Surge pricing is Silicon Valley's most insidious trend. Popularized by Uber—a company synonymous with fucking people over—surge pricing allows companies to randomly jack up prices whenever demand is running a little high, reaping profits for startups while customers on a budget are left behind. And now techies have brought the brutal manifestation of supply and demand economics to food.
For the 200,000 attendees of San Francisco's Outside Lands Music Festival this past weekend, where a three-day pass cost $275, Uber's hated "surge pricing" scheme made sure that exhausted revelers ponied up hundreds of dollars to get a few miles across town.
If Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is Keyser Söze, this is the moment in The Usual Suspects when he stops limping, sparks up a cigarette, and rides off in a sleek black car. Today, the e-hailing company announced "the most aggressive price cut the company has ever made," in order to handicap the competition.
