That makes a lot of sense: allow the market to do its thing and efficiently allocate scarce resources.

But it raises the question: why doesn't Uber operate like a normal marketplace where buyers/sellers submit bids/offers at prices of their own choosing?

By preventing buyers/sellers from participating in price discovery, Uber makes itself look a lot more like a classic employer/vendor than an online marketplace.

Because it adds friction to what both drivers and riders want to be an easy, smooth transaction. Sidecar tried this approach and had their lunch eaten by Uber and Lyft.

Fair enough, people seem to prefer stores to flea markets where haggling is permitted.

But stores bear product liability for dangerous products, vicarious liability for employee misconduct, and are bound by employment/labor law.

You can't claim to be a flea market when you are really a store.

What if you can have actual employees and offer flexible times? That can be done.

That college student can sign up for short shifts, after all. You can allow folks to self-schedule. I*m pretty sure Uber already rates folks, in part, by their availability to drive.

> What if you can have actual employees and offer flexible times?

Sort of. If you have actual employees you need to pay for benefits. Someone who only works a few hours a day may not bring in enough revenue to cover the cost of their benefits, so the employer may need to require longer, less flexible hours in order to make it worth hiring someone in the first place.

So, that's an optimization problem around cost of benefits versus amount of revenue, right? The company can view it from the aggregate perspective; they might lose money on some low-hour employees, but still capture the revenue, enhance their market share and convenience, and make it up on revenue versus cost aggregated over all employees.