Surge Pricing Will Kill Us All 

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I remember my econ history when merchants would try to do "surge pricing" during famines back in the day, and the community banded together to break into their food storage and to lynch the merchant.

23:51 - oh god, this is basically just a description of the technically optimal strategy in Roller Coaster Tycoon: inspect each guest before they enter the park to see how much money they have, then set the park entry price to that amount, since they'll never refuse the entry fee as long as they can pay it.

Economists are really out here calculating CumFares, CumHours, and CumDist but we're still supposed to take them seriously.

Omg.... I see your face. I thought up to this point you were a sentient economics book

I spent a winter delivering for UberEats, one other way they insensitivize working during surge times is that, while the customer only sees the surge price, I would see how much I’d normally make plus the added surge price presented as a bonus. I also remember one day there was a blizzard and the app sent out notifications about it ahead of time saying how much more I’d be making that day.

"Willingness to pay correlates to need" sounds like something someone with a high ability to pay would say

My dad was forced to make a living off of driving for Uber after he had to leave his last job due to terrible safety standards (Oil/chemical distribution, shocker that they refuse to spend money on safety). It's a psychological nightmare for a working class person to do that for a living. The ups and downs in income is terrible for mental health and physical health because it forces you to be on the road for long periods of time for very little benefit. At his peak, he was making $2k+ a week (this was extremely short lived and made no real mid/long-term impact on his life), but driving for like 70 hours. Like most work in this world, there is an abusive relationship between the employer and the employee. But it did prove something about this video to be correct, the higher pay did result in more drivers. The point is, it resulted in income cutting in half and then in half again when factoring in vehicle upkeep and gas costs. And there STILL weren't enough drivers. The reason for that, I believe, is that Uber has also tapped into the idea of "what is the maximum amount of time people are willing to wait for a certain price". This is how they've been getting away with paying drivers so low lately imo. My father always seemed very busy on the road, with lots of stories of people talking about how they had been waiting 45+ minutes for a ride. Just off the top of my head, it's hard to think of a company that takes advantage of poor/working class people on a more extreme level, really doing everything in their power to drain every spare fucking cent out of not only their customers, but their employees as well. Thankfully after almost 3 years of driving full time for them (about half of this time spent $400/week minimum on car rentals due to his truck's engine giving out, with no way to save up for a new vehicle and absolutely no help or sympathy from Uber), he has escaped back to a regular, normal 9-5 job that takes advantage of him and makes his life miserable at times. Man, this world is fucking depressing. Thanks for the interesting video though

The Freakonomics quote hits perfectly on the greatest con of the econ community of the last century: the idea that they are able to "describe the world as truly is" and those who disagree are just "politically motivated". Great video!

I’m from Ukraine and surge pricing is really prominent here during the war, it leads to a lot of frustration as you mentioned in the video. So as you might have heard, russia systematically attacks our power grid in order to kill our electricity. A lot of our public transport is electrified, like underground city rail or trolleys, so as you can imagine once these attacks happen people switch to different modes of transport with lower passenger capacity like regular buses or taxis. Taxi services like uber, bolt or uklon use surge pricing so prices for a ride home go thru the roof.

"The standard assumption is that labor has a choice between work and play." The greatest setup in comedy history!

There's so much that could be said about Uber "breaking up the taxi monopoly"... Accepting massive losses to undercut the competition and simply ignoring longstanding regulations aren't options for most companies.

Supply and demand concepts were meant to be descriptive. But as some point they became prescrictive. It was meant to describe a trend but turned into a dogma of greed.

My natural suspicion is the surge pricing has the intended effect that whilst it raises supply numbers of taxi drivers, it has the much more realistic goal of also massively increasing profits during peak times.

I explicitly remember when I drove for Uber how the day would disappear. I appreciate you bringing up the psychological manipulation - the bonus structures of Uber and Lyft made me want to keep driving for the extra money and the gamification with bells/chimes/bloops of the app made me feel like I was playing a casino game. Often I would find I would lose track of time and I would feel existentially empty that I was taking another ride at 3 in the morning.

