of $
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#150> ...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…
It would likely lead to people working harder to find better prices. I moved into a nice house that was about to be foreclosed a couple of years back and after moving in, we had to get some of the same things done that we’d had at our previous home. The quotes were usually 2-3x higher for the exact same job.
This doesn't make any sense... what these algorithms are doing is trying to determine how price insensitive the person is... they are trying to find a price point where, for this individual, they aren't going to make the effort to find an alternative because it is not worth the extra savings.
If this leads people to work harder to find a better price, their software isn't working right... it should be charging that person less (just lower enough to not trigger this 'find a better price' desire)
How much time a person is willing to spend to save money is going to be very proportional to how much money that person has, and this makes total sense.