1. theguardian.com/technology/201… It could possibly be that this story isn't right - or that these are the exception rather than the rule (I suspect that it _is_ right, but anyways). If correct, what this tells us is that the standard libertarian shtick on Uber/Lyft is basically wrong.

2. As @ryanlcooper caught back in the day, "philosophers" like Jason Brennan claimed that people who opposed surge pricing ought be disenfranchised. This, apparently, was not a joke - he reportedly made the claim in conference settings too.

3. The argument being a market efficiency argument - that the best allocation of resources was a market with better price discrimination. Apart from the equity issues, captured in Cosma's "shit machine" post bactra.org/weblog/841.html - there is an obvious problem.

4. No rational business _wants_ perfect competition. Perfect competition means no rents. No rents means unhappy shareholders and worthless stock options. Unhappy shareholders and worthless stock options means fired CEOs.

5. So the Uber/Lyft long term play isn't a magical future of autonomous self-driving cars for cheap, leading to market efficiency awesome. It's a much more standard story of exploitative information asymmetries. Uber and Lyft are positioned at an information chokepoint.

6. It is very hard for their customers to know what they are paying drivers. It is hard (though not impossible) for their drivers to know what customers are paying. And a combination of high collective action costs and legal regime makes it very hard for drivers to organize.

7. The result is that the only plausible path to profitability for Uber and Lyft is through exploiting the informational and power asymmetry - squeezing the drivers to bare maintenance level, while using surge pricing to price discriminate among customers.

8. The extent to which most platform plays may plausibly actually be information/power asymmetry plays has yet to get proper attention thanks to "markets are awesome rhetoric" but it's likely important. Finis.