I wanted to tell you I appreciate the effort put into your subtitles. A lot of people need them. Accessibility helps everyone. Thank you :)

The end goal of capital is to create the same pricing black box model that you see in airline tickets or medical supply companies. If markets function on disparities of information, the natural tendency to chase profits will lead to opaque pricing policies designed to nickel and dime us all to death

Don't know if you mention it further on in the video, but one often overlooked benefit of queues (at least of the physical kind) is that in real life settings, it can prioritize somewhat based on actual need. People can and will cede their place to someone behind them in cases where there might be an emergency, or out of politeness.

Imagine if you had to show up 6am to the bakery and bid on every loaf of bread with 1000 othe people to make sure demand and price were aligned optimally.

The reason why Taxi's were heavily regulated in the UK & EU was to stop nonsense like surge pricing & psychological manipulation. It's Uber exploiting it's customers, and it should be forced to operate to the same standards as other Licenced operators, Taxi & Private Hire. For the most part it is here, but Surge pricing still remains unfortunately...

I remember everyone calling me to cry about Uber's prices, and I couldn't resist telling them I TOLD YOU SO. Everyone wants a good deal, and now they're paying MORE for Uber than regular cabs because of convenience, not because of a good deal. Consumers suffer, drivers suffer, Uber gets rich. And there is no demand curve, either people need a cab or they don't.

As someone who closely knows three people who have all driven for Uber and done UberEats for 5+ years straight now, none of their base rough hourly wages have increased aside from their own abilities to "hustle" i.e. play into churn and burn work ethics. Since Q2 2020, Uber and Lyft's surge pricing algo has gotten approximately 70% more aggressive, in that the price hikes' exponents reach those insane $20/mi levels at least 70% faster. Even more nefariously, both companies currently schedule surges ahead of time for all holidays, sports gatherings, extreme weather events, music events, and even experiment with personalized surges based on your phone data - including your birthday, work schedule, or religious holidays. Because there is a direct duopoly of the rideshare industry (AND the delivery industry), they have just as much control as a monopoly would, with none of the legal oversight or narrowed market guidelines. Disgusting.

The thing about the "just make the income distribution more egalitarian" argument is that surge pricing isn't just about consumers, it also affects the income of workers in the first place. Having a large portion of the economy experiencing not only volatile prices but also volatile incomes is a recipe for disaster. Volatility is bad for long term planning and there are many good reasons to want to decrease volatility in the overall economy. Stable prices and long term planning are yet another benefit of public transportation and active transportation.

"Willingness to pay" might as well be called "wealth-based rationing." Unless you're relatively well-off and you're in an emergency, your willingness to pay for anything depends almost entirely on how many other things you'd have to give up that you'll no longer be able to comfortably afford. In other words, how much money you have.

This was really interesting and informative! One important thing I think was missing from this discussion, though, is how the need for a ride within a reasonable time frame is unequally distributed. The argument that Uber is making is that no one *needs* a ride and the only cost to not being able to afford one during surges is a longer wait, and for all the great analysis in this video, it seems to be taking that claim at face value, which I think is a mistake. As a person who presents female, I occasionally will use the "express" feature on a ride share app to get a ride quicker, which fortunately I'm able to do. And the only times I have ever used this feature are when I'm being aggressively hit on, or followed, or creepily stared at by a strange man at night and I feel unsafe where I am. Sometimes, waiting in a place that isn't your home at certain times for certain people can be dangerous. So, hypothetical scenario #1: Money is tight, but you're excited to let off some steam and celebrate the new year with your friends. You make a budget for the night based on the prices listed on Uber for a ride home that afternoon, and pick somewhere fun that you can afford to get home from. Fast forward and it's 2am, the club has just closed, and you're more than a little tipsy at this point, not to mention exhausted. You and your friends each order rides home, and yours is the last to arrive. You glance down at your phone to check the remaining wait time, and suddenly notice that the $15 trip you had planned for is going to actually cost you $300! You quickly cancel the ride and decide to wait for the surge pricing to calm down. An hour later, nothing has changed, and you are alone, exhausted, drunk, cold, dressed for clubbing, and completely unable to get home. Or, hypothetical scenario #2: There's a huge protest being held nearby for a cause that's important to you, so you get a ride from a friend and head into the city. While you're out, the mayor declares a curfew--anyone still in the streets at sunset is automatically a criminal. Maybe you don't hear about the new order, or maybe you lose track of time, or maybe you just don't care. The second the sun sets, police attack the crowd, spraying tear gas, firing rubber bullets at random, chasing down fleeing protesters and beating them with batons. You get separated from your friend during the chaos and no longer have a ride, so you run a few blocks and then duck into an alley and frantically pull up Uber. Apparently you aren't the only one--surge prices are activated and you can't get home for less than $200! You run a little further before realizing you've gotten yourself lost, and notice your phone is nearly out of battery after the long day. You can't afford a $200 Uber, your friend isn't answering your calls, and before the surge prices fall, your phone dies, leaving you stranded, lost and alone in the city past curfew, while heavily-militarized police scour the streets for stragglers. Both of these scenarios make the distinction between surge pricing for Uber vs surge pricing for healthcare a whole lot less meaningful. I'd be shocked if Scenario #1 hasn't happened already, and while Scenario #2 may sound a little further fetched, it's certainly not implausible. For many people, especially those in positions of privilege, all rides are "frivolous"; but for those living at the intersection of class and another form of oppression, access to an affordable ride in a reasonable timeframe can be incredibly serious, even a matter of life and death.

