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by AnthonyMouse 3170 days ago
> That's an ad-hominem.

Its an explanation of their motives.

> If you're going to claim people are complaining just to complain then you need to support your case that this sleazy pay-to-play scheme isn't a sleazy pay-to-play scheme.

It has an obvious benefit in increasing available supply. Once a driver has paid the fee they have 35% more incentive to provide service.

> Just because Uber is trying to fix something bad (surge pricing) doesn't mean their solution (this ridiculous scheme) isn't also bad.

Neither of them is actually bad.

Bad is the inability to get a ride during high demand because nobody is doing either of those things.

> The first problem is that drivers have no way to know that until they've lost money on the deal.

That only works the first time. After that the driver has their own experience to draw on.

> Since Uber controls who gets rides, they can make sure that some portion of drivers come out ahead using this scheme.

In which case only those drivers will sign up next time and the pool of drivers willing to sign up shrinks every time.

> When other drivers claim they lost money or just broke even, the "winning" drivers can chime in that the scheme worked great for them.

Nobody cares what other people say when their own personal experience says something else.

It's easy to trick anyone once, but then they won't trust you anymore. People not trusting you forevermore is an expensive price to pay for a one time payout.

1 comments

Did you know that many people buy lottery tickets week after week based on their understanding that other people are winning, and not their own experience of losing constantly?
> Did you know that many people buy lottery tickets week after week based on their understanding that other people are winning, and not their own experience of losing constantly?

Because lottery tickets are entertainment. People with crappy jobs get to imagine telling off their stupid boss and moving to their own private island. The fact that it never happens doesn't mean people won't pay $1 to imagine it. Or for the feeling they get when the numbers are being read and the first two or three actually match once in a while.

There is nothing equivalently exciting about temporarily getting paid 35% more at work.

Probably because a one in tens of millions chance is infinitely larger than a zero in tens of millions chance.

And people say lottery players are bad at math!