Slashdot Mirror
Uber Accused of Cashing In On Bomb Explosion By Jacking Rates (thesun.co.uk)
After a bomb exploded in Manhattan, leaving 29 injured, people leaving the scene discovered Uber had doubled their fares. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Sun:
Traumatized families caught up in the New York bomb blast have accused Uber of cashing in on the tragedy by charging almost double to take them home. Furious passengers have taken to social media to slam the taxi firm in the wake of the blast... Uber reportedly charged between 1.4 and 3 times the standard fare with one city worker saying he had to pay twice as much as usual. Mortgage broker Nick Lalli said: "Just trying to get home from the city and Uber f****** doubled the surge price."
"Demand is off the charts!" the app informed its users, adding "Fares have increased to get more Ubers on the road." Uber soon tweeted that they'd deactivated their surge pricing algorithm for the affected area in Chelsea, "but passengers in other areas of Manhattan said they were still being charged higher than normal fares." One of the affected passengers was Michael Cohen, who is Donald Trump's lawyer, who tweeted that Uber was "taking total advantage of chaos and surcharging passengers 1.4 to 1.8 times." And another Uber user tweeted "I'm disgusted. People are trying to get home safe. Shame on you #DeleteApp."
"Demand is off the charts!" the app informed its users, adding "Fares have increased to get more Ubers on the road." Uber soon tweeted that they'd deactivated their surge pricing algorithm for the affected area in Chelsea, "but passengers in other areas of Manhattan said they were still being charged higher than normal fares." One of the affected passengers was Michael Cohen, who is Donald Trump's lawyer, who tweeted that Uber was "taking total advantage of chaos and surcharging passengers 1.4 to 1.8 times." And another Uber user tweeted "I'm disgusted. People are trying to get home safe. Shame on you #DeleteApp."
Take a taxi?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Supply and demand. Market is efficiently allocating scarce resources. Price increase will increase supply providing consumers with more of the scarce resource. It's a thing of beauty really.
After a bomb exploded in Manhattan, leaving 29 injured, people leaving the scene discovered Uber had doubled their fares.
People called an Uber driver *into* a disaster area and/or potential terror/war zone for a ride home and are pissed that the rates went up? Hazard pay people. And private companies w/o public supervision can do whatever they want. If you don't like it, take a taxi or the subway, or fucking walk. First-world problems for sure.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Uber is exploiting people by using them as cheap labor. They need to be forced to pay them a living wage......... except when I need a cheap ride.
Uber drivers all leave Hell's Kitchen (aka Chelsea) to get surge rates in rest of Manhattan.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Headline should read "Uber Increases Driver Pay to Help Meet Emergency Demand."
How would you make the uber drivers go into an area they don't want to go into, if it isn't by offering them more money?? Armed police?
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Yeah, why would you, as an Uber driver, work in a much more risky environment if there's no additional pay? You barely make profit as it is and these assholes are whining about paying extra in chaos?
Allocation of scarce resources by price is not market failure. This is of particular importance during unusual circumstances.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
That's not a free market, that's a PopeRatzo strawman free market. Namely it's one that doesn't and can't exist as it's a fundamental oxymoron.
I think sane people want a "free market" to the extent possible. The government should only interfere when there's an actual problem and that problem is greatly damaging to society.
Paying $40 extra to an Uber driver - that's not one of those times. Paying $100k for a $5 drug because of a monopoly granted by the government in the _first place_ probably is.
So when you hear those evil capitalists carrying on about a free market, don't imagine Anarchy. You'll waste less of people's time deciphering your nonsense.
Uber didn't increase the rates because there was a bomb. Uber doubled the rate because nobody was traveling to the city, only away, so to get more drivers to make the one-way unpaid trip into the city to get a fair, they were paid for the empty portion by the person who wanted the ride.
The Uber rates aren't driven by disaster, but ride requests. This wasn't an evil plot, it was effective capitalism. If we can't tell the difference between capitalism and evil, that says something about both.
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