im beginning to see a pervasive theme in economics that is naming things and treatibg them as real before they have been empirically established.

Never feel bad about putting out longer stuff... I honestly would rather sift through a couple of hours of whatever you put out than watch many other things. That is if you feel adding more is actually adding. I think you do an admirable job editing.

When you mentioned social safety net in Nordic countries, I can't help but be kinda sad, cause while we've def have it better then most countries, the fact is that in Sweden most of the parties are leaning towards moderate, or neo liberal, and have slowly over the years to privatize everything, or make poor people pay money, (like with several museums in Stockholm, which used have free entry, but will now be forced to introduce Entry fees again soon).

"Uber knows the drivers have income targets, which is why they keep raising it, just out of reach" Holy crap. Literal Catch-22 villainy here.

Pricing really is something interesting, almost esoteric. As I read about the current European winter with high gas prices and records in profits for energy providers, it becomes clear how competition between these companies cannot work against their shared urge to raise prices at any glimpse of opportunity (there is a war, yay). Consumers will think it is justified because of said opportunity (and they have no choice either in this case - a free market in which participation is mandatory is quite free indeed). It is not like people can jump to the next provider the way they can buy a different brand of soy milk. There is effort, research, contract lengths, cryptic pricing schemes, etc. Oligopolies will oligopole, I guess...

It's funny how the whole "time is money" thing is (correctly, mind you) bandied about, but people don't see willingness/ability to wait as being comparable to willingness/ability to pay. Not to say they're exactly equivalent, because I don't necessarily think they are, but it's convenient that something that can't be banked (literally and figuratively) is viewed as being less valuable than something that can.

Apologies if someone has already brought this up (or if you bring it later in the video - which I'm still watching), but I learnt pretty quickly a few years back when I was taking long haul flights a few times a year (normal for many - very unusual for me!) to do any research in 'Incognito' mode. If you researched a price on Expedia for an upcoming trip, and made a note of the price, then, when everything was finalised for your trip, you went back to purchase the ticket, it would have *always* gone up by at least 20%. But if you did that research, still using Expedia, but not logging in, and being 'Incognito' in the browser too, then, when you wanted to actually buy the ticket, it was the original, lower price. I'm not sure if this is common knowledge - I'm not one of the jet set! Just thought I'd share my experiences. Very interesting vid, BTW - subscribed.

I haven't finished the video yet, but putting this down to mark my thoughts: while a queue (first come, first serve) is more fair for removing capability of paying as a barrier to access, I think people must be able to go further and ask "Now that capability of pay is no longer a barrier, what do we do about one's capability to get into and stay in the queue?" We see this happen with voting and one can probably draw a good parallel from it to surge pricing. Voting has also had cost barriers put in place in the form of poll taxes, historically. We currently face issue of long lines. However, in the US, both have a history of being tactics to target marginalized groups. So, now we have to ask ourselves: how do we make it easier to wait in line to vote or to remove the lines altogether WHILE also not preventing people from voting? Edit: Okay I've continued watching and pretty much all worries I have had are addressed immediately.

