#monopsony — Public Fediverse posts

Why your fare cost so much, and uber drivers get paid so little:
It is the result of a highly calculated corporate strategy known as surveillance pricing (or algorithmic personalized pricing).
In a genuine free market, prices function as transparent signals shaped by open supply and demand. Both buyers and sellers see the market rate, ensuring fairness. If a business overcharges, consumers walk; if it underpays, workers leave for a competitor.
Surveillance pricing completely subverts this dynamic by weaponizing information asymmetry. Using a massive hoard of data, the platform creates an invisible digital partition between the customer and the service provider. Instead of a shared, transparent marketplace, the algorithm isolates both sides into separate, closed-door negotiations where the platform holds all the cards.
For the passenger: The algorithm calculates the exact upper ceiling of what you will tolerate paying at that specific second—factoring in everything from your immediate location, time of day, and urgency, to your historical behavioral trends.
For the driver: The platform acts as an electronic monopsony (a market with many sellers but only one dominant buyer of labor). It isolates the worker and calculates the absolute structural floor of what that specific driver will accept to keep their car moving. By dangling unpredictable, variable incentives, it extracts hours of uncompensated labor (waiting and idling time), leaving the driver to absorb all the capital risk, vehicle depreciation, and fuel costs.
By blinding both sides of the transaction, the platform acts as a centralized command structure rather than a passive matching service. It systematically strips away the "consumer surplus" (the extra value and savings a buyer gets) and the "producer surplus" (the fair profit a worker keeps) and absorbs that wealth entirely for itself.
This mechanism is profoundly anti-free market because it replaces transparent competition with a proprietary information monopoly. True markets thrive on decentralized, shared knowledge; this system relies entirely on keeping everyone else in the dark.
#SurveillanceCapitalism #GigEconomy #PlatformCapitalism #FreeMarket #Economics #monopsony

Editorial re: anniversary of March 23, 2010 Obamacare #AffordableCareAct #PPACA #ACA signing by Mr. #AudacityOfHope #Obama #HopeChange #ObamaBiden #JoeBiden

#SinglePayer #MedicareForAll #Americare #UniversalHealthCoverage #UHC2030 #monopsony🙏🖖> #PublicOption👍(#Baucus #Lieberman, #Podesta, et al. sabotage🖕) > #Obamacare / Heritage Foundation #RomneyCare☹️ pre-ACA gaslit / Stockholm syndrome pre-existing condition health insurance disqualification, denial👎😡🖕
Cc: @PDAmerica

@luckytran
Expanded, improved world-class MedicareForAll: U.S.A. Uncle Sam's AmeriCare: healthcare where and when you need, Uncle Sam pays the bills.👍🖖😊

"Health insurance premiums, high *annual* deductibles, co-pays, closed networks, medical bankruptcy😡 are a human right"… said no one ever.☹️ #MedicareForAll: free at point of care, will save you money👍 but… "nah, socialism!"☹️
#M4A #AmeriCare #UniversalHealthcare #UniversalHealthCoverage #UHC2030 #UHC #EverybodyInNobodyOut #monopsony