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Ask HN: Why doesn't Uber pay drivers using free market bidding?

2 points by crgwbr ↗ HN
There seems to be a lot of debate on things regarding the amount which companies like Uber and Lyft pay their drivers, whether surge pricing is ethical, etc. But all of this stems from the fact that the company directly sets the price of the service.

To me, it seems like it would make more sense to let drivers set their own price per mile / minute and to have to service automatically select the cheapest nearby driver. That would also give the user the ability to request a higher rated driver or quicker pickup (and pay more) or a lower rated driver or longer wait time (and pay less).

Why haven't they gone this path? Are there ecomnomic considerations in not thinking of? Is it just a matter of being too complex to implement?

2 comments

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nnn1234
It's not too complex to implement. Think of uber's USP a taxi in X minutes ,the smaller the X the more rides they get.

Analogizing to the past ,let's say you hailed a cab before Uber and had to choose how much the driver would charge, would you do that?

A metric based pricing (distance with some initial price) is much more time efficient for the rider and driver.

I know that travelling X miles will cost y $ across the board. If I have to not only choose type of service but quality of service that's one more thing I have to do. Given that we know I will pay close to $Y for X travelled any cost plus price around Y seems logical to me.

Issue with tech coming into play is the cost X is significantly decreasing ( threatened by reducing driver pay)

If we take into account driver pay as a separate part of cost per ride, then eliminating that makes most sense.