What they always "forget": "If you are willing AND ABLE to pay enough". 200 dollars isn't the same amount of money to a poor person and a millionaire.

In some US cities, its often illegal to be a pedestrian in some areas, as there are no side and crosswalks to get you out of certain blocks, let alone any public transport. If a potential customer was stranded in an area they can't legally get out of by being priced out of a cab, just what is such an individual supposed to do? If they were black they could plausibly get shot for jaywalking if they ran into the wrong cop. Someone might be tempted to try late night informal hitching. I suspect the policy has already led to assaults, robberies, and even deaths. What happens if there's still a big crowd, waiting in subzero temperatures after an event venue has chucked out and closed down late at night and there's no affordable transport? What happens if you have to get to work and you forced to fork out more than you're actually going to earn just because the shift you're forced to work happens to be at the same time as a big event? Note another aspect of Uber policy is to try and put out of business not only rival cab firms, but also public transport. Their claim of 'breaking' taxi monopolies ring hollow when they're trying to establish their own complete monopoly.

When I first heard about surge pricing I assumed the the driver was given all the extra money, but later found that the driver took the same % off the ride price and Uber kept the rest for themselves. So surge pricing actually benefited Uber more than it did their drivers. I'm not sure if this has changed but if not F' Uber! Thay are grabbing extra cash for nothing, making bank while their drivers face the social cost of dealing with people angry about paying extra for a ride.

"The question is not just whether these assumptions are accurate. It's whether we want them to be." Beautiful quote that gets to the heart of my distrust of much of economic theory in general.

This is the first of your videos I've watched in probably a year and I just wanted to say I enjoyed it a lot more and was able to wrap my head around it and didn't zone out like I have in the past. I really appreciate how much more accessible it felt, and the jokes and metaphors helped a lot!

I can foresee the day when companies have such an accurate model of who you are-gleaned from tracking your every move in the “connected world”-that they’re able to charge potential “troublemakers” more for food, rent, utilities, etc., such as to force you to work longer hours, in order to prevent your having the time to educate yourself, to protest workplace conditions, to organize a union, or to impact your world in any uncontrollable way; your expenses will *always* exceed your income by, say, 5%, even as you routinely work 100-hour weeks, while someone who scores highly on docility, or subservience, or on angrily supporting the status quo, will pay so little for expenses as to always have ample free time to vote for the bosses or to roam the streets cracking troublemakers’ skulls.

Not sure how transparent Uber is with their pay but I remember a driver telling me once that past a certain distance or time on a trip their share of the fare was capped and the rest was kept by the company

I love that you don't just follow the trends and put out these videos on surprising and interesting topics.

we stan the New York driver's co-operative

I love how tight and focused this video is.

I think I saw Unlearning Economics at a debate in Norway a couple of years ago, about the economics profession. :)

This doesn't mention that drivers use multiple apps simultaneously and game the surge pricing using nasty tricks - people think they're booking an uber, but the driver never turns up. After cancelling, if they try to book a trip with another driver, it's suddenly more expensive. The idea that it's about tailoring the pricing based on some sort of economic science is a joke. It's just old fashioned price gouging. Creating fake shortages and fake demand is not evidence of an efficient system.

I love purely informational videos like this. No hard agenda pushing. This guy and his team are amazing teachers

The most important thing (at least when it comes to luxuries like Uber) is that the price is predictable imo. The customer has to be able to know up front roughly what the drive will cost. You typically know that from experience so if prices suddenly rise that has to be very clearly indicated in the app or told to them before they begin the ride. Anything else would be extremely anti-consumer.

What does my head in even more is that uber and the like plan to raise prices once they're a monopoly, and investors ACTUALLY think this is a viable business model

I loved this one. The final line was borderline poetic. How much do we actually want our economy to reflect the basic assumptions of an introductory course in economics is such a great question. I feel like that question could be explored very thoroughly over a bunch of videos if you felt like it. There are so many attempts by our leaders to claim that a description of the facts as reflecting base assumptions and this being somehow normative is so deeply frustrating.

