This Valentines day, while traveling through San Diego in an Uber car, Lane heard something that disturbed him. "The driver had a Ford Sync system, and it read his text messages out loud." The message, which came wedged between numerous texts about a promotion for free roses, said, "UberX is very close to SURGE. It's Valentine's Day! People will be out all night and we didn't activate new drivers to make earnings even higher this weekend." Emphasis added. It can't be overstated: this is the exact opposite of what Uber says it tries to do, which is boost driver supply accordingly when demand increases. Here, we have a case of Uber suppressing driver supply to exploit increased demand. Kalanick screams the gospel of unfettered market forces, and yet his company is now caught manipulating that very market, like the sort of Red Soviet bogeyman you imagine haunting his cashmere-lined dreams.
Shocking.
No comments:
Post a Comment