The establishment vs Uber

[Jester]

Oh look, a thread on Uber. I unhide all my hides, Ctrl+F "gouge", 0 results. Quick scan, nope, never came up.

Uber broke the law by price-gouging during Hurricane Sandy, among many other events. Yes, sometimes laws exist for a reason. And they should be enforced. Some of the laws blocking Uber are crappy, but they don't even try to get them changed, they just break them. And I have absolute 0% sympathy for a company that illegally price gouges during emergencies. They can burn.

But... Uber is not a company with ordinary employees. Its drivers are essentially per-trip contractors, who can decide to work, or not work, and they get the majority (80%?) of the take. They determine their own hours - presumably also during Hurricanes!

Uber has (afaik) no power to coerce drivers into driving. All it can do is increase fares to attract more drivers into the system. They could lower their fares to be charitable to passengers, but then (I strongly suspect) the drivers will start reciting Jayne Cobb's "ten percent of nothing is... lemme do the math here" speech, and will decide it's more attractive to get the hell out of the way of a hurricane than drive people around for free.

-Jester