I found this interesting and relevant to my own work life.. Im a self employed carpenter, and when im in periods of having lots of work in my diary, i increase the rate i charge people per day for any new leads i get, this will either put people off and make them go elsewhere (which is fine, im busy at the moment).. or theyre happy to wait, and im happy to be earning more money per day which means i can work less days per week.. I have now found after continually increasing prices i tend to work soley for rich customers, and i doubt id even be able to afford my own services were i to have to pay my prices.. strange scenario, that ive never really thought of until now.

Love that you brought up Snow Crash. Less than a fan of the fact that the book doesn’t feel too far from reality anymore.

My step-dad passed away 2 years ago and had been working for Uber for 5 years at that point. He worked 70 hours a week and was our main source of income. He literally had to take out loans and open up credit cards in mine and my mom's names to make ends meet. He did not communicate this to us, presumably so that we wouldn't worry and would think everything was fine. When he passed we were saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt that we're only now getting close to paying off over 2 years after he passed away.

Loved the video, you started from the basics, worked your way up in a way I was easily able to follow and understand.

Top-notch stuff. You're one of the few intelligent and hard-working youtubers left who make it worthwile spending my afternoons on this platform

When i used to go to college, i would pay 13$ for a ride. Nothing out of ordinary, and a reasonable price here. Then, suddenly it went to 24$. At first, i thought it was because of rush hour, problem is, the price has never gone down.

I appreciate the trickling accumulation of the prevalence of you humor, into your videos.

I wouldnt say queuing is an equal opportunity, obviously those who have more downtime, and less dependent on cabs, and prior knowledge and preparation will benefit from queuing. Anyone who has to use for work or other neccessary means, or simply dont have bank account, just have no opportunity to get there first. I think a fairer system benefits those most in need but then we are talking about communism and now Im crazy person.

first UE video i completely understood. not sure whether that's because i had a nap immediately before it, or you're improving. great work!!

Always love what you put out, but I did find the old voiceover format more intuitive and enjoyable personally.

When I paused this video to get some food, the subtitles read, _'Look, surge pricing isn't all bad,'_ as the title flashed at the top and reminded me this video is called _Surge Pricing Will Kill Us All._

It's especially annoying to hear "those who need it most" in this context - because disabled people often depend on taxis and are likely to be much less able to pay.

11:00 Something this section misses is how surge pricing works for drivers. When I was an uber driver, if you're offline, you'd never be given a notification "there's a high surge in your area, go out and work". That's not how it works. instead, what happens is that while ON the job, your map shows you a heatmap of surges. encouraging you to drive over to that area to pick up customers. Surge prices don't add more uber drivers to the road (unless you know ahead of time like new years, or friday evenings by the bars), they MOVE drivers with no riders from less popular areas to more popular areas

As someone who was an Uber driver, I never thought about surge pricing as being a mechanism to get more drivers on the road. To me, it was always something pulling you to another location, to make drivers who are already on the road congregate in a busy area.

GREAT video. very high quality. Thank you for sharing your work and analysis. There’s a lot to chew on here.

An alternate title for this video would be "In Defense of the Queue".

Great video. I think there are some other aspects of the supply/demand thing that are possibly relevant here. As surge pricing "adds drivers" it is sometimes cannibalising from... drivers. Many drivers here drive for a variety of companies including Uber - and will switch during a shift depending on the availability of fares and income. From Ubers perspective they've "added supply" but from a consumers perspective the supply remains unchanged. Additionally while you did talk about it a little bit I think the demand side is not nearly as logical as they suggest and not just because people are not like that but also because of information imbalance. If I could look up prices in advance I might not go somewhere at a time when I would have to pay huge amounts to get home. If I was there and didn't like the prices I might wait till they go down, if I knew that they would at a given time. Instead I go out not knowing what the cost will be, and I have no idea when looking at a too-expensive rate if waiting will help or make it worse. The lack of information in advance also applies to drivers - many drivers do not live where they would primarily work. So they need to know in advance, to be able to go there and so on. They can guess when surge pricing may kick in, but they may be wrong. By the time they have arrived they've already invested money and thus have to work a certain amount to recoup their expenses regardless of the rate. If Uber were using all their extensive data and so on to pre-price stuff by at least say 12 hours or so I'd find it a lot better in terms of people being able to choose when they work and when they take a taxi. Doesn't solve the socially regressive issues of course. (Not an economist so apologies for layman-ness!)

