[rayiner]

I think you can make an argument that it’s bid rigging. Uber/Lyft pricing can be viewed as an auction where the surge price is the market clearing price. Conspiring with others to not accept bids below a floor could probably be prosecuted as a bid rigging conspiracy.

[jdmichal]

I don't see how it could be bid rigging, when the drivers are not even able to bid. Short of what the article discusses, they must take whatever Uber / Lyft give them. If anything, this seems more akin to actual negotiation / refusal to work at the proposed price. Which, if they are contractors, is perfectly acceptable, no?

[lisper]

> they must take whatever Uber / Lyft give them

No, they don't. No one is putting a gun to their head and forcing them to work. Uber/Lyft's offer is take-it-or-leave-it, but leaving it is always an option.

[perennate]

That leaving is an option is what the parent comment is saying ("refusal to work at the proposed price"). The drivers in the article are refusing to drive at the non-surge price, and when the price surges, they find the price acceptable and so take the rides.

The part of parent comment that you quoted is just about how the take-it-or-leave-it nature leaves no middle ground (bidding).

[lisper]

But that is false. Acceptance or refusal of an offer is bidding. It's essentially an auction: Lyft/Uber asks, "Does anyone want to sell at $X? No? OK, how about $X+1?" etc.

What the drivers are doing is not bidding, it is colluding to hide the true market price, i.e. what the lowest bidder would actually be willing to accept. That is illegal.

Please note that my sympathies are very much with the drivers. Their situation sucks and needs to be improved. But breaking the law is not the way to improve it.

[dullgiulio]

I wonder why the opposite is legal. If users are willing to pay more, Uber/Lyft will not automatically offer more to the drivers. Seems like the free-market works only when it is in favour of the company arbitraging.

[lisper]

The rules of capitalism are specifically designed to drive the price down as low as possible, in the ideal case, to the actual marginal cost of production. That's good for the buyer, bad for the seller, so sellers try all kinds of ways to get around this, some of which are legal (IP protection) and some are not (collusion, price-fixing). If you want to argue that we should change the rules I will not dispute you. But that the moment, that's where things stand.

[chipperyman573]

>But breaking the law is not the way to improve it.

Breaking the law is exactly what Uber and Lyft did and now that they're on the other side they're whining about it.

[lisper]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[EGreg]

You are implying that some drivers arr willing to accept it, but are not accepting it.

Aren’t you begging the question? How do you know this is the case?

[lisper]

If no drivers were willing to accept the lower rates there would be no reason for them to collude.

[jakelazaroff]

> What the drivers are doing is not bidding, it is colluding to hide the true market price, i.e. what the lowest bidder would actually be willing to accept. That is illegal.

Is that what's happening? The drivers have no ability to coerce other drivers. It seems to me that if there were a driver willing to accept a lower price, they would do so. But not enough drivers are willing, so Uber/Lyft is forced to increase its offer.

[lisper]

Of course that's what's happening. Collusion != coercion. Collusion is voluntary.

What is really happening here is that Uber wants the drivers to play a multi-player prisoner's dilemma, and the drivers want to coordinate cooperation. Uber wants to force the price to the lowest that the market will bear and the drivers want to force the price to the highest the market will bear. The rules of capitalism are specifically designed to produce the former outcome.