[thisisit]

The author seems to be confused on cause and effect. The newspaper example shows customers were better off 3+years with "The Times" pricing.

The whole thing needs to be understood by looking at how things actually started. Let's take the example of Uber. People weren't happy with the way taxi services were operating so it was ripe for "disruption". But, getting into a stranger's car for a ride was not really a solution.

So Uber had to create a two way market - entice people to offer their cars and entice people to take a stranger's car. They also had to offer up incentives on both sides of the market to ensure participation - offer drivers with perks and higher payouts while the riders got cheap pricing. Once the market was established and verified they had to find a way to make money. The only problem was riders or customers could not be inconvenienced, at least a lot. So, now the drivers had to bear the brunt.

But, this will lead to some unintended consequences. An example is that instead of trying to charge customers fairly Uber uses "surge pricing" - so much so that there are place which are mulling to ban this practice. Then there are cases of drivers trying to defraud riders too. This invariably causes lowered customer experience.