"As a British person I'm legally obliged to say that this ignores all the fun of queing" *YT cuts to an ad showing refugees waiting in line for a bowl of soup* The algorithm has some dark humour.

What gets left out in the discussion of surge and dynamic pricing is that they happen in markets with little or no competition. Uber “disrupted” taxis by engaging in unethical and illegal practices, lobbied local politicians to legitimize their business, and ran hives losses in order to underprice the competition and take over the market. It’s not like car insurance in the US where there is a level of competition and access to providers that drivers can actually shop around for rates.

"people with hotmail addresses were also charged more" wtf!! I use that!! >:(

Heavy feels related to Defunctland's video on Fastpass - Willingness to pay, monetizing prioritization in a theme park line, extracting $ using manipulative information feed. Optimization of revenue generation, the trap of infinite growth.

Isn't the "econobrain" exactly the idea of "objectivism" by Ayn Rand? She even used it in a same context.

This is really funny to watch. In Russia (yes, bear with me) there is local taxi service called Yandex Taxi. Its basically same as Uber, but they implemented this "surge" feature years before. And guess what? Very quickly its became "high demand, prices increased" almost whole day except deep night. And company answers to complaints was basically "bigger demand - bigger price, big price - demand drops and those who REALLY need ride (=willing to pay anyway) will get their ride". Problem is that "increased demand" is almost always so price never drop much. Heck, i heard rumors people observed "high demand" warnings at dead hours.

Here's a crazy idea to the new years eve problem. We give a fixed amount of money, let's say, per year. We give these people, some sort of fixed hour limit per week (so we know how many customers they can service). Then on special days, we can put more of these people on, pay them more (to meet increased demand), or incentivise with some sort of pay bonus if they wish to work more than the fixed amount of hours. Oh wait...

When I was doing economic thought experiments a while back (because I'm a nerd), I bumped into this same problem. Who says whether people will prefer more money for the same amount of work, or less work for the same money? Similarly, if supply increases, what happens to the demand? In an impoverished country, the demand will surely rise along with the supply, but at some point it will stop naturally. Economics just assumes one of the two and bases all its theories on that: People always want more.

A minor quibble about your discussion of WTP (maybe I missed you saying that): The amount of money someone is willing to pay also increases as a person gets richer. So, they do not want the cab more, the money they are willing to spend is just the same relative amount of their total income or wealth as it would be for a poorer person.

This video is so great! Definitely going to watch more by you

I nominate "Driber" as the official shorthand for "Uber driver"

Treating the most luxurious transport like a necessity feels kind of strange, you don't wait forever if you can't pay for taxi, you just take public transport.

I know you mentioned banning psychological manipulation as a joke, but I think it probably will be a thing at some point in the future at the legal world. It could be proven to be dangerous and argued for it to be a crime in numerous forms, so that'd be nice.

One of the things that drives me nuts about economics is how much it mirrors design in one important dimension: when done well, it's invisible. The worst economists and supporters of the worst economic policies are the loudest because they have to yell the loudest against all the complaints created by their choices. Plus a ton of these discussions about enticing drivers one important human metric: word-of-mouth goodwill bringing in more drivers total to handle surge situations. If I KNEW I would get excellent employee support and solid benefits and wages for my time worked, I would definitely work part-time doing surge driving to help me survive. But I only hear how much they shit on and/or ignore workers and passengers just to protect whoever is behind the app itself, the faceless corpos. I'm sure Uber/Lyft customer support workers get screwed over too I mean, I specifically mean the people whose job it is is to be sociable and deny responsibility. Management and higher, basically.

If hourly wages are unusually high during New Year's, I can see how some drivers might decide to go over their daily goal in order to have more relaxed hours the rest of the month, or make up for time lost during christmas for example. All this does is reduce the monthly hours required to reach the goal, which will reduce overall supply outside of surges.

It's funny. I can imagine an economist arguing that there's no useful distinction between "willingness to pay" vs "ability to pay," since you don't need to care about "why" someone is willing or unwilling. But you've hit the nail on the head in noting that "willingness to pay" is not correlated with "need." There's a lot of literature on the distribution of malaria medication, and how it tends to end up in the hands of wealthy communities that already have good healthcare and so have less need. It's because those wealthier communities can pay, so they end up with the meds. This happens even for anti-malaria charities!

