A Rant on Uber-Surge-Price-Rants
So there are many people complaining about Uber charging 10x the normal rate for rides on New Year’s Eve (first seen here).
My immediate reactions:
- It’s the market, baby
- you wanted it, you got it
- just say “no thanks”
- did somebody force you to use it?
- drivers deserve every cent of it
- did you try a normal cab? where not able to get one? why might this be?
- be an Uber driver yourself next holiday
But also “thinking slow” there are so many things wrong with complaining about surge prices.
- Uber driving is not known to be a well paid profession. Mainly because the market forces work here to make it a race to the bottom. Therefore it absolutely makes sense to allow the market forces to push up the prices when demand is higher. I wonder how many people complaining about the surge prices work in a environment where competition is as fierce as for Uber drivers. If the do, they should understand. And shut up about it. And if they work in a more protected environment they should consider using taxies run by union friendly companies. All the time.
- People are afraid that Uber will use its market dominating position to squeeze more money out of … well pretty anyone using its system. No shit, Sherlock. Uber is obliged to make a tons of money, this is expected by its investors. Those fantasy numbers have to have a reason, and those reasons don’t have to be rationally founded.
- What keeps another company to copy-cat Ubers business proposition? There is nothing special about it, just create an Uber clone and undercut the prices. Of course, Uber has the momentum on its side at the moment. But so did MySpace.
- Really think hard about that “free market thing”: Uber is Ayn Rands vision come true. “Disruptive Uberization” (Bullshit Bingo!) comes at a cost. And we will pay these costs, sooner or later. I rather prefer that individuals pay in a transparent way that whole societies have to bail out “too big to fail” companies.
This may sound like an Uber-Bashing, but that is not the goal. Uber is not the root of all evil, it is just a company making what it should be making: money.
This is a shout-out to all people irrationally complaining about free markets but taking all the advantages those free markets give them. Hell, this article is written on a product assembled in China by a company known to treat the employees like de facto slaves, so go figure. No saints here…
So what did we do on new years eve? Take the public transportation. Was late by an hour, overcrowded with drunken youths, and we had to walk 20 minutes.
But the driver had the same income as last and next month.