Financial analyst rips 'dystopic' price-gouging algorithms over report Uber surges prices on dying phones

11 June 2024

Many economists, during the Biden era, have been pointing out that inflation and prices are two different things.

In other words, price increases that came about in 2021 and 2022 won't be going away — even with the rate of inflation slowing down. An inflation slowdown, many economists have stressed, doesn't mean that grocery stores will be lowering their prices to pre-pandemic levels.

In a recent Bloomberg News report, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway described the algorithms that corporations have been using to justify hiking their prices as much as they think they can get away — algorithms that financial analyst Sam Ro is slamming as "dystopic."

Ro, in fact, is especially appalled by pricing on Uber's part.

On X, formerly Twitter, Weisenthal summarized the main points of the article. And Ro, in response to Weisenthal's tweets, slammed Uber's activities as the "most dystopic s*** I've heard in a long time."

Ro, who publishes a newsletter for investors, highlighted a study in Belgium that "looked at Uber prices" and "took two people in the same place going to the same destination, and it noticed that it charged more if the individual's phone battery was low. And what the surmise is, is that that's a proxy for, you're desperate."

Weisenthal tweeted that corporations "got better at tailoring prices to you individually" and used "price fixing by algorithm." And the reporter noted that in "the booming world of ancillary revenue…. Consultants…. teach companies how to max (prices) out."

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