Are we the baddies?

For some people, paying the premium to jump the queue is the point. What they didn't forsee is what happens when everyone has wound up paying the premium, and the queue is now with you again. This is mostly Australian frequent flyers, when it was a high barrier to entry it conferred advantages and now Fly in Fly out work has commoditised club status, there is next to no boarding advantage, and no points flight availability.

So yes. Status seeking, and differential price seeking probably is a-social as a pattern when it's weaponised against the consumer.

That said, I hated Uber, they actually offered to underwrite people breaking the law to get foot in the door (how that didn't get them excluded as a corporate scofflaw is beyond me) and they continue to export all the profits offshore, but taxi services had become shit and now we have got used to Uber and I just don't worry about surge pricing. I got boiled slowly.

My fellow Australians all feel a bit shit about the introduction of tipping in paywave and food service. That's unaustralian. We have legally enforced minimum wages and penalty rates. Turn that feature off.

The European push to mandate included luggage in flight is seeing a fair bit of trolling. So there are still true believers who think needing clean underwear is weak.

Uber and Lyft are expensive but anyone who says they are worse than what they replaced doesn’t remember well the heydays of taxis. Sure, people in big towns like NYC could always get one fairly easily, but everyone else was stuck dealing with whatever potentially shady operation they could dig out of a phonebook, and even then getting a car wasn’t guaranteed.

Now, anyone anywhere can get a ride, often quickly. I’m not trying to excuse any predatory commercial practices directed at drivers or passengers, which are serious problems deserving of more strict regulation, but I absolutely do not want to go back to the old way.

I'm really not sure old school taxis are actually that bad.

I had two incidents in the UK recently where my app of choice failed me and I was quickly bailed out cheaper by googling "taxi $TOWN" and having a one minute conversation with an operator.

They are better than they used to be because of the competition. I remember a time not that long ago where getting a minicab was nigh on impossible, and one miraculously did show up, it would be primary so the driver could try to scam you.

Not my experience using taxi call services in Chicago. Whenever I called them (before Uber) the taxi was prompt and courteous.

The apps did three things that the call services did not do:

1) subsidize drivers with vc money for many years making drivers plentiful and fares cheap

2) use unlicensed cabs so they could saturate areas like Manhattan that had previously limited the amount of cabs that could operate

3) Deprive drivers of info they might use to reject fares they don't want (like destination).

> 2) use unlicensed cabs so they could saturate areas like Manhattan that had previously limited the amount of cabs that could operate

This is mostly a problem with the people you pay taxes to who would invent systems to restrict the driver numbers.

No, restricting the amount of cabs is good, actually. It's very annoying if your city is overrun with cabs. The restriction needs to be reasonable but dense cities like NYC would just trend towards 100% cabs if you let them. And then nobody can drive anywhere.