No, it is not at all identical because riders only get to see the prices that uber wants them to see rather than all the rates that would be available if drivers could set their own rates, thus "the market rate" cannot escape a threshold that is contrary to uber's business prerogatives.
Second, Uber is running the supply/demand auction system behind the scenes already. Prices are not fixed but dynamic and change in real-time based directly on supply and demand.
I’ve often brought up the app to check prices and decided not to ride for a while. Drivers do something similar.
> thus "the market rate" cannot escape a threshold that is contrary to uber's business prerogatives.
I’m not sure what this means. I’m sure Uber sets some reasonable floor on the price, but it’s more in the driver’s interest than their own. There are absolutely drivers who would drive for below operating cost of the vehicle because either they aren’t bothering to calculate it or they aren’t the ones actually paying for it (e.g. a car that is late on payments and soon to be repo’d).