As a person working in the gig economy (not at uber) i strongly agree that workers tend to use income targets. Personally i use a combination of minimum income & maximum hours worked per day. What strikes me in the case of uber, is that the days when prices are high are highly predictable (national holidays etc) and this might cause people to change their target income for that day before hand or decide to forgo it entirely for the day. if i knew that i could be charging a lot more on certain days, i would probably take it easy a few days before hand if possible, work my arse off on the day, and then sit at the couch for a week after. i agree that uber&surge pricing suck as f*ck, but it might be interesting to research whether workers' income targets change according to their estimates of their potential earnings and how does the availability of taxis change just before/after the peak days.

I always liked your videos and the increased rate of your dry-humour jokes is a nice treat on to of in-depth discussions.

"Surge pricing" is just acute price gouging. The company is functioning like any asshole store that decides to make water $35 during a major natural disaster.

jesus h christ that "Now i cant wait in line anymore" Ralph clip just shot me all the way back to middle school so vividly

I think it would be really cool if you were to have a conversation about this with Michael Munger from Duke university. He has shared some good insights on the economics and ethics of using price to allocate resources in times of elevated scarcity during his many apearences on EconTalk.

Nice reference to Snow Crash. Seems like a lot of gig corps have read that book as a manual rather than a critique.

Hearing about cars make me go insane now. I want to live it a world full of bikes and a tram on every street.

6:33 Healthcare has this thing in hospitals called triage where you can "cut the line" if the doctor gives you priority based on the severity of your physical state. That includes emergencies wich are attended immediately. I think it was a poor example for this case.

The truth is Uber ran at a loss initially to attract customers but had to balance the books somehow eventually.

It would be awesome to see a summary on your second channel of the rabbit hole of Uber driver research. Nothing as high quality and high effort as your normal videos. Or maybe even a main channel video on the topic. Great video!

I will stop everything to watch anything you put out, I'm so glad you make content. You've made me more critical of economics and better for it.

Grab, a large Southeast asian company that started as a ride hailing app, is also doing this. Drivers don't get a lot of customers and riders wait way too long, especially during "rush hours". I knew something was up when I talked with many drivers who all say they haven't gotten many customers lately.

Dynamic pricing is really annoying as someone who doesn't own a car. It makes it incredibly annoying and sometimes impossible to get around when i don't know exactly what the cost will be. Always have to lunge at good prices months in advance. I'm very glad my home country's regular trains are extremely predictably priced. If it wasn't just high speed/international trains I'd hate my life. Ugh

Recurring theme of Unlearning Economics: - "You don't understand economics" - "No, you don't understand human culture" Uber and firms in general trying to bend the cultural attitudes on pricing is a huge problem.

One of the first things you study in introductory psychology courses is ethics in psychology. Fun to hear about these social scientists and psychologists working to leverage people into working more. Super ethical. 10/10

"if your target for the day is $100, you'll probably reach it every day. With surge pricing on New Year's Eve, you might even make it in just one trip." Unfortunately for the driver, this never happens. Unfortunately Uber pockets most of that surge fare. I used to drive full time and breaking 60 a day was getting to be a struggle. The drivers are definitely not winning with Uber.

So to make this very good video even shorter: Surge Pricing makes an existing problem (unequal income distribution) much worse. But it's far from the actual problem and, most importantly, can be dealt with in good ways that do not rely on a ban. You know. Proper and good regulation. In a deeply unequal income distribution, however, Surge Pricing without regulations only exists to exasperate the problems inherent to the situation. So it's better to fix the source (lowering the highest incomes while raising the lowest) than ban something that can reflect the current supply.

The problem with queueing: it can be circumvented, and become the same as surge pricing. For example with Taylor Swift concerts, scalpers artificially inflate their own position in the queue, and then sell the tickets for more. So it ends up being the same situation as "surge pricing" except the additional profits go to a middle man instead of the producer. Not a good outcome. If Uber was purely queue based, I would expect to see automated scalper services.