> I don't see what the problem is.

The problem is most people don't know. In my country you can't change the price for a given person. So if you don't know it's done, you can't change your behaviour (like do legal actions).

This is not the law in all places sadly. I read that restaurants in Japan give a different, cheaper menu to locals and more expensive menus to tourists. Most tourists don’t know and the restaurant doesn’t want to price out the locals.

That just sounds like racism though - how do they tell who qualifies for the ‘local discount’ versus the ‘tourist premium?’

Betting it’s based on stereotypical appearance and language, not checking IDs.

A more charitable approach might be to charge an extra fee for foreign credit cards - that way you get to effectively upcharge tourists, while encouraging conversion to and payment by local currency, additionally saving yourself transaction fees in the process.

Japan specifically is extremely xenophobic, they actively discourage people from immigrating, they do not want foreigners there except as tourists. If you are not born in Japan, you can never become Japanese as far as the locals and the government are concerned.

It's kind of reductionist to take that environment and that culture and just default to "giving the white guy the expensive menu is racism." You'd have to do that to probably 1500 people before you hit the person who has actually immigrated as opposed to a tourist.

I figured the same but wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt

Costa Rica the vast majority of tourist attractions have a resident price and a tourist price. I have mixed feelings about it -- on the one hand, it makes sense for a country reliant on tourism to charge tourists more, since tourists are much richer, and a lot of the money goes to ecological protection, research, the arts, etc. On the other hand, it's kind of a bummer for a nominally cheap country to have quite expensive museum and national park admissions - it's hard not to feel like you're getting screwed, and it's not an ignorable difference for my budget.

It's an interesting dilemma. Personally, I prefer the version of price discrimination where you introduce high-margin premium value-adds that people can opt in or out of - alcohol or steak/lobster at a restaurant, rooms with views or additional packages at hotels, table service, etc, which can allow wealthier customers to subsidize less wealthy ones without necessarily compromising the core service. Though that's still a bummer when adding a view to a room is prohibitively expensive for something that cost the hotel nothing more to provide, and you feel like either you're getting screwed or you'll always have an alleyway view from your hotel.

> Presumably people are fine with getting "ripped off" by Uber, otherwise they wouldn't keep using Uber and paying for it.

They're fine with it because of the lack of real alternatives. There's effectively a duopoly with Lyft in most cities. Duopolies usually don't present every customer with at least some sort of solution that allows for both parties in the business transaction to gain value.

Which is why taxis were a regulated industry before some cokeheads in SV decided things needed to be "disrupted".

You can't look at an economic transaction and deduce that parties involved were "fine" with it.

> Presumably people are fine with getting "ripped off" by Uber, otherwise they wouldn't keep using Uber and paying for it.

I’m not sure why we should presume people are “fine” with this just because it’s something that happens.

Plenty of things happen in this world that are not “fine” and make people upset, but continue to happen because of market forces, lack of reasonable alternatives, something being the “least bad” option, etc.

I think one of the most glaring issues is that Uber has established dominance in the category, which gives them power of their users and allows them to implement pricing strategies that are user-hostile with less chance of repercussions.

> I think Uber sucks, but people keep using it, and seem to beg to differ.

This sort of thing happens when you reach de facto monopoly status...

> It's not like it's some free ad-supported product that's a scourge on society where all the costs are hidden.

It is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44378508

Right, people keep using Uber because it solves a real problem for them and provides convenience in their life.

If someone creates the same or better service at a more reasonable price, the consumers will switch. There is no vendor lock-in for Uber and no monopoly.

I don't see anything illegal going on here, just good old business.